In the Country with the World's Worst Displacement Crisis: Sudan (Encore)
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You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. For more than a year, war has raged in Sudan, devastating one of Africa's largest countries. Fighting between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces has transformed towns and cities into battlefields.

So many people have fled, some 12 million, that it is now considered the worst displacement crisis in the world. NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu visited Sudan in September. He went to Amdurman, which is the twin city across the river from the capital Khartoum. Here's what he saw.

It's dawn and a vegetable vendor with a megaphone calls out to customers to buy his lemons, oranges and potatoes. They're laid out on a wooden cart hitched to a donkey that he leads down a side street. This idyllic everyday moment in Abd al-Man lasts for a few hours. Then it's interrupted, broken by the daily rupture of shelling, launched from a few miles away in the capital Khartoum.

Omdurman and Khartoum are divided by the River Nile. Both cities were occupied by the Rapid Support Forces, or the RSF, until May, when the army forced them out of most of Omdurman. The army have advanced even further into parts of Khartoum over the last week, but the fighting has left a trail of destruction.

Military control in Omdurman has allowed thousands of people who fled for safety to return. But they face a fight to rebuild their lives amid the ruins.

On a Friday afternoon, worshippers trickle into the Sheikh Garibala Mosque. It's more than 100 years old, in Old Umdurman, a historic pocket of the city. Its sky-grey walls have been damaged, covered in bullets. Torched cars lay waste in the compound. Every window has been shattered. Abdul Rahim is the imam. He says RSA fighters embedded in the mosque and killed the worshippers they found there. We lost two brothers. They killed by...

He managed to flee, and when he returned to the mosque in May, he wept when he saw the destruction. Everything valuable had been looted. The fighters even dug up graves in a search for the corpse of the mosque's wealthy founder. They hoped to steal the gold and jewellery they believed he was buried with. But the tomb wasn't found, he says. For now, they have no plans to repair the mosque because it could be shelled at any moment.

So their plan is to remain open for the few who have returned to the area and to offer meals for so many in desperate need. After prayers, we leave the mosque with 64-year-old Mohamed Kher. He was born and raised here and worked for almost 10 years in the US. He walks with us past empty skeletal houses through eerie streets. Several doors are marked with a red X, spray-painted by the military.

It's to show that RSF fighters who occupied them were defeated. That's my house. The shop over there. It's a nice supermarket. We soon reach a terracotta-coloured bungalow with a convenience store attached to the front. The house was built by his father over a century ago.

He goes in to tell his wife we're here. I have a friend of mine, Manuel. He's a Nigerian guy. He's a Nigerian son. He's my son. He's your son. Then he leads us inside his living room. They throw you in my house. They bomb all my house.

The ceilings have caved in, the cement walls cracked and punctured by shrapnel and bullets. He says RSF fighters stayed here and looted it. They took his safe with all his savings, his TV, his air conditioners, even his clothes. It's trouble. It feels trouble. I cannot believe it. You cannot imagine it. It's not coming to my wine. My house would be like this.

He says the most painful thing has been to accept that at 65, he has to start over. Start again. Yep. Inshallah.

Nearby, 40-year-old Khomeini Abdurrahman is drenched in sweat as he works with his nephew in the heat of the afternoon sun. His family fled the city last year, then returned to the house a few weeks ago. They found their home in ruins, the walls blown apart. Now they're rebuilding it.

Brick by brick. His nephew scoops cement from a mound and spreads a layer across the length of the wall, while Khomeini carefully relays each brick. It's still dangerous here, he says, but the war has dragged on longer than they imagined, and they were tired of living as refugees in their own country. So they've come back to start again. Omdaman was the cultural heart of Sudan. Its historic monuments and museums were national treasures that are now destroyed.

But in growing pockets of the city, there are shoots of normal life again. Many of its hallmark clay buildings have been repaired in bustling districts beyond the reach of heavy shelling. There's a steady stream of cars. Donkeys trot over sandy streets. People shop at reopened supermarkets, get their cars fixed at mechanics. They sip tea at outdoor cafes. But the war still echoes in the background.

And the everyday challenges are acute. Rent prices have soared, the cost of fuel has tripled, so has the price of most food. Half of Sudan's 45 million people are starving. The war has devastated agriculture here, and too little help has arrived from the outside world. But so many more would be on the brink, if not from the help from within Sudan, from everyday people like Somaya Abduwahab and Mustafa Ezzeldine. Zoya, you're a star in Suhanda?

There are a couple that started a community kitchen, run from the grounds of their old car dealership that shut down when the war began. A team of 50 people serve 10,000 people each week with bread and servings of four, a stew of spiced beans that they pour into containers.

The kitchen is just one of many along this street alone, funded by Sudanese people here and from the diaspora. Before we leave, Samaya tells me that what she wants people to understand is how these initiatives show the depth of care among Sudanese people, giving from little, doing what they can for each other, even in war. Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Umdurman.

That's The State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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