In the hectic days before US diplomats helicoptered out their embassy in Khartoum under the cover of darkness last month, one task remained.
Armed with shredders, sledgehammers and gasoline, US officials, following government protocols, destroyed classified documents and sensitive equipment, officials and eyewitnesses said.. By the time Chinook helicopters carrying commandos landed next to the Embassy shortly after midnight on April 23, the embassy’s four floors were lined with large bags of shredded paper.
But the piles also contained valuable documents for Sudanese citizens – their passports. Many had left them at the Embassy days before, to apply for US visas. Some belonged to local staff members. As the Embassy was being evacuated, officials who feared the passports might fall into the wrong hands destroyed them.
More than a month later, many Sudanese are stranded in the war zone, unable to get out.
“I can hear the fighter jets and shelling from my window,” said Selma Ali, an engineer who handed in her passport at the US Embassy three days before the war broke out, from her home in Khartoum. “I’m stuck here with no way out.”
Many other countries have also stranded Sudanese visa applicants, a source of recriminations from Sudanese on social media. But most of those countries didn’t destroy the passports, instead leaving them locked inside locked embassies—inaccessible, but not gone forever.
Of eight other countries that responded to questions about the evacuation, only France said it had also destroyed the passports of visa applicants.. The US State Department confirmed that it had destroyed passports.
“It is standard operating procedure during these types of situations to take precautions not to leave any documents, materials or information that could fall into the wrong hands and be misused,” said a spokeswoman who asked not to be identified due to State Department policies.
Ali, 39, had hoped to fly to Chicago this month for a training course and from there to Vienna to start working with a UN organization. “My dream job,” she said. Instead, she is confined with her parents to a house on the outskirts of Khartoum, praying for her safety. “I’m so frustrated,” she said, her voice shaking. “American diplomats evacuated their own citizens, but they did not think about the Sudanese. We are also human.”
The decision to destroy the passports was heartbreaking for US officials who realized it would prevent Sudanese citizens from fleeing, several witnesses and officials familiar with the evacuation said.
Particularly distressing was the fact that the passports of Sudanese staff members were also destroyed. Some had applied for US Government training courses; others had left their passports at the Embassy for safekeeping.
“There were a lot of people who were very upset about this,” said a US official who, like several others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive episode. “We left behind a lot of people who were loyal to us, and we weren’t loyal to them.”
But officials were following the same protocol that led to the destruction of many Afghan passports during the hasty evacuation of the US Embassy in Kabul in August 2021, which was also a matter of controversy.
Foreign diplomats said it was virtually impossible to operate in Khartoum after the first shots were fired on April 15, when fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group, quickly escalated into full-blown warfare.
Still, Sudanese critics said the embassies could have tried harder, especially since they went to such lengths to evacuate their own citizens. Military planes from Britain, France, Germany and Turkey took thousands of people out. Armed US drones monitored buses carrying Americans as they traveled to Port Sudan, some 845 km away.
Edward Wong contributed reporting to this article.
By: DECLAN WALSH
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6729330, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-24 23:00:07
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