Irish citizen Zenira Elbasheer has described an “unimaginable” situation as she attempts to help evacuate her family from Sudan this week.
More than a week ago fighting broke out in the northeast African country between Sudan’s army and a paramilitary group, following months of growing tensions. About 50 Irish citizens were evacuated on flights on Sunday, organised by French and Spanish authorities, as efforts to evacuate diplomats and their dependents from Khartoum intensified over the weekend.
However, Elbasheer’s parents and three siblings are currently stuck outside of Khartoum and “trying to find a way out”.
Her family have no access to the internet, which means they can’t receive information about the evacuations.
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“Yesterday it was only until about 3pm that I managed to even take get a two-minute phone call with my dad, and that’s after just repeatedly running through their numbers, one after the other, until one of them eventually gets through,” she told The Irish Times.
Reaching the evacuation points by themselves is “extremely dangerous ... It’s just the complete worst situation”.
“I never thought I’d say that my family are displaced at the moment,” she said, adding that she and her siblings had “normal childhoods” in primary and secondary school in Ireland, before going on to university in Sudan.
Elbasheer’s sister (24), brothers (20, 18) and parents are all Irish citizens, she said, after living in Ireland for fourteen years. The family moved back to Sudan in 2013 and were in Khartoum this week when the violence broke out.
“They got their initial email telling them to stay in place. The air strikes in the area were getting extremely, extremely dangerous. Buildings in our neighbourhood have been completely crumbling, so as you can imagine that there was no possible way for them to stay there. They had to leave to my parents’ hometown, with very little contact with anyone, nowhere to stay,” she said.
Elbasheer is currently in Manchester, working as a doctor, and is doing everything possible to get her family out to join her in the UK.
“It’s unimaginable. It’s not something that I thought I would be dealing with ... I’m just trying to focus on the positive,” she said.
Irish citizens who are still in Sudan to watch for updates from the Irish embassy account in neighbouring Kenya on Twitter and to stay indoors and stay safe until further advised by the Irish team on the ground.
A team of Irish special forces soldiers and diplomats has been sent to Sudan to assist Irish people in leaving the country in response to the worsening violence there.
Up to 12 members of the Army Ranger Wing, the Defence Forces special operations unit have been sent to accompany a small number of officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Tánaiste said members of the team were on the ground in Djibouti, a nearby country in the Horn of Africa, where evacuated citizens would be provided accommodation and assistance to travel back to Ireland.
GOAL’s Regional Security Advisor Paul Westbury, who is leading GOAL’s security and safety response in Sudan has said that he suspects the death toll in the country to be substantially higher than reported.
He said that he feels that the two armed groups directly involved in the conflict are not announcing their casualties, and as a result, the number of deaths are a lot higher than disclosed.
Mr Westbury also said that he does not think Generals Hemeti or Burhan will back down to international pressure, and that it is “very likely” that there are other countries “playing games” behind the scenes.
“Hemeti owns the gold mines. Everybody wants gold, especially certain people in the world at the moment, so they will likely back him because they want the gold, and he will be paying everything in gold,” Mr Westbury said.
“Others want seaports, or they want land on the Red Sea, it’s all those kind of different batches that will play into the game, but the two people themselves have got to the stage now where they won’t even talk to each other, and unless someone can unlock that, this is going to go on for an extended period, unfortunately.”
Mr Westbury also explained that in order for Hemeti to take control of the country, he must take control of Khartoum, “and he will throw everything he can at it, and unfortunately, if that means bodies, then he will throw bodies at it. He’ll bring people from all over the place to take Khartoum.”
The unrest is already causing large amounts of civilians to leave Sudan, with reports of displaced people migrating upwards into Egypt and across to Chad. Goal are also receiving reports of others coming across the South Sudan border.
Mr Westbury said that one of his staff members on the ground in Sudan told him yesterday that in an area where no fighting was going on it was “desolate”, with people having emptied their houses and leaving.
According to rumblings within the 240 national Goal staff in Sudan, Mr Westbury thinks that if the people of Sudan “could stop the fighting tomorrow with Burhan in charge, they would live with it for now”, as he is “the lesser of two evils”.
Mr Westbury said that his next priority is ensuring the safety of his national staff, but this is difficult as GOAL are responsible for the safety of not only the employees, but their families too.
To date, GOAL have had no reports of any injuries to their staff in Sudan.
