KHARTOUM: In the heart of the Sudanese capital, crowds are drawn by mouthwatering aromas to Syrian eateries that line an upscale Khartoum neighborhood.
The tantalizing odors of popular Syrian dishes of shawarma, fatteh and garlic sauce fill the air of the Kafouri district.
“Syrian restaurants are distinctive,” said Salaheddin Adam, queueing outside one restaurant.
“Their interior designs are appealing and they are always clean and offer varied menus,” he added, while waiting for his chicken shawarma wrap.
In the traditional Sudanese turban and white jalabiya, the 34-year-old meat trader said he particularly relishes Syrian appetisers.
“They have a special taste and add flavor to the dishes,” he said.
Syrians benefit from visa-free entry to Sudan and more than 200,000 have arrived since 2011, fleeing their country’s war, according to local NGO figures from last year.
Khartoum residents now flock to restaurants serving Syrian delicacies, making it often hard to find a table at restaurants in the Kafouri district.
“Shawarma, shish taouk and kebabs have long been served at Sudanese restaurants. Still, they are not as good as those at Syrian restaurants,” said Ahmed Suleiman.
The 28-year-old is a regular at one of the Syrian eateries, which he lauded for the “taste and quality” of their food.
The Syrian presence in the area, where Levantine Arabic is widely heard, has also led to fierce competition between restaurants.
For Suleiman, the rivalry benefits Sudanese diners.
“Every restaurant has its specialty. They generally excel in their service as opposed to Sudanese people,” he said.
“We try to support them through their crisis by frequenting their restaurants,” he added.
More than 5.6 million Syrians have fled their country, according to the United Nations, since the conflict erupted in 2011 with a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests.
Syrians who opted to settle in Sudan enjoy equivalent rights to nationals, including access to health care and education.
They are also allowed to apply for jobs and run businesses.
Malik Abdul Wahab, from the Syrian city of Aleppo, arrived shortly after the start of his country’s war.
He opened the “Ayamak Ya Sham” or “The days of the Levant” restaurant which now has a staff of more than 15, the majority Syrians.
“We are keen to provide maximum cleanliness and quality. We also care about good treatment of customers,” said the 32-year-old.
Syrian cuisine offers a wider variety of dishes than Sudanese food, and they are cheap to make and come in plentiful portions.
“We are keen to offer new and varied foods, not known to the people,” said Abdel Wahab, boasting that there are more than 100 different Syrian dishes.
One of his customers, Nihad Al-Fateh, praised the “diversity of dishes” provided while waiting for her shawarma wrap with garlic sauce.
But Sudanese citizens are suffering from financial woes, with price rises late last year sparking mass protests that ultimately led to the ousting in April of longtime leader Omar Al-Bashir.
The current political and financial crisis has led to “soaring prices of all the ingredients,” said Abdul Wahab, who is trying not to push up prices significantly.
In the capital’s Riyadh neighborhood, the Levantine influence can also be heard as passers-by sing along to Syrian songs played by restaurants.
Mohamed Abdel Sabour, a Sudanese engineer, eats regularly at Syrian outlets which he says are more welcoming than Sudanese ones.
Khaled, who runs a Syrian eatery in the Riyadh area, boasted of having “permanent Sudanese customers.”
“We try to please the customer to make sure that they visit again.”
Syrian eateries flourish in the heart of Sudan’s capital
Syrian eateries flourish in the heart of Sudan’s capital
- The tantalizing odors of popular Syrian dishes of shawarma, fatteh and garlic sauce fill the air of the Kafouri district
- Khartoum residents now flock to restaurants serving Syrian delicacies
Three-year heatwave bleached half the planet’s coral reefs: study
PARIS: A study published on Tuesday showed that more than half of the world’s coral reefs were bleached between 2014-2017 — a record-setting episode now being eclipsed by another series of devastating heatwaves.
The analysis concluded that 51 percent of the world’s reefs endured moderate or worse bleaching while 15 percent experienced significant mortality over the three-year period known as the “Third Global Bleaching Event.”
It was “by far the most severe and widespread coral bleaching event on record,” said Sean Connolly, one the study’s authors and a senior scientist at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
“And yet, reefs are currently experiencing an even more severe Fourth Event, which started in early 2023,” Connolly said in a statement.
When the sea overheats, corals eject the microscopic algae that provides their distinct color and food source.
Unless ocean temperatures return to more tolerable levels, bleached corals are unable to recover and eventually die of starvation.
“Our findings demonstrate that the impacts of ocean warming on coral reefs are accelerating, with the near certainty that ongoing warming will cause large-scale, possibly irreversible, degradation of these essential ecosystems,” said the study in the journal Nature Communications.
An international team of scientists analyzed data from more than 15,000 in-water and aerial surveys of reefs around the world over the 2014-2017 period.
They combined the data with satellite-based heat stress measurements and used statistical models to estimate how much bleaching occurred around the world.
No time to recover
The two previous global bleaching events, in 1998 and 2010, had lasted one year.
“2014-17 was the first record of a global coral bleaching event lasting much beyond a single year,” the study said.
“Ocean warming is increasing the frequency, extent, and severity of tropical-coral bleaching and mortality.”
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, for instance, saw peak heat stress increase each year between 2014 and 2017.
“We are seeing that reefs don’t have time to recover properly before the next bleaching event occurs,” said Scott Heron, professor of physics at James Cook University in Australia.
A major scientific report last year warned that the world’s tropical coral reefs have likely reached a “tipping point” — a shift that could trigger massive and often permanent changes in the natural world.
The global scientific consensus is that most coral reefs would perish at warming of 1.5C above preindustrial levels — the ambitious, long-term limit countries agreed to pursue under the 2015 Paris climate accord.
Global temperatures exceeded 1.5C on average between 2023-2025, the European Union’s climate monitoring service, Copernicus, said last month.
“We are only just beginning to analyze bleaching and mortality observations from the current bleaching event,” Connolly told AFP.
“However the overall level of heat stress was extraordinarily high, especially in 2023-2024, comparable to or higher than what was observed in 2014-2017, at least in some regions,” he said.
He said the Pacific coastline of Panama experienced “dramatically worse heat stress than they had ever experienced before, and we observed considerable coral mortality.”
