More than 2 million of the 5 million people who fled Khartoum have returned in the year since the Sudanese army recaptured the capital from a paramilitary force that had seized it at the outset of civil war in 2023. The city they’re coming back to still runs on scraps. Power is mostly out, buildings remain damaged and workers are going unpaid, while the state orders civil servants, students and shopkeepers back into a capital that still can’t fully function.
Who Has to Come Back
Nisreen Altayeb returned from Egypt after a crackdown on refugees there that began around the start of the year. She said, "We left Sudan in the first place because of the lack of security, but then we started finding the same thing. It wasn’t safe in Egypt." That’s the kind of choice people are being handed: one unsafe place, then another, with the border and the state apparatus deciding where they can breathe.
Altayeb is trying to return to her work as a schoolteacher, but like many government employees, she has not been paid even her meager salary. The government had evacuated ministries and administrative offices to the coastal city of Port Sudan and has ordered civil servants to return to work in Khartoum. Students, who had been offered classes online and permitted to take their exams at temporary centres in other cities or abroad, have been told to return to classrooms. The command comes from above. The burden lands below.
A Capital Still Broken
Signs of recovery have so far been concentrated in Omdurman, Khartoum’s sister city across the White Nile, where the army had maintained partial control. Khartoum proper, as well as Bahri city to the north, remain largely without electricity and other services. The RSF has continued targeting power stations and military installations around Khartoum with drone strikes, hindering recovery. Altayeb Saadeldin, spokesman for the Khartoum state government, said those attacks meant the capital’s electricity was working at 1/3 of its prewar capacity. He said, "That third is being distributed so we can provide people for 8 hours a day."
Eight hours a day. That’s the rationed normality being offered after war, displacement and bureaucratic command. The city’s infrastructure is still shattered, but the machinery of administration is already back to issuing orders.
The University of Khartoum lies in the most damaged part of the city. Students told they must return to in-person exams and classes have found labs, lecture halls and dormitories still damaged by the war. Student Megdad Kammal said, "The city needs work just like the university needs work." University officials say rehabilitation is ongoing ahead of the new semester later this year. The line from the bottom is plain: the buildings are not ready, the services are not ready, but the timetable is already being imposed.
Taxes, Fees and the Price of “Recovery”
Small business owners have also faced pressure to open up shop, particularly in Khartoum’s vital Souq al-Arabi, a sprawling market in the city centre which became a battle zone riddled with land mines during the RSF retreat. Authorities have started collecting taxes and other fees, but many complain they still don’t have access to basic services such as power. Mohamed Abdelbasit, who owns a print shop, said, "Our income is very low right now. They need to help us to come back, to encourage us to come back," arguing that tax collection should be postponed to help shopkeepers cover their costs.
Saadeldin said the state was providing postponements as needed, but that the resource-starved state also needed revenue to manage basic services such as safety and the sewage system. That’s the familiar bargain: pay up first, survive later. The state wants its cut even while the lights stay off and the streets still carry the scars of war.
The return to Khartoum is being sold as recovery, but the facts on the ground read differently. People are being pushed back into damaged neighborhoods, unpaid jobs, half-lit classrooms and a market still marked by land mines. The army holds the capital, the state collects taxes, and ordinary people are left to make a city livable again with little more than exhaustion and necessity.