Sudan's unravelling revolution as stench of rotting bodies haunts the streets

Over the last month, citizens have taken to the streets of Khartoum, to protest against the rocketing fuel prices. Photo / Twitter

Warning: Distressing content

Doctors were hard at work at a hospital in southern Khartoum when the smell of the revolution started wafting through the corridors, making some staff vomit – others rushed out to find the cause.

The stench was coming from a locked refrigerated container standing in the hospital grounds. Constant power cuts meant the container, which belonged to the Ministry of Justice, was no longer working. When doctors managed to get in, they found more than 100 unidentified corpses congealing into each other, cooking in the Sudanese sun.

"It was horrendous. You could smell the bodies from about 500 metres away. It was nauseating," Dr Osama Mohammad told the Telegraph.

Two months on, the identity of those in the container is still a mystery. Government factions have tried to stop autopsies from taking place and some corpses have been conveniently lost or hastily buried.

Some say the bodies were the unclaimed dead of a legal system stretched to breaking point. Many believe murdered protestors from Sudan's revolution were among the dead.

But whether they were the result of mismanagement or mass murder, the rotting bodies are a symptom of a much wider crisis pushing one of the most successful revolutions of the Arab Spring to the edge, with far-reaching consequences for Africa and the Middle East.

From 2018 to 2019, mass street protests led by the country's youth led to the military overthrow of President Omar al Bashir who had led the country with an iron fist for the past three decades.

The enormity of that moment could hardly be understated. A country that once competed with Saudi Arabia for the ultra-conservative Islamist crown, which had persecuted Christians and given a safe haven to Osama bin Laden, was finally coming in from the cold.

But today, the euphoria at seeing al Bashir behind bars has given way to disillusionment and anger. "I'm so sick of this shit. I want the British to come back," an armed policeman told the Telegraph in the railway town of Atbara.

A fragile coalition of politicians and members of the armed forces has run the country for the past two years. This transitional period is meant to end in 2023 paving the way for democratic elections, but Western diplomats wonder if Sudan will make it that far.

Prime Minister Abdellah Hamdok – a former UN economist now often described by observers as having the most difficult job on earth – must weigh every political decision against a dizzying array of powerful vested interests and more than half a dozen different armed or paramilitary forces.

Take the challenge posed by the Darfuri warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. "Hemedti", as the general is known, commands the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary army numbering up to 100,000 that grew out of murderous Janjaweed militia in the Darfur genocide. The RSF now operates across the country in parallel to the official armed forces and Hemedti has huge influence as the deputy of the Transitional Military Council.

Darfuri warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (left), known as 'Hemedti'. Photo / Twitter

Both the Sudanese army and Hamdok want the RSF to integrate into the national army, but Hemedti refuses. The tense standoff between the Sudanese Army and the RSF is just one of a catalogue of problems the country needs to balance on a daily basis.

At the same time, the nation of 44 million has barrelled headlong into an economic crisis that has been picking up speed ever since South Sudan won independence in 2011, taking most of the country's precious oil money. Now there are major water, fuel, electricity and food shortages across the country and the cost of living is spiralling.

Over the past month, young men with clubs have taken to the streets of Khartoum, to protest against the rocketing fuel prices, as Bashir-era subsidies were removed overnight. But these protests feel very different to the ones which rocked Sudan in 2018 and 2019.

When the Telegraph visited a protest in northern Khartoum, the barricades were teaming with street adolescents sniffing glue out of plastic bags. When we left we were immediately arrested by the secret police who had been standing near the protest in plain clothes and taken to a nearby military camp for several hours. "How do you know what you're going to photograph is to do with the military or not?" one irate officer shouted at us.

Many suspect these protests are being organised by disgruntled members of the ancient Islamist regime or factions of the military in a bid to undermine the civilian leaders. Last week Hamdok went on national television and pleaded with pro-democracy groups to work together or face a "devastating civil war".

To complicate matters even further, Sudan has found itself at the heart of an international power struggle where everyone from the Gulf states, Egypt and Turkey to the US, Israel and France is competing for influence. They want a stake in a country that bridges Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world with 643km of strategic coastline along the Red Sea and an estimated 10 per cent of the world's unploughed arable land.

Much to the ire of the US, Russia is also pushing hard to build a warm water naval base in Port Sudan. One Western security source said that Moscow most probably wants to connect the Russian navy to the Central African Republic, where the Wagner Group, a shadowy mercenary organisation with strong ties to the Kremlin, holds immense sway.

Many authoritarian states such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates have established strong relations with different military or religious factions as they do not want a flourishing liberal democracy in this part of Africa.

"The demonstrative effect of a successful civilian transition worries authoritarian governments across the region. Sudan's transition has offered up a potentially inspiring model of change to other civilian populations struggling under authoritarianism," says Jonas Horner, a senior Sudan analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank.

"Every foreign power is trying to serve its own interest on Sudanese soil, but these interests do not necessarily match the best interests of the Sudanese people," says Amgad Fareid, former chief of staff to PM Hamdok.

"Political powers have their own disagreements as well. There is no clear consensus among them on the actual purposes of the transition; eyes are not on the prize anymore".

Several months after the bodies were discovered the stench of human rot still hangs heavy in the dusty air, outside the Hajj Al Mardi Muhi Eldin Teaching hospital.

Nearby a protestor has graffitied a grey dead hand on the wall – the hand of the revolution reaching up out of the grave. A morgue label spray-painted onto the dead hand reads "missing".