The United States continues to look at “every conceivable option” to help Americans get out of Sudan amid deadly clashes in the country, but is not considering peacekeeping troops, according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan said the U.S. has placed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets over the land evacuation route to help facilitate safe travel by land from Khartoum to the Port of Sudan, but does not have any U.S. troops on the ground.
“It is not standard practice for the United States to send in the U.S. military” into war zones to extract American citizens, Sullivan said, speaking at a press briefing at the White House on Monday.
“We didn’t do it in Libya. We didn’t do it in Syria. We didn’t do it in Yemen, and no we didn’t do it in Ukraine. Afghanistan was a unique case involving the end of the 20-year war that the United States was centrally involved in,” he added.
According to the Associated Press, an estimated 16,000 private U.S. citizens are registered with the embassy as being in Sudan. The figure is rough because not all Americans register with embassy or say when they depart.
Sullivan said the U.S. “will go to great lengths to support and facilitate” the departure of Americans but also noted that the State Department has been cautioning Americans in Sudan to leave the country for years.