After two years of civil war, Sudan's capital is a shell of its former self
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For more than two years, Sudan has been mired in a brutal civil war, a war that has devastated the country. Last month, NPR international correspondent Emmanuel Akinwotu gained rare access to the capital city Khartoum.

That is where the war erupted, and much of the city, once home to more than 6 million people, has been damaged or destroyed. Emmanuel worked with Sudanese producer Ammar Awad. He's 48, and he's lived in Sudan most of his life. While reporting on the impact of the war on his country, Awad was also confronted with his own loss. This one?

Among the many places they visited, Awad's family home, a big brick bungalow on the outskirts of Khartoum. He and his family were forced to flee during the war. Now it's uninhabitable. There are fallen walls, heaps of brick. And they take the roof from us.

The metal roof ripped off. The house ransacked and looted. Some of the family's belongings lie scattered in the rubble. The Quran of his dad. Walking through the shattered pieces of the life he once lived, the home he once loved, he's overcome. We're walking in front of it.

In Arabic, Awad says his feelings are not of sadness, but forgiveness. If he who ripped wood from this home, he says, and used it to light a fire to cook with, we forgive him. If he who stole from here was someone in need, we forgive him.

Consider this. This house can be rebuilt, Awad says. But unlike the house, he says, the once united people of Sudan, they may never come back together. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

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It's Consider This from NPR. It has been more than two years since civil war exploded on the streets of Khartoum, a conflict which by some estimates has killed as many as 150,000 people. The Council on Foreign Relations says more than 14 million have been displaced.

The paramilitary rapid support forces took over the city in the early weeks of fighting. The RSF 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.

Against a backdrop of destruction, sounds of life and revival in Khotun. Groups of children ride their bikes through eerie, deserted streets. They race and skid on the sandy concrete, riding past empty buildings and storefronts left in ruins. 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.

And nearby, staff at a bakery sweep glass from the storefront, shattered by gunfire. There's a shortage of water and no electricity. But then the generator bursts into life 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 Khatun was recaptured by the Sudanese army after two years of brutal occupation by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.

Just a few years ago, this was one of Africa's most populous cities, with bougainvillea draped over sand-coloured 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. 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 is battered and broken, its facade burnt to a matchstick. Almost nothing has been spared, not even the country's treasures. Sudan's National Museum held rich records of the country's ancient civilization. Okay, welcome. At the museum, I met Musa Elfador, an archaeological researcher working here for 27 years. As we walk through the gates, the scale of the damage is overwhelming. It is so bad.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It's okay. 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.

Precious evidence of Sudan's ancient history was ransacked. The museum held close to 100,000 artefacts that spanned more than 4,500 years. It stored mummies and artefacts from the Islamic, Christian and Marawitic eras. These porres are small antiquities. It belonged to the Marawitic period at that time. But most of it was looted by the RSF.

Even electric cables were ripped from the walls and stripped for copper. Everywhere they dig and take it. And also all the air conditioning, they take the machine inside and take it. In several offices, fighters even defecated in the room. Most of the artefacts that they didn't take with them, they burnt or destroyed. Only the library was left mostly intact.

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 centres. Untold numbers of people were tortured and killed, as told through the survivors, that 24-year-old Munir Jalabi at a military hospital in Khartoum. I was working in the area.

His body is skeletal, his bones bulging through his skin. He was arrested by the RSF over a year ago while he was buying food at a market. Jalabi 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.

Jalabi's mother, Afaf Abubakar, is sitting by her side. She said she didn't recognise her son when she first saw him here three weeks ago. She thought he'd died until she got the call that her son was at the hospital. 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. Awad greets his old school friend, who refused to leave Khatun. He says the community suffered under RSF occupation and that they're thankful to be alive. A major clean-up operation is now underway.

Teams of tractors clear the rubble and debris across the city, street after street. 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 memory.

That was NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu reporting from Khartoum, Sudan. This episode was produced by Michael Levitt and Jason Fuller. We have engineering support from Ted Meebane. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Tara Neal. Our executive producer is Semi Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

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