Whereas foreign diplomats were evacuated from Khartoum amid heavy fighting, Sudanese civilians have been left to consider the role the West may have played in both their personal situations and their country’s crisis.
Ahmad Mahmoud, a 35-year-old filmmaker, is among them – now denied the ability to evacuate as a result of foreign actions.
Mahmoud said he is staying at his flat in Khartoum with his wife and two cats. They are kilometres from the army headquarters “where the fighting is the loudest since day one”. He said he can hear fighter jets flying over his house, as well as artillery and shooting. “The first few days the building was constantly shaking because of the bombing nearby.” In voice notes that he sent – as the internet was too poor to speak through WhatsApp calls – a bomb went off in the background.
Mahmoud applied in January for a visa to France, where he was supposed to travel for a film writing residency. Instead, he was told he had been flagged as a “threat” by an EU member state to either public order or internal security, so could not be issued the visa. Mahmoud was not given a further explanation. The only reason he can think of, he said, is that the last two times he travelled to the EU it was at the invitation of leftist political groups, who invited him to meet and network with groups active against the negative impacts of EU anti-migration policies in Sudan and other countries. An organiser of those trips told The Irish Times that Mahmoud’s presence at events “denouncing externalisation policies” could be the reason for his visa refusal, but that is not proven, just a “suspicion.”
Mahmoud’s lawyer, Isabelle Denise, said consular authorities are obliged to give proper reasons for a refusal. “By not doing so, the French authorities have violated European and French law. This situation is unacceptable. And it is all the more serious with the current events in Sudan,” she said.
In an email to The Irish Times, an EU Commission spokesperson said it does not comment on individual cases and member states examine visa applications on an individual basis.
Mahmoud’s involvement in criticising EU migration policy is also relevant to the current conflict, Mahmoud said, because the EU has been accused of bolstering the Rapid Support Forces, the powerful paramilitary group which is now fighting the Sudanese army. The RSF was previously tasked with guarding Sudan’s borders amid increased EU spending to stop migration towards Europe. Between 2016 and 2017 alone, the EU pledged about €160 million towards Sudan, including money aimed at controlling migration. While the EU has denied that any of its money goes directly to the RSF, many analysts say that the RSF has benefited, at least indirectly, as a result of it. “The EU helped whitewash the RSF image,” said Mahmoud. “They legitimised them and now it backfired on all of them.”
In an email to The Irish Times, an EU Commission spokesperson said “the EU has never funded the RSF nor the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). EU development programmes have been channelled through the UN family, EU member state agencies and NGOs, focused on the sole and direct benefit of vulnerable populations.”
After his French visa was denied this year, Mahmoud applied for a visa from Sweden, because he had received an invitation from the Swedish embassy in Khartoum to attend the Malmö Arab Film Festival, which begins on April 28th.
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He was supposed to pick up his passport from the Swedish embassy on April 9th. But the embassy also saw in the EU’s system that he was flagged as a threat “so they decided to keep the passport longer”.
“Then the war happened. My passport was stuck there,” he said. Sweden evacuated its embassy staff from Khartoum this week, according to media reports. In messages seen by The Irish Times, an official told Mahmoud that although they were “deeply sorry”, it would not be possible to give him back his passport.
“People are now crossing the borders to Egypt or Ethiopia or South Sudan,” said Mahmoud. “Every day it’s becoming more crucial to leave the country ... The fighter jets are constant, the bombing is constant, and at any point the troops might land here and the fighting might become even more intense. So I feel that we might have to leave soon, but I can’t leave without my passport.”
The Swedish embassy did not respond to a request for comment. It is unclear how many Sudanese citizens have been left without passports because of foreign embassies not returning them.
Mahmoud has an expired passport and is trying to figure out whether there is any way to use that, but he has been given no confirmation from any officials about this. “Oh s**t, they’re shooting again,” he said in a voice note, interrupted by the fighting as he explained this.
Even if the fighting stops, he said, he is fearful of what will happen next – including if either side wins. “Me leaving the country is probably going to be a must soon, whether I like it or not.”