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Since Sudan’s disastrous civil war broke out in April 2023, the news has gotten worse with each passing month — more people displaced, starving or killed. As the chief Africa correspondent for The New York Times based in Kenya, I have covered the conflict closely. But reporting on the conflict from inside Sudan has seemed impossible.
Visas to enter Sudan are difficult to obtain. Few journalists have been allowed in since the war began. But one day this spring, after a chance encounter with an old acquaintance, I found a way into Sudan.
In April, I flew to Port Sudan, the country’s de facto wartime capital, with photographer Ivor Prickett and New York Times security consultant Jon. At the airport’s immigration counter, I watched anxiously as our passports (coincidentally, both Irish) were passed between three officials. The aid workers warned us that even with visas, we might be denied entry.
“Ka-chunk.” The last official stamped our passports. We went in.
The war between the Sudanese National Army and its paramilitary rivals has ravaged the country, plunging Africa’s third-largest country into a turbulent situation with ever-shifting battle lines. Yet Sudan’s bureaucracy persists. We spent days in meetings, filling out forms, and persuading officials to grant us the “permit” – the coveted permission we need to report freely.
The waiting process was particularly frustrating for Ivor. One evening, near the port, the family celebrated the end of Eid al-Fitr under the beautiful night sky. But Ivor had to leave his camera in the car and just watch the scene happen.
Port Sudan, once a sleepy port, is now packed with people fleeing the war. Rents have soared to levels comparable to those in London or New York, and prices are outrageous. At the Coral Port Sudan Hotel, once the city’s finest but now a run-down establishment, we order three sandwiches, sodas and coffee for lunch. The bill comes to $90, which I pay with a wad of Sudanese pounds (the country’s depreciating currency) in a shopping bag.
A week after arriving, we received our papers to report to Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, and set out 500 miles west, where the war had broken out a year earlier. The roads were potholed, and sandstorms came without warning, sometimes forcing us to stop altogether. After a night in the city of Atbara, we turned south and followed the Nile toward Khartoum. We passed 25 checkpoints and at one point were taken to an intelligence office for questioning.
At dusk, we entered Omdurman, one of the three cities in the capital of Khartoum. A thin veil of normalcy seemed to shroud the city amid the brutality of the war. In the north of the city, fighting was relatively quiet, with children playing soccer on the side of the road and shoppers picking up groceries at grocery stores. However, across the river, gunfire roared and smoke billowed from the fighting.
Over the next five days, we didn’t meet a single foreigner. There were no hotels, so as darkness fell on the first night, we drove the streets looking for a room to rent. One lead failed, then another. Our translator, Abdulrahman Al-Tayeb, eventually found us a house near his home that had been abandoned a year earlier. Everything inside was covered in dust and fine sand.
But a few minutes later a group of neighbors showed up and, with the hospitality for which the Sultan is famous, helped to clean up the room where we slept.
The next morning, we waited five hours for the military guards to arrive so we could start working. The scale of the destruction was shocking. Ivor said it reminded him of the devastation in Mosul and Raqqa, Iraq, where he had filmed the war against the Islamic State. 2017 and 2018 It was a tragic turn of events for this once proud city that I first visited 25 years ago.
Wearing a protective vest, I climbed to my vantage point in the bombed-out hospital building and looked across the Nile to the eerie ruins of downtown Khartoum. Across the front line, I saw the charred remains of high-rise office buildings where I once interviewed officials and the abandoned hotel where I once stayed.
I could see a corner of the suspension bridge that leads to Tuti Island in the center of the Nile. Fifteen months ago, I had seen couples smiling from ear to ear as they took selfies under the bridge. Now, the bridge was controlled by fighters from the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary force battling the Sudanese National Army for control of the city and the country.
Residents of the capital lack everything: medicine, clean water, affordable food, safety. They also need attention. Despite spotty internet, people know that Sudan’s war is rarely reported and feel their plight is ignored. Some are eager to speak up, no matter what their circumstances.
At the overcrowded Al Nau hospital near the frontline, we met Hassan Adam, a 14-year-old boy who had just started eating again after being shot in the abdomen a few days earlier. He looked severely malnourished, especially as he sat up in his bed and watched his mother prepare a bowl of food.
Ivor secretly took a photo of Hassan, which was later published on the front page of The Times. Along with my article, Hassan motioned for him to join him for dinner, a gesture that, as Ivor had said, seemed to embody the fortitude and dignity of many of the people we met.
One of my most difficult moments occurred in the malnutrition ward, where I sat next to a young mother holding seven-month-old twins in her arms. Both children were severely malnourished, the latest victims of Sudan’s impending famine, which aid workers warned could be the worst in the region in decades.
But I’m a father of twins and a journalist, and it breaks my heart to look at these kids and imagine myself in their shoes.
