Sudan’s Prime Minister Kamil Idris on Saturday pledged to rebuild Khartoum on his first visit to the capital, ravaged by more than two years of war, since assuming office in May.
Touring the city’s destroyed airport, bridges and water stations, the new premier outlined mass repair projects in anticipation of the return of at least some of the millions who have fled the violence.
“Khartoum will return as a proud national capital,” Idris said, according to Sudan’s state news agency.
The war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in the heart of the capital in April 2023, quickly tearing the city apart.
Tens of thousands are estimated to have been killed in the once-bustling capital which 3.5 million people have fled, according to the United Nations.
According to Khartoum state’s media office, Idris on Saturday visited the army headquarters and the city’s airport, two national symbols whose recapture along with the presidential palace earlier this year cemented the army’s victory in the capital.
But reconstruction is expected to be a herculean feat, with the government putting the cost at $700 billion nationwide, around half of which in Khartoum alone.
The army-aligned government, which moved to Port Sudan on the Red Sea early in the war and still operates from there, has begun to plan the return of ministries to Khartoum even as fighting rages on in other parts of the country.
Authorities have begun operations in the capital to properly bury corpses, clear thousands of unexploded ordnances and resume bureaucratic services.
On a visit to Sudan’s largest oil refinery, the Al-Jaili plant just north of Khartoum, Idris promised that “national institutions will come back even better than they were before”.
The refinery — now a blackened husk — was recaptured in January, but the facility which once processed 100,000 barrels a day will take years and at least $1.3 billion to rebuild, officials told AFP.
– Cabinet stumbles –
The UN expects some two million people will return to Khartoum this year, but those coming back have found an unrecognisable city.
The scale of looting is unprecedented, aid workers say, with evidence of paramilitary fighters ripping copper wire out of power lines before they left.
Vast areas of the city remain without power, and the damage to water infrastructure has caused a devastating cholera outbreak. Health authorities recorded up to 1,500 cases a day last month, according to the UN.
“Water is the primary concern and obstacle delaying the return of citizens to their homes,” Idris said on Saturday.
A career diplomat and former UN official, Idris was appointed in May by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto leader, to form an administration dubbed a “government of hope”.
But the cabinet has faced repeated hurdles and warnings from critics that it could put up a veneer of civilian rule despite its affiliation with the army and the participation of militant leaders.
In 2020, during a short-lived transition to civilian rule, the government in Khartoum signed a peace agreement with Sudanese armed groups, allocating a share of cabinet posts to signatories.
All but three cabinet posts are now filled, and armed groups currently fighting alongside the army have retained their representation in Idris’s government.
But reports that Idris has sought to appoint technocrats to replace members aligned with armed groups have created tensions.
Some of the armed groups, known together as the Joint Forces, have been integral in defending North Darfur state capital El-Fasher, which has been besieged by the paramilitary RSF since May of last year.
If the RSF succeeds in taking El-Fasher, it will control all of the vast western region of Darfur, cementing the fragmentation of the country.
Despite the army securing the capital, as well as the country’s north and east, war still rages in Sudan’s west and south, where the RSF is accused of killing hundreds of civilians in recent days.
Sudan is suffering the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises, with nearly 25 million people in dire food insecurity and over 10 million internally displaced across the country.
A further four million people have fled across borders.
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