Western Governments Look to Escape the ‘Nightmare’ in Sudan

Multiple Western governments are drawing up evacuation plans for their diplomats in Sudan as a surge of violence has swept through the capital city of Khartoum, already killing hundreds of people, injuring thousands, and putting foreign diplomats in the crosshairs of a dangerous escalation.

Battles between two rival generals erupted in recent days, following months of simmering tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the country’s official army, and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The fighting has left the estimated 10 million residents of Khartoum besieged with no avenues of escape. The two generals—Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto ruler of Sudan, and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, who leads the RSF—are vying to gain control of the country by force, even as they agree to a spate of short-lived ceasefires under mounting international pressure.

Caught sheltering in the city are hundreds of foreign diplomats, international organization officials, aid workers, and thousands of foreign citizens, some of whom have been targeted, harassed, beaten, or, in several instances, sexually assaulted by fighters believed to be aligned with the RSF, according to multiple current and former Western diplomats and internal U.N. memos obtained by Foreign Policy.

Western governments have begun mapping out evacuation plans, but it remains unclear if they can actually be carried out, given the surge in violence sweeping the city and RSF control of Khartoum Airport, the only feasible exfiltration point. Japan is reportedly dispatching military planes to evacuate its citizens. The United States at this point is drawing up contingency plans but has held off from implementing an evacuation for now because of the fighting in the city and airport closure, one U.S. official said. U.S. diplomats are sheltering in place.

“This is an absolute nightmare scenario, and we are working nonstop to ensure the safety of all our colleagues and citizens there,” said another Western official, who spoke to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity.

“The worst-case scenario has come true,” said Cameron Hudson, a former U.S. diplomat and an expert on East Africa at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “These two generals are now dead set on fighting each other, and they’re fighting each other on the streets of Khartoum, which is in itself another level of worst-case scenario.”

The pressure on the Biden administration to aid U.S. citizens trying to escape the country is likely to mount in the coming days if the fighting continues, as more reports filter in about attacks on diplomatic personnel and compounds. Three U.N. staffers with the World Food Programme were killed on Saturday; a U.S. Embassy convoy was raked with gunfire on Monday, though everyone in the convoy escaped safely; and that same day, the European Union’s ambassador to Khartoum was assaulted in his own home. RSF fighters also attempted to break into the Norwegian Embassy as staff there scrambled to destroy sensitive internal documents in case the embassy was breached, according to two officials. Officials fear foreign diplomats could be caught in further fighting, following several failed attempts to broker a cease-fire in recent days.

On Wednesday, Sudanese army airstrikes pounded Khartoum Airport, and RSF troops returned fire with anti-aircraft guns. Satellite imagery provided by Maxar Technologies revealed that at least 14 planes had been destroyed at the airport and the bombings had also set ablaze buildings and military checkpoints to the north and south of the airport.

It remains unclear whether foreign diplomats are being purposefully targeted as part of a broader strategy by the warring factions or have simply been caught in the crossfire of the fighting, which has killed at least 270 people and injured more than 2,600, according to the latest count on Tuesday from Sudan’s Ministry of Health Emergency Operations Center. However, those numbers are believed to be a significant undercount, with bodies lining the streets of Khartoum and medical staff unable to retrieve victims or travel to hospitals amid block-to-block fighting, airstrikes, and artillery shelling.

The conflict threatens to unravel Sudan’s fragile state of political stability and has upended the country’s stuttering transition to democracy after years of civil war and decades of autocratic rule under former dictator Omar al-Bashir. The fighting has also spread beyond Khartoum to other regions of Sudan, including Darfur, North Kordofan, and Blue Nile, according to the internal U.N. reports.

In Washington, top Biden administration officials at the National Security Council and State Department have jumped into crisis mode. The State Department has created a new emergency task force to manage the crisis in Sudan, including overseeing the protection of U.S. government personnel and U.S. citizens in the country, according to two officials familiar with the matter. Other foreign governments have asked Washington for assistance in helping to secure their own personnel and citizens or get them out of the country, but top U.S. officials in Washington have instructed their diplomats to say they don’t have the resources or means to help foreign governments at this point, according to the two officials.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on a previously planned trip to Japan, has spoken directly to the leaders of the two warring factions in Khartoum and urged them to cease the fighting and halt the targeting of Sudanese citizens as well as U.S. personnel. “I made very clear that any attacks, threats, dangers posed to our diplomats were totally unacceptable,” Blinken said at a press conference on Tuesday.

And other countries are making moves to evacuate their stranded citizens. On Wednesday, Japanese government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno said Tokyo had enlisted the country’s military in a rescue mission to save 60 Japanese nationals and diplomats in Sudan who were facing severe shortages of food and water after five days of fighting. And Germany’s military had to call off a plan on Wednesday to rescue 150 citizens on transport planes because of the fighting in Khartoum, Der Spiegel reported.

A pair of internal U.N. memos on the situation in Khartoum obtained by Foreign Policy paint a dire portrait of the violence and chaos that have swept through the city since Burhan’s and Hemeti’s forces began fighting. In one incident, RSF forces on Monday morning barged into a building in Khartoum where staff from an international organization worked, abducted two male staff members, and attempted to sexually assault a third female staffer. The abducted staffers were later released. The report lists a host of other incidents that reflect the chaotic scenes of fighting across the city. Several buildings holding U.N. offices came under sniper fire, allegedly by members of the Sudanese army. A rocket-propelled grenade hit the home of another U.N. staffer in Khartoum. Other fighters, reportedly aligned with the RSF, “are entering the residences of expats, separating men and women and taking them away.”

The “trend of criminality targeting UN and Humanitarian personnel has also increased in Khartoum and other regions of the country, particularly in Darfur,” one of the reports reads. The reported incidents of RSF fighters looting U.N. premises, kidnapping, and sexual assault attempts “are indicative of the exponentially increasing risk level against” U.N. and other international organization personnel in Sudan, the report states.

U.S. officials and regional experts have cast doubt on whether Burhan and Hemeti can contain the fighting they started, even if they agree to a viable cease-fire, because it’s unclear how much control both—but particularly Hemeti—have over their own forces. “All reporting suggests that the RSF is an undisciplined rabble inside of Khartoum right now,” Hudson said.

The RSF, with up to 100,000 fighters, is composed of thousands of poorly trained and heavily armed young men, some of whom have demonstrated more eagerness to ransack and loot homes than fight, according to one source based in Khartoum. Hemeti and the RSF got their start committing atrocities 20 years ago in Darfur.

A popular uprising ousted Sudan’s longtime dictator, Bashir, from power in 2019. A civilian-led transitional government was subsequently formed with the military to oversee the country’s transition to democracy. In October 2021, however, Burhan and Hemeti derailed that transition by coordinating a coup and seizing control of the government, with Burhan nominally leading the government and Hemeti serving as his deputy. U.N. and U.S. mediators rushed to clinch a deal between the two generals to integrate the RSF into the Sudanese army, a move that analysts warned for months would exacerbate the rivalry between the two generals. Tensions have been mounting ever since, culminating in the eruption of violence in recent days.

The situation is becoming increasingly desperate for Sudanese citizens, as water and food supplies dwindle for those sheltering inside their homes and factions expand their looting and violence. More residential areas are being shelled, and hospitals are reportedly suspending some services due to the fighting. In Darfur, the conflict threatens the security of nearly 1.6 million displaced people already heavily reliant on humanitarian aid.

One of the U.N. reports, apparently issued on Monday, suggests that the SAF may have the upper hand over the RSF as the fighting continues. “It is difficult to ascertain who has the upper hand, as both sides continue to make conflicting claims that they control key installations. It appears that the balance of power appears to be shifting to the SAF as the RSF is reportedly about to run out of ammunition,” the report reads. The RSF also has unclear lines of command, little experience in urban combat, and is without air superiority.

Some analysts believe the fighting will only get worse as both warring factions scramble to send more reinforcements into Khartoum. “The worst case scenario now is that clashes will prolong and civilians will be even more caught up in the fighting,” Kholood Khair, the founding director of the Khartoum-based Confluence Advisory, said on Twitter. “When neither side cares about anything but total victory [there are] always new worst case scenarios.”