Introduction
The Khartoum crisis is not simply a story of war — it is a story of what comes after war, when the guns fall silent but the suffering does not. For the estimated 2.7 million people who have returned to Sudan’s capital since the army recaptured it, homecoming has meant confronting chronic electricity blackouts, severe water shortages, mass unemployment, and a near-total collapse of healthcare. Approximately four million residents fled Khartoum after fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in 2023, reducing large parts of the city to rubble. Now, those who have come back are caught between the relief of being home and the harsh, daily reality of surviving there.
Rooted in Rubble: A City That Once Housed Eight Million People Now Struggles to Support a Fraction
Khartoum was once a thriving African capital home to more than eight million people. Today, a veteran United Nations official who has worked in conflict zones across the world — including Ukraine — told AFP that the level of destruction in Khartoum’s city centre surpasses every other crisis they have witnessed. Blackened, bombed-out buildings line the streets of what was once a busy commercial hub. Upscale districts such as Khartoum 2 lie almost entirely abandoned, their tree-lined avenues now eerily silent, broken glass crunching underfoot, and entire corners of luxury villas blown out by missile strikes.
The Sudanese army rebuilt the airport and reopened it for domestic flights, patching up key infrastructure in an effort to encourage residents to return. Despite those efforts, electricity and water still cut out for days at a time, and the city’s recovery remains far from the normalcy that officials have attempted to project.
Serving Survival Needs: What Returning Residents Actually Face Each Day
The services that returning Khartoum residents desperately need — steady power, clean water, accessible medicine, and employment — remain critically scarce. Markets across the capital have reopened, but the community they serve is largely broke. Widespread unemployment means that even where goods are available, most people cannot afford them.
Souad Mohamed, 49, had her refrigerator stolen by looters and cannot afford a replacement. “So now I have to buy vegetables and meat every day, and the price goes up every day,” she told AFP. College professor Imam Babiker described visiting ten different pharmacies to find blood pressure medication for his father — only to discover a different price at every stop. His diabetic mother’s insulin is stored in a refrigerator that is rendered useless by 12-hour daily power cuts, causing the medication to spoil.
Healthcare workers are doing what they can. Sudanese charities rushed to rebuild hospitals after residents began returning, and some facilities are now described by health workers as “better than before.” However, physician Haifa Omar acknowledges that “some things just aren’t available,” with patients regularly asked to purchase their own medicines. “I have a lump in my throat as I say it — we know how difficult people’s situations are,” she said.
Meanwhile, as of June, only one percent of Khartoum had been declared safe by the United Nations, with dozens of children killed or injured by booby-traps and unexploded ordnance left within walls and on street corners.
Inclusive Access to Safety Remains Out of Reach for the City’s Most Vulnerable Residents
The reality of who has returned to Khartoum reveals a stark divide. Working-class neighbourhoods have seen the highest numbers of returnees, while those who can afford to stay away largely have. Nearly half a million people have come back from neighbouring Egypt, where 1.5 million Sudanese had sought shelter but faced soaring living costs, racial persecution, arrests, and deportations. For many, the choice to return was not made freely — it was made out of financial necessity and desperation, not because conditions in Khartoum had genuinely improved.
Thuraya Babiker, 86, believed she had returned home permanently. Three months later, she and her husband and youngest daughter were preparing to leave for the United Arab Emirates. “We don’t want to leave,” she said, explaining that the absence of adequate medical care makes remaining in the city impossible for elderly residents with complex health needs.
Businessman Emad Khaled, 43, made the decision to send his family back to Egypt while he stays in Khartoum alone for work. “Bringing my family back was a mistake,” he told AFP. Multiple government officials who were ordered to return to Khartoum confirmed to AFP that they too had chosen to leave their own families outside Sudan’s borders.
Assurance Without Foundation: Officials Push Returns While Residents Question the Safety Narrative
What has unsettled many Khartoum residents most deeply is the perception that the push to return is driven by political optics rather than genuine improvements in safety or living standards. Occasional RSF drone strikes continue to hit Khartoum even now. Yet authorities ended remote learning in July, compelling university students to return physically to campus.
Khartoum University medical professors threatened to resign en masse in protest. Students described being forced back against their will. One master’s student, who requested anonymity, told AFP: “The university’s refusing to let me defend my thesis online, even though my supervisor is also in a different country and doesn’t want to return.”
An undergraduate management student described missing her in-person exams over the summer and now scrambling to secure scholarships in Egypt so she can restart her degree from scratch at a different institution. “They wouldn’t listen to us — all they cared about was for people to return,” she said. “To me it’s political. They want people back to show that things are fine, when things really aren’t fine.”
Here’s What You Need to Know About the Khartoum Displacement Crisis
How many people fled Khartoum after the 2023 conflict began? Approximately four million people fled Khartoum after fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in 2023.
How many people have returned to Khartoum so far? An estimated 2.7 million people have returned to Khartoum since the Sudanese army recaptured the city, with nearly half a million of those returning from Egypt alone.
Is Khartoum safe for returning residents? As of June 2026, the United Nations had declared only one percent of Khartoum safe. Dozens of children have been killed or injured by booby-traps and unexploded ordnance. Occasional RSF drone strikes continue to hit parts of the city.
What are the biggest daily challenges for people living in Khartoum now? Returning residents face electricity blackouts lasting up to 12 hours per day, prolonged water outages, widespread unemployment, rapidly rising food prices, and severe shortages of essential medicines and medical supplies.
Why are people coming back to Khartoum if conditions are so poor? Many returnees, particularly from Egypt, were compelled to return due to soaring living costs, racial discrimination, arrests, and deportation threats in host countries — not because Khartoum had genuinely recovered enough to support them.
What is happening with Khartoum’s hospitals and healthcare system? Sudanese charities have worked to rebuild hospitals, with some facilities reportedly better than before the war. However, critical medicine shortages persist, and patients are regularly asked to purchase their own medications because hospitals lack adequate supplies.
Why are university students being forced to return to Khartoum? Sudanese authorities ended remote learning in July 2026, requiring students to attend classes in person. Students and professors have protested this decision, with Khartoum University medical faculty threatening mass resignations and students arguing the mandate is politically motivated to create an appearance of normalcy rather than reflect genuine safety.
Khartoum Needs More Than Optics — It Needs Real Recovery
The Khartoum crisis stands as a sobering reminder that recapturing a city from conflict is only the first step — rebuilding the daily lives of the people within it is an entirely different and far longer undertaking. For the millions who have returned to find blackouts, medicine shortages, unexploded ordnance, and no jobs waiting for them, the gap between the official narrative of progress and lived experience could not be wider.
The international community, humanitarian organisations, and Sudan’s government each bear responsibility for closing that gap — not through pressure campaigns designed to fill streets with returning faces, but through the sustained, practical investment in power, water, healthcare, employment, and verified safety that Khartoum’s residents urgently need and deserve.
Source: AFP reporting from Khartoum, September 2026.
