(CNN) For most people in Sudan, Omar al-Bashir is the only leader they have ever known, his 30-year rule defined by brutal oppression and astounding political survival.

Under Bashir, an entire generation grew up in the shadow of war, where the threat of torture in infamous "ghost houses" was never far away, and press freedom nonexistent.

Girls grew up looking over their shoulder for marauding gangs of "morality police," ready to flog them simply for walking down the street with a male friend.

Boys in the north grew up in fear of being dragged from their homes to fight the civil war in the south.

CNN Senior International Correspondent Nima Elbagir.

Bashir taught everyone to live in fear. But he also taught them what they didn't want, and even under his decades-long oppression they still, incredibly, visualized a democratic society.

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