Evacuations of foreigners continue Monday in Sudan where nine days of fighting for power between army and paramilitaries have left hundreds dead, with no end in sight.
Explosions and gunshots have not ceased to echo in Khartoum and other cities, but foreign capitals have managed to negotiate passages with the two belligerents: the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, de facto leader of Sudan, and his deputy turned rival, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who commands the much feared paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
It was necessary “to take advantage of a small window of opportunity”, indicated a spokesperson for the English government, in London.
Because, “with intense fighting in Khartoum and the closure of the main airport”, the scene of fighting from the first day of hostilities, April 15, “a wider temporary evacuation was impossible”, he continued.
In all, more than 1,000 EU nationals were evacuated, said the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell, referring to a “complex operation”.
Several Arab capitals have also evacuated hundreds of their nationals.
A Lebanese, who arrived in Port Sudan by bus and ready to board a boat, told AFP that he left with “a T-shirt and pajamas”. “It’s all I have left after 17 years” in Sudan, he laments.
In Khartoum, “we were under siege, like in a thriller”, he says, while running water and electricity have been cut for several days, the telephone network badly deteriorated, and the beginning of shortages of products food for the five million inhabitants of the capital.
“We were afraid of falling ill or being injured in the strikes”, continues the man, in the middle of a group of evacuated families, carrying small pink backpacks of children and a few suitcases.
“The war fell on us without warning,” he continues. And now “everything is destroyed”.
The violence, mainly in the capital and in Darfur, in the west, left more than 420 dead and 3,700 injured according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Most of the evacuated foreigners are diplomatic staff. Many nationals are still waiting for a place in the long convoys of white cars or branded buses that leave continuously for Port-Sudan or air bases outside Khartoum.
Upon arrival in Djibouti, where many foreign troops are stationed, families disembark, haggard, planes in the middle of soldiers who organize the incessant ballet of evacuations.
“Fear for the future”
But if many foreigners have left, what will become of the Sudanese, ask experts and humanitarians.
“I fear for their future,” Norwegian Ambassador Endre Stiansen admitted on Twitter. “Now weapons and personal interests weigh more than values and words: all scenarios are bad,” he continues.
The five million inhabitants of Khartoum have only one idea in mind: to leave the city which is plunging into chaos.
The two camps accuse each other of having attacked prisons to get hundreds of prisoners out, of looting houses and factories. Clashes took place near several banks, which were immediately emptied.
In a country where inflation is already in three digits in normal times, the kilo of rice or the liter of gasoline are now traded at gold prices.
However, gasoline is the key to escape: it takes a lot to reach neighboring Egypt – 1000 km to the north – to which thousands of Sudanese now hope to turn. Or even to reach Port-Sudan, 850 km to the east, and hope to get on a boat, as the very first evacuees from the country, the Saudis, did.
“As foreigners who can flee, the impact of the violence on an already critical humanitarian situation in Sudan is worsening”, warns the UN.
Caught in the crossfire, its agencies and many humanitarian organizations have suspended their activities. Five aid workers, including four from the UN, have been killed and, according to the doctors’ union, almost three-quarters of hospitals are out of service.
Looting and attacks
Thousands of Sudanese have already fled to Egypt, South Sudan and Chad, bordering Darfur.
This western region, the poorest in the country, was ravaged in the 2000s by a bloody war ordered by the dictator Omar al-Bashir, ousted in 2019, and led in particular by the Janjawid militiamen, the bulk of the troops of the General Daglo today.
Today, when no one has access to it, it is once again plagued by looting, attacks and atrocities.
The World Food Program (WFP) reports that “10 vehicles and six food trucks were stolen”, representing “4000 cubic meters of food” which will not go to the 45 million Sudanese, of whom more than one in three suffered from hunger before the current confit.
This degenerated into a war on Saturday. But it had actually been brewing for weeks between the two generals. Allies for the 2021 putsch, they failed to agree on the integration of the FSR into the regular troops.
Militarily, with both sides engaged in an information war, it is impossible to know who controls the country’s institutions or the airports and what state the infrastructure is in.