A Scots diplomat has told how he was scrambled to join the UK Government’s evacuation of Brits fleeing war-torn Sudan while at his best friend’s wedding. Glasgow-born Fraser McDougall was part of the UK’s successful operation to rescue more than 2450 people – the longest and largest evacuation by any Western nation.
The 28-year-old, who works for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, was sent to Sundanese capital Khartoum with the UK Rapid Deployment Team to help Brits fleeing violence that has killed more than 800 people. Fraser got the call just minutes before he gave his best man’s speech at Calum Clark’s wedding to Siobhan Chien at Harelaw Farm, in Fenwick, Ayrshire.
He said: “I wasn’t actually on call but, as it was such a big crisis, they needed all hands on deck, so I was asked if I could deploy to Sudan. So it wasn’t just my best pal who said ‘I do’ on the day. The call came about 10 minutes before I was due to give my speech.
“It slightly dampened my ability to party quite as hard as my wife and I had hoped because I needed to get on the first flight the next morning.
“I didn’t let on to Calum until the following morning when I texted him to say, ‘Brilliant wedding. Just so you know I left a bit early because…’
“I hadn’t wanted to ruin his day but to be fair he hadn’t noticed I’d left early. By that point he had had many whiskies.
“If I’d been on call I wouldn’t have been drinking at all but I didn’t mind having to forgo some of the merriment because I was excited to get my first deployment. I feel proud to have been part of the longest and largest evacuation of any Western country.”
Fighting broke out on April 15 between Sudan’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces under General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. More than 1.3 million people are estimated to have been forced to flee in fear.
Fraser swapped his tartan wedding outfit for a bulletproof vest as he joined colleagues on the ground at Wadi Saeedna airfield near Khartoum. He said: “It was almost like an out-of-body experience because the processing work is relatively straightforward, but you have all this drama going on around you – babies collapsing, people coming in with gunshot wounds, people just in utter trauma.
“You had to try and disconnect from what you were seeing and plough on because our task was to get as many people out as possible before the shaky ceasefire collapsed. Lots of the people I supported had gone through horrendous ordeals just to get to the airbase and had suffered shrapnel or gunshot wounds.
“You had people with clothes torn apart or covered in blood. An old, retired doctor arrived and he had been shot in the thigh, the arm and his chest or shoulder. Our military guys operated on him there and then.
“I remember one young mum who had just given birth and her journey had involved having to hide under tables in abandoned restaurants and dodging gunfire. She was so stressed and exhausted, she almost dropped the newborn in front of us and caught him by the toe.”
The Scot spent five days on the ground during the fragile ceasefire before the security situation deteriorated further.
Fraser – whose day job is second political secretary at the UK Embassy in Dublin – said: “I’m not trying to be heroic but I came to the conclusion if I was going to have an untimely end then I’d want it to happen while I was doing something my family could be proud of.”
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said: “I’m incredibly proud of the vital work that people like Fraser are doing to help the most vulnerable in response to humanitarian crises around the globe – often in very challenging circumstances.”
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