Evacuation

Tuesday

Michela Wrong

The danger of becoming a ‘professional survivor’

From our UK edition

It was a relatively minor episode in a period marked by the killing of two African presidents, months of massacres in churches, schools and sports stadiums, a biblical exodus by much of the Hutu population, a cholera outbreak in refugee camps established in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and a rebel takeover of the country. But it mattered a great deal to Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, the author of this book, as she was one of the children evacuated in June 1994. At 15, she did not meet the criteria stipulated by the convoy’s organisers, so she and her mother hid under a tarpaulin sat upon by the smaller children as the trucks worked their painstaking way through a series of road blocks manned by Hutu militiamen hungry for fresh victims.

Wednesday

Dave Seminara

Weathering the storm: on the ground in hurricane-ravaged Florida

Fort Lauderdale, Florida I’ve lived in seven US states and five countries, but when I arrived in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2019 I knew it was my last stop. There is no such thing as paradise on earth, but for me, St. Pete is as close as it comes. But every year during hurricane season, we’re on pins and needles hoping the big one won’t come and wipe us off the map. Our homeowner’s and flood insurance rates are insane, but I still don’t know anyone who feels like their policies are comprehensive enough to sleep easy when the Weather Channel vans prowl our streets like hungry hyenas looking for viral footage during hurricane season.

Tuesday

Allan Mallinson

Why was the British army so ill-prepared to fight the second world war?

From our UK edition

Conflict comes highly recommended. Two former chiefs of the defence staff, Generals David Richards and Nicholas Carter, praise it for identifying key lessons from the past appropriate to the future. A former MoD strategic adviser, Sir Hew Strachan, says it will ‘challenge the professional and enlighten the generalist’. The US marine corps general and former secretary of defense James Mattis, ‘the warrior monk’, says it is ‘a clear-sighted assessment of war’s future’. And the late Henry Kissinger called it ‘an exceptional book, written by two absolute masters of their profession’.

Thursday

John Pietro

Sudan and the decline of American courage

Over the weekend, US special forces evacuated American embassy personnel from Sudan in a nearly day-long operation. The evacuation came as the African country descended into near civil war on April 15 when the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces took their disagreements to the battlefield. US forces managed to get all of the personnel — along with a number of foreign individuals — out of the country safely, flying about 800 miles from Khartoum back to Djibouti in three heavy-lift helicopters. The decision to leave an embassy is not an easy one, and is typically reserved for only the most severe circumstances (Kyiv in early 2022, for example).

sudan

Sunday

Harry Shukman

‘Bit of a pickle’ — meet the British student stuck on vacation in Kabul

If a friend told you he booked a vacation to ‘goof off and soak in the sun’, you would be forgiven for thinking he had opted for a week on the Costa del Sol. Miles Routledge seems to be a bit different. He’d seen news reports stating that, while the Taliban were making inexorable progress through Afghanistan, it would be months before they seized Kabul. So off he went. Late last week, he was strolling through the bazaars like a typical Brit abroad, snapping pictures of exotic dishes and posting updates on Facebook about the inferior quality of Afghan plumbing. It was just two days into his trip, after the Taliban had marched into the capital and flights out of the city had been canceled, that Routledge, 22, wrote on Facebook: ‘I’m stuck in Afghanistan. Bit of a pickle.

routledge