Fewer than 5,000 US citizens have contacted the State Department about the deteriorating security situation in Sudan, and only a small number have said they want to leave the country, spokesman Vedant Patel said on Friday, offering one of the first tallies of Americans stranded by the outbreak of violence.
The number of people who have signed up for alerts from the U.S. government and to communicate with diplomats about potential evacuation from Khartoum and other places is far below the 16,000 citizens that were initially reported to be in the East African nation.
“Fewer than 5,000 individuals have chosen to communicate with us,” Patel said during a Friday briefing. “And a fraction of that have requested assistance in departing the country.”
The fighting that broke out on April 15 between warring generals has prompted frantic efforts to evacuate foreign diplomats and expatriates, including a U.S. military operation to evacuate U.S. personnel from Khartoum and to temporarily shut down the embassy operation there.
People have been evacuated by airlifts from Wadi Saeedna airfield in Khartoum and 15-hour-long overland convoys from Khartoum to Port Sudan for transfer to a ferry to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Others have crossed over land into Egypt and Ethiopia.
In addition, several hundred U.S. citizens have already left Sudan either by land, sea or aircraft, Patel added.
The U.S., which has for years advised citizens to avoid Sudan, has rebuffed calls for a broader government-organized evacuation there.
“It is not standard practice for the United States to send in the U.S. military into warzones to extract all American citizens,” said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan earlier this week. “We didn’t do it in Libya. We didn’t do it in Syria. We didn’t do it in Yemen. And, no, we didn’t do it in Ukraine.”
The U.S. has surveillance and reconnaissance assets monitoring the evacuation routes and has positioned naval vessels in the region “for any potential contingencies,” Sullivan added.
U.S. officials have also noted that citizens remaining in Sudan, many of whom are dual nationals, have changed their mind about departing the country based on the rapidly changing security environment. The Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are battling for control amid intermittent cease-fire violations.
“People who today think that they’re going to stay put may decide next week, next month, that they want to leave,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Thursday.
At the same time, U.S. diplomats remain intensely engaged with the two generals and both agreed to extend the current cease-fire that Blinken announced on Monday, Patel said. Numerous violations of the cease-fire don’t amount to a failure of the effort, and both factions expressed readiness to engage in a process that could lead to a more durable cessation of hostilities, he added.
The U.S. is trying to bring the rival generals — army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — back to the negotiating table after long-running talks to form a transitional government devolved into open warfare.
