Shut the fuck up and do not move.

In the 12 months before I set off on my adventure I had been keeping a close eye on the humanitarian crisis developing in Sudan. In April 2023, civil war broke out between the Sudanese government and the so-called Rapid Support Forces, RSF.

Civil war is not new to Sudan, the current conflict is the third civil war in the country and seems to have arisen from tensions arising from the integration of the RSF into the country's military. The RSF itself had already incorporated the infamous Janjaweed or, Devils on Horseback and I have no doubt that power struggles within all three factions led to the current situation although officially, the second civil war was blamed on disagreements between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian South and had seen huge civilian casualties and caused the displacement of up to 14 million people!

Whatever the reasons, the situation in Sudan had, by 2023, already become so dire that I had written an article asking why the West were so eager to ignore a conflict that was causing such suffering.

My intention was always to visit Sudan after Egypt and head for the relative safety of the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.

By the time I got to the region there were reports of female Sudanese fighters being trained in camps between the Sea and the Red Sea mountains with the emergence of the Kandakat or Nubian warriors. 

The levels of violence towards civilian women, especially by the RSF, undoubtedly played a major role in this, with many Kandakat volunteering to fight on the front line, so focussed were they on preventing further crimes against humanity.

On a recce of the border region with Egypt I saw for myself what mass displacement looks like. Although I was stopped and briefly detained by Egyptian army personnel before being forcibly turned round, I witnessed what I later learnt was up to a hundred thousand people attempting to flee the country for the relative safety of refugee camps in Egypt. 

An Egyptian army captain based in Cairo informed me that there were at least two million Sudanese refugees in Egypt. Add to this the 1.5 million Syrian refugees in the country and you get an idea of the human catastrophe facing the middle east and North Africa!

By now I was used to my plans being disrupted by war. As was made abundantly clear to me, I wasn't going to be crossing into eastern Sudan via land. To make matters worse I started receiving reports of drone strikes in and around Port Sudan itself, a new frontier in mankind' s voracious thirst for killing each other.

My next option was to catch a boat to Port Sudan, so along with my Egyptian guide whom I will call Ali, my Arabic wasn't fluent enough for me to negotiate passage myself, I set off for the port town of Shalateen. 

I never made it that far.

The area is rich in minerals, including gold and the Shalateen Mineral Resource Company, (SMRC) control the area. Control that, I was about to discover, was maintained with the help of private security companies, or, mercenaries, to give them their proper title and  in spite of their close links to Russian mining company Infinity, this involved American security personnel !

How do I know this? 

I know this because about 20km from Shalateen, we spotted a drone flying above us and a dust cloud approaching from the western desert.

Ali said that we should stop and wait to see who was paying us such close attention. We didn't have to wait long for the source of the dust cloud to appear. In a scene reminiscent of a Hollywood movie an unmarked, black SUV pulled up about 20 metres behind us and a loud speaker amplified voice informed us to exit the vehicle and lie face down, next to our vehicle. Keeping our hands visible at all times. I was very grateful to have Ali with me, reaching for my phone and google translate was a no go!

I heard the approaching footsteps and then saw a pair of boots take up position in front of us. 

This was as vulnerable as I had ever been. 

Face down in the desert, surrounded by an unknown militia.

It took me a second to realise that I understood the orders being given to search the car.

An American voice !

It struck me that whoever these men were, they assumed that they had come across 2 Egyptians. They hadn't seen my face and my head was covered by my black and white, tactical shemag.

Very slowly I raised my hands and said, the only thing that came to mind ;

“Americans in the desert? Have I missed something?”

The response?

“What the fuck! Shut the fuck up and stay still !”

Mine and Ali’s feet were kicked apart by 2 more of the group and we were thoroughly ‘frisked’.

“Vehicle is clean”, another American sounding voice barked and with this we were dragged to our feet and for the first time I was able to get a good look at our ‘captors’.

Not that I could tell much, they were wearing their head scarves in typical dessert fashion and their faces were obscured. They wore desert combat fatigues and had no insignia that I could see. They were also wearing the atypical mirror-reflecting sunglasses.

A long time ago, in a country far far away, (haha) I had been trained in how to deal with a situation like this and I will claim it was this training that kicked in but it was probably as a result of watching so many movies that I asked to speak to the person in charge.

“I told you to shut the FUCK up!” was this time accompanied by the very clear threat of being hit with the butt of the speaker's automatic rifle. This guy clearly wasn't in charge.

The next vice sounded more authoritative, less threatening.

“Easy soldier, I’ll deal with this”

We were instructed to slowly turn around, making no sudden movements and I counted three other gunmen, all armed with automatic rifles and wearing the same unmarked fatigues. Including the driver this made a total of 6 but the only person I was interested in was the guy in charge.

By now, it was clear to everyone that we posed no threat and 5 minutes later Ali and I were told to get back in our vehicle and return to Cairo. This area, we were told, was off limits to civilians.

We didn't need a second invitation!

I have no idea who the men were, they weren't very informative but they were either employed by SMRC to keep people away from the mining area, or to stop people from getting too close to the demilitarised zone and the border.

Plan B had just gone the same way as Plan A. My next planned stop was a week by the red sea in Hurghada.

Hopefully I could get on a boat bound for Port Sudan from there.

I still wasn't ready to give up on Sudan and its multiple Pyramids!