Control rooms, buses and a night operation: How India brought back over 3,000 stranded in Sudan

As fighting erupted in Khartoum on April 15 between the Sudanese armed forces and the country’s Rapid Support Forces, the Indian embassy reached out to the Indian community in Sudan and started issuing advisories.

Indian Nationals arrived at T-3 after evacuated from Sudan in New Delhi on Wednesday. Express photo by Praveen Khanna

Despite risks of power outages and network availability as the conflict in Sudan intensified, the Indian embassy started an online registration process.

Multiple control rooms were set up at Port Sudan, Jeddah and in Delhi to monitor and coordinate the operation minutely.

What made the scale of the operation so massive was the substantial presence of Indian nationals and those of Indian origin in Sudan. Officials said there are around 3,500 Indian nationals and 1,000 people of Indian origin in the country, most of them concentrated in pockets of Khartoum city, besides in cities such as Omdurman, Al Fashir, Kassala and Port Sudan.

INS Teg, carrying Indians evacuated from violence-hit Sudan under ‘Operation Kaveri’, upon its arrival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (PTI Photo)

According to officials privy to the details of the operation, a major challenge was to safely transport Indian nationals to Port Sudan from different pockets of Khartoum. Amid reports of fighting, additional buses were deployed to take the evacuees to Port Sudan, 850 km northeast of Khartoum, a journey that took them 12-18 hours.

Last month, Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra called the situation in Khartoum “volatile, complex and unpredictable”. Among the many logistical challenges he mentioned was ensuring adequate diesel availability for the buses to Port Sudan.

The massive coordination effort also involved making facilities at Port Khartoum for the Indian nationals to complete their documentation before they could be evacuated and arranging transit accommodation at Jeddah.

A major highlight of the operation was a risky evacuation mission carried out by a C-130J Super Hercules aircraft of the IAF, which rescued 121 people from a small airstrip at Wadi Seidna, 40 km north of Khartoum, last month. The operation was carried out at night with no navigational aids or landing lights.

Last week, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan was in Jeddah to receive the stranded Indian nationals coming from Port Sudan. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar had also spoken to his counterparts in the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UK on the operation.

On Thursday, the Indian Embassy in Sudan said the task of bringing Indians stranded in El Fashir was achieved by mobilising its resources and coordinating with various stakeholders in conflict zones to ensure safe travel for its citizens over an arduous journey of over 1,800 km.

“Two buses from El Fashir in Western Sudan carrying 80 Indians reached Port Sudan (East of Sudan) safely, after travelling for more than 48 hours,” the embassy said in a tweet.