On the second week of the ongoing Siege of Khartoum and the wider war across Sudan especially in the Western region of Darfur, South Kordofan and the Blue Nile region, a second 72 hour truce between the warring sides, Sudanese Armed Forces or Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is about to take affect. The first 72 hour truce allowed residents and tens of thousands of foreign nationals many with families many children and babies who are still learning to walk, to finally leave metropolitian Khartoum including Khartoum Bahri and Omdurman and other parts of Sudan to the safer evacauation including points in the city of Port Sudan on the Red Coast or to the Argeen border crossing on the Sudanese and Egyptian border near Aswan, Egypt. Once at the Argeen crossing, the exhausted Sudanese and nationals and people suffering with chronic illness still have to wait nearly 24 hours or more in never ending queues as thousands of visas and passports are slowly processed. Port Sudan and the wider Red Sea province, East Sudan and Northern Sudanese states of River Nile, Meroe are relatively safe and peaceful. Most of the ambassadors, diplomats and consular staff who are usually priotized over ordinary citizens in dangerous situations, were the first to be taken out of Sudan, some with the help from military special forces. Egypt has so far taken 14 to 16,000 Sudanese refugees fleeing the war and siege in Khartoum. Due to the two nations centuries long history and cultural ties, Egypt does not mind giving Sudanese families a safe place to live until the fighting in Khartoum ceases. Many Sudanese in Egypt, North Africa and the Middle East and the larger Sudanese diaspora in Europe, US and Canada are monitoring the events back home. Chad has also taken 20,000 Sudanese from war torn Darfur who crossed through the closed Chadian border. In the cities of El Geneina, El Fasher and Nyala intercommunal violence and earlier truces have broken into intense war by the RSF against the already internally displaced Darfuris and refugees who are still fleeing to Chad for safety. The Chadian government is anticipating even more people coming across the Chadian Sudanese border if the intense fighting in El Geneina Darfur doesn't halt soon. Keep in mind, Chad is already hosting half a million Sudanese refugees from the earlier war in Darfur beginning in 2003. To add to the stress, humanitarian aid organizations are also running low on supplies and funding as they struggle to adjust and do what little they can with aiding the refugees especially in Chad. The Chadian government also fears a second Darfur conflict spilling across its borders again. Sudan is also hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees the Tigray region in Ethiopia near Garedef, Syrian and Yemenis and even Rohingya refugees. More than half a million South Sudanese refugees and other civilians have already returned home to their politically tense homeland.
For two days after the April 20th truce, many of the evacuees sat in miles long conveys spent 24 to 30 hours traveling through armed checkpoints, military stops, anxiety and fear. Many Sudanese and foreigners who aren't embassy staff or diplomats have had to arrange their own evacuation out of the besieged city to their shock, anger and frustration while scrambling for last minute coach buses to their respective exfil sites. The evacuated foreigners and Sudanese locals and expats who had returned home from abroad have safely and successfuly been evacuated through Port Sudan, one of the largest cities on Sudan's Red Sea Coast and the country's principle major port for goods and trade. The foreign citizens come from a kaldescope of nationalities: Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Phillipines, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bulgaria, France, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, United Kingdom or Brtain, United States, Libya, Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries. Some are businesspeople, traders, investors, doctors, teachers, and construction workers. Khartoum was going through a construction boom from investment and business interests right before the war visited its doorstep. To return to the boom will take a while. Most of the larger evacuations were completed from April 20th-24. Saudi Arabia due to its close proximity was able to evacuate its citizens first followed by India whose government launched Operation Kaveliri brining 300+ Indian citizens back home and is still in the process of bringing more. Despite the evacuations, some foreign nationals and dual citizens most Sudanese Americans remain stranded in Khartoum due to the uncertainty of the siege ending and spordic fighting in the Khartoum surburbs. The US State Department has been critized for only evacuating embassy and consular staff and leaving some 16K Sudanese American citizens behind. On April 21st, State Dept spokesman JOhn Kirby tried to explain away the criticism by stating the violence on the ground was too dangerous to retrieve anymore Americans. While other reporters commented that some of the Americans wanted to stay due to family ties and are dual nationals which throws their evacuation prospects up in the air. Foreign nationals are still being evacuated from Port Sudan. For nearly a week since evacuations of Sudanese and foreign nationals began in Port Sudan, the Saudi navy has been ferrying thousands of evacuees to Jeddah the nearest Saudi city to Port Sudan by a day long ferry ride. For centuries, many pilgrams on their way to perform hajj in Mecca have transited through Port Sudan than taken the ferry on to Jeddah to their final destination to Mecca. Pilgrams still follow the same route today. Sudanese pilgrams were on their way back home when news of the war reached them in Jeddah. The war had broken out towards the end of Ramadan when most Sudanese were fasting and looking forward to usually festive and peaceful eid especially in Khartoum the larger cities across Sudan.
Greeks in Sudan
It must be mentioned again that Khartoum is a metropolis on the Nile, not a small or even medium sized city in a rural area. Unlike Tripoli, Libya when it was being bombed by NATO in 2011, Khartoum doesn't have an easy outlet to the Ocean were thousands of people could be shipped or hurriedly taken to neigboring countries and disperse to their respective home countries. Also, Sudan is the third largest African country. It's size has often been underestimate by the reporters and pundits who pay little attention to geographical distance. Some are not geopolitical knowledgable themselves. There is no quick way to evacuate the densly populated Khartoum beside the Nile River. The Sudanese Army is currently conducting aerial bombings of RSF positions in the Khartoum suburbs. The war in Sudan is Not a civil war, which implies the majority of the citizens are supporting one side over the other. Ordinary Sudanese citizens do not support either side in the power struggle and are not involved in the fighting on the ground. They are struggling to survive with water shortages, power cuts, food and medical supplies and damage to critical infrastructure further away from Khartoum. Some media pundits have tried to compare the Sudanese Army to the RSF which is a militia group to show how horrific the war is for Khartoum residents and the rural regions in conflict. The Sudanese Army is the national army and a professional armed forces. To compare a national army to a militia or insurgent group shows little understanding of and a disrespect and dismissal of the country's own institution. It was the same comparison that was made during the outbreak of the Syrian civil war 2011, when Western media reporters were insistant alongside Washington and London attemptin to delegitimaze the Syrian Army as not a legitimate fighting force against the Free Syrian Army. The media and Washington were quick to support the Free Syrian Army as the "true" national army of Syria. It was the same deligimatiaation the United States did in Iraq when US occupation forces broke up the Iraqi Army to "debathize" them after toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003. Breaking up the Iraqi Army to create a tabala rasa Army with no memory of Saddam or the older Baathist regime created a huge security vaccum that took years to fill and fix.
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