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KHARTOUM: The shattered remains of antique pottery and shards of ancient statues lie among broken glass and bullet casings at Sudan’s National Museum, not far from where the Blue and White Nile meet in the capital Khartoum. After over two years of a civil war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions, Sudan’s army expelled the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces from Khartoum and its environs this spring. But much of the city still lies in ruins, including many of its heritage sites. Antiquities were damaged in the fighting, and still more were carted off by looters and smuggled into neighboring countries. Preservationists who returned to the city after the army’s advance are now sifting through the wreckage and trying to recover and restore what they can. “The museum was extremely damaged. A lot of artifacts were stolen that are very, very important for us. Any piece in the museum here ... has a story,” said Rehab Kheder Al-Rasheed, head of a committee set up to evaluate damage and secure museums and archaeological sites in Khartoum state, as she stood in a hallway strewn with debris. So far, about 4,000 antiquities have been counted missing in Sudan, according to Ikhlas Abdullatif, director of the museums sector at Sudan’s National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums. These include pieces in Khartoum, as well as other parts of the country such as the western Darfur region, where about 700 pieces disappeared from museums in the cities of Nyala and El Geneina, Abdullatif said. In El Geneina, the museum’s curator was killed when the building was shelled. Many of these pieces appear to have been smuggled to neighboring countries. Sudan is among a long list of countries including Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt where antiquities smuggling became rife in the wake of political upheaval. The National Museum’s open-air courtyard includes multiple temples and other artifacts moved to Khartoum from the country’s north in the 1960s to preserve them from flooding caused by the construction of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. One of the most spectacular is the Buhen Temple, built by the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, who reigned around 1,500 B.C. The temple sustained damage during the fighting which authorities are working to repair – albeit with “very, very limited resources,” Rasheed said. The National Museum was not the only site to suffer damage. The interior of Khartoum’s Republican Palace Museum is now filled with charred wreckage. Antique cars parked outside sit amid debris, their windows and headlamps smashed. Abdullatif estimated that the cost of restoring and maintaining Sudan’s museums and securing the remaining antiquities could be as high as $100 million. It is a sum preservationists are unlikely to obtain any time soon given the country’s devastated economy. There is also the question of when foreign specialists might feel it is safe enough to return. Sudan had around 45 archaeological missions in the country before the war, Rasheed said. Today, all of them have stopped. “We hope, God willing, the missions come back and continue their work,” Rasheed said.

WASHINGTON: US sanctions went into effect Monday on a major Indian port project in Iran, as President Donald Trump again showed his willingness to punish longstanding partner New Delhi in aid of his wider regional goals — in this case to pressure Tehran.

The sanctions on the Chabahar port come a day after wide UN sanctions also came back into force on Iran, as Trump, European allies and Israel have all targeted the country over its nuclear program.

The first Trump administration issued a rare exemption in 2018 to allow Indian companies to keep developing Chabahar when the United States imposed sweeping unilateral sanctions on Iran, whose main port at Bandar Abbas is overcapacity.

But much has changed since 2018. Kabul was then still controlled by a government backed by Washington, the European Union and India, who viewed Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan with suspicion, accusing it of having ties to the Taliban.

Chabahar had been billed as an alternate gateway to Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan, which has long controlled the lion’s share of transit trade into Afghanistan.

The Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, as US forces withdrew under a peace deal signed by Trump.

The US president has also broken with decades of US deference to India, in which his predecessors declined to press New Delhi on disagreements as they saw the rising power as a counterweight to China.

Trump, who appeared peeved after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declined to praise him over a ceasefire in a four-day conflict with Pakistan, has imposed major tariffs on India due to its purchases of oil from Russia.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott announced the end of the sanctions exemption on Chabahar in an earlier statement that said it was effective September 29.

The decision is “consistent with President Trump’s maximum pressure policy to isolate the Iranian regime” and the exemption had been made “for Afghanistan reconstruction assistance and economic development,” Pigott said.

INDIA WEIGHS NEXT MOVE

Under US law, companies including state-run India Ports Global Limited will have 45 days to exit Chabahar or risk having any US-based assets frozen and US transactions barred.

Joshua Kretman, a counsel at law firm Dentons who formerly worked on sanctions at the State Department, said any inclusion of an Indian firm on the sanctioned list “has the potential to create a kind of cascading effect where banks and other companies may not transact with the designated business.”

“If that sanctioned entity operates globally, needs access to major banks or dollar clearing, there is legitimate reason for concern,” he said.

Commenting on the decision, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said only: “We are presently examining the implications that this revocation has for India.”

Despite the closing of Afghanistan, India last year signed a 10-year contract in which the state-run India Ports Global Limited (IPGL) promised $370 million of investment in Chabahar.

The port remains strategic for India as it lies near the border with longtime adversary Pakistan, in the troubled Balochistan region.

Barely 200 kilometers (125 miles) away on the Pakistani side, China is building a major port in Gwadar, which will give Beijing major new access into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.

Chabahar “has strategic value for India: regional connectivity with Iran and Afghanistan and the Middle East without being held back” by “friction with Pakistan,” said Aparna Pande, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute.

But India is always careful not to violate sanctions, she said.

“At a time when there is an American administration which is imposing sanctions and tariffs as punitive action, India will likely adopt a wait-and-watch approach,” she said.

India begrudgingly stopped buying Iranian oil after Trump imposed sanctions in his first term.

Nonetheless Kadira Pethiyagoda, a geopolitical strategist who has written on Indian foreign policy, said that India could use Iran ties as “leverage in its dealings with the US, Gulf states and Israel.”

“India may choose to wear the sanctions as part of a broader effort among non-Western Great Powers, including China and Russia, to reduce reliance on the US economy and decouple from Western-controlled financial networks,” he said.