Citizens clean up with karos and chutzpah
Khartoum is the capital again, and residents are risking life and limb to make it safe.
Alhodeebee Yassin al Semany in Khartoum
Sudan’s military-led government has returned to Khartoum, after nearly three years of operating from the eastern city of Port Sudan. The officials and other residents are returning to a war-scarred city still littered with deadly ordnance.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group forced the army out of the capital in 2023 when war erupted between the two sides.
Early last year, the tables turned and the army drove the militiamen out, but Khartoum remains dangerous. Shell casings, unexploded munitions, and other remnants of war litter streets, homes, markets, and schools.
In the absence of a state-run clearance effort, much of the work to make the city liveable again has fallen to volunteers.
Abdullah al-Hilu, a social activist, coordinates more than 50 volunteers trying to clear war debris across Khartoum, Omdurman, Bahri, Jebel Aulia, Um Badda, and East Nile. With almost no equipment, they load debris on tractors and handcarts, known locally as karos. “We’ve removed about 6,000 pieces of ordnance that could have killed hundreds of civilians,” says al-Hilu.
Their work earned the backing of Sudan’s national mine-action centre, the body authorised to do such work, which provided training on ordnance collection. Volunteers are also repurposing shell casings into small enterprises, including brick and tile manufacture – creating jobs for residents who lost their incomes in the war.
But the danger persists. “Remnants remain undiscovered,” says al-Hilu. His dream is to get electronic devices that can detect explosives more accurately.