WASHINGTON – In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Africa Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS), joined Face the Nation on CBS yesterday to discuss the situation in Sudan and the evacuation of U.S. embassy officials by U.S. special forces.
You can watch the full interview here.
Below some of the thoughts that Senator Coons shared with the constituents: “[I]f I’d been on this show just two weeks ago, we wouldn’t have been talking about fighting in Sudan because there wasn’t any. There were special envoys from the U.N., the A.U., the U.S., all negotiating with these two generals, General Hemedti and General Burhan of the regular army and the paramilitary, still hopeful that they could return to a civilian government. It unwound fast, in just the last week, and I’m grateful that our special forces have now successfully, overnight, evacuated the U.S. nationals who work in our embassy in Khartoum. This is a temporary suspension. It’s my hope and theirs that we will be able to return to Khartoum and the situation will stabilize. But, Margaret, this is the same sort of thing that happened in Kyiv in Ukraine, that has happened in other countries like Yemen and Syria where, when the fighting gets intense quickly, we rely on our special forces to evacuate U.S. nationals who staff an embassy in a country that descends into a war zone…
He also adds: “Sudan is a vast country: It’s the third-largest country in Africa, a country of 45 million people spread over a huge amount of territory. Yes, I am concerned about the safety and security of U.S. nationals who have been serving in humanitarian missions or in other ways across the country. There are quite a few U.S.-Sudanese dual nationals in the country, and the U.N. and the U.S. and a number of other countries will do their best to help return to civilian rule, to end the fighting, to support a stabilization in Sudan, but as for right now, an evacuation through some overland convoy is the most likely path out for folks who work for the U.N. in the World Food Program, for example, who serve other countries in Khartoum and around the country, and for those remaining U.S. nationals who may wish to leave.”
