Kuwait Evacuation

Kuwait Evacuation

Introduction

On 2nd August, Iraqi Armed Forces under the leadership of Saddam Hussain, invaded Kuwait. Iraq kept Kuwait under their control for over seven months. During this period, the United Nations had sent a notice to the Iraqi Government to revoke the command on Kuwait and go back, but they kept refusing. So after the last deadline given by the United Nations, they formed a United Nations authorised coalition of forces led by the United States carried out military intervention and forced Iraq to leave the command and go back. 

Reason for the Invasion of Kuwait

There were several reasons for this attack. Which one is the correct reason is a mystery. In early 1990, Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi petroleum by slant drilling in their land. One reason was that Iraq wanted to waive the debt of US$ 14 Billion, which was raised from Kuwait for financing the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. Iraq was constantly pressuring Kuwait for producing less amount of petroleum so their petroleum would be sold on a high price. After such a cruel act by Iraq, all the countries were shocked. The situations in Kuwait were getting worst every day. Many nations had expected a war between the Gulf countries because of past quarrels. So it became an important topic to get Indian people out of Kuwait. Over 1,00,000 Indians were staying in Kuwait with food or not even five days. In such a case, India came into the frame. But there were many hurdles because the number of evacuees was a lot. No country had ever worked with such an incident. In such an occurrence, a country always chose the sea route for evacuation. Due to implementation of the embargo on Iraq by the UN, all the sea routes to Kuwait was shut down. It was the only medium to send supplies to Iraq. So after verifying all the parameters, the Indian Government sent an advisory to the Indian citizens in Kuwait to reach Amman or Jordan and leave Kuwait as soon as possible. From there, India was going to airlift people and get them back to India. 

But, again, there was another impediment over here. Most people didn't have their passports and relevant document so verifying the person's nationality was not possible. Indian Government didn't lose the hope and arranged temporary passports to them. Indian Ministry of External Affairs in collaboration with Air India, Indian Airlines and Indian Air Force started the process of airlifting the evacuees. The first flight of Air India flew on 18th August 1990. The operation ended on 20th October 1990 when the last plane evacuating Indian citizens flew from Jordan. The Air India took 63 days to evacuate 1,11,711 people from Jordan and Amman to Bombay in 488 special flights. Each flight had to travel a distance of 4,117 km one way. Hundreds of vehicles were used for travelling such a big crowd from Kuwait to Jordan. 

Conclusion 

This evacuation was considered as the most massive evacuation in the world. Evacuating such a big crowd gave Air India, an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most people evacuated by a civil airliner. Not only the Indian Government helped this process, but people like Mathunny Mathews, Harbhajan Singh Vedi, Abey Varicad, V. K. Warrier, Ali Hussain played a significant role in volunteering and managing all the things for the crowd in Kuwait. No one would ever forget such an incident in their life.