Is it safe to travel to The Sudan? ( I have exhausted many DOS web pages, please do not link me to them. ) If you have personal experience traveling there especially under the auspices of the United States Dept of State, please share them here if they are not Classified.
Is it unsafe in any way? Is it more unsafe for a woman? For a white woman from the USA opposed to a Muslim woman from Egypt? Are there any precautions that can be taken to minimize the dangers?
I am interested in first person on the ground experience in The Sudan. Please do not link me to articles either provided by the US DOS or by journalists. Journalists frequently travel with a degree of safety that normal folks do not enjoy.
If you’ve been and are in the know, please share the straight dope.
About two years ago I was traveling through Africa for work, and at one point it was difficult to get from “A” to “B” due to lack of airline connections. The best option was to fly through Sudan, which involved spending one night in the country. With the advice from those in the know, we chose not to pursue that option, and instead chose a less optimal set of flight connections.
This wasn’t too terribly long after the incident in which two US Embassy employees were murdered. Can’t provide much more than this out-of-date experience of avoiding the country entirely.
ETA: Had we chosen to do the layover in Sudan we would have had security offered to us, and we still chose not to go.
Everything is perfectly safe until something goes wrong. None of us can tell you if you will be the one who happens to get kidnapped or killed. The State Department Security advisors get paid to sit around all day and think about this stuff, and they say it’s probably not a great idea for American citizens to travel in Sudan unless they have a really good reason (and presumably an organization with tried and true safety procedures) to back you up. There isn’t much an anecdote on a message boards is going to provide that that doesn’t.
Former USDOS employee here. Travel alerts are usually issued for either medical or security issues. Security issues can range from general street crime to the active targeting of Americans for either kidnapping or assassination. The travel alerts normally will have specifics as to why they are being issued (such as the nature of the threat and the locations), so you’re best off reading and heeding. Sometimes the security alerts are for activities outside of the urban areas, sometimes for the entire country. Asking advice on a message board as to your personal safety is probably not the best avenue.