4,000 Indians to leave Yemen in ships, planes

Ramping up its evacuation plan for 4,000 Indians stranded in Yemen, the government is sending Minister of State for Overseas Indian Affairs General (Retd) V.K. Singh to oversee operations from the nearest port of Djibouti city. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke to the Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, who is leading the air operation against Houthi rebels in the country, to brief him on Indian evacuation plans and “request his support and cooperation” for them. PM Modi also “conveyed his best wishes” to the Saudi King “for a quick resolution of the challenges in the neighbourhood.”

Mr. Singh will fly on Tuesday to Djibouti, where the government is hoping to bring one group of 400 Indians out of Aden by a commercial passenger ship to be then sent back to India. The Indian operations will comprise a combination of civil and military efforts, including two passenger liners, two Indian Air Force ‘Globemasters’ two Air India aircraft and three naval ships. “Unfortunately, despite warnings, our people only move at the last minute, and that has complicated the task,” Mr. Singh told The Hindu, “But we have learnt many lessons from our experience in Iraq and Libya last year and will try to bring them home soon.”

The immediate worry, Mr. V.K. Singh, is that the airports in Yemen are either closed or only open intermittently due to the violence by Houthi rebels and air strikes launched by the Saudi-led coalition of Gulf countries, who now control the airspace over Sana’a, and the Saudi government’s assistance would be required to facilitate more “flight

Eighty-five Indians, who were able to take a Yemenia Airways flight out of Sana’a, have already reached their homes in India, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin told reporters on Monday.

The evacuation operations were announced after Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj held two meetings to coordinate efforts by different ministries. Ms. Swaraj met with Air Chief Marshall Arup Raha, senior officials from the Navy, Defence Ministry, Ministry of Shipping and Civil Aviation Ministry. In a separate meeting, officials of the External Affairs Ministry met with Ms. Swaraj and decided to send a five-member team, including three diplomats, to Djibouti to help with the process of obtaining air and port clearances, as well as processing travel papers for the India does not have a mission in Djibouti. It is represented by the Indian Ambassador to neighbouring Ethiopia, Sanjay Verma, who will be stationed in Djibouti along with officials from the embassy in Egypt to aid the operations.

Officials told The Hindu that their efforts would be to “facilitate the travel of evacuees directly from Djibouti port and airport to the Indian aircraft as quickly as possible”, as there is limited accommodation in the East African nation with a population of only about 900,000.

The evacuation operations will be funded by the government’s special “community welfare fund” set up in 2009 for approximately six million Indian workers in 17 ‘ECR’ countries where emigration clearance is required.Since January 2015, the government had issued three advisories warning of the deteriorating situation in Yemen, where President Hadi has had to flee the country after rebel groups took over the capital city Sana’a. The danger to the roughly 4,000 Indians remaining there, a majority of whom belong to Kerala including hundreds of nurses, has been aggravated by the airstrikes launched by a Saudi-led coalition of 10 countries last week. The UN has evacuated all personnel from Yemen on Saturday. However, the MEA spokesperson said the Indian embassy in Sana’a will not shut down “as long as any Indian nationals require assistance in Yemen.”