The din of bombings and heavy weapons fire drowns out the call to prayer that resonates in the streets of Khartoum. Ramadan began on Monday March 11, but clashes do not stop in the capital of Sudan. The scene has an air of déjà vu. Almost a year ago, on April 15, 2023, the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began in the middle of the month of fasting, a few days before Eid-el-Fitr.
Eleven months later, Khartoum is still the epicenter of the fighting. The city was emptied of almost half its population, with more than 3 million people forced into exile. The other half of the inhabitants decided to stay in the heart of a city that had become a battlefield. Neighborhood by neighborhood, they organize themselves and try to survive in self-sufficiency.
In Jareef al-Gharb, east of Khartoum, a schoolyard has been converted into a soup kitchen. On videos sent to World, volunteers prepare iftar, the breaking of the fast, for dozens of local residents. Rice and lentils simmer in large zinc pots. At the other end of the city, in the Beit al-Mal district, a community managed by Sheikh El-Amine, a Sufi preacher, opened its doors to nearly 100 families fleeing the abuses of soldiers. “We have a refectory where we prepare nearly 3,000 meals a day, a prayer center, a clinic, dormitories and even a bakery”details a cleric in charge of the sanctuary called El-Masid.
More than 300 community canteens of this type have spread across the capital. Although they are sometimes financed by local notables, most of the time these initiatives have seen the light of day thanks to self-managed “emergency cells”, which bring together volunteers, experienced political activists, doctors and social workers often from resistance committees, these neighborhood organizations which were the linchpin of the revolution which led to the fall of Omar Al-Bashir in 2019.
While more than 70% of the capital’s hospitals are out of service, these groups have set up makeshift clinics that receive war wounded and chronically ill people free of charge. “We sometimes work on the ground with little equipment and we only manage to save very few people”explains Omar (first name has been changed for security reasons), member of the emergency unit in the Fitehab district, on the west bank of the White Nile.
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