Sudanese return to their homeland, hoping for stability but finding it still wrecked by war

CAIRO (AP) - Ahmed Abdalla sat on a sidewalk in downtown Cairo, waiting for a bus that will start him on his journey back to Sudan. He doesn’t know what he’ll find in his homeland, wrecked and still embroiled in a 2-year-old war.

His wife and son, who weren’t going with him, sat next to him to bid him goodbye. Abdalla plans to go back for a year, then decide whether it's safe to bring his family.

"There is no clear vision. Until when do we have to wait?" Abdalla said, holding two bags of clothes. "These moments I'm separating from my family are really hard," he said, as his wife broke down in tears.

Abdullah is among tens of thousands of Sudanese who were driven from their homes and are now going back. They are hoping for some stability after the military in recent months recaptured the capital, Khartoum, and other areas from its rival, the Rapid Support Forces.

But the war still rages in some parts of the country. In areas recaptured by the military, people are returning to find their neighborhoods shattered, often with no electricity and scarce food, water and services.

The battle for power between the military and the RSF has caused one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Famine is spreading. At least 20,000 people have been killed, according to the U.N., though the figure is likely higher.

Nearly 13 million people fled their homes, some 4 million of whom streamed into neighboring countries while the rest sought shelter elsewhere in Sudan.

A relatively small portion of the displaced are returning so far, but the numbers are accelerating. Some 400,000 internally displaced Sudanese have gone back to homes in the Khartoum area, neighboring Gezira province and southeast Sennar province, the International Organization for Migration estimates.

Since Jan. 1, about 123,000 Sudanese returned from Egypt, including nearly 50,000 so far in April, double the month before, the IOM said. Some 1.5 million Sudanese fled to Egypt during the war, according to UNHCR.

Nfa Dre, who had fled to northern Sudan, moved back with his family to Khartoum North, a sister city of the capital, right after the military retook it in March.

They found decomposing bodies and unexploded ordnance in the streets. Their home had been looted.

"Thank God, we had no loss of lives, just material losses, which matter nothing compared to lives," Dre said. Three days of work made their home inhabitable.

But conditions are hard. Not all markets have reopened and few medical services are available. Dre said residents rely on charity kitchens operated by a community activist group called the Emergency Response Rooms, or ERR. They haul water from the Nile River for cooking and drinking. His home has no electricity, so he charges his phone at a mosque with solar panels.

"We asked the authorities for generators, but they replied that they don't have the budget to provide them," Dre said. "There was nothing we could say."

Salah Semsaya, an ERR volunteer, said he knew of displaced people who tried returning to Wad Madani, the capital of Gezira province, but found the basics of life so lacking that they went back to their displacement shelters.

Others are too wary to try. "They're worried about services for their children. They're worrying about their livelihoods," said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative to Sudan.

Throughout the war, there has been no functional government. A military-backed transitional administration was based in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, but had little reach or resources. After retaking Khartoum, the military said it will establish a new interim government.

The U.N. is providing cash assistance to some. UNICEF managed to bring several trucks of supplies into Khartoum. But aid remains limited, "and the scale of needs far exceeds available resources," said Assadullah Nasrullah, communications officer at UNHCR Sudan.

Sudanese in Egypt wrestle with the question of whether to return. Mohamed Karaka, who has been in Cairo with his family for nearly two years, told The Associated Press he was packing up to head back to the Khartoum area. But at the last minute, his elder brother, also in Egypt, decided it was not yet safe and Karaka canceled the trip.

"I miss my house and the dreams I had about building a life in Sudan. My biggest problem are my children. I didn't want to raise them outside Sudan, in a foreign country," said Karaka.

Hundreds of Sudanese take the two or three buses each day for southern Egypt, the first leg in the journey home.

Abdalla was among a number of families waiting for the midnight bus earlier this month.

He's going back to Sudan but not to his hometown of el-Fasher in North Darfur province. That area has been and remains a brutal war zone between RSF fighters and army troops. Abdalla and his family fled early in the war as fighting raged around them.

"We miss every corner of our house. We took nothing with us when we left except two changes of clothes, thinking that the war would be short," Abdalla's wife, Majda, said.

"We hear bad news about our area every single day,” she said. “It's all death and starvation."

Abdalla and his family first moved to el-Gadarif in southeast Sudan before moving to Egypt in June.

He was heading back to el-Gadarif to see if it's livable. Many of the schools there are closed, sheltering displaced people. If stability doesn't take hold and schooling doesn't resume, he said, his children will remain in Egypt.

"This is an absurd war," Abdalla said. He pointed out how the RSF and military were once allies who together repressed Sudan's pro-democracy movement before they turned on each other. "Both sides were unified at some point and hit us. When they started to differ, they still hit us," he said.

"We only want peace and security and stability."