Stolen homelands: Sudan's generations of conflict, displacement and hope

A year has passed since the eruption of war in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum, a conflict that witnessed former allies Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Army, and Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, the leader of the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), vie for power.

The war has devastated Sudan, killing tens of thousands and forcing about 10 million Sudanese to flee the violence. Today, Sudan is suffering a dire humanitarian crisis and a looming threat of famine.

Before becoming adversaries, both Burhan and Dagalo worked for Omar Albashir, the now-ousted dictator, who nicknamed Dagalo "Hemeyti" — meaning "my protection" in Arabic —  when he brought him to Khartoum to scare off whoever thought of threatening Albashir’s 30-year rule.

Albashir formalised Hemedti and empowered his once-tribal armed forces, then known as the Janjaweed — whose name is said to translate to "Jin on horseback" in a local Darfur dialect — and gave them the official name the RSF. But during the revolution of 2019, Hemedti betrayed Albashir in pursuit of power.

"Now, each Khartoumian bears a survival story, a testament to resilience shared only by those with the strength to recount it"

Just as the Janjaweed played a complicit role with the Army in burning villages and displacing millions from Darfur in 2006, now, the two rival armies have turned Khartoum into Darfur, forcing the majority of Sudan's middle-class population into becoming refugees overnight.

While the plight of Khartoum may be new, Sudan’s history of conflict is not. Right under our noses, South Sudan experienced similar horrors that led to its separation from Sudan after Africa's longest-running civil war with the Sudanese army.

As in Darfur, Khartoumians ignored the Janjaweed's genocidal acts as they continued with their daily lives. Both South Sudanese and Darfurians were internally displaced and scattered worldwide for decades, some to never return, living only on memories of horror survival stories.

Now, each Khartoumian bears a survival story, a testament to resilience shared only by those with the strength to recount it. Many have gone into severe desperation, and many have passed away due to sudden heart attacks and other sudden illnesses. Many think the two are related, and many repeat the Islamic belief that “their day has come”, suggesting they would have died if they were in their beds in a safe Khartoum.

Because of the scarcity of official news from or about Sudan, which has been overshadowed by international attention on Gaza, our family WhatsApp groups have transformed into news briefings.

Seven weeks since Sudanese people - in the country and around the world - have been violently catapulted into the kind of total chaos and uncertainty only the collapse of a state’s governing structure can achieve.

✍ @yassmin_a https://t.co/D4xlRVEeD2

— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) June 5, 2023

Recently, one of  my family’s remaining neighbours shared images and videos showing how our once-vibrant neighbourhood in the old quarter of Umdorman in Khartoum is now a ghost town. We recently learned it has been taken from the Janjaweed by the army forces.

Cautiously filming during morning prayers to avoid the watchful eyes of the Janjaweed, our neighbour captured desolate streets strewn with corpses and burnt cars. Tales emerged of forced marriages to Janjaweed soldiers, a famous doctor shot in a brief debacle over his car, and the passing of a beloved uncle who sought refuge in a Sufi Sheikh's house.

This is the harsh reality for those who chose to stay: destroyed communities, a lack of basic medical attention, and the ever present threat of death.

Meanwhile, stories of newlyweds intending to embark on a perilous journey to Europe, now smuggled into Libya and forced to endure horrific conditions, echo with the haunting news of a twelve Sudanese souls killed when their refugee boat sank off the coast of Tunisia, inducing a sombre silence within the group.

Working in museums has always fueled my curiosity about how societies can abandon cities, leaving homes untouched and unreturned until rediscovered by archaeologists or, in our case, WhatsApp archaeologists.

Initial promises of a swift resolution to what the military termed a "conflict" convinced many Khartoumians that their refuge was temporary. Yet, the harsh reality of a now full-blown civil war has left these refugees grappling with an intricate equation of survival: dwindling savings, uncertain futures, and the challenges of assimilating into new communities.

For middle-class refugees of Khartoum, this equation mirrors the struggles of a previous generation that fled the Albashir government or anticipated economic collapse after he came to power in 1989.

The Gulf is where most Sudanese ended up, as it was a familiar space where Sudanese were instrumental in building the infrastructure of the Arab Gulf states, starting in the late 1950s. The newly independent Sudanese nation was seconding them based on their experience as administrators, a legacy of the British colonial education and bureaucracy. 

With the economic deterioration of Sudan and the rise of the oil-rich Gulf states, there was always a need for Sudanese doctors, engineers, and even soldiers, who were a familiar choice.

This trend continues today. The Janjaweed were even contracted to fight alongside the Saudis and Emiratis in the Yemen war that broke out in 2015. This directly contributed to the rise of Hemedti and his forces, who were seen as an acceptable replacement to Albashir to play a Haftar- or Sisi-like role in quelling the spirit of revolution in Sudan.

My father spent 20 years in the Gulf, like many, in the hope of returning to a better home. Despite our apparent comfort abroad, many diaspora kids - like me - secretly envied those who lived in Sudan.

The kids back home were just kids; they never had to endure the longing to be in a place where people looked like us and spoke like us — a place where we belonged without standing out, where we weren’t asked why we were there or when we got there.

Sudan was the place we went to if we misbehaved, or for college as a last chance to get a taste of home before you had to head back out to the Gulf again to look for a job, as it was your time to take responsibility for the family here and back home.

For many, the Gulf served as a stepping stone to moving to the West as it ensured financial stability to make the move. Some of my father’s generation anticipated the collapse in Sudan and decided to move West to secure a more politically stable future for their children.

But they underestimated the challenges of relocating to the West, where their children faced Sudan’s primary identity crisis. As black Arabs, we constantly grapple with explaining our identity.

"Despite our apparent comfort abroad, many diaspora kids - like me - secretly envied those who lived in Sudan"

In the eyes of the Western world, including Arabs in the Arab world and especially in the West, we are often perceived as simply African. However, our parents, deeply rooted in Sudanese culture, see themselves as African but feel a stronger affinity towards Arab identity.

This discrepancy initially leads to confusion within the new community and an internal struggle, mostly for the children. However, eventually, it fosters a reevaluation of self-perception and the realisation that Sudan's inability to harness the power of its dual Arab and African heritage lies at the root of many of its challenges.

That's in addition to the pressure of being Muslim in a post-9/11 world, where you are expected to be religious by your parents but not too religious for the authorities with the media fascination of Jihad or, as they called it, the threat from within.

With all these complexities, many shared our envy of the cousins back home in Sudan. However, others preferred to assume their role as new citizens fighting for new causes in new lands.

During the 2019 revolution, the Sudanese diaspora played a pivotal role in drawing global attention to Sudan's plight. Staging sit-ins and pushing campaigns and donating, many returned when Al-Bashir failed, attempting to contribute until the outbreak of war interrupted their efforts.

As a political cartoonist threatened for my work and unable to go to Sudan freely, I shared the same sentiment. I returned after the revolution, eager to give my children a glimpse of the home that fueled my passion for change.

They, like me, had lived in multiple countries – in Qatar, they were Sudanese kids; in Maine, they were Black kids; and in Oslo, they were just another immigrant kid, shocking the Arab kids that they speak Arabic and explaining to the African kids why they speak Arabic.

Returning to Sudan, I wanted them to find a sense of belonging to understand who they are, regardless of where life takes them.

I still remember how my summers in Sudan as a teenager shaped my love for art and how the connected houses in my family’s compound-like neighbourhood were a wonder cabinet. The maze-like alleys, the dusty library, trying to solve the mysteries of who those people in black and white photo albums were.

The architecture changed every summer depending on need and who moved in and who got married. The tens of drawers filled with stacks of beautifully handwritten and official documents that belonged to my grandfather are still waiting to be discovered.

It took 25 years for my father to return to Sudan as a retiree, after he had worked to pay for our universities and helped us find jobs. He finally managed to build his house in the 100-year-old family compound, only to survive a gunshot from a teenage Janjaweed soldier and end up as a refugee in Egypt, forced to make an 18-hour bus journey with 30 family members.

The last time my family took this journey by land it was when my great-grandfather and his family were forced to take the exact route around 100 years ago, escaping the wrath of a self-proclaimed messiah Al-Mahdi.

I discovered this while digging through the British Library online archive, where most of my great grandfather’s documents have been scanned and made public. We have no idea of the fate of the originals back home.

My grandfather, Abdalla Bey, returned 15 years later after the British defeated the short-lived caliphate, married an Egyptian, and built a house for her sons to seek education in the capital. Her descendants lived in the same house until this war. Our Whatsapp news briefings informed us that the Janjaweed is occupying it now.

Discussing displacement and our house with a Somali friend, he shared memories of the first days of the civil war in his own country, walking for days to the next city, just as we did, they expected the conflict to end shortly.

"The war has stripped away everything, yet in its aftermath, both the old and new diaspora, armed with the contrasting experiences of the worst and the best of Sudan, are tasked with building a resilient nation"

When he returned 30 years later, his house was not only occupied by a new family, but it is now in a new country.

In a conversation with the new house owners, they acknowledged that it was once his house and my friend accepted that it is their house now. They moved in years after his family fled.

He was living in Cairo as a UN refugee waiting for resettlement at the time, his family was settled in Australia, where he studied, got married, and now has children who are Australians with family in Sweden, the US, and London.

The way he looks at it, his family didn’t lose their house; rather, the house gained a new family.

As Sudanese who were forced to flee, as with displaced people all over the world, there is an uncertainty of our return, whether it's in 10 years akin to my grandfather, or 20 years following my father's path, or perhaps even 30 years as my Somali friend experienced. Unlike my father's generation, we are living through the very collapse they foresaw.

Our children will grapple with the idea of home, returning if there is a chance or becoming citizens in distant lands. We were once diaspora kids with the choice to go home; now they are refugee children, growing up without the certainty of returning.

All we can do is continue working towards a chance to rewire the system, rebuild, and fulfil our dreams and the dreams of those before us of returning to a feeling of a home that never manifested.

The outcome remains uncertain, much like the struggles our fathers endured, but our commitment to trying endures. The war has stripped away everything, yet in its aftermath, both the old and new diaspora, armed with the contrasting experiences of the worst and the best of Sudan, are tasked with building a resilient nation.

Sudan will continue to be overlooked, as it is easier for the powers that be to manipulate fragments than deal with a colossal failed state or, even worse for them, a democratic state.

This challenge, then, falls upon us, from our experiences and those of those around us, to shape a new, better Sudan or whatever it will end up being.

Khalid Albaih is a Romanian-born award winning Sudanese political cartoonist and cultural producer currently living between Doha and Oslo.

Follow him on Instagram: @Khalidalbaih

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.