Fleeing Sudan: Evacuation challenge tests nations’ values

As hundreds of Chinese evacuees boarded the Chinese destroyer Nanning at Port Sudan this week, many waved red five-star flags, and some cried with relief upon their escape from the warring factions that have plunged Sudan into chaos.

“Compatriots, no matter where you are, the great motherland will always be your strongest backup!” a naval officer told the 678 passengers, including 10 foreigners. “Please rest assured – we’ve arrived, everyone is safe!” he said through a loudspeaker, inciting cheers from the crowd.

“I was very worried that we wouldn’t be able to get out,” said one Chinese woman, choking back tears, in a state-television interview. “I am so proud to be Chinese.”

China’s rapid evacuation of 1,300 Chinese – the majority of China’s citizens in Sudan – makes good on the country’s promise to protect the growing number of Chinese residing overseas. Other governments’ decisions on whether to undertake risky and dangerous evacuation operations – and how and when they’ve chosen to do so – have varied widely, due to geography, economic interests, and historic relations.

Amid the civil strife in Sudan, countries have opted for a range of strategies, from China’s flexing of new military muscle to evacuate Chinese people, to Gulf nations routing their citizens out even as their diplomats stay put in Sudan. Some have invited early criticism for evacuating embassies while telling their citizens on the ground to “shelter in place,” while others have made no distinction between diplomatic corps and private citizens and have airlifted all their people out – and additional foreign nationals to boot.

Ultimately, crisis is a time when the way nations see themselves – and how they want others to see them – is put on full display.

“We have a humanitarian responsibility”

Maximilian Röttger, the director of the Goethe-Institut Sudan in Khartoum, boarded one of the first flights operated by the German Armed Forces on Sunday. “On the one hand I’m relieved to be here,” he said after he arrived in Berlin. “On the other hand, I am of course very depressed and sad about how I had to leave the country and I am very worried. For everyone on-site, the situation remains very tense.”

Throughout this week, the German military operated eight flights out of Sudan to Jordan, involving about 1,000 German personnel, including soldiers, biological and chemical warfare specialists, cyber experts, and bomb-threat experts. It has also airlifted citizens of more than 30 other countries out of Sudan in a display of solidarity and cross-border cooperation.

Typically the first action when a crisis develops abroad is to advise German citizens how to depart of their own will, says a spokesperson from the Bundeswehr Joint Forces Operations Command. The next step would be to organize charter flights. “In the case of Sudan, this wasn’t possible anymore because the fighting was serious,” the spokesperson says. “So the decision was made to use military transportation under the lead of the State Department.”

The obligation to protect German nationals abroad is mandated by German consular law, and European Union legislation stipulates that EU states should help support each other’s nationals, particularly in cases where countries aren’t represented by an embassy in Sudan. “Other than that, we have a humanitarian responsibility,” says a spokesperson from the federal foreign office.

More than 700 people were evacuated in all, including 200 Germans. “Everybody involved is proud; it’s a good feeling to do the job,” says the Bundeswehr spokesperson. “We care about German citizens worldwide, and we’re ready and able to act.”

“It was important to us that, unlike in other countries, an evacuation not only applies to our embassy staff, but to all local Germans and our partners,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the German parliament this week.

“Not a passive actor”

That comment has been used by British media to criticize their own government, which evacuated its embassy staff over the weekend but didn’t begin evacuating its more than 2,000 citizens until Tuesday.

Americans have also come under fire, as the country evacuated its embassy staff in a daring rescue Saturday but told citizens to stay put until it was safe on the ground to rescue them. The United States carried out its first overland evacuation Friday with 300 Americans aboard, according to reports, while many other countries had moved forward days earlier. About 16,000 Americans are registered with the embassy in Khartoum.

Citizens’ reasons for staying in-country, especially dual-nationals, are complex as a security situation deteriorates. Sudan has been at a level-four advisory for years. “The embassy on the ground was making it very clear for more than two years how dangerous and unpredictable the political situation inside the country was,” says Michael McKinley, former senior adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State and ambassador to Brazil, Afghanistan, Colombia, and Peru.

Under the “No Double Standard” law, if the United States has information that its diplomats are threatened in a country, it needs to share that information – even if pared down to protect classification – with U.S. citizens in that country. There is no legal obligation to evacuate citizens, though.

Three former American ambassadors interviewed by the Monitor rejected the premise that America was stranding its citizens in Sudan. Each said the well-being of American citizens abroad is inculcated into State Department officials at every level.

Dennis Jett, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Liberia when it was evacuated in 1990 and former ambassador to Mozambique and to Peru, argues that much of the domestic criticism of U.S. caution in Sudan is political. “Republicans are looking for another Benghazi,” he says. “They think they were able to pin that on Hillary Clinton. They’re looking for something to pin on [President Joe] Biden.”

At a time when war plays out live on social media, the public often misunderstands the complexities – and risks – associated with unpredictable evacuations. It is never instantaneous. For example, Mr. Jett notes that Sudan is 10 times the size of Oklahoma, which makes getting U.S. citizens out a logistical nightmare. “It’s 16,000 Americans, many of whom don’t want to leave. You’re going to go look for them?” he says.

As a situation evolves and becomes more permissive, evacuation opportunities increase, says Matthew Tueller, former ambassador to Yemen during the 2015 embassy evacuation. He’s also served as ambassador to Iraq and Kuwait. The State Department draws down around a dozen embassies each year – usually the last option, he says – whether due to conflict or natural disaster. “Sudan is not an unusual circumstance, but it’s one that poses a lot of challenges because things eroded quite quickly,” he says.

Mr. McKinley argues that the most important thing the U.S. can do right now in Sudan is negotiate a lasting cease-fire between the warring parties. He points to its work in the 72-hour negotiated cease-fire, extended late Thursday, as a crucial step to safely conducting evacuations. “The United States is not a passive actor in this at all, of course, and very proactive in responding to the violence and helping negotiate the cease-fire to allow internationals and civilians to leave,” he says.

Brotherly mediators

Many Arab states have presented themselves as the main protagonists in the rescue of global citizens from Sudan.

As of Friday, Saudi Arabia had evacuated 119 Saudi citizens and 2,677 foreign nationals from 78 nations, including dozens of Yemeni and Syrian refugees, providing hotels and meals free of charge. According to Saudi officials, the evacuation and welcoming of foreigners is a policy borne out of its commitment to international cooperation and is a “humanitarian” approach, despite its role in funding both armed factions in Sudan prior to the eruption of conflict.

Jordan, meanwhile, is running several military flights from Port Sudan to Amman carrying its citizens and dozens of foreign nationals, including those from European, Asian, and African countries.

Jordan, like most Arab states, has pledged to keep its diplomats in Sudan until all its citizens are evacuated – even after the killing of the Egyptian assistant administrative attaché on Tuesday, who was gunned down while helping to prepare the evacuation of Egyptian nations. According to an Arab diplomatic source, it is a trade-off between the safety of civilians and peace and regional stability, which Arab states view as part of their wider national security.

“Arab states and the Arab League are the only actors that have the ability to mediate between the two sides in Sudan. Out of the interest of regional stability, the stability of an Arab brotherly nation and global security, several Arab states are keeping their staff in Sudan despite the risk,” says the source, who was not authorized to speak to the press.

The wolf warriors

Risk-taking is also based on capability. Many countries simply don’t have the military power – or have committed to maintaining it – to help rescue citizens in a sudden conflict.

The Sudan operation marks the third time in just over a decade that China has dispatched its navy for an overseas evacuation, following missions in Libya in 2011 and Yemen in 2015. As recently as the 1990s, China’s navy lacked the capability to carry out such operations. When the Chinese embassy evacuated its personnel from Somalia during the civil war in 1991, for example, it had to request help from a state-owned shipping company.

Now, China is helping other countries evacuate citizens from Sudan. So far, China has transported citizens from five other countries on its warships, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press conference on Thursday. “China will continue to do what we can for other countries that have asked China’s help for evacuation,” she said.

“China has always placed importance on the safety and interests of Chinese citizens abroad,” says Li Wei, an Africa expert in Beijing and former researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

This approach reflects China’s deeply rooted state paternalism, also evident in its “zero-COVID” policy, under which Beijing imposed draconian controls that it said were aimed at “putting the people and life first.”

This governing ethos depicts Chinese authorities as “father-mother officials” – or fumuguan – who are responsible for the welfare of their citizens. China’s top leader Xi Jinping was once referred to as “Xi Dada” or “Papa Xi” by the state media and some ordinary people – although today that term is censored.

It’s a theme popularized by nationalistic Chinese films such as the 2017 blockbuster hit “Wolf Warrior 2” – the second-highest-grossing movie ever in China – in which the Chinese fleet rescues Chinese citizens caught up in a civil war in an African country.

“There is a kind of security – it’s called the motherland takes you home,” Wu Xi, director of the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on state television this week. “You can forever trust it.”

Noah Robertson contributed reporting from Washington, and Taylor Luck contributed from Amman, Jordan.