Carrying heavy suitcases and bags, Sudanese families thronged into Cairo’s main railway station, hoping to head back to a more stable homeland after escaping the country’s civil war.
They are among thousands of displaced Sudanese streaming back home from Egypt into territory retaken by the Sudanese armed forces from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary in Khartoum and its environs since the start of this year.
“I miss every corner of Sudan, really. I’m very happy that I’m going back,” one of the returnees, Malaz Atef, said.
The families were waiting to board a free train to the southern Egyptian city of Aswan, from where they would take buses to the Sudanese capital Khartoum. A couple of young girls wore hats reading, “Thank you, Egypt” in Arabic.
Over 4 million Sudanese fled to neighbouring countries — including more than 1.5 million to Egypt — after war broke out between the army and the RSF in April 2023, according to figures from the International Organisation for Migration, or IOM.
Since the start of this year, over 190,000 people have crossed the border from Egypt into Sudan, more than five times the number who returned in all of 2024, an IOM report said earlier this month.
Conflict Between Army And RSF
Sudan’s ambassador to Egypt, Emad el-Din Adawy, who visited the station on Monday, said the returns marked “an important stage for reconstruction and bringing back stability.”
Despite the relative calm in the capital, fighting between the RSF and the army is still raging in the central Kordofan region and al-Fashir in Darfur in the west.
The war, triggered by a dispute over a transition to civilian rule between the army and the RSF, has displaced over 12 million people and pushed half the population into acute hunger, according to the United Nations.
Some Sudanese in Egypt have complained of difficulty finding jobs and discrimination, and Egypt has deported thousands of refugees it says entered illegally. Thousands of others have fled onwards to Libya.
The weekly trains from Cairo to help Sudanese to return home voluntarily have been financed by Sudanese businessmen, according to Adawy.
The Sudanese who have gone back so far have mostly headed to Khartoum, as well as to Sennar and El Gezira states to the capital’s south, according to the IOM.
(With inputs from Reuters)
