Khartoum at War: A personal story by Shamsaddin Dawalbait (Pt 1/2)

After war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in mid-April 2023, many people living in Khartoum left to the south, to Wad Madani, capital of Al Gezira. Among those leaving the Sudanese capital were prominent civil society consultant Shamsaddin Dawalbait and his two sons. After five months in Wad Madani, Dawalbait travelled back to Khartoum. He later wrote down his impressions of his travel and stay in the war-torn Sudanese capital.

Shamsaddin Dawalbait is the author of several books on Islamic reform, democracy, and development in diverse developing world societies, and the founder and director of the Democratic Thought Project, a Sudanese civil society programme.

Established in 2013, the project aims to “introduce and mainstream political thought and culture and an enlightened version of Islam that accepts the rules of fair, democratic governance, women’s rights, universal human rights, culture of development and one that uncompromisingly accommodates diversity in Sudan”, as Dawalbait describes the programme.

“Rather than the “copy-paste” method, which is the common approach in dealing with these issues, the Democratic Thought Project approach emphasises the need to implant and nurture these products of universal modernity into Sudanese political practice, thought and culture.”

The Democratic Thought Project has since published the Reading for Change book series and organised numerous Reading for Change groups which have held thousands of discussion sessions. Through the Project, more than 350,000 copies of books on Sudanese political culture and thought have become available free of charge to reading groups in Sudan.

The Project also established the Alhadatha Alsudaniya magazine in 2016 and a daily newspaper, Alhadatha, in 2019, after the Sudanese revolution had ousted dictator Omar Al Bashir.

Return

After staying in Wad Madani for about five months, Dawalbait decided in December 2023 to travel back to Khartoum, to secure his private library as well as the tens of thousands of Reading for Change books stored in a warehouse in Khartoum. He wanted to make them available for young people , impoverished by the war and “to start that project from my home”.

Furthermore, he hoped to form a sort of platform through which the conditions of the millions of people trapped in the furnace of war in Khartoum could be reflected.

The civil society activist wrote down his impressions of the travel back by bus, about his arrival in war-torn Khartoum that was almost entirely occupied by RSF paramilitaries, his difficult stay there, including his encounters with RSF soldiers, and his decision to leave again six months later.

On January 20 this year, Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, a Sudanese think-tank based in New York, published Dawalbait’s report about his return to Khartoum. Radio Dabanga acquired permission to republish the personal story, of which the first part can be read below. The second part will be posted on Sunday.

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Khartoum at War: A personal story by Shamsaddin Dawalbait

Setting out

It is early morning. I am on Police Bridge in Wad Madani, where three 26-passenger buses are parked. From their appearance and location, it seems that they were originally local buses. The drivers must be adventurous men to continue traveling between cities during the war, even though they earn good money. A few people are waiting near, or sitting inside of, one of the three buses. The other buses are parked, waiting for their turn to be loaded. Due to the lack of passengers, that might not happen today. A middle-aged conductor shouts in a loud voice: “Khartoum Assalama Albagala, the Assalama bus station … Assalama or you’ll get your money back!” With a high tone he tries to make sound confident, the conductor seeks to reassure travellers with a half-smile, urging the reticent to board the bus.

Fear and apprehension dominate the situation. What could happen on the way? Or after arriving in Khartoum? Would it even be possible to reach Khartoum? Would the adventure end with being detained? Robbery? Although Wad Madani was a relatively safe area at the time, the news of war and stories of looting and attacks in Khartoum and its environs, and older stories and reports about the Janjaweed violence against civilians in Darfur were enough to spread terror in the hearts of the people. This was evident in the reluctance of many of the passengers to board even after arriving at the bus stop, the fact that their luggage consisted only of plastic bags with one change of clothes, that they carried small cheap phones instead of smartphones, the gloom, and the whispered questions about road safety, treatment at checkpoints, and travel times.

I took another look at the general condition of the bus, especially the tires, and looked for the driver, who was not there, in an attempt to assess at least the technical chances that the vehicle would reach Khartoum. When I had last taken the Khartoum-Wad Madani road, I noticed when we left Khartoum for Al Gezira five weeks after the outbreak of the war (I.e. the third week of May 2023), that most of the already dwindling services on the eastern road between the two cities had disappeared. This was the road we would take due to the heavy armed presence and clashes on the western road from Al Kamlin and onward.

I have an old habit of trying to get a general impression of the driver before travelling, especially when circumstances force me to take buses outside their official stops and ticket offices. I would sometimes change vehicles based on this impression. The strange thing is that all vehicles about which I had an uneasy feeling, as far as I can remember, had some kind of traffic accident or mishap during the trip. This time I couldn’t see the driver, but I had no other options anyway. As it turned out, wartime bus drivers were a different breed: They were adventurers looking for quick financial gain.

Their assistants, on the other hand, are the real victims of this war, exposed to violence, extortion, humiliation, detention, and beatings on a regular basis. They are the ones who, on behalf of the passengers, face the meanness and violence of the armed men at the checkpoints and transit stations, and bear the brunt of the accusations against those passengers. The first thing you notice about them is their silence, their tired faces devoid of any expression, and you are forced to reflect on the amount of patience and endurance required to complete any journey and return alive.

I put my trust in God and got on the bus, others were encouraged to get on, and the bus moved at around 08:00 towards Hantoub Bridge and then on to the eastern road to Khartoum. Most of the passengers were middle-aged women who seemed to be from Mayo and other parts of Khartoum’s Southern Belt. One was a young woman with two children, and another was carrying a large envelope for an X-ray. A few people had come to say goodbye to these women. The farewells were quiet and short. Afterward, they put on that firm, stern look of grandmothers, as if to say: “What do you want, boy?” They likely anticipated the interrogations and harassment from both sides of the war on the way. There were only three young men in the bus, but silence and cautious anticipation prevailed among each of them.

Checkpoints in army held areas

The checkpoints started shortly after the Hantoub Bridge and thereafter were never more than ten kilometres apart. Each checkpoint was crowded with people, some in military uniforms and others in civilian clothes, standing in groups separated by a few meters: Policemen, local authorities, security forces, and the military. Some were armed with Kalashnikovs, others with sticks and batons.

The bus had to stop at each one, and the young assistant would get off with a melancholy face and go to a thatched shed far from the parking spot and stay inside for some time. Although the entrances had no doors, it was not possible to see what was happening inside due to the difference in light. When the assistant exited, he was usually more energised, as if he had just overcome a difficult obstacle. The vehicle then moved slowly towards the second group of people standing at the checkpoint. Some nodded that we could continue, while others asked the vehicle to pull over to the roadside and wait.

If we were stopped a second time, the driver would take over, fishing papers out from overhead, and giving them to the policeman. The policeman puts something in his pocket, looks at the paper, then gives it back to the driver and signals him to move.

Each of the checkpoints was an example of chaos and lawlessness. Although the people present at these checkpoints, despite their large numbers, appeared to be affiliated with local or federal authorities, their behaviour was uncontrolled. What most of them had in common was that they tried, using their powers and the state of fear and necessity bred by the war, to extort as much money as possible from passing vehicles.

We stopped between 10 and 20 minutes at each checkpoint, depending on the demands of its staff and the progress of the negotiations—or, more accurately, the pleas—of the assistant or the driver to reduce the amount of money requested. At one checkpoint before Al Hilaliya, the three young men had to get off the bus after being asked about their tribal origin. All three were from Arab tribes from Kordofan or around Khartoum.

Reaching checkpoint No. 12: Al Hilaliya

It was nearly 13:00 in the afternoon. In normal times, the five hours we had spent getting to Al Hilaliya on the road would have been enough to get to Khartoum and back to Wad Madani. But things were about to get worse. The checkpoint in Al Hilaliya was more crowded, with more people in civilian clothes carrying firearms or the solid truncheons used by security forces to disperse demonstrations and protests.

There were also more buses heading to Khartoum waiting at the checkpoint – which often entered from Hasaheisa and other places west of the Blue Nile, via the Rufaa Bridge, to the eastern road. Many passengers got off, trying to find out the reason for the delay or to follow up on the efforts of the drivers and their assistants to secure passage. It turned out that the delay was caused by those manning this checkpoint. They were demanding large sums of money, crushing drivers to the point that there was little incentive anymore to continue the trip.

The mixed crowd of travellers and military and security forces spread out over three hours of waiting on and around the asphalt road on a scorching hot day, despite the fact that it was December. The checkpoint personnel wore expressions of meanness, cruelty, and indifference as they raised their batons in the faces of those who were begging them to accept a smaller amount, turning them back, saying, “Hey man, get out of my sight… I don’t have anything for you..!” Travelers showed signs of exhaustion from hunger, thirst, heat, suppressed anger, helplessness, and fear of what could happen, including returning the bus to where it came from.

Those scenes seemed to me to sum up the epitome of the Sudanese state of 1956 and its ghoulish descendant, the State of 1989*: The use of brutal force to control the scene, the corruption and tyranny without limits and the in-your-face chaos caused by the behaviour of government employees unconstrained by controls, regulations, or laws. There was a complete absence of any institutional framework. Under the feet of these wild elephants, civil rights were lost.

Some may say that the term ‘1956’ is a ‘Janjaweed expression’ that the RSF are deploying for political gain**, and that it is not permissible to accept or use it. Rather, they argue, civil society should use its own terms, instead of legitimising those of armed groups or exposing themselves to accusations of being ‘covertly Janjaweed’. However, these scenes cannot be separated from the conditions created by the 1956 State and escalated by the 1989 State.

Likewise, civil society’s criticism of the predecessor of the 1989 state did not begin with the RSF, but rather preceded it by decades, embodied in common expressions such as “returning to the founding platform,” and “restructuring the institutions of the Sudanese state,” which reflect the founding defects in the 1956 State. Civil society is not borrowing the language of armed rebel movements, but these movements are adopting the language of civil society. Consider the expression New Sudan, which was originally the name of a magazine. In the mid-1940s, it became the name of a daily newspaper founded in Khartoum, and 40 years later, in the 1980s it came to be associated with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement [formed in 1983 by South Sudanese rebels under the leadership of John Garang, RD].

We stayed at the Al Hilaliya checkpoint until after 15:30. Those staffing the checkpoint, in an attempt to extort travellers, expelled all the vehicles from under the few trees that offered shade in the area to an open space devoid of any shade. Once again, the pleas of the sick, children, and other passengers did not sway the authorities.

Finally, after the young assistant returned for the tenth time, his face almost brimming with tears, desperate to convince the armed men to accept less money, the driver told us that there was no way but to leave the paved road and head north through the Al Butana plains. He taught us the names of towns that were difficult to pronounce and instructed us to say we were heading to them in case we were stopped. Indeed, the driver headed north first through fields, then rough dirt roads for about an hour, then west to an area barren except for a few wadis, until he met the asphalt road again.

After we left the Al Hilaliya checkpoint, silence prevailed inside the bus, as we feared what might happen if a security patrol suddenly appeared. We had barely caught our breath when the driver stopped for a moment to tell us that the next checkpoint would be the first manned by the RSF. He said everyone should prepare their identification papers and know what to say if asked about his profession and place of residence in Khartoum. Silence and fear returned, and our apprehension and anticipation rose once again.

RSF checkpoints

A young man with a long rifle, who looked to be in his early twenties, got on the bus and greeted us in the dialect of the Abbala [camel herders, RD] people from western Sudan. Then he asked: “Where are you coming from?” A number of passengers answered in unison, encouraged by his welcoming tone: “From Madani”. “Yes, where are you going?” “Khartoum.” “Why are you so late?” It was sunset by then. Some answered in murmurs: “The army bases…they didn’t leave us alone…they delayed us at Al Hilaliya…!” Women were the ones who usually answered the group questions. The young man, who wasn’t wearing a military uniform, asked, smiling this time: “Is anyone carrying any weapons or contraband?” Some of the passengers responded with a similar smile, closer to laughter, while they responded in the negative.

Meanwhile, another person was walking around the vehicle, peering through the windows at the faces of the passengers and what was inside the bus. He asked for the documents of three middle-aged men, with African features. He checked their documents and asked them a few questions, then allowed the bus to continue.

A little later, the driver asked the passengers if they preferred to continue traveling to Khartoum, with the possibility of the bus being prevented from entering at night, or to spend the night in Um Dawanban and enter Khartoum in the morning. Most preferred to spend the night in Um Dawanban. It was clear that the passengers, although they breathed a sigh of relief, because their first encounter with the RSF was the opposite of what they had expected, had no energy left to take risks that day.

In Um Dawanban, a new economic activity had developed during the war: Boys and young men offered iron beds, often part of their home furnishings, for rent, along with pillows and blankets, for travellers like us to spend the night. Most trips that had taken only hours before the war now took days, creating a new demand.

We set out early in the morning from Um Dawanban, to begin another long journey between the RSF checkpoints. There were now no more than 500 metres between each checkpoint, so that each vehicle was searched within sight of the next and the one after that, and yet we had to stop and undergo the same search at each checkpoint. Did I say every vehicle? In fact, there were no other vehicles other than the one we were riding in. The roads were empty of people, animals, or any activity.

As we advanced towards Khartoum, the traces of the battles with the army began to appear: Destroyed armoured vehicles and troop carriers, and combat vehicles burned or overturned on both sides of the road. In places where there were buildings, especially shops, RSF combat vehicles could be seen inside their open doors, their Dushka machine guns pointing towards the street. All this amidst an uninterrupted series of RSF checkpoints, with paramilitaries boarding the vehicle, asking the same questions, and requesting the documents of the same three men… until the bus entered East Nile and stopped in front of a large gas station, which turned out to be the main checkpoint for entering Khartoum.

At this checkpoint, all passengers were unloaded with their luggage. The women took their bags indoors, accompanied by a woman wearing an RSF uniform. The men were interrogated outside about their professions, reasons for coming to Khartoum, and where they lived. Their bags were searched, and their documents were checked.

The personnel working at this checkpoint immediately reminded me of the security personnel of the National Congress Party [NCP, set up by the Sudanese Muslim brothers and dissolved in 2019, after the democratic revolution, RD]: They were mean, and had that dry, mocking tone and appeared to enjoy oppressing people.

When my turn came, I presented my driver’s license as identification, and the officer took it as an opportunity to try to give me several lessons. Pedantically he said that the license was not an identity document and that it had no value outside of the driver’s seat, et cetera. The only document acceptable to him was the national ID, despite the fact that a driver’s license can be used as ID in many other countries. At the end of that long rant, I took my ID out of my bag. The officer looked at it, turned it over, and looked at it for a long time. Then, oddly enough, he asked me to prove that I practice the profession of ‘agricultural engineer’ it listed!

Entering Khartoum

The feelings were mixed as the bus took us, for the first time in months, onto the streets of Khartoum. This was the city that we had left in a hurry, fleeing fierce military battles and terrifying stories of a foreign military force that had invaded and now controlled it. An initial feeling of alienation, I think, overwhelms all those who return because of the paramilitary presence at every corner and bend while eyes from windows scrutinise every vehicle or other movement straying down the street. Everyone wants to know the extent of what is happening … compare it to with what he has heard and assess the risks and chances of survival for themselves and their families.

After leaving the checkpoint, we found ourselves on the main road of Al Haj Yousef and saw a significant number of RSF soldiers moving around with their weapons, gathering around a car while a mechanic worked on it, or sitting on chairs near a tea or food vendor. They were moving along amidst broken pieces of furniture or perhaps an electrical pole, or even a burnt rickshaw, put in the middle of the street as a barrier from which they guarded their checkpoints, which were now separated by no more than 250 metres. Despite the early hour, people were moving around, and shops, including butcher shops, grocery stores, and vegetable kiosks were open, features of a normal life. Or maybe just normal in comparison to the destruction that we had expected.

We reached the Al Manshiya Bridge [connecting Khartoum North with Khartoum, RD]. On the right was the East Nile Hospital. We had heard on the news that it had been bombed, and indeed, part of the facade overlooking the bridge was destroyed. Only one lane of the bridge was open, with checkpoints on the lane coming from Khartoum. There was little traffic, mostly either combat vehicles mounted with Dushka machine guns, or civilian vehicles driven by members of the RSF. We crossed without any problems, though with apprehension.

After arriving on the Khartoum side of the Al Manshiya Bridge, we proceeded to Street 60 in the eastern part of the city. Once again, except for the absence of any pedestrians on the streets, or people in shops and houses (which was expected because of the many videos of empty neighbourhoods on social media and repeated talk about Khartoum as a ghost town), there were no other visible effects of the war: buildings and villas are still standing. We saw no traces of cannon shells or machine gun pellets. The street itself was relatively clean, although devoid of cars. Up until that point, our bus was the only vehicle we saw on the street.

The treatment at the checkpoints was striking. Usually, a young man would get on, greet the passengers in the distinctive Darfuri Arabic dialect, ask where we were coming from, and wish us good health. He would look at the faces of the passengers and inside the carriage, then get off. Meanwhile, another person would examine the faces of the passengers from the windows. He would ask some for their documents, and others to get off. Oddly enough, it was always the same three people, with their African features, who were asked to get off. They would be taken to what appeared from the outside to be a checkpoint office, located inside a store or a garage overlooking the street.

It seemed that there was consistency in the way the RSF dealt with us. At one of the bases on 60th Street, one member shouted after looking from outside and without getting into the vehicle: “Young men get off the bus!” They meant people in their 40s, after all the true young men had already been taken off by the army.

I went with those getting off the bus. But a man who seemed to be the commander of the base asked me immediately: “Why are you getting off, uncle?” I answered, “Didn’t you tell the young men to come down?” In general, there was a degree of special treatment for the elderly and women, and in any case, the treatment at the RSF checkpoints that we passed, despite the large number, was better than what we experienced at the army checkpoints.

In Khartoum

The bus continued its halting journey along 60th Street, Africa Street, the streets leading toward the Central Market in southern Khartoum, until we found ourselves at the Water Tower station. There, some passengers got off, saying quick farewells to those with whom they had developed relationships on the journey. I got off at the Mayo Market, where a friend who had helped me a lot on the trip took me to his home.

Life in Mayo seemed somewhat normal, as it had in Al Haj Yousef. The market was crowded with people. Goods, food, vegetables, and even some fruits were available. There was a reasonable movement of domestic buses, despite the extreme poverty and neglect of services that characterises the neighbourhoods in southern Khartoum.

The next morning was a special day, full of emotions, because I would be returning to my home after about five months of absence. I had left the place to protect my young son after the battles reached our neighbourhood, and the shelling and bullets flying overhead intensified. This is what we witnessed during the first five weeks of the war. In addition, we saw hordes of poor people, most of them women, roaming the streets and entering abandoned houses in the richer, central neighbourhoods of Khartoum. They carried whatever valuable things they could carry to their homes in the poor southern districts. They must have also reached our house, located in the middle of the battlefield. Adding to that, I had been told that RSF members were using our home as their residence.

Several considerations had prompted me to return to Khartoum. The first one concerned my private library, with dozens of notebooks, quotations from readings, and their sources. I had already experienced the confiscation of my library by the SudaneseSecurity Service in 1997.

The second reason for my return was that I felt deep down that some of us, those who had engaged in public work in various forms, had to remain with our people inside the beleaguered city and share the pain and cruelty of the war. I had hope that those of us who remained inside could form some sort of platform through which we might be able to reflect the conditions of the millions of miserable people trapped in the furnace of war in greater Khartoum.

The third consideration related to the tens of thousands of books of the Reading for Change series of the Democratic Thought Project, which were in a warehouse near the centre of Khartoum. I wanted to explore the possibility of getting them out and making use of them in some way. Later, I decided to make them available in home-libraries for young people who had been crushed by poverty due to the war and to start that project from my home.

Back home

I arrived with my friend at the RSF checkpoint next to my house, filled with anticipation about their reaction to my request to enter, and what I would find if they agreed. What would be the condition of the house, where I had lived with my family for 14 years? What about the library? My private room? My daughters’ rooms? Our things? I was to have my first personal meetings with members of the RSF since the start of the war.

We found a man in military uniform carrying a long rifle, sitting as a guard in the base, while others milled around nearby. My attention was drawn to two chairs with patterned cushions, part of our dining set.

We asked the man about the commander of the checkpoint. After asking several questions, he got up and took us to him. The commander, a man in his early forties, wearing shorts and a polo shirt, greeted us calmly. I pointed to my house, told him that I was the owner and said that I wanted to take some things from inside.

Looking in that direction, he asked “which house?” I pointed to it again. When he asked, “The one with the library?” I was relieved because if the RSF base commander knew about my library, it might still be intact. The polite man even said that he did not need to see our IDs, he asked the guard who turned out to be one of the occupants of the house, to accompany us there.

The outer door was tied with a rope from the outside, as it had obviously been opened violently, and its two ends were now far apart. From outside it was possible to see beds, tables, and cotton and foam mattresses, some on the floor… Almost half of the interior furniture of the house was in the outer courtyard: Tables and chairs, kitchen utensils, mosquito nets,shoes ….

I walked straight into the living room, where the library was, followed by the soldier with his rifle. Thankfully, the library was covered in dust, but otherwise unaffected. The books were in their places on the six wooden shelves. Some of the shelves had been moved and taped together, apparently to make room for something in the living room, but the books were there!

I entered my room, which was adjacent to the living room. Five months previously, I had left it with a comfortable chair and a medium-sized table for reading. There was a small cabinet of shelves for my writing, translations, and books that I edited or participated in preparing, and a chest of drawers for papers, files, reports, etc. Above it were the many books that I was working on. Now, the room was empty, except for the large bed and wardrobe. The wardrobe was completely empty, its drawers scattered on the floor. The souvenirs and antiques on top of the wardrobe were missing, except for a framed picture of one of my sons. But the books in the small cabinet were intact. In the inner hall, clothes, papers, sheets, and shoes were piled up everywhere amidst the remaining furniture. Some of the things on the floor and in the house were not our property.

I went up to the upper floor, the soldier following behind me. Everywhere I went in the house he followed me, standing next to me and holding his rifle. The room of my one of my daughters was empty. In the room of my other daughter, so many things had been piled on the floor that it was hardly possible to push the door inward. The things in the third room, which used to be occupied by two relatives who lived with us, were also piled on the floor.

I gathered whatever papers, notebooks, and books I could find. I wanted to have them with me in case I couldn’t return, and I seized the brief opportunity offered when the soldier went out to smoke, to retrieve a sum of money that I had hidden in the house, and left, rushing because I knew that the road becomes more dangerous in the afternoon. We passed the commander who surprised me by suggesting that I return home, alone at first, and that in time my family could join me. When I replied: “But you are living in the house,” he said that they had no need for it.

At that point, the idea of staying in Khartoum started to become real.

In the middle of battles

I spent the following days collecting essentials for my stay at home in Khartoum: A clay water jar, solar panels, batteries, household utensils, a gas cylinder, a portable fan, door locks … This meant moving along the only open transportation line, from Al Kalakla Allaffa in southern Khartoum through Mayo neighbourhood to the intercity bus terminal (Al Mina Al Barri) and then via Al Sahafa Zalat street to Abu Hamama in central Khartoum. Most days, the transport took place amidst the whizzing of cannons and the crackle of bullets, or aerial bombardment and rising tongues of smoke in places not far from that line. Other times, the sounds of artillery and bombardments would start early in the morning so that most people preferred not leave their homes at all. A new phenomenon, compared to the first weeks of the war, consisted of night battles, pitting warplanes against the fiery lights of anti-aircraft guns.

The days passed and while my trips between south and central Khartoum continued, I gradually adapted to the war situation. My first impressions of the city, of a relatively clean 60th Street with its cohesive buildings, which seemed to be part of an attempt by the RSF at the time to attract residents to return to Khartoum, disappeared completely. This impression was replaced by the real images of Khartoum: Continuous rows of residential neighbourhoods and public squares devoid of people, previously crowded roads without cars or rickshaws, but with hundreds of destroyed vehicles in the ditches, with their doors open or torn-apart, many of which were dismantled or (partly) destroyed, leaving only their iron frames.

Small businesses

All the markets of Khartoum were plundered and damaged by the war, and new markets emerged in their place, where mostly stolen goods and other materials were sold. As for businesses outside the old markets, all that remains of the shops along the roads are their signboards. Beneath the signs, broken doors hang wide open, shelves are empty, broken glass, display cases and counters are shattered and burned, furniture or the remains of it are piled up inside and in front of the shops, a scene of destruction stretching for miles.

According to studies, the informal sector contributed nearly 60 percent of the national GDP before the war***. The war in Khartoum severely damaged this sector, including wholesale and retail trade, transportation, hotels, food services, health, and education. It will be a major challenge to rebuild these sectors because their financing came either from banks that were also severely affected by the war and from savings of the people (in addition to transfers from Sudanese expatriates abroad), i.e. sources that cannot be restored except through a real and efficient compensation programme.

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* The “State of 1989” is a reference to the three-decade rule of deposed President Omer Al Bashir, who took power in a coup d’état in 1989 and the Sudanese Islamist Movement that held the real power in the regime.

** The ‘State of 1956’ refers to RSF war propaganda. The paramilitary group claims with this slogan that it is waging the war to dismantle the governance system that prevailed in Sudan following its independence in 1956.

*** IFPRI, “What Are the Economic and Poverty Implications for Sudan If the Conflict Continues through 2024?”, August 2024, available at: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/caa843dc-b3cd-4c7c-9511-d0eeb3047a99/content