When the Rapid Support Forces seized Heglig and later withdrew from the oil field after a negotiated understanding with the Sudan Armed Forces and the government of South Sudan, many observers reached the same unsettling conclusion: war is not always a blind force. When interests are clear, combatants and politicians can act with precision.
That realization exposes a painful paradox. If pragmatic calculations could spare oil infrastructure, why did the same logic not extend to safeguarding Sudanese lives, or the environments that sustain them?
The answer lies in our hierarchy of priorities. Some things are protected, others are expendable. Environmental concerns almost always fall into the latter category. They are dismissed as secondary luxuries, distractions from the urgent matters of bread, medicine, and security. Yet this quiet neglect often conceals a deeper and slower violence.
The destruction of Al-Sunut Forest near Al-Mogran (confluence of Blue and White Nile in Khartoum) was not simply an act of encroachment. It was the removal of one of the capital’s last ecological safeguards. A forest is never just trees. It is a city’s memory, its shade, its balance with land and river.
More troubling than the cutting itself is the ease with which its importance is questioned. Environmental damage rarely arrives as spectacle. It unfolds gradually, quietly eroding the conditions that sustain life.
For decades, Al-Sunut functioned as one of Khartoum’s natural lungs. Its trees absorbed pollutants, trapped dust, and released oxygen into a city already burdened by heat, industry, and traffic. Their presence moderated temperatures, cooled the surrounding air, and softened the harsh climate along the White Nile.
Its disappearance carries consequences that extend beyond the visible clearing. Air pollution intensifies. Heat rises. Respiratory illnesses increase, particularly among children and the elderly.
The risks extend further. During the rainy season, the expanding White Nile once met banks reinforced by the deep roots of acacia trees. Without that natural barrier, the soil becomes more vulnerable to erosion and less capable of stabilizing the river’s edge.
The forest flourished during the war, then collapsed when people returned.
The destruction of Al-Sunut is therefore not a minor incident. It is a silent crime, one whose consequences will unfold slowly, long after the chainsaws fall quiet.
Yet before accepting the circulating narratives at face value, it was necessary first to determine the true extent of the damage inflicted on the forest. Was the deterioration really as severe as some media outlets and social media platforms suggested? Assessing the spatial and temporal scale of the cutting required systematic field observation, something that was not possible during the first year of war and the months that followed, when the area remained a closed military zone.
Meaningful field assessment only began after residents started returning to Khartoum in the second half of 2025. Even now, no one can say with certainty when the large-scale cutting began, or at what pace it unfolded.
In the absence of reliable field data during that period, we turned to a rigorous scientific approach based on remote-sensing technology. Using satellite imagery, we analyzed the environmental changes that had affected the forest over time. By comparing images across different dates and interpreting spectral indicators of vegetation cover, we were able to trace the trajectory of the forest’s deterioration and measure it in quantitative, objective terms. The findings revealed several striking patterns.
We monitored the vegetation cover of Al-Sunut forest along the White Nile using imagery from the Sentinel-2 satellite. Data from February for the years 2022 through 2026, drawn from the same measurement area, showed that the forest remained in moderate to good condition until 2025, with natural fluctuations from year to year.
Notably, 2024 recorded an exceptional peak in vegetation density, with green cover rising by 37 per cent compared with the prewar period. This surge may be attributed to the mass displacement of residents and the abrupt halt of human activity during the war’s first year.
By 2025, however, as residents began returning and a measure of stability gradually returned to Khartoum, the forest’s vegetation cover began to deteriorate. The decline accelerated in August 2025 before culminating in a sharp and rapid drop that reached its lowest point in February 2026.
This analysis relied on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI, a widely used remote-sensing metric for assessing vegetation health. The index ranges from +1 to −1, providing a numerical measure of the vitality and density of plant cover across a given landscape.
| NDVI Range | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 0.5 – 1 | Dense vegetation cover |
| 0.2 – 0.4 | Moderate vegetation cover |
| 0 – 0.2 | Sparse vegetation cover |
| Below 0 (negative value) | Bare land |
Key to interpreting ND vegetation index values.
Source
| Year | Average Vegetation Vitality | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| February 2022 | +0.44 | Forest in good ecological condition |
| February 2023 | +0.35 | Forest with some fragile and weakened areas |
| February 2024 | +0.48 | Relatively high greenness and more uniform vegetation |
| February 2025 | +0.37 | Clear decline and the reappearance of weaker zones |
| February 2026 | −0.18 | Severe collapse, with a negative value indicating degradation to largely non-vegetated surface |
The vegetation index values for Al-Sunut forest over four years, before, during and after the battles in Khartoum, reveal a striking trajectory. The data clearly indicate that the forest’s vegetation cover flourished in the aftermath of the war’s outbreak. By February 2024, green cover had surged by 37 per cent, a rise that likely reflected the sharp decline in human activity following the takeover of Khartoum by the Rapid Support Forces. The pattern shifted dramatically once residents began returning. As civilian life gradually resumed, the forest’s vegetation cover entered a phase of marked deterioration, culminating in a dramatic collapse by February 2026. Within a single year, from 2025 to 2026, the index recorded a 149 per cent drop. Most of this decline unfolded after August 2025, with the most severe losses concentrated between December 2025 and February 2026.
The temporal change in NDVI measurements of Al-Sunut forest between February 2024 and February 2026 shows a steady decline in vegetation density, culminating in a sharp drop at the beginning of 2026.
Satellite imagery comparing 2024 with 2026 reveals notable environmental changes within Al-Sunut forest’s boundaries. Most evident is a clear contraction of green cover and a simultaneous expansion of bare soil patches.
The analysis also points to increasing spatial fragmentation within the forest. What was once a relatively continuous and uniform canopy has given way to scattered gaps and exposed areas that are gradually widening.
In addition, signs of newly exposed and damp zones have appeared near the banks of the White Nile. These patterns may indicate a disturbance in the balance between soil and vegetation cover, as well as changes in surface characteristics following exposure and removal of plant growth.
Satellite images of Al-Sunut forest. The image on the right from February 2024 and the one on the left from February 2026, analyzed using the Bare Soil Index derived from Sentinel-2 data. The 2024 image clearly shows dense vegetation cover in green, while in the February 2026 image the green recedes sharply and the barren area expands.
These findings are not fleeting visual impressions. They represent the outcome of a precise quantitative reading of vegetation indices, reflecting what has actually occurred on the ground, without exaggeration or understatement.
Here, the answer to the question posed at the outset becomes clearer: Was the loss truly as severe as reported in the media and amplified across social platforms? The data suggest that the reality may be even graver.
When the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) shifts from a positive value, indicating living, viable vegetation, to a negative one, meaning the surface is no longer vegetated at all, the issue is no longer a matter of seasonal decline in greenness or a passing drought. What we are witnessing is a fundamental transformation in the ecosystem itself. The forest, in effect, has ceased to be a forest, more like a body stripped of its green skin and left exposed beneath the sun.
Field observations point to systematic felling that may signal an organized timber trade.
Atar correspondent Hussein Saleh
As the images above show, the spatial analysis reveals a clear retreat of the green canopy and, more tellingly, a pattern of internal fragmentation within the forest itself. Vegetation did not recede evenly. Instead, it splintered into scattered pockets and small patches, while exposed gaps widened month after month.
This pattern of deterioration differs markedly from the natural fluctuations typically linked to rainfall cycles or seasonal climatic shifts that accompany periods of drought. Decline driven by indiscriminate cutting leaves a distinct signature: stripped corridors and cleared patches, sharp spatial contrasts and bare areas emerging amid broken clusters of green, precisely the pattern reflected in the satellite images.
According to field observations by Atar correspondent Hussein Saleh, who visited Al-Sunut forest and captured the accompanying photographs, the cutting appears to have begun very early in the war and continues to this day. The pattern of felling suggests a methodical approach, indicating that an organized timber trade may have taken root during the past few years.
Only a narrow strip of the forest remains largely untouched, a thin band running along the White Nile, seemingly spared by the proximity of the water.
“I did not notice signs of birds in the areas where the trees were cut,” Saleh said. “They appear only in small numbers along the remaining riverside strip of the forest.”
He added that remnants of artillery shells are also scattered across the site.
The satellite analysis aligns with Saleh’s field observations and fills a crucial gap in the story. The forest did not deteriorate immediately after the war erupted. On the contrary, it initially flourished, as if nature, briefly freed from human pressure, had taken a deep breath.
Al-Sunut forest
Photo by: Hussien Salih
The real decline came later. It coincided with the gradual return of human activity and the growing demand for energy and fuel in the absence of functioning state institutions.
Here lies the harsh paradox: the war itself did not kill the forest. People did. Indiscriminate logging became, at its core, a symptom of state collapse, when a man under siege by necessity turns to felling trees, not out of malice, but because survival leaves him little choice.
With the loss of Al-Sunut forest, Khartoum has forfeited a hidden store of biodiversity, one that is invisible to most people yet crucial to the balance of the environment.
Birds, pollinating insects, small reptiles, soil microorganisms, and seeds lying in wait for the rains to signal the start of a new life cycle, none of these are luxuries or mere embellishments. Each is an integral part of a complex web of life; when one strand collapses, the entire ecological system trembles.
The forest also held symbolic value, bridging the gap between concrete and nature. Its disappearance erodes a part of Khartoum’s former identity, the sense that life can still thrive within the city’s confines. Yet amid this destruction, hope remains. Nature does not surrender easily. Acacia trees, in particular, possess remarkable regenerative capacities, if they are granted protection.
Today, the forest, like much of Khartoum and its infrastructure, thirsts for decisive intervention, a rehabilitation plan, and political will before what remains is reduced to ashes.
