Fleeing Sudan, some say Saudi ships are ‘a golden opportunity’ to escape

A few weeks ago, Ahmed al-Hassan was a medical student in Sudan working on a campaign to help refugees from a neighboring country. Then the forces of two rival generals went to battle in the streets of the capital, Khartoum, and he himself was forced to flee.

He left behind his house, his textbooks, and the paperwork proving he was a student—packing basic necessities in a suitcase and backpack—to escape the bullets, fighter planes, and shelling with his ailing mother.

After a harrowing 14-hour bus ride across the country, they arrived in the seaside town of Port Sudan, where thousands of Sudanese and foreigners have gathered in hopes of getting a boat or plane out of the country.

Standing in a line of evacuees waiting on Wednesday to board a ship to Saudi Arabia – a 10-hour journey across the Red Sea – Mr. al-Hassan, 21, that he knew he was one of the few Sudanese with the connections to find a way out of the conflict that is tearing his country apart. He was born in Saudi Arabia and has legal residence there, allowing him and his mother access to the Saudi-supervised evacuation efforts.

“It was a golden opportunity,” he said. “In Port Sudan there are so many people who want to leave; it was a 1 percent chance that something like this would happen to me.

The Saudis have sent naval vessels and chartered commercial vessels on more than a dozen voyages across the Red Sea, evacuating nearly 6,000 people so far, less than 250 of them Saudi citizens. A Times reporter traveled aboard one such naval ship from Port Sudan to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a group of evacuees who fled to safety.

The ship was huge and gray, with a labyrinth of inner passages bathed in white and red lights. Evacuees lay curled up in sleeping bags on the floor and on benches in the cafeteria, battling the effects of seasickness as the boat swayed gently across the sea. In the mornings they staggered to the deck for fresh air, where the sun shone on deep blue waves.

Crew members periodically recited the Islamic call to prayer over loudspeakers, while the ship’s navigators instructed worshipers how to watch the ever-changing direction of Mecca.

As they seek refuge, the vast majority of evacuees on this route would not be classified as refugees; Saudi authorities say they can only hire those who have citizenship or legal residence in the kingdom, or who plan to travel further.

Yet Saudi Arabia, one of the countries closest to Sudan with the resources to manage evacuations, has played a central role in liberating people from the northeastern African country since violence erupted in mid-April.

There is a large Sudanese migrant population in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi officials have relations with both warring generals and view Sudan’s stability as critical to regional security. And the kingdom is a member of the four-member diplomatic group known as the Quad that recently oversaw the failed attempts to transition Sudan to civilian-led rule.

The Saudi bailout also fits well with the efforts of the oil-rich kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to portray his country as a rising world power and himself as a benevolent international player and neutral mediator.

“Welcome to the kingdom of humanity,” Saudi Arabia’s Major General Ahmed al-Dubais told a group of Chinese, Sudanese and Saudi evacuees who arrived at the port of Jeddah on Wednesday, overrun by television cameras and accompanied by Fayez al. Malki, a Saudi actor who shared his entire journey with 4.3 million subscribers on Snapchat.

As they disembarked from the ship via a gangway, female Saudi soldiers presented them with roses. The ships will continue to collect evacuees as long as the journey is safe, a Saudi military spokesman said.

More than 100,000 people have fled Sudan in less than three weeks since fighting broke out, and more than 300,000 are internally displaced, UN agencies said Tuesday.

Port Sudan, controlled by the Sudanese army, has become a haven as fighting rages in Khartoum.

On Wednesday morning, tugboats carrying evacuees raced across the water to Saudi naval ships. Dozens of dazed-eyed men, women and children waited quietly in two rows as Saudi soldiers inspected their bulging suitcases.

Departing was HMS Mecca, with about 200 evacuees, including Rihab Mahdi, 45, a Sudanese mother of five whose family managed to secure passage because her husband worked for years as a security officer for the US embassy in Khartoum.

“There are few opportunities and there are many people,” she said. Despite being lucky, she was overcome with grief when she left her home, threw textbooks out of her 7-year-old son’s backpack — “the best part,” he declared — and filled it with pajamas and other items of clothing.

“It’s hard to leave your country, your family, your friends,” she said.

When asked why they could not bring more Sudanese evacuees, a Saudi military spokesman, Colonel Turki al-Maliki, said the kingdom’s authorities were making “maximum efforts” but certain requirements remained. Priority will be given to the elderly, women and children upon arrival in Port Sudan, he said.

In Khartoum, the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan, continued to fight on Wednesday, even as the army announced that it agrees to extend the current ceasefire by one week, and the RSF reaffirmed their “full commitment to the declared humanitarian ceasefire.”

The statements came a day after neighboring South Sudan announced that both generals had agreed to a ceasefire from Thursday and would appoint representatives for peace talks. But no date for negotiations has been set and previous ceasefires have collapsed.

Khartoum residents were awakened on Wednesday by heavy explosions and gunfire close to their homes, with warplanes circling the city and firing on some targets as of 5am.

“The Sudanese are facing a humanitarian catastrophe,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a speech in Nairobi, Kenya. “Hospitals destroyed. Humanitarian warehouses looted. Millions face food insecurity.”

Even as he fled, Mr al-Hassan, the medical student, said his thoughts were with those less fortunate, including Yemeni and Syrian refugees living in Sudan who could be displaced again.

Just a few weeks ago, he was working on a campaign to help refugees who had fled to Sudan from Ethiopia, he said. Now he was on the other side, carrying a responsibility that felt far greater than his 21 years.

“I feel like I have a family that I have to protect by any means necessary,” he said. “And you have no guns, you have no power, but you use all your people that you know and the right thinking about how you evacuate your family to get here.”

Abdi Latif Dahir contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, and Nada Raswan from Cairo.