After routing paramilitaries, Sudan’s army faces looting claims
June 5, 2025 (OMDURMAN) – When the fierce clashes between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) finally subsided in her south Omdurman neighbourhood last month, the woman known as Mrs. Z returned home, hoping the worst was over.
Instead, she was met with a new shock: her house had been picked clean.
She had fled with her home intact, and neighbours told her it had remained untouched during the RSF’s presence. But after the army took control, they witnessed soldiers loading her furniture and belongings into two small trucks.
Her search for answers drew her into the chaotic energy of the Sabirin market, a notorious, sprawling bazaar known for trafficking in stolen goods. The air, thick with a hundred competing scents and sounds, did little to distract her. Then, amidst the glittering junk and pilfered treasures of a vendor’s stall, she saw them: her own possessions, laid out for sale.
“I found a soldier in military uniform offering some of my things for sale,” she said. “Who do I complain to about the one who caused my harm and looted my property?”
Her question hangs over residents in cities recaptured by the Sudanese Army, who say their relief at the RSF’s retreat has been replaced by a bitter sense of betrayal as they face a new wave of systematic looting, this time allegedly by their own country’s soldiers.
For nearly two years, residents of Khartoum and its sister cities Omdurman and Bahri endured the RSF’s occupation, which saw homes widely plundered and public property destroyed. When the army began a major offensive late last year to reclaim the capital, many hoped for a return to order.
But as the army announced its gradual recapture of neighbourhoods starting in March, a new pattern of plunder emerged, according to dozens of testimonies from residents, activists, and local community groups. The army’s leadership and its spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations.
Humanitarian activist Walid al-Baqir said the initial optimism among returning civilians has curdled into resentment.
“The state of reassurance… has turned to resentment and anger because of these practices,” he said.
He, along with other residents and community organisers, described groups of soldiers they call the “Black Ants” who allegedly move through recaptured areas, systematically looting homes, shops, and what little remains in commercial buildings.
The stolen goods, from furniture and electronics to air conditioning units, are then transported and sold openly in markets like Sabirin, with no apparent intervention from the army command, according to multiple residents, merchants, and employees in the capital’s three cities.
Beyond theft, residents also report widespread, seemingly pointless vandalism, alleging that soldiers sometimes fire at empty houses for no reason.
The allegations are not confined to the capital. In Wad Madani, a city in central Sudan recaptured by the army, residents and activists from Al Jazirah state complain of continuous, methodical theft by soldiers and allied groups.
“The looting operations inside Wad Madani have reached the stage of emptying the city of everything,” the Um Al-Qura Observatory, a local monitoring group, said in a report.
Local “resistance committees,” which have organised community services throughout the war, have repeatedly condemned the thefts. In a statement last week, the Central Salha committees denounced the “Black Ants” and demanded authorities hold them accountable.
Months earlier, in March of last year, the committee in Omdurman’s Wad Nubawi neighbourhood claimed “gunmen wearing Sudanese army uniforms looted 70% of the neighbourhood’s homes” just days after the army’s takeover. The statement described soldiers and police looting in “plain sight of officers and officials, making them complicit.”
For many, challenging the perpetrators seems impossible. One resident from the Kafouri area in Bahri said that after soldiers stole all the air conditioners from his house, he went to a nearby army checkpoint for help.
“When I informed the officer in charge,” he recalled, “he replied: ‘What can I do to them?'”
This sense of impunity is felt within the ranks as well. One army soldier, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the looting by his comrades as a “disturbing” phenomenon. He said officers are often indifferent or fear a backlash from their soldiers if they try to stop the thefts.
He spoke of confrontations between officers and soldiers over the issue, with some looters defending their actions as taking “spoils of war.”
A former army officer, who also asked not to be named, said the ultimate responsibility lies with the military leadership.
“Wars always produce negative practices,” he said. “But decisive leadership is capable of curbing them.”