Evacuees and military personnel board an RAF aircraft bound for Cyprus from Wadi Seidna Air Base in Sudan, April 29, 2023. (Arron Hoare/UK Ministry of Defence)
For more than two weeks, Heba Elshich has been stuck in a war zone. Britain has her passport, and she has no way out of Sudan. The 34-year-old Sudanese citizen was waiting for the British Embassy to return her passport with a U.K. visa when fighting erupted April 15 between warring Sudanese generals. As bombardments and gun battles broke out, foreign embassies abruptly shut down.
Within days, thousands of foreign nationals, diplomats and aid workers evacuated on ships and military planes. More than 100,000 Sudanese have also fled the country, mostly by foot to neighboring nations. But some Sudanese people remain trapped because mainly Western embassies emptied with their passports still inside. Without valid passports, no international evacuation or neighboring country will accept them.
Five Sudanese with passports in British, German and Indian custody told The Washington Post they had received little to no responses regarding the status of their passports and no answer when they would be returned. The situation is emblematic, they said, of the haste with which they feel the international community has abandoned Sudan.
“They have to think about us,” said El Muiz Mustafa, 45, an engineer stranded in the capital city of Khartoum. His wife and children, all U.K. citizens, live in Britain. He traveled often between the two countries and had handed in his passport as part of applying for a U.K. spousal visa. “But the problem is that we feel we were just left behind. We are trapped.”
At least 500 civilians have been killed from the fighting and compounding humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations. In desperation, people have turned to WhatsApp groups and social media to crowdsource news and emergency help.
For Elshich, it has already become a matter of death. A consultant who specializes in migration, Elshich sent an email to the U.K. processing center soon after the fighting started, pleading for her passport so she could evacuate with her elderly and sick parents. Days later, she received a response from the processing center telling her to “bear with us.”
Soon it was too late. After days with no electricity and clean water, her father’s kidney problems flared, she said. He died April 26 while awaiting a hospital bed. “His death was quite avoidable if this war did not happen,” Elshich said by phone from Khartoum, where the fighting has been among the worst.
She had crowdsourced information on social media in hopes of finding an ambulance. “We just could not get him to the hospital in time.” Elshich said she cannot claim the British Embassy is “the primary reason my dad died,” but she cannot “help but think if I had a passport and we were able to evacuate would he still be with us.”
A U.K. government spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under agency protocol, said in an email that “due to the ongoing conflict, we have had no option but to close the Visa Application Centre in Khartoum,” which is run by the global processing company TLScontact. “Where an individual is eligible to come to the U.K., we are doing everything possible to provide support, recognising that many people are facing very challenging circumstances and decisions,” the statement read.
The power struggle in Sudan has pitted the military, under the leadership of de facto head of state Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti. The fighting erupted after weeks of rising tensions over an internationally backed power sharing agreement. The warring factions agreed on Tuesday to extend a cease fire, which has only brought periodic and unpredictable lulls in violence.
With each passing day, dangers and desperation deepen. Faris Elbadawi, 39, was set to start his dream job as a doctor in the United Kingdom this month. He planned to bring his wife and three young children over in July. His U.K. visa application was accepted last month, and he was awaiting approval to retrieve his passport when the war began.
After days under fire, his family fled to a nearby village during the first cease fire. His children, Elbadawi said, are now afraid to sleep without him around. For now, his dream has been reduced to just getting his passport back, he said. Then he can take his family to neighboring Egypt Ethiopia or South Sudan.
Mustafa, the engineer, tried to get on a U.K. evacuation plane but was rejected for not having his passport and a valid visa. After being turned way, his return to Khartoum took days and he came under fire from the Rapid Support Forces, surviving thanks to the help of strangers. “We are not on vacation,” he said. “This is war. I just need my passport. I do not care whether to go to the U.K. or to hell. I just need my passport, simply.”
Yasir Elabbas, 26, said he tried to call and email the Indian Embassy regarding his passport but received no reply. He had planned to pursue a master’s degree in India. His family is just across the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. But Elabbas cannot reach them.
It remains unclear how many Sudanese are caught in this dangerous quagmire given the lack of clarity by governments. Spokespeople for the British and French foreign ministries did not respond when asked how many Sudanese passports are in their possession. The Indian Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
With foreign staff at embassies gone, it has fallen on Sudanese to take the risk to find a solution. A Sudanese worker for the Chinese Embassy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the embassy had around 300 passports when it shut down and visas on-site were invalidated. But it was his duty, he said, to return people their documents. He and his colleagues pressed for permission.
On April 29, the embassy publicized a ramshackle effort to return people their passports. The man said that during lulls in the fighting he told people to come to pickup points around the city. By Tuesday evening in Sudan, he said they had returned over 100 passports. But most people are still waiting. “We just want the embassies to give us back our passports,” Elshich said. “I am pretty sure there is a way.”
The Washington Post’s Victoria Bisset, Adela Suliman and Ellen Francis contributed to this report.
