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The hustle and bustle of buyers and sellers has returned to Khartoum’s central market, but “it’s nothing like before”, fruit vendor Hashim Mohamed told AFP, streets away from where war first broke out nearly three years ago.On April 15, 2023, central Khartoum awoke to battles between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who had been allies since 2021, when they ousted civilians from a short-lived transitional government.Their war has since killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.In greater Khartoum alone, nearly four million people — around half the population — fled the city when the RSF took over.Hashim Mohamed did not.”I had to work discreetly, because there were regular attacks” on businesses, said the fruit seller, who has worked in the sprawling market for 50 years.Like him, those who stayed in the city reported having lived in constant fear of assaults and robberies from militiamen roaming the streets.Last March, army forces led an offensive through the capital, pushing paramilitary fighters out and revealing the vast looting and destruction left behind.”The market’s not what it used to be, but it’s much better than when the RSF was here,” said market vendor Adam Haddad, resting in the shade of an awning.In the market’s narrow, dusty alleyways, fruits and vegetables are piled high on makeshift stalls or tarps spread on the ground.- Two jobs to survive -Khartoum, where entire neighbourhoods have been damaged by the fighting, is no longer threatened by the mass starvation that stalks battlefield cities and displacement camps elsewhere in Sudan.But with the economy a shambles, a good living is still hard to provide.”People complain about prices, they say it’s too expensive. You can find everything, but the costs keep going up: supplies, labour, transportation,” said Mohamed.Sudan has known only triple-digit annual inflation for years. Figures for 2024 stood at 151 percent — down from a 2021 peak of 358 percent.The currency has also collapsed, going from trading at 570 Sudanese pounds to the US dollar before the war to 3,500 in 2026, according to the black market rate.One Sudanese teacher, who only a few years ago could provide comfortably for his two children, told AFP he could no longer pay his rent with a monthly salary of 250,000 Sudanese pounds ($71).To feed his family, pay for school and cover healthcare, he “works in the market or anywhere” on his days off.”You have to have another job to pay for the bare minimum of basic needs,” he said, asking for anonymity to protect his privacy and to avoid “problems with security services”.Beyond Khartoum, the war still rages, with the RSF in control of much of western and southern Sudan and pushing into the central Kordofan region.For Adam Haddad, the road to recovery will be a long one.”We don’t have enough resources or workers or liquidity going through the market,” he said, adding that reliable electricity was still a problem.”The government is striving to restore everything, and God willing, in the near future, the power will return and Khartoum will become what it once was.”

Thousands in the United States staged large demonstrations Sunday denouncing the Iranian government’s deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters in the Islamic Republic.Several thousand people marched in Los Angeles, home to the world’s largest Iranian diaspora, while several hundred others gathered in New York, AFP journalists in both cities reported. US protesters could be seen carrying signs condemning a “New Holocaust,” a “genocide in the making,” and the “terror” of the Iranian government.”My heart is heavy and my soul is crushed, I’m at loss for words to describe how angry I am,” said Perry Faraz at the demonstration in Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the US.The 62-year-old payroll manager, who fled Iran in 2006, learned this week that one of her young cousins had been killed during the overseas rallies held in her native country.”He wasn’t even 10 years old, that’s horrible,” she said.Demonstrations sparked by anger over economic hardship exploded into protests late December in what has been widely seen as the biggest challenge to the Iranian leadership in recent years.The rallies subsided after a government crackdown in Iran that rights groups have called a “massacre” carried out by security forces under the cover of a communications blackout that started on January 8.Norway-based Iran Human Rights says it has verified the deaths of 3,428 protesters killed by security forces, confirming cases through sources within the Islamic Republic’s health and medical system, witnesses and independent sources.The NGO warned that the true toll is likely to be far higher. Media cannot independently confirm the figure and Iranian officials have not given an exact death toll.- Calls for US intervention -“This mass murdering of the population is terribly upsetting,” Ali Parvaneh, a 65-year-old lawyer protesting in LA said. Like many protesters, Parvaneh carried a “Make Iran Great Again” sign and said he wanted US President Donald Trump to intervene by targeting the country’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).Some in the crowd in LA went as far as to call for the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has been in power for more than 25 years. After having attacked Iranian nuclear sites in June, Trump sent mixed signals on possible US intervention this week. The Republican first threatened to intervene if Iranian protesters were killed, but then said he was satisfied by Iranian assurances that demonstrators would not be executed.”I really hope that Trump will go one step beyond just voicing support,” Parvaneh said.Many protesting in the Californian city chanted slogans in support of the US president and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah of Iran who was deposed by the popular uprising in 1979.- ‘Don’t need a puppet’ – Parvaneh echoed Pahlavi’s popularity among some segments of Iran’s exiled and expatriate population.”Had the monarchy stayed in place, it would be much different and Iran would be in a much better situation,” he said.Pahlavi’s support base is concentrated abroad while his political sway within Iran is limited.The former Shah’s son, who lives in exile near Washington, said this week he would be ready to return to Iran — but it is unclear if most Iranians want this.The Iranian opposition remains divided, and memories of the Shah’s brutal repression of his left-wing opponents remain vivid. Last week, a man caused minor injuries when he drove a truck into a demonstration held by Iranians in Los Angeles, carrying a sign that read: “No Shah. No Regime. USA: Don’t Repeat 1953. No Mullah.” The sign was referring to the 1953 coup that saw Iran’s government overthrown in a US- and UK-backed operation that had seen Pahlavi installed as the country’s leader.In Los Angeles’s Westwood neighborhood, nicknamed “Tehrangeles,” Roozbeh Farahanipour believes the diaspora must support Iranians without infringing on their “right to decide their own future.””They don’t need a puppet implanted by the West,” said the 54-year-old restaurant owner.Others in California also share that view.”Trump is playing the Iranian people,” said poet Karim Farsis, a resident of the San Francisco Bay area. Farsis, an academic, stresses that it is US sanctions — including those imposed by Trump — and the Republican’s ripping up of a nuclear deal that have contributed in large part to the suffering of the Iranian people.She also criticized the almost complete ban on Iranians entering the US since June.”We’re living in a really twisted moment,” she said. “Trump is saying to Iranians: ‘Keep protesting, take over your institutions.'”But if they find themselves in danger, they can’t even find refuge in the United States.”