The Face of Truth | Dr. Ibrahim Shaglawi Khartoum.. A City That Was Conspired Against

Yesterday, a friend sent me an episode of the program “For the Rest of the Story,” presented on Al Jazeera by the distinguished journalist Fairouz Ziaini, entitled “Khartoum.. The Ruralization of Cities.” Despite being old, the episode seemed remarkably relevant today. Khartoum expanded because it carried the weight of the state and its challenges. Therefore, this weight was not always a source of strength; it also made the city a target of conspiracies and ambitions, while American sanctions contributed to weakening its economy and hindering its role. Hence, the story of Khartoum appears to be part of the story of the state itself, and its struggle for existence, role, and future.

The episode discussed Khartoum’s growth from half a million inhabitants to ten million, a phenomenon that reflects the imbalance in development between the center and the peripheries. Professor Al-Arabi Bouayad presented an academic reading of the phenomenon, while the remarks of Majdi Abdel Aziz, the then Commissioner of Omdurman, seemed closer to political justification than to confronting the crisis. This reflected an aspect of the crisis of power at that stage: the tendency to treat facts as a problem of discourse rather than a problem of reality.

Khartoum did not receive the rural population because it was a magical city, but because the state turned it into an almost exclusive center for opportunities, services, education, healthcare, and employment. Every better university in the capital attracted young people from the states; every more capable hospital received patients from the peripheries; and every job or investment produced a new migrant. Thus, the ruralization of Khartoum became an inevitable result of failed policies and lazy planning, while the expansion of the capital became a mirror reflecting the dysfunction of the state.

But there is an important question that should not escape the attentive reader: Why has Khartoum continued, generation after generation, to pay costs that go beyond its function as the capital of the state?

Because Khartoum was not merely an administrative city.

 At many times, it was the capital of the Sudanese and Arab position. In 1967, it hosted the famous Arab Summit associated with the Three No’s, and the city was transformed, at a historic moment, into a space for shaping Arab decision-making in the aftermath of the Naksa. Since then, the name of Khartoum has been associated with Sudan’s ability to produce a position that transcends its geography.

But positions do not come without a cost, particularly when they are issued by a state with an influential strategic location. Sudan, with its position between the Arab world and Africa, its access to the Red Sea, its agricultural and water resources and natural wealth, and its proximity to areas of tension in the Horn of Africa and the Nile Basin, is not marginal in regional calculations.

 Rather, it is a point where interests and conflicts intersect and extend beyond borders. Therefore, Khartoum became at the heart of these calculations.

From this perspective, the title of the article, “A City That Was Conspired Against,” can be understood as a political description of a long trajectory of decisions and positions surrounding Khartoum, making its weakening and keeping it outside the path of advancement appear closer to a plan in which regional and international calculations intersect, rather than the random outcome of events.

During that period, external pressures, American sanctions, regional political ambitions, and internal mistakes became intertwined, leaving Sudan more vulnerable to challenges. Sanctions, in their various stages, directly affected people’s lives and infrastructure, as well as the economic, financial, and investment environment, making the path to recovery and development more difficult.

But placing all the responsibility on external forces would be an incomplete reading. Internal mistakes contributed to opening the doors through which external pressures entered, alongside weak institutions, centralized decision-making, economic instability, poor management of resources, and political divisions that made the state less capable of protecting itself.

Then came the war of April 15, 2023, and what preceded it, bringing many of these contradictions together. What happened to Khartoum was a struggle over the center of the state, its institutions, and its memory. Therefore, the scale of destruction that struck the capital cannot be separated from the struggle over the shaping of the country. The city that had suffered from an excess of population before the war began to suffer from population displacement, and the city that had received those seeking safety found itself searching for safety.

Here, the historical paradox appears harsh. Khartoum, which embraced the Arabs at a moment of defeat and brought opponents together around a unified political position, now finds itself facing a major tragedy, while many Sudanese feel that Arab solidarity has not matched either the historic relationship or the scale of the catastrophe. At the same time, the war has entered a network of regional and international interactions, and Sudan has become an arena where multiple interests intersect, while the citizen alone bears the cost of the destruction.

Therefore, according to #TheFaceOfTruth, Khartoum paid the price of the centralization of the state before the war, then the price of its weakness during it, and it will bear the cost of restoring its vitality afterward. But the issue is greater than rebuilding a city; it is about rebuilding a state, correcting the distribution of development and opportunities, and transforming Khartoum from a center that drains the country into a capital that serves it. The war has revealed the extent of the conspiracies and ambitions surrounding Sudan, making awareness of them part of our national security, and a responsibility in which leadership contributes by protecting stability, citizens by recognizing the risks, and the media by exposing what lies behind events, so that we do not rebuild the city while leaving the causes of its crisis intact.

May you remain well and in good health.

Thursday, October 8, 2026

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