‘Die trying, or just die at home’: Civilians fleeing Sudan face impossible choice

Mohamed Eisa, a Pittsburgh-area physician, confronted an impossible dilemma with his relatives while trapped under gunfire in Khartoum, Sudan, last month.

“We had to make a decision whether, basically, die trying, or just die at home, being captured in the middle of these two warring parties,” he said in an interview with The Hill from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he and his family have found safety.

“At the end of the day, we decided, just, we’re going to take a risk and leave.”

It’s a stark choice facing hundreds of thousands of civilians trying to survive an outbreak of war in Sudan, with supposed cease-fires so far failing to halt the fighting. 

Eisa arrived in Sudan for his father’s funeral days before the outbreak of war between the country’s two top military commanders in mid-April. 

His family is among nearly 100,000 civilians who have fled Sudan over the course of two weeks, which the United Nations warns, could lead to an exodus of 800,000 people. 

Eisa described the return to safety as shocking, explaining that surviving a war zone over the course of 14 days had altered his sense of reality. 

“I’ve never even thought that I would feel this, but when I got to Jeddah here, as if this is the first time ever for me to see civilization, to see streets with cars going back and forth, to see restaurants that are operating, people are walking on the streets,” he said. 

“Although it’s been two weeks since all of this has happened, but it felt like 14 years, not only 14 days or 15 days.”

Eisa holds a U.S. work permit and, as part of its requirements, must sit for an interview with the American embassy before he can return to his wife and 2-year-old daughter, who stayed behind in Pennsylvania, where they live. 

His evacuation from Sudan was made possible by Saudi Arabia, which has helped ferry through its Royal Navy nearly 6,000 people of at least 103 nationalities. 

The ships carry people from Port Sudan to Jeddah, where the port area is considered relatively safe and under the control of the Sudanese army. 

Eisa has kept in touch with friends also trying to escape Sudan, sharing his story to document the risks of his journey and the senselessness of the violence. 

Underscoring the danger of his decision to flee the capital, Eisa has suffered the loss of a close friend, Bushra Ibnauf Sulieman, a Sudanese-American doctor who was reportedly stabbed to death in a suspected attempted robbery in the capital city of Khartoum. 

Criminal violence is a dangerous byproduct of the outbreak of war between competing military commanders — Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti,” commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

While the U.S., in close coordination with partner countries in Africa, the Gulf and the United Nations, have helped broker temporary cease-fires between al-Burhan and Hemedti, fighting and violence continue — raising the danger for civilians seeking to flee. 

Others have fled north toward Egypt. Ahmed Bakhit, an American citizen, flew to Cairo to reunite with his Sudanese wife, who managed to flee Khartoum and cross the border into Egypt. 

Bakhit is working to push forward his wife’s immigration paperwork to bring her back with him to the U.S. Her application was initially stalled over consular delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it now is at a standstill since the drawdown of the U.S. embassy in Khartoum.

“It’s been a very stressful couple of weeks,” he said in a phone call with The Hill.

For Eisa and his travel party — which included about 18 people from his immediate and extended family — they made the decision to escape Khartoum on April 24, the first day of the first cease-fire agreement. 

Sudan’s airport was damaged in the early days of the fighting, so they followed advice to head for Port Sudan.

Eisa and his family secured a bus to drive them the 11 hours across the desert to Port Sudan, but the driver refused to pick them up at home.

Eisa said they found another bus to drive them to a meeting point, which he described as “the longest 45 minutes of my life,” driving through a city ravaged by air strikes, street fighting, heavy artillery and indiscriminate shooting. He said city streets were littered with dead and decomposing bodies.

During the journey through the state of Khartoum, the bus had to stop at four RSF checkpoints, with Eisa describing the soldiers as trigger-happy, with little discipline or respect for the rules of war to avoid targeting civilians.  

“They [the RSF] stopped and got all the men out of the bus and manually searched [us] at gunpoint, and you could just see the fear on everyone. They were looking for if the men have any relationship with the SAF,” he said.

“They stopped my brother, and they basically asked him, they were saying, ‘It looks like you belong to the SAF. You better tell us,’ or, ‘You better give us your ID because if we find out that you are part of the SAF, we’re going to just shoot you right here. We’re going to drop you dead right here.’ That’s what they said to my brother.”

Eisa said they were also asking whether the men were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political party that held power under deposed Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir but that RSF fighters are likely linking to the SAF.  

Eisa said he destroyed any IDs he had stating he is a physician, saying he was afraid RSF fighters would abduct him and draft him into service to treat the wounded. 

“I think I’m one of the lucky ones that sort of got out of this situation and circumstances alive, along with my family. I feel extremely lucky,” he said. 

Despite feeling relative safety when arriving in Port Sudan, Eisa said he nearly gave up all hope that the family could make it out of the country. The small city was overrun with people trying to flee and, at that time, diplomats from Saudi Arabia appeared to be the only representatives helping to organize evacuations. 

Saudi Arabia set up make-shift consular services in a building near the port, Eisa said, and it quickly became overrun by Sudanese, Americans, Europeans, and other nationalities — including Syrians, Yemenis, Pakistanis, and Indians.

He described scenes of chaos, with families crowded on the floors, screaming children, people without food or water for hours, and the few hotels or apartments for rent in the city increasing prices exponentially. 

Eisa and his family boarded a ship Friday afternoon and arrived in Jeddah on Saturday. He was in contact with a friend of his, an American citizen, who was asking him for any advice on how to get on a ship out of Port Sudan. 

The American told Eisa that he was in contact with the U.S. Embassy, who directed him to a meeting point and said someone would collect him and his family and bring him to a ship. 

Over the weekend, the U.S. moved naval ships into the Red Sea to help with evacuations, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. The U.S. has also coordinated at least three convoys that carried 700 people from Khartoum to Port Sudan. 

 “I mean, honestly, I wasn’t very hopeful about what he was saying,” Eisa said. Their phone call dropped and Eisa told The Hill on Wednesday that he had yet to connect with his friend again.

“My assumption is he’s probably boarding a ship, whether it’s arranged by the Americans or the Saudis I don’t know,” he said.