Perched on the roof of a building whose railing was blown away by a shell, Kamaleddine Al-Nour contemplates the plumes of black smoke rising into the sky, above the northern suburbs of Khartoum. There, in the Bahri district where he was born, fighting rages between soldiers of the armed forces of Sudan (FAS) – with whom The World obtained permission to travel to the country – and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Control of the Sudanese capital is at stake. Accompanying the setting sun, missiles fall on buildings, blurring the horizon with a dark cloud.
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Three years ago, on the barricades set up across the streets of Bahri, this young revolutionary set tires on fire to protest against the putsch led jointly by generals Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Al-Bourhane and Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, known as “Hemetti”, the October 25, 2021. By ousting the civilian government, the two officers, still allies, had put an end to the democratic transition initiated in the wake of the revolution of 2019 against the military-Islamist regime of Omar Al-Bashir.
Moments after the coup was announced, a general strike was announced in factories and civil disobedience encouraged from the minarets of mosques. All generations combined, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese poured into the streets of the country every week to block the way for a new military regime. At the head of the procession, Kamaleddine Al-Nour and his family, the old man (literally “angry”, in Arabic), formed the spearhead of the demonstrations.
Masked, armed with sheet metal shields and construction helmets, they confronted the junta soldiers with stones, who fired live ammunition at the crowd. Three years later, the old man have close-cropped hair, wear khaki fatigues and roam the front lines of the Sudanese capital, machine gun slung over their shoulders. Since the start of the war between the FAS of Al-Bourhane and the RSF of “Hemetti”, on April 15, 2023, they have chosen their side. They are fighting alongside the Sudanese army.
“Today we are facing an existential war. The RSF endanger the unity of Sudan. War risks disintegrating our society and everything we hold dear. So we took up arms”justifies Kamaleddine Al-Nour, who joined the FAS training camps a few months ago. “In demonstrations or on the battlefield, we have been shedding our blood for the country for a long time. We defend our people. In this way, the war is the continuation of the revolution.he says.
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