 Welcome to Indian Diplomacy's second Google Hangout. Today, we have gathered to discuss one of the most important activities, not only of the Ministry of External Affairs, but of the entire government when it comes to our citizens living and working abroad. In the recent past, there have been several occasions when our citizens in foreign lands have faced the threat of violence or large-scale disturbances due to conflict situations. These are the instances where the Ministry of External Affairs has stepped in proactively to equate our citizens from conflict zones. Till now, the biggest such evacuation was from Kuwait in 1990 before the first Gulf War. I am sure many of you would have seen the film Airlift, which is based on this effort. Unfortunately, the film has projected an image of the Ministry which is completely at variance with reality. So, we thought, therefore, we would speak to some of the actual participants in that mammoth exercise to bring out the true facts. Moreover, MEA's evacuation efforts did not begin or end with Kuwait. In the recent past, we have had evacuations from a number of situations. From Lebanon in 2006, in Operation Sukhun. From Libya in 2011, in Operation Safe Homecoming. From Ukraine in 2014. From Libya in Iraq also in 2014. And most recently from Yemen in 2015 in Operation Rahat. Before we go to our panel, let us take a look at some scenes from Operation Rahat. National requests from 33 countries. But we evacuated national of 48 countries including America, England, France, Germany, Australia. In all, we evacuated 4,474 people of India and 1,920 foreign nationals. Operation Rahat was a very challenging cooperation. The land route was blocked. The airspace of Yemen was declared as no flying zone and there were pirates in the sea. Minister of State for External Affairs, General V.K. Singh was given the charge of personally overseeing the rescue and evacuation of a large number of people. Without losing time, General V.K. Singh visited Sana five times. He camped at Djibouti to personally oversee the evacuation work, actively coordinated with the officials, spoke to the rescued people and assured them that the government would ensure that all of them will reach their homes safely. Get your formalities completed, move, vacate the ship, go to the other ship so that you can eat out there and relax out there. Tomorrow you will be taken by vehicles to the airport and put into the aircraft to go back to India. Just as the government managed to rescue and revive the prematurely born five-day-old child who was brought in an incubator, the Indian effort seemed to provide an incubator-like protection to all those who were rescued and brought back to safety. Indeed, it was Operation Rahat which brought relief not only to the evacuees, but also to those who worked round the clock to save precious human lives. Thus people who have been on the ground coordinating these challenging evacuation efforts. I welcome Ambassador KP Fabian who was the Joint Secretary Gulf and oversaw the operation that evacuated 170,000 Indians from Kuwait. To talk about the same evacuation, we have with us Ambassador RP Singh who was posted in Kuwait at the time of the Gulf War and in fact who was the last person to leave once the evacuation efforts were complete. I also welcome Ambassador Nencha Lovam, our Ambassador in Jakarta, Indonesia who was coordinating our efforts for the evacuation from Lebanon in 2006 and who was awarded the Prime Minister's Award for Excellence in Public Administration. We also have the present Joint Secretary Gulf, Shreem Ridhul Kumar who has played a key role in several evacuations from the Gulf region. We are also joined by Captain D.K. Sharma, the spokesperson and PRO of the Indian Navy who played a critical role in the recent evacuation of Indians and nationals from 48 countries from Yemen. Lastly we also have a young IFS officer, John Mai who was at the forefront during the evacuation from Yemen and who joins us today from Gawahati. Logistically and also from a man management perspective, an evacuation is a lot of hard work for the officials both in missions as well as in headquarters. It requires the officials to ensure airspace clearance, leasing with countries at war to have a break in hostilities, getting clearances to move people through multiple locations to ensure their safety. In all of these factors such as their differing health requirements also have to be borne in mind. It is important that the needs of every individual are fulfilled. The whole government machinery works in synchronization. Ministry of External Affairs, the Defence Forces, Air India, State Bhavans all coordinate to ensure that every individual is cared for. So let us begin with the Kuwait evacuation because that has attracted quite a bit of attention due to the film Air Lift. Ambassador Arpi Singh, I don't know whether you have seen the movie or not, but it depicts the embassy clearing out at the first sign of trouble from Kuwait. How different was your actual experience on the ground? Thank you because I have seen this picture and the real story is that the embassy came to know about the invasion at about 3.30, 4 o'clock in the morning. It was probably around 6.30 here and I got a call from Ambassador Arun Budhiraja saying that do you know something has happened and so frankly I got up and he said he is going to speak to the joint secretary Gulf and then he spoke to Ambassador K. P. Fabian who was JS Gulf at that time and all of us then we went to embassy and normally it used to take about 10 to 8 minutes from my house, but on that day it took almost 45 minutes because on the way there were Iraqi soldiers because by that time they had entered and they were roaming in a round Kuwait. It is not true that the embassy people had run away. It is a fact that the embassy, Indian embassy was the only embassy which were working right from 2nd August of the invasion and up to 8th of January in Kuwait. We closed down the embassy only on 8th of course some other practical purposes. The embassy was not allowed to function because the Iraqi government had announced that Iraq is 19th province of Kuwait and therefore there cannot be any diplomats here, there cannot be ambassador here and if they want to move they are welcome to go to Baghdad. But this was our government decision that we have not recognized the invasion on Kuwait because it is a sovereign country even today and therefore after our minister of external affairs accompanied by the additional secretary Paul that is ambassador IP Khosla, ambassador K. P. Fabian and ambassador K. N. Bakhti in Baghdad. They met Saddam Hussain and they requested him that the Indian embassy should be allowed to function because we have a large Indian community here which has to be repatriated and it is going to take a not days not weeks but the number of months and which was true. After a lot of discussions with the Saddam Hussain our delegation decided that as desired by Saddam Hussain we can move for the diplomats the diplomatic staff to Basra that is about 180 kilometer from Kuwait and the non-diplomatic staff can stay back in Kuwait and can function from somewhere else than the embassy. So we requested that well that is all right but we would like to have some something that our at least our diplomatic staff can enter the embassy and we would like to send our diplomats from Basra to Kuwait from time to time to help our Indian community and also our non-diplomatic staff in preparing the travel documents because the reason was that the Kuwaitis have taken away all the passports from the Indian population who were working in their various places. They like maids, drivers and other community and they didn't have travel documents. At that point of time we had about 170,000 people Indian people from in Kuwait out of which about 20,000 were away on vacation because the schools were closed for summer vacation. So we had in fact in real sense about 150,000 Indians out of which about 120,000 had no travel documents that they can leave Kuwait without any problem. Now when the the picture shows that there was nobody in the Indian embassy and he was looking for the ambassador and other diplomatic staff it was mentioned that well they have gone away which which is absolutely wrong it is it is not true because at that point of time everybody was in Kuwait and we were functioning from the embassy itself and of course the Indian population Indian leaders were also with us in in in the embassy and also in a in Indian school and you know some other places where from where we were working. Now after couple of days Iraqis they announced that the all the embassies foreign embassies including their ambassadors will have to vacate Kuwait by 23rd August 1990 and as decided in Baghdad by our external clear minister we also moved to Basra but not to join our consulate because we had our consulate also and Mr. Gurg one RS Gurg was the consul general there and the probably the idea was that we can go and function from the consulate but that also we didn't do the Indian government our government had decided that we should not to be seen a part of the consulate because then in that case we are working there a diplomatic staff of India in Baghdad sorry in Basra and that we didn't want to do so what we did we have we established our office in certain hotel in in Basra which was destroyed let me tell you on 16th January itself and we were staying there right up to 10th of January 1991. Now we used to send our diplomatic staff from Basra to Kuwait covering 180 sorry 180 kilometer from Basra to Kuwait to help our Indian community and also our staff in preparing the travel documents. Now that used to take you'll be surprised in normal course 180 kilometers should should not have taken more than two hours but we used to take at least five to six hours because they are on the way their minds and the the the Iraqi soldiers they were all around and they they used to check thoroughly because they said nobody is a diplomat here now and therefore you are like anybody else but fortunately for for us for Indians whether they're they're normal people or Indian diplomats they had given that kind of respect to us and they wouldn't they wouldn't touch us so much like any other people any other Iraq sorry the the any other foreigners or Kuwaitis so they didn't allow us to in in staying in Kuwait for more than a night so what we did two people used to go they will stay one night there and that was at the ambassadors residence because there we had kept everything whatever baggage or whatever the other assets were there we had just stored in the ambassador residence and we used to go there and function from there at night and also in daytime we used to go to embassy and used to go there or an hour or so or sometimes even more because by that time we had established the ham radio because let me tell you if if in the picture it is shown that's the the the actor or the producer is is talking to the ministry on telephone which is absolutely wrong because there was no telephone international telephone connection for months well let's not talk of only on 2nd august this was this was not there for months so and also the electricity was cut off and only the local telephone were operating we could talk to our our diplomats our other non-diplomatic staff or anybody uh indian community and international telephone calls were not allowed okay now what we did now from 2nd august to 9th august we had unfortunately no connection with the ministry except of course it is not true that we were absolutely cut off because we used to send we were able to send our messages from Baghdad and we used to send somebody to Baghdad and deliver that message to our ambassador then he will see that it is phone to ministry and the response was will also come to Baghdad which they will deliver it to us that continues for about a week and after that the ham radio comes now then we used to take or talk almost daily on ham radio with the joint secretary gulf with the special coordination joint secretary mr harish dobra and also with mr mr hair who was joint secretary uh overseas indians and in addition to that we used to talk some other people also giving a clear picture what is happening in Kuwait about the missing people then so on so forth now thank you ambassador i think you have really painted a very comprehensive picture of the challenges that you face working in that environment when iraq had invaded kuwait and the kinds of difficulties that you had to face even through basic communications let alone you know mobilizing this 170 000 indians or 150 000 ambassador fabian you were the joint secretary gulf at that time and the bulk of the political coordination that took place which resulted in the evacuation safe evacuation of our indians happened at your end what are your experiences of what actually happened and how you put together this massive coordination effort way back in the 1990s thank you as uh ambassador our fishing has pointed out our embassy in Kuwait was very alert if they called me at 3 30 to wait time in the morning it shows that they were not sleeping we had two concerns when we heard of the invasion one was of course the safety and security of our population our people there and connected with that but also equally important that there should be no military intervention they should not be a big war if there is a big war you can spread from Kuwait to elsewhere in the region and you know how many millions of our people were there and therefore the first thing which we did was we came out with a statement you know saying that what iraq did was wrong and that iraq should be draw there are Kuwait's sovereignty should be re-established and foreign minister I.K. Gujarat he sat out on a 42 he went and met Jim Baker secretary of state the United States and others so also the UN secretary general Perez Tecora now foreign minister came to the conclusion very early that the United States was determined to hurry up on it and therefore it was decided that we had to evacuate our people and then as already pointed out by ambassador we went to iraq now at this end what we did was to simplify matters we both constituted a subcommittee of the cabinet and that was chaired by EAM that is I.K. Gujarat and we in the guard division reacted as the secretary so that we were fully so that we were able to get things done and such was the smoothness of the arrangement that if I got a call from Erynda in Amman saying that well 800 well those days you know we had to speak very briefly that means there were 800 passengers I just lifted up the racks I told secretary of aviation 800 he said okay that means he would send the required number of a Brahmin plane immediately no questions asked and so that was one part of it it was very very smooth then we also had to sort of you know take care of the you know our people had lost their jobs they had lost those who were having shops or other establishments that lost their wealth so we also took up that matter at the United Nations and over a period of time it took a little time but our people have compensated now even after the evacuation has started we continued with our efforts for peaceful resolution but unfortunately we failed and basically we also not only we also send the food a ship a lot of food to Kuwait and I remember you know the Vietnamese were there and they were also short of food we shared that with them and on that famous flight of I.K. Gujarat well we had at one point we had been approached by Pakistani air hostesses they were held up there and we had agreed to bring them back to India but then somehow before we were about to leave they called me to say that no they cannot come probably you know somebody from their side the government or whosoever it is embassy must have told them not to come with us but we assisted also other nationals so on the whole looking back we can say that the vast mechanism of government of India acted with commendable sort of efficiency and it is not only the government of India it was a team work between the government and the civil society especially the community in Kuwait they did tremendous work in cooperation with embassy so on the whole I think we have done very well thank you ambassador Fabian it's really fascinating to hear about such a massive evacuation taking place in 1990 when telecommunications and other infrastructure was not as well developed as it is today but even then now we have with us Ridul Kumar who's joint secretary currently the joint secretary Gulf and who has also played a very critical role in the several evacuations from the Gulf region. Ridul tell us a little bit about Operation Rahat because that is the most recent evacuation that we have conducted in 2015 and we evacuated nearly 5000 Indian nationals and close to 2000 foreign nationals I believe that was also a very very challenging task because it involved a lot of coordination and a lot of political you know back channel communications also tell us a little bit about how you manage Operation Rahat. Thank you Vikas, thank you for briefing me about the matter on Yemen. Yemen Operation Rahat was an unqualified success not only for India the country but also for our Ministry of National Affairs. It proved our immense commitment to the safety and security of our nationals abroad as also our commitment to the safety and security of other nationals in the largest spirit of us we have put to good term but as you rightly pointed out in the beginning that Yemen Kuwait was not the only operation there were operations afterwards in my last four years of working as joint sector in the Gulf Division we have faced four challenges major challenges two were regarding evacuation but there were other two in which Indian nationals were assisted in Gulf countries. 2013 we had about 150,000 Indians who came out of Saudi Arabia through the assistance of our embassy and with direct coordination with the Gulf Division this was one of the biggest operations between the last four five years soon afterwards we had about 6000 people coming out of Iraq 7000 in fact and that happened when ISIS took over in June 2014 a large threat of Iraqi territory we had before that conducted an operation in which 6000 Indian nationals were brought out because of the implementation of local laws in that country and then came Yemen Yemen was definitely an exercise in itself you would see that we were put to a very difficult test and you cannot come out of flying colors out of a difficult test if you have not well prepared yourself I must tell you that we were watching the situation in Yemen in a very close range for the last one year before the actual incident took place in September 2014 the Houthis took over Sana and there were very clear indications that Yemen is going to Iraq there may be a civil war there may be difficulties for our nationals there and then point in time we were in regular contact with our mission in Sana and we had started doing our ground work the previous operation in Iraq was a good learning example for us and that helped us in preparing well for Yemen in January when President Hadi Hadi's position was weakened by the Houthi people taking over Sana completely we were the first ones to have realized that you would be surprised because that on 19th of January anybody any foreign country including the western countries issued an advisory for their nationals to evacuate Yemen we had done that we didn't stop at that we continued following the situation and we had sent one team of ME and MHE officials primarily to see three aspects of our situation there one was how we can secure our people working in the embassy secondly how we can secure Indian nationals living in Yemen and thirdly if the situation worsens what will happen to our strategic interest in that region so to look after all these three aspects we sent that team and that team came out with very clear recommendations this happened from six to thirteenth of March you would be surprised again that we were actually forcing what was happening in Yemen on 25th of March the the entire thing erupted and Yemen came into attack by Saudi forces by that time we had mobilized all our sources we had already created a standing group under the guidance of honorable prime minister and it was done in July 2013 and that group included all the major stakeholders all the ministries importantly 12 key repairs from the ministry of external affairs so they were all a part of that group and that group was keeping much before the actual operation started so we were very well prepared in terms of operationalizing what we had to do and you could see that not only this operation involved ME but in in involved air India it involved ministry of defense it involved our maybe it involved our ministry of shipping on 26th of March when the the Yemen operation was started by us at that point in time ours was the only embassy present in center most of the other embassy that's closed all by that so obviously we remained the only point of contact for not only Indian people but also for other nationalities and when you see the amount of numbers of people we have brought out it is not only Indians but a very large number of foreigners are also evacuated and these foreigners came out not only from countries which are our neighboring but from B5 countries also Americans evacuated we evacuated UK nationals we evacuated French we evacuated Russians so all those people were brought in brought out by us if you look at the the entire planning if you look at the entire quantum of exercise and if you look at the way the entire exercise was carried out to complete profession you would see that all the stakeholders did their job well the guidance was very clear we had very clear political leadership which guided us in the entire operation our external affairs minister called the Saudi foreign minister on 27th of March he again called him on 29th of March on 30th of March our prime minister spoke to King of Saudi Arabia these communications were important because you would see that this we were trying to equate people in the war night situation the there was naval blockade there was blockade in the air nobody could fly either the commercial aircrafts or this military aircrafts and without Saudi permission there was no possibility that he could either bring out our people through the sea route or through the air route if you look at the situation on the ground also our people were spread all over the place we had huge difficulties in terms of bringing people from different cities in Yemen to our place in Sanaa what we did was we coordinated our efforts because we realized that to bring out people from Sanaa directly to India were the impossible tasks because the air blockade so we decided that we should have Zibouti as our hub and once we have created Zibouti as our hub we requested the Saudi authorities to give us a air time which would allow our aircrafts to fly in from Zibouti to Sanaa which was about 30 minutes flying time bring our people in about half an hour load them up and bring them back in about half an hour so we were getting on an average two hours two and a half hours of that particular flying time you would be surprised that this whole operation was personally supervised in Sanaa and Zibouti by our honorable minister of state for external affairs Dr. Jannar B. K. Singh and under his guidance this entire operation became a very smooth exercise I would recall one very interesting incident which he recalled to us he said that in one of the he actually sat in every flight which moved from Zibouti to Sanaa and bringing our people back in one of the flights because of the air time given to us the air window given to us he realized that they were Saudi fighter planes which were almost accompanying our flight and it gave us a huge hugely scary moment so it was not a very easy task for us to do if you again look at the operations in in the seaport the seaports were under heavy shelling they were never broken and we had to request the Saudi authorities and the other coalition partners to allow us our planes to allow our ships to move in that from that area so it is very easy to see that when extraordinary circumstances come about we have individual acts of heroism when you have when you have an extraordinary task like operation in Kuwait in 1990 when you have difficulties in Yemen which is in war zone when you have difficulties in Iraq which is almost run over by terrorists and most deadly terrorists then this cannot be done by individuals there has to be a huge effort between the states between the state agencies there has to be coordination within the state agencies as also between states and it is the the goodwill of India in the entire region that we can persuade Saudi Arab we can persuade the warring factions in Yemen to assist us in bringing our people out and because there was no presence of the foreign embassies also you can see that we brought in brought out about 1900 more than 1900 people from 48 nationalities so that way this operation was a huge success it got us international recognition in terms of our credentials as a provider of humanitarian assistance in cases of problems arising any place in the globe and I think that it very clearly demonstrates along with our operations in Iraq our operations in Kuwait earlier that there has to be an appreciation and understanding of war like situation and how how hazardous it is it is for people to be brought out under those circumstances. No thank you very much Mr. Rizal I think you have given a very comprehensive picture of the tremendous coordination both abroad and in India that we had to do to ensure the safe return of our Indian nationals as well as foreign nationals from war on Yemen but before we return back to Operation Raha let us focus on Operation Sukhum which took place as you know in 2006 from Lebanon and the person on the ground was Ambassador Nencha Rovam who was then our ambassador to Lebanon she's now currently our ambassador to Indonesia and she's joining us from Jakarta Nencha we'd be very happy to listen to your insights on how you managed to coordinate this very significant operation Operation Sukhum from Lebanon. Thank you Vikas I should start by saying that every evacuation is different the nature of the crisis was very different from what it was in Kuwait in the case of Lebanon it was the bombing of the Hezbollah by the Israeli defense forces that started the war basically from one day to the next you found yourself in the middle of war and so you had to think on your feet how to reach out to the people who you want to help they you know in the case of Lebanon these are all literate or semi-literate or illiterate workers were spread out all over the country most of them were not registered with the embassy because many of them came illegally and so we had to devise ways to reach out to them in the midst of all the bombing and the shelling by activating all the contacts we had including the Gurdwara the temples the associations representing all the various states and find out from them in what state they were would they like to be evacuated that's how things started we reached out to them and the embassy and yes of course we were a very small mission apart from me there were three but two other diplomats and eight staff members including the security guards and that was all the resources we had so we had to put everyone many of these Indian nationals didn't have their papers in order some had no passport some had no work permits so different kinds of irregularity in their documents so even before we could think of evacuating them they had to deal with their paperwork and for that we had to work very closely with this with the country with the Lebanese authorities who in the midst of all that they were going through were very very helpful they they were very understanding and I think one of the victories we scored was that we managed to regularize the papers without paying a cent because these were poor people who couldn't afford to pay the fines and more so because many of them had their wages locked up with with their employers and in fact because of that many of them in spite of the situation were not clear whether they would be evacuated or not because they didn't want to leave their hard-earned money behind so these were all the various issues we had to deal with no really fascinating you know how a three-member mission managed to evacuate so many Indians from Lebanon way back in 2006 really creditable and perhaps that's the main reason why you were given that award also by the Prime Minister I think very well deserved let me now return back to Operation Rahat and we are privileged to have with us Captain D.K. Sharma who's the spokesperson of the Indian Navy and the Indian Navy as we all know played a very significant part in Operation Rahat. Tell us what were the logistics involved in creating these air bridges and sea bridges to evacuate these Indians and foreigners from Yemen? Thank you Vikas I was just waiting for that now since we have spoken about all the diplomacy and all the groundwork which was done let me tell you let's come down a very micro thing now a ship which has been now ordered all the the ME has done the job the embassies on the standby the people have been mustered now you just imagine a ship for example in Op Rahat Ines Sumitra which was out for the last 30 days she was doing an anti-piracy patrol in the Gulf of Aden she is on a different mission but that is the beauty of a naval ship whether it is you know we have four roles the military role the constabulary the diplomatic role and the benign role so this duty which came or the directive which came from the government of India that you have to go in and now start the evacuation so the role the role reversal was there the ship had to be changed from it was carrying out anti-piracy role it had to be changed into now providing relief and sucker it had to go in in uncharted waters we were going into a place which has strife tone nobody has gone there the pilotage facilities are not there the port control is not there there is no support now you are going into a dead zone a blind zone in which now you can imagine a 40 year old commanding officer with his 180 people is now being interested to go in pick up 340 people who are waiting who are also displaced they are badly you know mentally disturbed that they are leaving their places behind them they are coming out and going where they don't know this gentleman Ina Sumitra when she made her first approach she was told on the 30th on the 30th night when she entered Aden believe you me it was under fire as Mr. Mridul has told absolutely under fire this he had now four duties if you see safety and security of the ship which is going as an ambassador of the country safety and security of the evacuees then the medical help to be given you don't know what kind of state the people are coming in they were pregnant ladies the latest stages of pregnancy and see the the mental state of the patient the people with high blood pressure they don't know that while coming up you know somebody can develop some kind of and we have only one medical officer and then the logistics how to make them comfortable we do not as a warship the first evacuation was 349 Indian person which had children which had women which had elderly people so they had to be brought in they were carrying their luggage documents had to be checked in that kind of a scenario where you have no time so what is the bona fide of that man or the lady or the gentleman whether he belongs whatever documents he is producing are correct or not so the onus is to pick him up by doing some kind of preliminary checks and then going and we move them out overnight sorties and then the any role comes in when Djibouti the immigration and all everything was done on that side and during these things you know I must also tell you at this point in time when you are going into a harbor and a situation is like this and the merchant marine has not come in over there for the last two three four five weeks because as he's telling you do not know where a sunken boat is there or what is there and if a ship goes and hits believe you that is a crisis for the ship itself so this is how the things were done one after the other and then we establish the because the sanaya field was not available because air India could not land over there Indian air force also pooled in their assets the sea 17s were there at Djibouti so a kind of a sea bridge was established between the three ports Alhudaida on one side Aden in the center and Asher on the on the on the eastern side and the ships in between when Sumitra was doing two major warships that is Anas Mumbai and Anas Tarkash were diverted from Bombay and again the planning which was happening which Mr. Mrdul and Vikas told you that it all started a few weeks back that we were getting ready for all this so we had the logistics over there the medical breaks the HADR breaks the communication everything was being carried on Mumbai and Tarkash and also we had two vessels from the SCI MV corals and one more Kabrati which were all moved as a convoy these two ships became a host hotel ship in Djibouti so that the people can come and rest over there and then the next bridge was the sea 17 gets the air India gets all the navy gets people from Yemen to Djibouti and from Djibouti either it was the sea 17 which goes to Bombay and then goes to Kochi so this is how the bridge the air bridges were established and the sea bridge was continuously established and then we pulled out almost through the sea bridge 3000 plus people were taken out with many nationalities because you know in these kind of situations there's no cascade color nationality the order was to just take the people out bring them safe and i believe one of the ships was even awarded three ships all the three ships the first ship Sumitra had the sea has been awarded with the Shorichakra and the other two seos have been given Nassana metal gill entry it was recognized by the government of India and this is how it was done in unison with all the agencies plugged in at all times absolutely i think that's what current captain Dikesh Irma has brought out how the entire government machinery worked in perfect synchronization to ensure the safety and security of all our Indian nationals and the foreign guests that we secured out of Yemen let me now turn to John May a young IFS diplomat who was on the ground in Yemen you know at the time of operation Rahat i think he was based in Djibouti John can you hear us sir tell us you know as a young IFS officer you know doing your first evacuation what what were the kind of experiences you had what were the kind of you know people that you met people who are coming out of distress situations how did you cater to them sir briefly the first challenge that we faced when we reached there was to run a 24-7 control room based in Djibouti which we were able to do from the day first when we reached secondly then we have to do the planning every day every day after the evacuation we did a planning which was led by the MOS generally we kept saying every evening every night we did rather but the the most unfortunate part to which we were able to add up later was that the thing changes every day there's no planning which was executed the next day the way we planned it was always a new thing we had to improvise on the ground thirdly that we faced being in Djibouti was that once people were out of Yemen when they reached Djibouti the problem that we faced in Djibouti was the continuation of the paperwork that we faced the problem of travel documents sorting it out and then there was a huge language gap with the people in Djibouti with the officers which delayed the procedures the paperwork the documents the formalities there then after moving people from the dock from the port to the air bases to the Djibouti airport was a huge task there was a problem with the transportation every day there was a new situation despite this I I I believe when I came back after 10 days from Djibouti I believe I came back as a thinking that people have gone back safely to their respective homes thank you sir how did you manage the food situation the food food food was a situation that we have we were the food and the water the the honorary council there and and we had a very few Indian origin Indian citizen base in Djibouti that was another problem I think Captain D.K. Sharma was one sir during this time when we had two hotel ships over there correct so they were loaded from the coach in and also one warship used to be there in Djibouti to take care of all this and you can well imagine that with the civilians there was no timings the galleys or the kitchens of all the ships were running 24-7 because we had children milk required you know the elderly people with medicines and all these things that is how it was managed great I think now it's time to open up the debate I'm sure there are lots of people watching us on the Google hangout and if there are questions which we can take from others who are listening to us and are curious about how the MEA coordinates these massive evacuation exercise with other government department then this is your chance to ask us those questions hi am I audible yes I can hear you okay good evening I'm shagun and I'm calling from Delhi yes shagun what's your question so my question is here for mr for ambassador are we saying yes where it comes in two parts so we know that the LF movie it depicted Akshay Kumar who rescued the entire in the rescued all the Indians from Kuwait so would you say that this is completely untrue and if yes what was the role of the Indian community during the evacuation good point okay now let me tell you on 1st august 1990 in the picture it is shown that they are dancing and drinking and drinking and cabaret dance etc they were all prohibited in Kuwait so I really don't know how they have done this number two on 2nd august when Akshay Kumar talks to ministry there are no telephone connection we don't know how he can talk to the ministry number three when he goes to the Indian embassy it is shown that the embassy has deserted and the ambassador and other diplomats and staff has gone away which is absolutely wrong let me tell you let me clarify certain things the Indian embassy played a very important important role in association with the Indian community there in Indian community I can name some of them and one was mr Matthews Sonny Matthews who was general manager of Toyota company in Kuwait and one was HS Vedic who was very close to his residence was very close to our embassy there and mr Abraham and one KTB Menon who had a house in Salmiya in Kuwait and but at that point of time he was in London because he had a house in London also mr KTB Menon had said that you know you can evacuate all the Indians and I can pay for them but that his request was not accepted by us and what we did that with the help of the Indian community leaders we established four committee one was evacuation committee the other one was transport committee then relief committee and the health committee and with that we were functioning the the food stuff it came through a ship which was not only distributed to the Indians who were in need but also to other countries including Bangladesh Sri Lanka and Pakistan and even other foreigners who came we gave them whether it was rice whether it was tea coffee sugar etc etc now what we did we had a committee of transport committee and evacuation committee it started sometime in early September and it took more than two months to send those people 120,000 people from Kuwait to Jordan the distance was 1900 kilometer we will send them by buses at one time I have seen myself in fact I was there we sent 110 buses in one day sending 5000 people and this exercise continued right up to end of October early November when we when when we have sent all of the Indians except seven to eight thousand people who didn't really want to go in fact we had a meeting with them on 8th of January 1991 asking them that were they telling them war is a minute and if you stay here maybe you will die and their answer was that whether we stay here or go to India we in any case we may have to die so better we would like to die here than going to India but so those were the only seven eight thousand people who remained there but with their own wishes but we still pressured them that we you must leave but they didn't leave and therefore we stopped that operation on 8th of January 1991 now so far the food is concerned there was no death of food after getting the ship there and all the committee leaders they worked day and night in sending those people by buses we collected from the Indian community in fact with the help of Mr. Sunny Matthews and others a lot of contribution by them so that the people who didn't have money they can they can also go and from Jordan of course it was by by air so there there was this continued for for for for two months more than two months and let me tell you that after this evacuation was over here we had left with the hey who's money which was contributed by the NRIs there and we deposited in the bank ambassador budhiraja and myself we deposited in a bank in Vasara for the prime minister's relief fund and that was the situation and in Baghdad when the community goes the Indians going by buses they were all helped by our embassy in Baghdad it is not true that the ambassador will just ask them I can offer you a glass of water and some biscuits they were they were fed with the good good food and and you know they they were sometimes staying for a day in Baghdad who couldn't afford now there is always a question is asked that how did you organize this sending these so huge people and what were the priorities our priority was after discussing with the various and we divided them in four five categories the number one was pregnant ladies then old old men and women who were very sick then we had the the students of 12th and 10th classes we also included them in the priority list and of course various nurses and others so that was our our priority on the basis of that so good I think ambassador R.P Singh has clarified very conclusively that yes the Indian community in Kuwait did play a very important role in coordinating with the Indian embassy there but at the same time it was definitely not a one-man effort as airlift price to portrait okay can we have one more question good evening good evening this is Sumit from Mumbai hi Sumit yeah hi uh my question is for Mr. Ridul Kumar and Captain Shatma yes one of the things that was shown in the movie airlift was that you guys were having issues of identifying international students during an evacuation and could you please tell us more about the process of verification and what are the technologies or database that we use and how were the passports issued when the citizens were had lost their passports and all their passports with their employer allow me to explain that the entire process yeah I mentioned in my presentation that we started identifying the problem about six seven months before it actually happened and by that time we had asked our ambassador Mr. Amrit Baboon in Sana that he should activate all the Indian community members through the local leaders so that we they have a database of how many people are working in different establishments Indian people and there should be ready list in all different cities so the six months from September till January February September 2014 till January 15 till January February 15 we compile the entire database we realize that there were over 4000 people of of India who were living in different parts of Yemen we provided them in case they didn't have passports we provided them emergency certificates it was a massive exercise but we did that exercise in anticipation that there may be a time when we need to evacuate them at a very short notice and thankfully because this entire exercise was done well in time we didn't have much of a problem but still you will find that lot of people who were not able to come up to us in terms of asking for either passports or emergency certificates they came up later when the situation became worse and lot of people landed up in Zibouti with no paperwork and we had to provide them papers emergency certificates on the spot in Zibouti so again it was a planned effort but obviously when you have a warlike situation even the best of the plans can go away but thankfully in our case it was a very small number of people who were given emergency certificates in Zibouti itself and to add to Mr. Mohanadu what happened to India and when they arrived I just tell you that what sir is saying that whatever was possible or could be done in the preparatory stages was done now comes the final moment of embarking and if you don't have the documents we had very clear instructions we had our own SOPs we had made sanitized zones on the ship which means that only people who have proper papers in place which was given to us by MEA that if so-and-so so-and-so things available they will go to this place ladies and children were only allowed inside the compartments of the ship rest everybody since the sortie was more than almost less than 24 hours and more than 12 hours so they were provided all the facilities on the upper deck and we had our security in place we were keeping an eye on everybody where the CCTVs were on and they were made comfortable but more or less the gentlemen the able-bodied people were not allowed to go inside the ship was not thrown open to the gentlemen only the ladies or the the procedures which were given by the MEA were followed I think it's already yeah it's already nearly an hour I think this was a very productive google hangout where we really were able to discuss in depth India's various evacuation efforts starting of course from the massive effort in Kuwait in 1990 and continuing all the way to Operation Rahat in 2015 I hope through this google hangout we have been able to give our viewers an insight into the tremendous coordination that goes into an evacuation effort how it's never a one-man show it's always a group effort it's always a team effort where team India comes together all the ministries whether it is a ministry of external affairs whether it's a ministry of home affairs ministry of defense our air force our navy our army they all come together in the national effort in a national endeavor to ensure the safety and security of our Indian nationals living and working abroad it's been a pleasure to interact with all of you I thank all my panelists for the insightful views on the various evacuation efforts and hope we do not have to see another evacuation anytime soon thank you all thank you thank you thank you