“We knew it was going to bust, but not like this.” At the Spanish embassy in Sudan, they had been carrying out —and receiving— police and intelligence reports for months warning that the capital of Sudan could soon become a real powder keg due to the confrontation between the forces of two rival generals. There was a lot of “concern”, but the outbreak was not expected to be imminent in the middle of Ramadan. However, in the early hours of Saturday, April 15, the Sudanese army and paramilitaries engaged in bloody armed clashes.
That same morning the process to evacuate the Spanish colony began, which ended with a military operation thanks to which 72 civilians have arrived in Spain. A successful operation, but one that had a critical moment, when a mortar shell fell just 20 meters from the first vehicle in the convoy in which the civilians were traveling to the airport, according to police and military sources told La Vanguardia.
When the conflict broke out, there were only two agents in the static security team in the Spanish embassy, ​​in charge of protecting the legation. Currently, this group of the National Police is made up of three uniformed men, but one of them was on vacation. A precarious situation to face what was coming. Serve a comparison. When the Taliban took Kabul in the summer of 2021, there were seven policemen at the embassy in Afghanistan, plus ten GEO agents, the elite group of the Police. In addition, Spain sent a reinforcement of two dozen geos. On this occasion, none. For nine days; only two policemen. One of them is an agent seasoned in this type of risk operations who also participated in the evacuation of Afghanistan.
According to police sources, the first tasks of the embassy were focused on informing the Spanish residents not to leave their homes and to stay under cover, away from windows due to the high possibility of explosions. And a premise: hold out until the situation allows it. But the objective was to regroup the entire colony for a forthcoming evacuation. Here a dilemma was put on the table: if the two agents made incursions into the city to take the Spaniards to the legation, the ambassador, Isidro González, would be left —at times— without protection. It was decided, the same sources continue, to recommend those interested in leaving the country to go to the embassy by their own means, taking advantage of windows of opportunity.
And what were these? When a supposed ceasefire was declared or when fasting was broken for Ramadan, with the expectation that at that time the crossfire would cease. The Spaniards were arriving in stages from Sunday the 16th to the ambassador’s residence, in whose basement an area of ​​about 50 square meters was set up for his stay. Bunks and mattresses were rolled out, blankets were handed out and food rations were served for a week. Meanwhile, in the streets of Khartoum the clashes did not stop.
The police team did make a rescue. One of the embassy secretaries remained isolated in her house with her three children. One of the nights they had to cross a part of the capital where there had been “heavy fighting.” The journey was “delicate”, but the agents managed to transfer the family to the ambassador’s residence, where the employee was reunited with her colleagues and the rest of the residents who were waiting for the green light for the military evacuation operation to begin. Not everyone made it to the meeting point. The missionary José Javier Parladé told La Vanguardia on Monday that it was impossible for the police to reach his residence, so he had to go by his own means —along with other volunteers— to the airport.
It was on Friday the 21st when Spain began the non-combatant personnel rescue operation —NEO, for its acronym in English— with the positioning of a first A400 aircraft at the Djibouti airport, which was later joined by an Airbus A330 and two others. A400, all of them from the Air and Space Army. In this small country in the Horn of Africa, some 1,300 kilometers from the capital, there are 50 Spanish soldiers deployed in the Atalanta mission, which fights against piracy.
Throughout the weekend, the aircraft operated between Djibouti and Spain to transport the material and military personnel who have participated in the operation. In total, about 200 soldiers. Before flying to Sudan —while the future evacuees were waiting at the ambassador’s residence— the necessary diplomatic coordination was carried out and the appropriate protection measures were established “to wait for the most appropriate moment to act due to the sensitivity of the situation.” , as reported by the Defense Staff.
That moment came on Sunday, after countries like the United States, the United Kingdom or France evacuated part of their nationals. In the French case, the convoy was attacked and a civilian was injured. The tension increased when this information reached the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, in charge of coordinating the device. The armed forces initially positioned an A400 with two VAMTAC vehicles and ground force personnel at the Wadi Seidna military airport, north of Khartoum, to support the evacuation. It was impossible to land at the capital’s international airport, which appears to be out of control of the Sudanese army.
At the time of that landing, the march began from the ambassador’s residence. The convoy was made up of ten vehicles in which about 70 people were traveling. Ahead – 37 kilometers, but it took a couple of hours to cover them. The most critical moment of the entire operation occurred a few minutes after starting the march. On the way out, civilians saw fighting and heard gunshots. “There was mortar fire. One of them fell just 20 meters from the first vehicle in the caravan,” police sources say. But it was “only one and sheltered”, so the person in charge of Security in those critical moments decided to continue the march. Along the way, they had to pass “no less” than twenty checkpoints.
Until at an intermediate point on the way, inside the capital, the Spanish soldiers from the Special Operations Group met them in the armored vehicles. Thus, they escorted the convoy until it reached the military airport, where by then two other A400s had landed to complete the deployment of the entire ground force. There, one of the A400s transported 104 civilians to Djibouti. Of these, a total of 72 people flew to Spain in an Airbus A330 and the rest remained in Djibouti to return to their respective countries by other means.
This Thursday, 53 military members of Bripac, Wing 31 of the Air Force, Special Operations, Operations Command and the Armed Forces Intelligence Center (Cifas) landed in Torrejón de Ardoz. They were received by the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, together with the Chief of Defense Staff (jemad), Admiral General Teodoro López Calderón. The first has thanked them for their effort to successfully complete a complicated mission. The second has valued the ability of soldiers to find solutions to the “unforeseen”.
