Khartoum

Overview

Khartoum is the capital of Sudan and the seat of its central government. It stands where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet to form the Nile’s principal northward course. Founded in 1821, the city grew into the administrative center through which successive governments governed a large and diverse country. Its position made it a center of political authority and transport, while its institutions connected Sudan’s interior to regional diplomacy, international trade, and the Red Sea coast.

Khartoum’s modern history includes two sharply different moments in relations between Arab states and Israel. In 1967, Arab leaders meeting in the city adopted the Three Noes: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. In 2020, Sudan announced an opening toward Israel, followed by its signing of an Abraham Accords declaration in Khartoum on January 6, 2021. The 2020 announcement was an unsigned, nonbinding joint statement centered mainly on economic and trade relations, rather than a comprehensive peace treaty. Together, these events mark a reversal in the diplomatic course associated with the city. [1][2][3][4]

Khartoum has also been a center of Sudan’s internal conflicts. Under Omar al-Bashir, the government directed a campaign of mass atrocities in Darfur and maintained ties with armed organizations hostile to Israel. After al-Bashir’s rule ended, competing military leaders struggled over control of the state. Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023 and devastated the capital. Sudan’s army retook Khartoum in March 2025 after more than 23 months of war. [5][6]

Geography

The Blue Nile and White Nile converge at Khartoum, giving the city a distinctive position on Sudan’s river network. The waterways divide the capital area into districts joined by bridges. Those crossings carry movement between neighborhoods and became military objectives when war reached the city in 2023. Bridges on three flanks of Khartoum served as critical supply routes for the Rapid Support Forces during its battle with Sudan’s army. The geography that had supported the capital’s growth thus also shaped the struggle to control it. [5]

Khartoum’s economic importance extended beyond the river junction. Before southern Sudan’s secession, major oil reserves lay in the south, while refining and transport facilities were concentrated in the north, including Khartoum and Port Sudan. Southern oil production supplied approximately 98 percent of the southern government’s income and 65 percent of the government income received in Khartoum. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement provided for equal sharing of oil profits between the governments in Khartoum and Juba. Because southern oil depended on northern infrastructure to reach the Red Sea, the capital’s political decisions were closely tied to the country’s principal export industry. [7][8]

Khartoum’s position also linked Sudanese politics to questions beyond its borders. Sudan and Ethiopia disputed the Al Fushqa area near Ethiopia’s Tigray region, while the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam raised concerns in Khartoum about the Nile’s flow. During fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, refugees crossed into Sudan, and Sudanese forces took control of key areas of Al Fushqa in December 2020. These disputes added to the demands facing Sudan’s leaders during the country’s political transition. [9]

Modern history

Founded in 1821, Khartoum became the administrative center from which nineteenth-century authorities governed Sudan. Its subsequent role as capital made it the principal seat of the modern Sudanese state. Following independence in January 1956, decisions made in Khartoum shaped the country’s external alliances and its relations with communities far from the capital. Sudan’s government later joined the Arab states confronting Israel during the Six-Day War, although Sudanese forces did not take part in active combat. [4]

From August 29 to September 1, 1967, eight Arab heads of state met in Khartoum after the Six-Day War. Their resolution called for continued struggle against Israel and adopted what became known as the Three Noes: no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations with Israel. The declaration made Khartoum a reference point in Arab–Israeli diplomacy for decades. It rejected immediate peace talks rather than leaving that option open. [1][2]

Khartoum was the scene of a major hostage-taking on March 1, 1973. Eight Black September terrorists seized the Saudi Arabian Embassy as a reception for the departing United States deputy chief of mission was ending. They slightly wounded the United States ambassador and Belgian chargé d’affaires, then took them hostage alongside the United States deputy chief of mission and the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The captors demanded the release of prisoners held in Jordan, Israel, and the United States. United States ambassador Cleo Noel was killed during the operation. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum helped carry out the seizure and used a Fatah vehicle to transport the attackers. A subsequently declassified United States document established that Yasser Arafat, Fatah’s leader, personally approved the operation. [10]

During al-Bashir’s rule, Khartoum became the center of a government that supported armed groups abroad while suppressing opposition at home. The United States designated Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism in August 1993. Sudan provided safe haven to Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other organizations. The United Nations imposed sanctions in 1996 after the government refused to extradite gunmen who had attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia the previous year. The Security Council lifted those sanctions on September 28, 2001. These measures reflected the international consequences of policies directed from the capital. [11]

War in Darfur began in 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement rebelled against the central government, accusing it of systematic neglect. Khartoum armed and unleashed the Janjaweed against the rebellion. The government-backed militia committed genocidal atrocities and attacked civilian communities to destroy support for rebel forces. Although the campaign heavily targeted non-Arab communities, Darfur’s conflict cannot be reduced to two uniform ethnic camps: some Darfurian Arabs opposed the Janjaweed or fought beside rebels, while some non-Arabs supported the government. Dictatorship, exclusion, and Khartoum’s pursuit of power were also central to the war. [6]

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur brought senior foreign officials to Khartoum. United States Secretary of State Colin Powell visited the capital in June 2004 before traveling to Darfur. That month, the government blocked United Nations access to Darfur amid worsening conditions. In 2006, President George W. Bush sent Jendayi Fraser to Khartoum with a letter urging al-Bashir to permit a robust United Nations peacekeeping force. International scrutiny continued as the consequences of Khartoum’s campaign became clear. [6]

Sudan’s long north–south war ended with the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. It granted southern Sudan six years of autonomy before a referendum on secession. The agreement also addressed the division of oil revenue, a matter of direct importance to Khartoum because northern facilities refined and transported oil produced largely in the south. Before the 2011 referendum, that production supplied about 65 percent of the Khartoum government’s income. Southern secession therefore threatened a major source of state revenue as well as the political arrangement established by the agreement. [7][8]

Conflict also reached the capital directly. Rebels from Darfur, supported by Chad, struck Khartoum in May 2008. Religious and civil rights disputes surfaced within the city. In October 2010, police evicted Presbyterian church staff from an events and office site while assisting a businessman seeking control of the property. On April 21, 2012, attackers breached a Christian compound with a bulldozer, burned the Gerief West Bible School and Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church, and damaged three other places of worship. On June 18, 2012, local officials sent bulldozers to demolish a St. John Episcopal Church building; two church buildings were reported demolished that week after three Catholic schools had been confiscated. These incidents formed part of the wider record of pressure on Christian institutions under al-Bashir’s government.

Khartoum also became a setting for challenges to the government’s application of sharia law. In July 2009, journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein campaigned against the law after a clothing case brought by local police drew international attention. Another woman faced a sentence of 40 lashes over clothing described as indecent, while several women had already received ten lashes each. Such cases exposed the consequences of state rules governing daily life and the efforts of Sudanese women to contest their enforcement.

Security

Sudan’s ties to organizations hostile to Israel gave Khartoum a role in regional security disputes. In October 2012, Israeli fighter jets struck a weapons facility near the city linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, part of the Iranian regime. The facility produced long-range Shihab missiles and other weapons intended for smuggling into Gaza and Lebanon; accounts also described a stockpile of rockets. Al-Bashir’s government subsequently began removing agents of the Iranian regime from Sudan. The strike showed how weapons routes running through Sudan connected the capital to conflicts elsewhere in the region. [4]

Security concerns within Khartoum were not limited to state policy abroad. An Al-Qaeda-affiliated cell in the city’s Al-Salamah area attempted bombings in August 2007 and detonated at least one explosive device before Sudanese authorities broke up the network. Khartoum’s Kober Prison later held members of that network; several escaped in June 2010. Another prison break occurred there in April 2023, as war spread through the capital, allowing an unknown number of Islamist and jihadist detainees to escape. [12]

Sudan’s opening toward Israel began during the transition that followed al-Bashir’s rule. In February 2020, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Kampala, and the two agreed to open communication channels. United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Khartoum in August 2020 during regional diplomacy following the Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization deal. On August 18, a Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson confirmed talks with Israel. After the foreign minister contradicted him, the ministry dismissed the spokesperson, revealing divisions within the transitional government over the proposed relationship. [3]

On October 23, 2020, Sudan announced plans to improve relations with Israel, days after the United States said it would remove Sudan from its state sponsors of terrorism list. Sudan also transferred $335 million in compensation for its role in Al-Qaeda attacks on United States embassies in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. The October step was an unsigned, nonbinding joint statement focused chiefly on economic and trade relations. It was followed on January 6, 2021, by Sudan’s signing of an Abraham Accords declaration in Khartoum, with United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin representing Washington. The signing gave formal expression to a diplomatic reversal from the rejection adopted in the city in 1967. [4][13]

The transition remained fragile. On October 25, 2021, al-Burhan led a military coup. Afterward, he expressed qualified support for reviving a suspended agreement concerning a Russian naval logistics facility near Port Sudan, while other Sudanese military officials said the arrangement remained under review. Contacts with Israel nevertheless continued under his rule. Israeli intelligence officers visited Khartoum in January 2022, and a Sudanese security delegation visited Tel Aviv the next month. An Israeli security delegation met senior Sudanese military officials in Khartoum in March 2022, its third such visit in six months. In February 2023, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met al-Burhan in Khartoum to advance relations, including discussions of agriculture, energy, health, water, education, and security. [14]

Present day

Khartoum became the epicenter of the Sudanese civil war when fighting broke out in April 2023 between al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. The RSF had developed into a powerful political actor after forces once confined to the capital’s outskirts entered Khartoum. Hemedti cooperated with army leaders and drew supporters from their ranks, but disputes over integrating the RSF into the regular army helped drive the rival forces into open war. Much of the RSF drew from Janjaweed militias previously allied with Sudan’s government. [5]

The RSF advanced rapidly in the opening battle for Khartoum. Fighting between the rival forces devastated the capital and other Sudanese cities and deepened a humanitarian crisis. Control of bridges became decisive because crossings on three sides of the city sustained RSF supply lines. By March 26, 2025, Sudan’s army reported that it had regained the Soba Bridge, linking eastern and southern Khartoum, and the Manshiya Bridge, connecting East Nile neighborhoods with the city center. Hemedti urged his fighters to hold the presidential palace, but army forces captured it. On March 28, the army secured the Jebel Aulia Dam bridge, approximately 28 miles south of the city and the last Khartoum crossing held by the RSF. [5]

Sudanese Armed Forces had retaken Khartoum by the end of March 2025, after more than 23 months of civil war. Their control of the capital and its crossings changed the military position around the city and provided access toward Kordofan and Darfur. It did not end the wider war or repair the destruction left by prolonged urban combat. Khartoum remains Sudan’s capital, but its recent history is defined by the consequences of a struggle between forces that once shared power at the center of the state. [5]