When conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Force (RSF) had reached its peak in early 2024, Saleh Iliyas and Abdurrahim, his friend-turned-family member, were doing the math: staying could mean dying at home, and leaving could mean dying on the road. But what becomes of a man whose world is torn in halves?
The conflict in Sudan had caught Saleh unprepared. He was just a tailor with steady hands when the violence came without warning. He could remember when he heard the first gunshot in April 2023. It sounded like a joke, “but Khartoum breathed its last quiet breath before the storm then.”
Saleh never thought the recent tensions between the RSF and local communities in Khartoum would escalate into a full-blown war. Here he was now, not only consumed by the violence but also considering moving out.
Deciding where to go was easy since he had lived part of his childhood in Nigeria. The difficult question was how to move out with a sick and ageing father, a young wife, and two children, including a newborn.
Then a turning point came.
As he sat in front of his house for Iftar, the evening meal during Ramadan, one day, a rocket passed over his head and landed a few meters away. The result was a huge blast, fire, collapsed buildings, and many dead bodies.
“It was as if Khartoum stood still for a second, and then the screams from the women, children, and men who were either terrified or affected, followed,” he told HumAngle.
Saleh had to leave. He spoke to his father and his friend, Abdurrahim. A driver who knew his way to safety said he needed three days to arrange it.
Within the three days of waiting, violence intensified in Khartoum. Power lines were severed, the internet was disrupted, and rumours replaced news. The RSF and SAF engaged each other, and the war was everywhere.
Saleh’s house, where his wife, father, two children, and Abdurrahim had found safety, became both a refuge and a prison. Food dwindled. The markets were looted, and many high-rise buildings were targeted or destroyed.
“Do you think this will end soon?” his wife asked one night, her voice trembling over the silence.
He didn’t answer. He was thinking of the absurdity of the war — blood brothers from SAF and the RSF fighting each other with pride. He thought of how men killed for mere symbols and a warlord who didn’t care.
They did not sleep peacefully in the three nights before the driver decided they had to leave. “We’ll go west,” he said, “through Omdurman. Maybe reach some safe villages, then south. There are routes people are taking.”
That night, Saleh stepped outside to see Khartoum one last time. The mornings that began with laughter and the Nile’s breeze were all gone. He remembered the faith that tomorrow would always come. Now, tomorrow was a ghost.
And so began their exodus, not as wanderers seeking land, but as souls, as resilient individuals who believed that there was a life to continue elsewhere.
On the torturer’s fork
To understand Saleh’s ruin, one must first understand the men who lit the match.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudan Armed Forces, was a career soldier moulded by the doctrines of control and hierarchy. He rose through the ranks during Omar al-Bashir’s three-decade rule, loyal to the idea that the army was the soul of Sudan.
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, was his ally. He is a former camel trader from Darfur who built his power on the backs of Janjaweed militias that were once accused of all sorts of war crimes. Hemedti’s RSF, which was an offshoot of the Janjaweed, became an autonomous force, commanding men who were not new to violence.
When al-Bashir fell in 2019 after months of civilian protests, the two generals joined forces to secure the transition, but peace was only a mask. The revolution that brought them together also planted the seeds of distrust.
By early 2023, tensions over integrating the RSF into the regular army had boiled over. Hemedti refused to dissolve his forces, fearing subjugation; al-Burhan insisted it was necessary for a unified state. And so, the generals who once shared a coup became rivals in a war that would tear their country apart.
Abdulrahim and Saleh could recall that during the revolution that brought El-Bashir down, many people were supporting the army, “and then just a year into the regime, everything changed for the worse,” said Abdurrahim. “Inflation rose and prices skyrocketed five times.”
Saleh explained that the size of bread that once cost 1 SDG (Sudanese pound) rose to 3 SDG under El-Bashir and led to protests, but it became about 15 to 20 SDG under al-Burhan.
“So you could see why people were angry with al-Burhan, and when squabbles started between him and Hemedti, people like us were supporting the RSF because we thought he was doing a great job, not pursuing any selfish interest,” Saleh said.
Hemedti won the hearts of the Sudanese by calling for a democratic transition. But as the tension rose, said Saleh, many RSF trucks were positioned “almost everywhere in Khartoum.”
According to him, Khartoum residents are administrative people and are not familiar with seeing weapons and military personnel stationed on every corner. That situation led to lots of skirmishes between civilians and the RSF, which made the paramilitary lose its popularity.
And then the war broke out.
The first weeks were chaos. Khartoum became a battlefield, its neighbourhoods reduced to rubble of what once were. Jets roared over the city as SAF bombarded RSF positions, while paramilitary men seized streets, looted markets, and turned homes into barracks.
Hospitals were shelled, schools attacked, buildings destroyed, and corpses lay unburied in the heat. Humanitarian corridors were promises that dissolved under fire.
“Every high-rise building, every mall, bank, or any empty building became a hideout for snipers or a target of bombs,” said Abdurrahim. “Lots of people were killed while attempting to run away.”
Despite that danger, more than 10 million Sudanese fled their homes, spilling into Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and beyond. Refugee camps rose overnight. The United Nations called it “the world’s largest displacement crisis.” Families were separated, and in the chaos of the roads, mothers buried children without names.
Saleh knew the stories before becoming one. He heard of those who died on the road to Port Sudan, those who drowned in the Nile trying to escape, and those who vanished into the desert.
And then foreign actors got involved.
Egypt, with its close ties to the army, threw its weight behind al-Burhan’s forces, seeking a stable ally along the Nile. UN investigators accused the United Arab Emirates of backing the RSF, funnelling weapons through Chad and the Central African Republic, an allegation it has denied.
Russia’s Wagner Group, long embedded in Sudan’s gold trade, was reported to have supported Dagalo’s men in securing mining sites. Countries condemned both sides, but diplomacy also took a bullet in the crossfire.
Long road to Nigeria
One night in early 2025, Saleh, his father, his friend Abdurrahim, his wife, and their two children joined a small group of neighbours, eighteen in all, mostly women and children, to begin their escape.
They had been warned about the dangers. Snipers perched on rooftops, looters prowled the streets, and militias set up unpredictable checkpoints.
“We had to move as one,” Saleh recalled. “If we walked separately or rode in a car, we might never make it out.”
They moved silently through the alleys of Khartoum. Behind them, the echoes of shelling rolled like distant thunder. Ahead lay uncertainty, hundreds of kilometres of dust, hunger, and fear. “But anything was better than staying,” said Saleh.
Abdurrahim, his childhood friend, walked beside him. “You know where you are going,” he said, “but you don’t know the road to follow. You just keep moving along the direction and stepping carefully to avoid danger.”
They reached the outskirts of the city by dawn, where they met the driver, a middle-aged man who had turned his pickup into a vessel of salvation amidst a war. He took what little they carried: documents, a few clothes, and “some stuff my father said was important,” recalled Saleh.
The drive southward revealed the full reality of the war. Buildings Saleh once admired — the glass towers, the university Abdulrahim attended, the small tea shops that once lined the streets — lay in ruins. Skeletons of burned cars littered the roads.
They zigzagged across Sudan, avoiding the territories of warring factions, surviving on bread, water, and anything their small money could buy. The journey that should have taken days stretched into weeks.
“We knew it wouldn’t be easy,” Saleh said, “but we didn’t imagine it would be this hard.”
When they finally reached the border with South Sudan, they rested for a day. They had thought they wouldn’t be welcomed, especially due to the recent history of conflict between North and South Sudan, “but were really supported there.”
“My son was even given water by one of their soldiers,” Saleh said.
From South Sudan, they moved again, passing through the Central African Republic into Chad. They met others moving in the same direction on foot. One group of about ten told Saleh they had started the journey as more than thirty. “They looked haunted,” he said. “Their faces told stories the mouth could not.”
It rained the day they arrived in Chad. They were temporarily registered as refugees, yet Saleh felt restless after a few weeks. “You cannot live waiting for mercy every day,” he said softly. “You begin to forget who you are.”
Nigeria, where his late grandfather hailed from, seemed the next logical destination. Though Saleh himself was born in Saudi Arabia, he spent some of his childhood years in Nigeria.
“I thought we could come here and start afresh before the war ended,” he said.
Now in Nigeria, the dust of the journey still clings to his eyes, the eyes of a man who has seen too much of the evil humans can do to one another.
Safety and its aftermath
From the Chadian border, through Maiduguri, in Nigeria’s North East, they finally arrived in Kano, in the country’s North West. Saleh and Abdurrahim found a city that looked energetic, but beneath it ran a quiet struggle. They rented a small shop in Rimin Auzinawa and waited for customers who rarely came.
“The economy is choking everyone,” Saleh said. “People rarely bring new clothes, and when they do, the amount they pay is too small.”
They had imagined Nigeria as a place of opportunity, where hard work would bring dignity. But the naira’s fall made everything expensive. “You open the shop from morning to night,” Abdurrahim said, “and at the end, you barely earn enough for bread.”
Saleh and Abdurrahim told HumAngle that the money they had come with was about to finish, and they were not earning enough to sustain life. Now, as evening fell over Kano, Saleh and Abdurrahim sat outside their shop, their machines silent, their thoughts elsewhere.
“We will leave the families here,” Saleh said, his voice low. “Let them have stability, even if we don’t. Algeria is not home, but maybe there, a man can at least feed those he loves.”
And so, once again, the journey calls — not for safety this time, but for survival.