As columns of smoke drift over Khartoum’s broken skyline and the haunting silence of once-bustling streets deepens, the true scale of Sudan’s tragedy is only beginning to register. Since April 2023, the capital has become a battleground between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), reducing neighborhoods to ash and paralyzing what was once the political and economic heart of the nation. But as global calls for ceasefires, negotiations, and humanitarian access grow louder, a more urgent question emerges: can Khartoum ever return to life as it was?
Not simply by ending the war.
Even if the guns fall silent, Sudan’s path to recovery requires far more than peace agreements or foreign aid packages. The most critical element – and often the most neglected – is the restoration of the country’s middle class. Without teachers, doctors, civil servants, engineers, business owners, and journalists, any attempt to rebuild Khartoum will be a hollow endeavor. These individuals not only held the economy together but also maintained a sense of civic order and social cohesion that gave the capital its character and functionality.
Today, the middle class lies in ruins. Many have been displaced to rural areas or neighboring countries. Their homes destroyed, their savings lost, their institutions dismantled, these former pillars of Sudanese urban society are unlikely to return without a fundamental transformation in governance, justice, and security.
History, however, offers a blueprint for hope. From the ashes of World War II to the scars of post-colonial and post-conflict Africa and Asia, there are examples of nations that not only rebuilt but also reimagined themselves. Their success stemmed not merely from infrastructure projects or international loans, but from deliberate policies aimed at empowering and stabilizing the middle class.
Consider postwar France. After losing over 600,000 citizens and seeing its infrastructure decimated, France prioritized social welfare, transportation, and educational reforms. These efforts, supported in part by the Marshall Plan, fueled a 170% increase in per capita income over 25 years. More importantly, they helped reestablish a functioning and fair society, laying the groundwork for political stability.
Japan’s experience was similarly transformative. Despite catastrophic devastation from the atomic bombings and wartime losses of over 2.5 million lives, Japan’s “Income Doubling Plan” of the 1960s prioritized industrial innovation, universal education, and targeted infrastructure development. By the 1970s, it had become the world’s third-largest economy.
In China, Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms post-1978 launched the country on a trajectory that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and revived a middle class long suppressed by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Special Economic Zones and liberalized trade policies attracted global investment while also creating millions of jobs and expanding local markets.
Closer to Sudan, Malaysia avoided full-blown civil war after its 1969 racial riots by implementing the New Economic Policy – an affirmative development plan that emphasized educational opportunity, entrepreneurial support, and equitable wealth distribution. This allowed for a multiethnic middle class to flourish and grounded the country’s modernization.
Mozambique, emerging from a brutal 15-year civil war in 1992, saw success through community-based development. With limited resources, the state focused on reintegrating displaced citizens, reopening schools, and reforming its financial systems. While challenges remain, this bottom-up strategy brought relative stability and economic revitalization.
Even in countries facing insurgencies rather than formal wars, the same principle applies. In Nigeria, the government’s response to the Boko Haram insurgency included reconstructing villages, training youth in trades, and supporting small businesses – slowly reknitting the social fabric in affected areas.
Rwanda, perhaps the most powerful example, transformed itself following the 1994 genocide that killed nearly 800,000 people. By emphasizing reconciliation, local governance, anti-corruption, and women’s empowerment, Rwanda fostered a new middle class and achieved significant economic progress despite having few natural resources.
In each of these cases, a simple truth emerges: reconstruction is not a technical task but a human one. Infrastructure can be replaced. Lives cannot. Social trust, once shattered, takes generations to rebuild – and it can only be restored when citizens see tangible reasons to believe that their dignity, safety, and contributions matter.
The situation in Khartoum today reflects not just the destruction of buildings, but the collapse of a vital social balance. Sudan’s urban middle class had long acted as the buffer between the extremes of poverty and privilege, and between state failure and social order. They staffed the hospitals, ran the schools, published the newspapers, and kept the market stalls humming.
Now, many of them are scattered or silent. They won’t return simply because the guns stop. They need guarantees: physical security, political inclusion, restitution for lost property, and a state that doesn’t fear their voices but values them.
Sudan’s military leaders and political factions must realize that any lasting peace will be as fragile as glass if it does not involve the full return and empowerment of this demographic. The international community – especially regional powers and global institutions – should direct aid not just toward emergency relief or megaprojects, but toward initiatives that enable skilled Sudanese to return, rebuild, and participate in shaping their country’s future.
True reconstruction does not begin with concrete or steel. It begins with people. With restoring professions. With dignifying labor. With funding education. With making small businesses viable again. With ensuring journalists can report without fear and civil servants can serve without corruption. It begins by investing in the very class that can sustain democracy, growth, and peace.
For Sudan, and particularly for Khartoum, the war’s real end will not be marked by a signature on paper or a UN resolution. It will come when families feel safe to return, children go back to school, and the engines of a battered economy begin to turn again – powered not by foreign consultants, but by Sudanese teachers, engineers, doctors, and traders.
Only then will Khartoum breathe again. And only then can Sudan dare to imagine a future that lasts.