Sudan: How did Britain fall so far behind its allies in rescuing its citizens?
In 1884, in the face of a violent Muslim insurrection in Sudan, General Charles Gordon was sent to Khartoum to restore order if possible and, if not, to evacuate British residents, of which there were some 2,500. He failed – gallantly, it should be said. His forces were besieged and he himself was killed. The relief force, charged by Gladstone with rescuing him and safeguarding those under his protection arrived two days late. An estimated 10,000 members of the garrison, as well as the civilians, died.
Flash forward 139 years. It is not Britain’s fault that Sudan has once more fallen into chaos. The gang fight that broke out suddenly between the forces of rival generals looking to control the country’s oil wealth is a matter for them and the Sudanese people to resolve.
Yet Britain now finds itself cast as incompetent in the midst of the confusion, left behind by France, Germany, Italy and Spain – even Denmark and Ireland – in the task of rescuing its citizens. One RAF aircraft is said to have landed in Cyprus this afternoon with a number of UK passport holders onboard. Other flights are said to be pending, and two naval vessels are steaming towards Port Sudan, situated some 600 miles of desert road east of Khartoum. Ben Wallace confirmed that Royal Marines are continuing to prepare an alternative route out of Sudan via a port on the east coast, as well as making contingencies for any humanitarian response.
Nearly all EU citizens have been airlifted to safety, along with an unknown number of Brits who were given space by our allies with no questions asked. Those from the UK who were flown out have been fulsome in their praise for their rescuers and deeply critical of their own government.
As for the several thousand of our people left in the country, it is impossible to say how many of them will be brought home in the next 24 hours. All that can be said for certain is that they have been left to fend for themselves, told one minute to hide under the bed, the next to make their own way to safety.
Just last night – seven days after the conflict began, resulting in heavy fighting and large-scale loss of life – the Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell told journalists that “intense planning” was underway for “a series of possible evacuations”. British citizens, having earlier been told to stay where they were, were instructed to travel, “as soon as possible,” to the main international airfield, guarded as it was by French and German soldiers.
The claim has been made that some 1,400 British troops are involved in the rescue mission now underway. But where are they? Most of them are in Cyprus. Just 120 troops look likely to remain behind at the airfield for as long as the crisis lasts.
Most shameful of all was the almost immediate evacuation by the RAF of the entire diplomatic staff of the British embassy in Khartoum, along with their families, leaving no one behind to act as a contact point for their fellow citizens. It was as if nothing had been learned after the frenzied and anarchic evacuation of Kabul in 2021.
The United States, with a reported 19,000 citizens resident in Sudan, has acted little better, flying its embassy staff out as soon as possible and relying thereafter on others, including the UN, to do the heavy lifting. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had negotiated a 72-hour ceasefire that he hoped would give all those wishing to leave time in which to do so.
So who is to blame for this latest fiasco? The RAF and the Army do what they are told. If ordered into the fray a week ago, they would have done everything that was required of them, going in if necessary with guns blazing. But they were not so ordered. The first 120 troops arrived only today.
Rishi Sunak was little heard or seen in the first days of the fighting. It was foreign secretary James Cleverly and defence secretary Ben Wallace who were left to organise and carry out an operation the code words for which could best be Too Little Too Late.
Cleverly’s role is unclear. Did he misread the situation or was he told not to make a drama out of a crisis? It seems safe to assume that Wallace jumped to it and that it is due to him that Too Little Too Late has ended up with any kind of scope and time.
Will lessons be learned? Will Sudan end up as a coda to the parliamentary inquiry into what happened in Kabul, or will it simply be chalked down to experience? We can only hope that all of our citizens desperately trying to reach safety do so in the next 24 hours, to be welcomed home without loss by a government mindful of its failures. Just don’t bet on it.
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