AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Sudan's capital, Khartoum, was once a vibrant city of more than 6 million people before civil war exploded on its streets and consumed the country for more than two years. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces took over the city in the early weeks of fighting. They were battling their former allies, the Sudanese Armed Forces, in a war that has caused humanitarian catastrophe and the worst famine in decades. Then, about a month ago, Khartoum was recaptured by the Sudanese army, but the city is a shell of its former self, as NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu reports.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Laughter).
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: Against a backdrop of destruction, sounds of life and revival in Khartoum. Groups of children ride their bikes through eerie, deserted streets.
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AKINWOTU: They race and skid on the sandy concrete, riding past empty buildings and storefronts left in ruins.
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AKINWOTU: A stand selling Sudanese tea and coffee has reopened for the first time in two years. The owner lays out plastic chairs and serves the first few customers.
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AKINWOTU: And nearby, staff at a bakery sweep glass from the storefront shuttered by gunfire. There's a shortage of water and no electricity. But then the generator bursts into life...
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AKINWOTU: ...And the bakery reopens again. These are the scenes emerging from a city hollowed out by the war. It's more than a month since Khartoum was recaptured by the Sudanese army after two years of brutal occupation by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
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AKINWOTU: Just a few years ago, this was one of Africa's most populous cities, with bougainvillea draped over sand-colored walls, restaurants lining the riverbanks, the city filled with monuments and architecture rooted in various eras of Sudan's history. But much of Khartoum is a scene of destruction.
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AKINWOTU: We walk across broken concrete and glass at the centuries-old presidential palace, occupied by the RSF until the last days of the battle for Khartoum. The hall's battered and broken, its facade burnt to a matchstick.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: Almost nothing has been spared, not even the country's treasures. Sudan's National Museum held rich records of the country's ancient civilization.
After you.
MUSA ELFADUL: Ok. Welcome, welcome.
AKINWOTU: At the museum, I met Musa Elfadul, an archaeological researcher working here for 27 years. As we walk through the gates, the scale of the damage is overwhelming.
ELFADUL: It is so bad (crying).
AKINWOTU: I'm so sorry.
ELFADUL: I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
AKINWOTU: No, don't worry. It's OK.
The gardens are charred black, the museum walls blown open. Towering statues of Nubian kings at the entrance are punctured by bullet holes, the arms hacked off. Inside, the cabinets are empty, the floors covered in debris.
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AKINWOTU: Precious evidence of Sudan's ancient history was ransacked. The museum held close to 100,000 artifacts that spanned more than 4,500 years. It stored mummies and artifacts from the Islamic, Christian and Meroitic eras.
ELFADUL: This hall (inaudible) small antiquities. It belonged to the Meroitic period - that time.
AKINWOTU: But most of it was looted by the RSF. Even electric cables were ripped from the walls and stripped for copper.
ELFADUL: Every wire, they dig and take it. And also all the air conditioning - they take the machine engine inside and take it.
AKINWOTU: In several offices, fighters even defecated in the room. Most of the artifacts that they didn't take with them, they burnt or destroyed. Only the library was left mostly intact.
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AKINWOTU: As we drive through Khartoum with music playing from the car stereo, the sheer scale of the theft and damage unfolds at every turn. It feels like the RSF swarmed through the capital city like locusts through a field. They stripped almost every building and home they controlled of anything of value. And the same brutality inflicted on the city was also inflicted on its people. The RSF turned schools, hospitals and homes into detention centers. Untold numbers of people were tortured and killed, as told through the survivors, like 24-year-old Munir Jelabi at a military hospital in Khartoum.
MUNIR JELABI: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: His body is skeletal, his bones bulging through his skin.
JELABI: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: He was arrested by the RSF over a year ago, while he was buying food at a market.
JELABI: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: Jelabi was kept in a cell packed with people who were whipped and beaten. They were only fed a small glass of lentils and water each day, if at all. The bodies of those who died would be left in the cell for days.
AFAF ABUBAKAR: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: Jelabi's mother, Afaf Abubakar, is sitting by his side. She said she didn't recognize her son when she first saw him here three weeks ago.
JELABI: (Non-English language spoken).
ABUBAKAR: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: She thought he'd died, until she got the call that her son was at the hospital.
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AKINWOTU: We continue our journey across Khartoum, through areas kicking back into life. And every so often, we stop when our driver or our producer, Ammar Awad, spots family or friends they've lost touch with during the war.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: Awad greets his old school friend, who refused to leave Khartoum. He says the community suffered under RSF occupation and that they're thankful to be alive.
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AKINWOTU: A major cleanup operation is now underway.
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AKINWOTU: Teams of tractors clear the rubble and debris across the city, street after street.
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AKINWOTU: Yet their work only scratches the surface. It will take several years and billions of dollars to rebuild Khartoum. But not everything can be replaced or rebuilt - only mourned and cherished in memories.
Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Khartoum.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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