In an eerie deja vu moment channeling the horrific Afghanistan withdrawal, Americans in Sudan have been left behind.

American forces carried out a precarious evacuation of US embassy personnel in Sudan, President Joe Biden said late Saturday, calling for the end to “unconscionable” violence there as two rival leaders battled for power in the African country.

Biden thanked the US troops who carried out the mission to extract American staffers in Sudan.

With the last American embassy worker out, Washington shuttered the US mission in Khartoum indefinitely.

The US said it had no current plans for a government-coordinated evacuation of an estimated 16,000 other Americans remaining in Sudan, calling the situation too dangerous.

Read that again. Our military was able to get into Sudan and get embassy personnel out. Yet there are ZERO plans for saving 16,000 Americans. ZERO. Shades of Afghanistan and Benghazi!

The thing is, as our friend Beege outlined here, the situation in Sudan has been FUBAR for quite some time now.

Things got worse as diplomats and a U.S. diplomatic convoy were attacked. Which meant all countries with embassies started ramping up to get their people out. And, by this morning the U.S. Embassy in Sudan was fully evacuated and shut down. 

“I am proud of the extraordinary commitment of our Embassy staff, who performed their duties with courage and professionalism and embodied America’s friendship and connection with the people of Sudan,” Biden wrote. “I am grateful for the unmatched skill of our service members who successfully brought them to safety.”

Biden added the embassy has been temporarily closed but “our commitment to the Sudanese people and the future they want for themselves is unending.”

Biden went on to say he was receiving regular reports from his team on efforts to assist the remaining Americans in Sudan “to the extent possible.”

Americans are stranded in Sudan right now. It’s a deja vu moment channeling Afghanistan. Keep in mind, Sudan is a mess and has been for quite some time. It’s gotten even worse these last few months. 

As the fighting continues, is there a plan – ANY plan in motion to get the rest of the civilians out of Sudan? Not really. 

In other words, if you are an American citizen who doesn't work for the Embassey, 'Good luck, and God speed'

— Sad without baseball (@LastWordWilliam) April 23, 2023

In fact, during a late night briefing, Ambassador John Bass first took a swipe at the Americans and citizens of other countries for ignoring the decades of warnings that Sudan was a dangerous place. 

Sudan has long been a dangerous environment. The United States in our Travel Advisories to American citizens and American travelers has had a notice in place for over a decade cautioning American citizens not to travel to Sudan.

Then he essentially said, even if Americans get to a port city, the U.S. may not stage any ships to get you out. 

We’re going to continue to do that. We’re going to continue to work closely with other countries, with the United Nations, with other international organizations, to collectively do as much as we can to enable our citizens, whether it’s individually or in combination with each other, to find their way to safety. We understand a number of our citizens, a number of other countries’ citizens, have made their way overland from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. That appears to be a quite challenging journey given the lack of predictably available fuel, water, food, other essentials.

And so we’re not recommending anyone undertake that route. We’re not advising anyone to undertake that route necessarily. But we understand if people are going to do that, and we’re going to continue to look for ways to try to help them do that from a distance to the best of our ability.

“From a distance.” WOW. Like, how much of a distance? 

One of those ways is to potentially make the overland route out of Sudan potentially more viable. So DOD is at present considering actions that may include: use of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to be able to observe routes and detect threats; secondly, the employment of naval assets outside the Port of Sudan to potentially help Americans who arrive at the port; and third, the establishment at the U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart of a deconfliction cell focused particularly on the overland route.

In other words, we have no clue. We are winging it. And the Americans left in Sudan are SOL. 

FYI. I just found this out. SMDH. They are most likely going to be flown out to Saudi Arabia today or tomorrow. @ajlamesa

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) April 23, 2023

What is egregious about this is two-fold. A. Sudan has been a mess for decades. Yet this mess with the current situation just suddenly happened and there were no warning signs? REALLY? B. What happened to all the lessons learned from the Afghanistan debacle? As I wrote here on April 6th, the White House definitively stated that EARLIER evacuations are now prioritized when a country becomes unstable. 

ALL the signs were there regarding how unstable Sudan was getting. And NO ONE stepped up to say ‘ummm, hey, we might want to move our people out sooner rather than later??!’ NO ONE?

This mess in Sudan is Afghanistan deja vu all over again.

Lmao everything under the sun falls apart under Biden, how many embassies have been evacuated under him? 1 in Afghanistan, 1 in Kyiv, and now Sudan? Am I missing anything?

— sikeops (@sike0ps) April 23, 2023

Thanks Joe. You and your team built another mess. Don’t you DARE blame Trump for this one!

UPDATE: Among the Americans left behind is a school teacher and her child. She was a teacher for the kids of embassy personnel, and the government just …left them behind. 

Feature Photo Credit: Original artwork by Victory Girls Darleen Click