Sudan war shatters infrastructure, costly rebuild needed

By Khalid Abdelaziz and Eltayeb Siddig

Destroyed bridges, blackouts, empty water stations and looted hospitals across Sudan bear witness to the devastating impact on infrastructure from two years of war.

Authorities estimate hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of reconstruction would be needed. Yet there is little chance of that in the short-term given continued fighting and drone attacks on power stations, dams and fuel depots.

Not to mention a world becoming more averse to foreign aid where the biggest donor, the U.S., has slashed assistance.

The Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling since April 2023, with tens of thousands of people killed or injured and about 13 million uprooted in what aid groups call the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Residents of the capital Khartoum have to endure weeks-long power outages, unclean water and overcrowded hospitals. Their airport is burnt out with shells of planes on the runway.

Most of the main buildings in downtown Khartoum are charred and once-wealthy neighbourhoods are ghost towns with destroyed cars and unexploded shells dotting the streets.

"Khartoum is not habitable. The war has destroyed our life and our country and we feel homeless even though the army is back in control," said Tariq Ahmed, 56.

He returned briefly to his looted home in the capital before leaving it again, after the army recently pushed the RSF out of Khartoum.

One consequence of the infrastructure breakdown can be seen in a rapid cholera outbreak that has claimed 172 deaths out of 2,729 cases over the past week alone mainly in Khartoum.

Other parts of central and western Sudan, including the Darfur region, are similarly ravaged by fighting, while the extensive damage in Khartoum, once the centre of service provision, reverberates across the country.

Sudanese authorities estimate reconstruction needs at $300 billion for Khartoum and $700 billion for the rest of Sudan.

The U.N. is doing its own estimates.

Sudan's oil production has more than halved to 24,000 barrels-per-day and its refining capabilities ceased as the main al-Jaili oil refinery sustained $3 billion in damages during battles, Oil and Energy Minister Mohieddine Naeem told Reuters.

Without refining capacity, Sudan now exports all its crude and relies on imports, he said. It also struggles to maintain pipelines needed by South Sudan for its own exports.

Earlier this month, drones targeted fuel depots and the airport at the country's main port city in an attack Sudan blamed on the UAE. The Gulf country denied the accusations.

All of Khartoum's power stations have been destroyed, Naeem said. The national electrical company recently announced a plan to increase supply from Egypt to northern Sudan and said earlier in the year that repeated drone attacks to stations outside Khartoum were stretching its ability to keep the grid going.

LOOTED COPPER

Government forces re-took Khartoum earlier this year and as people return to houses turned upside down by looters, one distinctive feature has been deep holes drilled into walls and roads to uncover valuable copper wire.

On Sudan's Nile Street, once its busiest throughway, there is a ditch about one metre (three feet) deep and 4 km (2.5 miles) long, stripped of wiring and with traces of burning.

Khartoum's two main water stations went out of commission early in the war as RSF soldiers looted machinery and used fuel oil to power vehicles, according to Khartoum state spokesperson Altayeb Saadeddine.

Those who have remained in Khartoum resort to drinking water from the Nile or long-forgotten wells, exposing them to waterborne illnesses. But there are few hospitals equipped to treat them.

"There has been systematic sabotage by militias against hospitals, and most medical equipment has been looted and what remains has been deliberately destroyed," said Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, putting losses to the health system at $11 billion.

With two or three million people looking at returning to Khartoum, interventions were needed to avoid further humanitarian emergencies like the cholera outbreak, said United Nations Development Programme resident representative Luca Renda.

But continued war and limited budget means a full-scale reconstruction plan is not in the works.

"What we can do ... with the capacity we have on the ground, is to look at smaller-scale infrastructure rehabilitation," he said, like solar-power water pumps, hospitals, and schools.

In that way, he said, the war may provide an opportunity for decentralising services away from Khartoum, and pursuing greener energy sources.