Sometimes the security situation in a country deteriorates to such an extent that Dutch citizens are unable to get away. In that case, the Cabinet may decide to have them evacuated by military personnel. This has happened several times in recent years. Think Sudan in 2023 and 2 years before that in Afghanistan. And now military personnel are on standby to evacuate Dutch citizens from the Middle East, should the conflict between Israel and Hamas get further out of hand.
Training necessary
Acting quickly and efficiently in crises requires coordinated cooperation between different units and international partners. Therefore, it is necessary to train these types of scenarios on a regular basis.
The Corps of Commandos does so annually. This time for the first time with the recently established Ranger Ball Battalion of 11.
Process evacuation
During the training, the units go through the entire evacuation process: from alerting and planning to evacuating people. Such an operation is called in technical jargon a Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO).
