Can the Foreign Office avoid the mistakes of Kabul in Sudan?

A British evacuation of Sudan began last night after a 72-hour ceasefire was agreed. Ministers, however, are anxious about the possibility that the fighting will start up sooner. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said it was ‘impossible for us to predict how long this opportunity will last’. Britons will need to travel to an airfield outside Khartoum themselves, as no escorts are available, and are being told only to travel when contacted. It is a precarious situation.

It is also easy to see superficial parallels with the chaotic evacuation of Kabul in 2021. Cleverly, though, said ‘this situation is fundamentally different to the situation in Afghanistan’, adding ‘we have established contact with a number of British nationals and we are talking where we can directly with them’.

What he didn’t say was that in Afghanistan, there was a significant amount of UK infrastructure including troops who had been stationed there for years. There is no British military presence in Sudan. There was also, frankly, a fair bit more notice that an evacuation of Kabul might be necessary, given the withdrawal of US troops was planned.

The reason the parallel persists is that there have, once again, been questions about the readiness of the Foreign Office for an evacuation of Britons in Sudan. It was revealed last night that the British ambassador to Sudan, Giles Lever, had been on holiday – which seems to be an unfortunate pattern in the Foreign Office – when the fighting began. Lever hasn’t been able to return but is reportedly working 20-hour days in London assisting the government’s efforts.

There is also the same sense of sand running through the hourglass too quickly. In Kabul it wasn’t clear whether people trying to escape would reach the airport; in Sudan there are fears that the ceasefire might end so early that Britons won’t make it out either, or that a panicked rush to the airfield will be triggered. That’s why ministers have been so keen to show that they are at work and doing everything they can – in contrast to the strange working from holiday arrangements that we saw back in 2021.