Military troopers patrol a market space in Khartoum.
AFP through Getty Pictures/AFP
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AFP through Getty Pictures/AFP
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — “I felt the air was lighter, I felt very joyful. I felt plenty of feelings, I used to be overwhelmed on that morning.”
That is how Khartoum resident Duaa Tariq described feeling when the Sudanese capital was liberated from nearly two years of brutal paramilitary occupation over every week in the past.
Tariq, who gave beginning to her first baby whereas Khartoum was beneath siege, has performed an lively position within the Emergency Response Rooms, a group group that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize final yr for his or her life-saving work throughout the civil conflict. All through this time NPR has stayed in touch with her.
The paramilitary Speedy Assist Forces (RSF) had dominated the capital for a lot of the conflict, with the Sudanese military pressured to arrange a wartime hub at Port Sudan on the Crimson Beach.
Duaa Tariq
Through Duaa Tariq
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Through Duaa Tariq
However final week, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) lastly broke the impasse and regained management of town and armed forces head General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan returned to the Presidential Palace.
The battle in Sudan broke out in April 2023 amid an influence wrestle between Normal Burhan’s SAF and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, generally known as Hemedti. Thus far, the conflict has killed as many as 150,000 folks (though the determine is prone to be a lot larger) and displaced some 15 million, creating the world’s largest humanitarian disaster.
Tariq, an activist in her early thirties, mentioned that within the days for the reason that military retook town from the RSF, she’s loved doing the small, odd issues that had been inconceivable when Khartoum was a battle zone.
“I rode a bicycle and I went grocery buying with out hiding the cash in my chest. I used to be laughing within the streets, I performed music,” she tells NPR. “I took my cellphone with me on the best way out as there have been no troopers to loot it. I did easy issues, nevertheless it felt so totally different.”
“There’s lots of people within the streets now. We’re smelling perfumes, persons are sporting perfumes now, sporting very good garments,” she provides. “We hear the enjoyment and sounds of the youngsters.”
Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan,chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council and commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces SAF, visits the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, on March 26, 2025. Al-Burhan declared from contained in the Presidential Palace in Khartoum that “Khartoum is free.”
Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua Information Company/Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua Information Company
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Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua Information Company/Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua Information Company
Khartoum, a once-charming and vibrant metropolis on the confluence of the banks of the White and Blue Niles, is now a shadow of its former self, after years of shelling lowered a lot of it to rubble. After the military retook town, it additionally discovered that the nationwide museum, which housed priceless antiquities from the Nubian kingdom, had been looted by the RSF on an enormous scale.
Whereas retaking Khartoum is a symbolic and strategic victory for the military, the broader conflict is much from over. Elsewhere within the gold-rich nation, the RSF stays in management, together with in Darfur area within the west of the nation the place it has been accused by the US of committing genocide.
“We should ponder whether the RSF as they retreat westward will join with the forces already there and whether or not they’ll try to make Darfur a fiefdom,” Eric Reeves, a U.S. scholar who has researched Sudan, informed NPR.
On the identical time, the Sudanese Armed Forces, who’ve additionally been accused of conflict crimes, are “something however good guys,” he harassed. He added that whereas the successes in Khartoum had been vital, “that is the middle and Sudan has at all times been outlined by center-periphery conflicts.”
Already there have been accusations of Sudanese military atrocities in Khartoum. UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk issued a statement on Thursday condemning “the credible reviews of quite a few incidents of abstract executions of civilians in a number of areas of Khartoum, on obvious suspicions that they had been collaborating with the Speedy Assist Forces.” He has referred to as for a full investigation.
“We’re at a brand new stage of the conflict,” Ahmed Soliman, Horn of Africa researcher at British assume tank Chatham Home informed NPR. Soliman mentioned the RSF will now must “regroup and consolidate after which we’ll see what the brand new section of the battle seems to be like and whether or not the military itself sees it as a second to try to defeat the RSF in its stronghold in Darfur.”
“Or whether or not or not it returns to extra tried and examined routes, which is to advertise insurgency and use allied militia forces … to combat conflicts within the peripheries in Darfur,” he continued.
The RSF has additionally mentioned it intends to type a parallel authorities, which the African Union has warned might threat partitioning the nation.
Again within the capital Khartoum, Tariq is having fun with this second of pleasure. “The place seems to be festive. It is utterly destroyed, however the persons are festive.” However she, like others, is aware of there may be a lot to rebuild.
However what resonates most for her are all the buddies she’ll by no means see once more now that the conflict in Khartoum — however not the nation — is mainly over.
“We misplaced plenty of volunteers inside our emergency response rooms and we misplaced so many individuals, relations, family members, buddies, neighbors. I (cannot) overlook the faces of the folks I knew,” she says.
