It may be impossible to find a single place that sums up the devastation caused by Sudan’s civil war, now deep into its fourth year. But as we report after a rare trip to the country, its ruined capital comes close. Before the war erupted in April 2023, Khartoum was a bustling city of around 7m people. Today its centre is deserted. Bare husks remain of government buildings. Smart homes and luxury hotels are in ruins. The streets, charred by fighting, are silent. So many bodies have been dumped that human skulls spill out of makeshift mass graves. And still the killing continues.
Khartoum is the scarred heart of one of Africa’s worst conflicts this century. War has destroyed swathes of the continent’s third-largest country and driven 14m people from their homes. Hundreds of thousands have probably been killed by fighting, famine and bursts of genocidal violence. The only recent African war whose horrors are comparable is the one in Congo, which may have killed more than 5m people in the early 2000s. Yet the war in Sudan is even more important geopolitically. As we warned two years ago, it has drawn in neighbouring countries, helping reignite civil wars in South Sudan and Yemen and threatening another round of killing in Ethiopia.
