Sudan’s cultural heritage becomes a casualty in its civil war

Geoff Bennett :

Sudan's civil war, now in its third year, has become a humanitarian catastrophe of staggering scale, marked by famine, ethnic cleansing and widespread sexual violence.

An estimated 150,000 people have been killed and nearly 13 million have been forced from their homes. But one part of this story has drawn far less attention, the destruction of Sudan's cultural heritage and what that loss means for its people and for the very idea of Sudanese identity.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown:

The scene at Sudan's National Museum earlier this year after government forces had retaken the capital city of Khartoum from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, precious artifacts destroyed or looted, treasures that speak to the overwhelming loss and high stakes of Sudan's civil war.

University of Washington historian Christopher Tounsel studies the region.

Christopher Tounsel, University of Washington: One of the reasons why the Rapid Support Forces targeted these museums is because of what they represent, right? Cultural heritage is a foundational part of how nation-states kind of provide legitimacy.

Jeffrey Brown:

This humanitarian crisis began in the aftermath of the 2019 downfall of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, when two former allies split and civil war ensued. More than two years later:

Christopher Tounsel:

It has been a hellscape, right? Millions have been driven away from their homes. The war has devastated critical infrastructure from clinics to hospitals, even to water supplies, right? We still don't really know how many people have been killed because the destruction has been so heavy and so many regions are not accessible to NGOs like the Red Cross.

Jeffrey Brown:

Also hard to assess, the damage to Sudan's cultural heritage sites. But to observers and experts, there's little question they have been caught in the crossfire and targeted.

Habab Idriss Ahmed, National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums: I'm an archaeologist. I can say it loudly. It seems to be it's like targeted to the disappear or to vanish the Sudanese culture.

Jeffrey Brown:

Habab Idriss Ahmed is a senior inspector at the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, the government agency overseeing Sudan's cultural sites.

She's now living in Scotland after fleeing the fighting in 2023.

Habab Idriss Ahmed:

It seems to be like something organized. It's not something randomly happened.

Jeffrey Brown:

Sudan's landscape is filled with pyramids, tombs and temples. It's home to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, libraries with historic manuscripts and numerous museums, including the Sudan National Museum, which prior to the war had housed some 100,000 artifacts, with one of the largest Nubian collections in the world.

A UNESCO statement earlier this year said: "The securing of certain institutions by the authorities has shown evidence of large-scale looting and significant damage. UNESCO strongly condemns these attacks on cultural heritage."

Habab Idriss Ahmed:

We lost a lot, a lot more you can imagine. We lost museums. We lost sites. We lost objects, thousands of objects. So we are being working more than 100 years in archaeology. So you can imagine the museum are full of objects. The stores are full of objects. We have history. We have memory. So, all this kind of shaped the identity of Sudanese people.

Jeffrey Brown:

Most of the blame has been placed on the paramilitary RSF, which has its roots in Western Sudan.

Christopher Tounsel:

It really goes back to the Rapid Support Forces being located on really the fringes of national power historically in Darfur. In the early 20th century, Darfur was really known as a kind of restive location within Sudan that was resisting colonial power. And that kind of restiveness really continued through political marginalization through the 20th and into the early 21st century.

Jeffrey Brown:

But government Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, have also been cited by the U.N. for civilian and other abuses in the war, including attacks on mosques and churches.

Habab Idriss Ahmed is now working with international partners to document some of the losses and give them life online.

Habab Idriss Ahmed:

It's like making a virtual museum of the Sudan, Sudan National Museum collection itself. So we tried our best to rescue, to assess the — what we have — been lost.

Jeffrey Brown:

Also threatened, a contemporary generation of artists who've been displaced and forced to leave much of their lives and work behind. One of them, Reem Aljeally, now living in Cairo, is a curator and visual artist. Much of her work focuses on the world of women in Sudan.

Reem Aljeally, Visual Artist and Curator: I think the art in Sudan is very powerful, it is very personal. Each artist has its own or her own kind of print and the kind of stories that they're telling. I think it is very truthful. It is very powerful. And I think through this art you can learn more about Sudan and the people of Sudan and these qualities that these people carry with them wherever they're going now.

Jeffrey Brown:

Colleagues who remained in Khartoum have checked on her gallery, which has been damaged in the fighting, while she herself stays in touch with other displaced Sudanese artists.

Reem Aljeally:

I think we're all doing our best wherever we are, and I think we're doing a really good job looking at the circumstances. You can find their work all over. You look in Doha, you find an exhibition, Nairobi. You look in Uganda, everywhere, they're just doing amazing work.

Jeffrey Brown:

Before the war, Aljeally started the Sudan Art Archive, a digital database to document contemporary work. Now that too has become a way of preserving potential and actual losses.

Reem Aljeally:

There was an urgency because we were facing the problem of displacement and exiles, and a lot of artists are more encouraged to actually be part of the archive because we realize the importance of this at the moment.

Jeffrey Brown:

Observers now describe the war as a stalemate, with no end in sight to the loss of life, widespread famine and displacement. And what of cultural heritage?

Where do things go from here? What are your biggest fears, or do you see any hope going forward?

Christopher Tounsel:

My biggest fear when it comes to the outcome of the cultural heritage is that some of these precious artifacts are never recovered, right, and that future generations of Sudanese citizens are unable to see with their own eyes, right, material history that connects them to the glory of these past civilizations, as well as material that shows how resilient the Sudanese people have been over space and time.

Jeffrey Brown:

And why should the rest of us pay attention? Because, Habab Idriss Ahmed says, this heritage is part of our history too.

Habab Idriss Ahmed:

I have a message to all the world. Because we thought that cultural heritage is belonging to the certain geographical area, yes, this is true, but, usually, when we study archaeology, we know archaeology or cultural heritage is — belong to the all mankind.

Jeffrey Brown:

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown.