Joe Biden Slammed for Evacuating ‘Four Embassies’ During Presidency.

Representative Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, slammed President Joe Biden on Sunday for evacuating “four embassies” since he took office.

Miller specifically referred to the U.S. embassy evacuation in Sudan that happened on Saturday when the Biden administration decided to suspend operations at its embassy amid the ongoing fight between rival Sudanese leaders on the ground.

The ongoing conflict has broken out between two military forces, including one led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the other led by his former deputy, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The dispute centers around a proposed move to a civilian-led government and how the RSF would integrate into the national army. The RSF wants to delay the integration for 10 years, but the army said it should take place in 2 years.

Sudan has been controlled by generals since both military factions participated in a joint effort to oust President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019.

“Joe Biden has had to evacuate FOUR embassies in less than 3 years. The media said Biden & Blinken were ‘experts’ and ‘the adults are back in charge.’ The world has been on FIRE since their disaster in Afghanistan. Pray for our country & the 16,000 Americans Biden left in Sudan,” Miller wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

In addition to Sudan, the United States has also suspended embassy operations in Afghanistan after withdrawing its troops in August 2021 and in Ukraine when Russia invaded the Eastern European country last February. However, the embassy in Ukraine reopened last May. The U.S. has also suspended operations in Belarus—whose President Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin—due to “security and safety issues stemming from the unprovoked and unjustified attack.”

Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State for Management John Bass said on Saturday that temporarily shutting down the embassy in Sudan was “the only really feasible option for us in this case,” according to CNN.

Around 100 U.S. troops in three MH-47 helicopters evacuated the U.S. embassy in Sudan by airlifting all of the roughly 70 remaining American employees from a landing zone in Khartoum and moved them to an undisclosed location in Ethiopia, according to the Associated Press.

Thousands of Americans remain stranded in Sudan because it was too dangerous to conduct a broader evacuation, according to U.S. officials. However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the U.S. will help Americans in Sudan in creating safety plans for themselves, Reuters reported.

How Quick Can the U.S. Evacuate Its Citizens in Sudan?

On Saturday, Bass said that the federal government doesn’t “foresee coordinating a U.S. government evacuation for our fellow citizens in Sudan at this time or in the coming days,” CNN reported.

The State Department doesn’t keep official counts of U.S. citizens in foreign countries, but it acknowledges that an estimated 16,000 Americans might be in Sudan, according to CBS News.

Echoing Miller’s remarks on Saturday, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, told CNN’s State of the Union host Dana Bash that while he appreciates efforts to evacuate the American embassy, he is “worried” about Americans who are still on the ground while an escalating internal conflict in Sudan unravels.

“You have got thousands of people in the middle of a civil war,” Graham said when asked what he thinks of Biden handling the situation. “And have we been late about sort of telling them to leave? Could you see this coming? Those questions will be asked and answered later on. If I was an American in Sudan, I would shelter in place. Hopefully, we can find a way to end the fighting, get humanitarian aid, and get our people out.”

However, Christopher Maier, assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, said on Sunday that there will be steps to help Americans who might want to leave Sudan.

“In the coming days, we will continue to work with the State Department to help American citizens who may want to leave Sudan,” he said. “One of those ways is to potentially make the overland routes out of Sudan potentially more viable. So, DOD [Department of Defense] is at present considering actions that may include use of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to be able to observe routes and detect threats.”

Maier also mentioned employing naval assets outside the Port of Sudan that would help Americans who arrive at the port and establishing a “deconfliction cell focused particularly on the overland route” at the U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Friday that there had been contact with “several hundred American citizens who we understand to be in Sudan” to discuss “security precautions and other measures that they can take on their own,” according to CNN.

Additionally, Biden said that he was “receiving regular reports from my team on their ongoing work to assist Americans in Sudan, to the extent possible.”

The president is currently facing criticism from Republicans and lack of support from Democratic-leaning voters who don’t want him to run again for president even though he is expected to announce a 2024 presidential reelection bid soon.

Newsweek reached out by email to the White House for comment.