SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
To Sudan now, where a bloody civil war exploded onto the streets of the capital of Khartoum one sleepy Saturday morning just over two years ago. The fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and their former ally, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has now engulfed the entire country. Africa's largest war led to the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with reports of large-scale famine and genocide in the remote western region. The Sudanese army recaptured Khartoum just over a month ago, and for the first time, the world can now see what's left of the city. NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu was just there and joins us now from the de facto capital of Port Sudan. Emmanuel, thanks so much for being with us.
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: What did you see?
AKINWOTU: Well, it was surreal. You know, before the war, this was just a really vibrant, proud city, over 6 million people, and now it's been emptied. There's so much destruction from buildings that are completely torched - almost like a matchstick - or covered in bullet holes, bombed or looted. And that's from everyday areas to the presidential palace, museums. At the moment, there's a small wave - a very small wave - of people returning, mainly the lower classes or people with very few choices of where else they can be. But they're coming back to a city with virtually no state services, although the government - at the moment, they're working to revive it. I left Khartoum yesterday, and they were just beginning this process to start cleaning and repairing the city. There were several tractors clearing debris...
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AKINWOTU: ...Sweepers cleaning the streets - so much bullet casing, gun boxes, unexploded missiles that they were coming across, even human remains. In parts of central Khartoum, you can even smell it.
SIMON: Emmanuel, what was the toll like - can you tell? - for the human beings who live there in Khartoum?
AKINWOTU: Yeah, just immense, really, on multiple levels. Now, I spoke to an activist who told me that when the RSF moved into her area, they committed just wholesale abuses, from sexual violence to beating and torture. They converted the main prison in Khartoum into their own detention center and even converted schools, hospitals, clinics into essentially detention centers, where they tortured and starved people.
At the same time, being there, it was also so fascinating to see how people were also reuniting with people they hadn't seen since the war started. Our producer, Ammar Awad - he's Sudanese, and more or less every area that we went to in Khartoum, he was finding people he hadn't heard from in more than two years. At one stage, we went to his childhood home, and he met his neighbors. And they just had this really moving embrace and catch-up because his neighbor had stayed in this area that the RSF had occupied.
AMMAR AWAD, BYLINE: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
AWAD: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: He told him that he'd suffered a lot, but he was just glad to be alive.
SIMON: Sudan is routinely now referred to as the world's largest humanitarian crisis. But what does a phrase like that actually look like?
AKINWOTU: Well, the first thing is just the level of hunger and starvation. Almost all the hospitals in Khartoum city have been shut down or destroyed. Since the Sudanese Army recaptured it, people have now been able to move freely and go to the nearest medical centers they can, which is in the city across the Nile, Omdurman. There's one main pediatric hospital. And we went there, and the wards were absolutely filled with extremely malnourished children. Each bed had two, sometimes three children. And the hospital told us that they've expanded their capacity over and over throughout the war, and yet they're struggling to meet the soaring need.
There are these community kitchens in Sudan that have really been a lifeline during the war, but they're stretched extremely thin, and especially because of aid cuts like to USAID. That aid funding and other aid funding has been cut, and the level of desperation is really huge. But at the same time, you know, even the last few days that we were there, we could see aid trucks from the U.N. finally really pouring into Khartoum and trying to meet this incredible need.
SIMON: Where is the fighting now?
AKINWOTU: Well, it's still on the outskirts of the capital region. And in the mornings, you could still hear bombing.
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AKINWOTU: The Sudanese army have been striking the RSF with artillery shelling, trying to drive them out from the capital region entirely. The intense fighting has moved to areas towards west Sudan - especially in the area of Darfur, where the RSF are largely in control, except for one city called Al-Fashir. And the RSF have essentially been bombarding this city for several months. And there's intense fighting there and a lot of desperation because there was a huge refugee camp hosting more than 500,000 people. And the RSF took it over a few weeks ago, and that has displaced about 400,000 refugees. So the situation there is extremely critical, and the fighting is still ongoing in different parts of Sudan.
SIMON: NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu in Sudan. Thank you so much for being with us.
AKINWOTU: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF TASH SULTANA SONG, "JUNGLE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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