# Sudan Says Government Is Returning to Khartoum After Years in Port Sudan
*Event date: 2026-01-11*
By IO Digest Desk
Sudan’s prime minister, Kamil Idris, said on January 11, 2026 that the government would return to Khartoum, marking a symbolic shift after nearly three years of operating from the Red Sea city of Port Sudan during the country’s civil war. The move follows the army’s recapture of the capital last March and reflects a broader attempt by the authorities to show that state institutions can function again in the center of the country.
Idris presented the return as the start of a recovery phase rather than an endpoint to the conflict. Speaking in Khartoum, he promised improvements to public services, healthcare, education, electricity, water and sanitation. That pledge underscores the scale of the challenge ahead. Khartoum was not merely a political center during the war; it was one of the conflict’s main battlegrounds, with neighborhoods besieged, artillery crossing the Nile, and large parts of the metropolitan area devastated.
The capital region, which includes Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North, endured close to two years of active fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Al Jazeera reported that millions were displaced from the city, and that many residents returning this year have encountered shattered homes, barely functioning services and makeshift graves scattered through damaged neighborhoods. The United Nations estimates that 1.2 million people returned to Khartoum between March and October, even as reconstruction remained limited.
That return has created pressure for the government to restore basic administration quickly. According to the UN estimate cited by Al Jazeera, essential infrastructure rehabilitation in Khartoum alone could cost about $350 million. Recent cabinet meetings in the capital and the launch of early reconstruction efforts suggest the authorities have been preparing the transition for months, but the physical and institutional damage remains severe.
The government’s relocation also comes with clear limits. Khartoum has seen relative calm, yet the city has still been hit by RSF drone strikes, particularly against infrastructure. Far from the capital, fighting continues across Sudan. South of Khartoum, the RSF has pushed through Kordofan after seizing the army’s last stronghold in Darfur last year. Sudan’s military has also issued new battlefield claims about operations in Darfur and Kordofan, but Al Jazeera noted that those claims could not be independently verified.
The wider war continues to define the significance of the government’s return. The conflict has displaced about 11 million people inside Sudan and across its borders, while also feeding what the UN has described as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises. In North Darfur, UN officials recently described el-Fasher as a “crime scene” after reporting mass atrocities and large-scale flight following the RSF takeover there.
For Sudan’s leadership, moving back to Khartoum is therefore both a statement of control and a test of capacity. The announcement suggests the army-aligned government wants to project normalcy and legitimacy from the national capital again. But the city’s condition, the continuing attacks on infrastructure, and the unresolved fronts elsewhere in Sudan mean the return is better understood as the beginning of a long reconstruction effort than as evidence that the war has been settled.
