India assists Americans evacuating Yemen in wake of weak State Department response
Private groups have opened StuckInYemen.com to help trapped relatives.
One has to ask, what exactly is going on at the US State Department?
We have been following the deterioration of Yemen for months. Despite the obvious dangers to American citizens within this country, I guess our bureaucrats decided they really didn’t need an evacuation plan.
Fortunately, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government seem to be more on top of the situation.
The US, besides economically developed France, Germany and Sweden, besides 22 nations have sought India’s assistance to evacuate its citizens from violence hit Yemen.
An US government travel advisory for Yemen pointed out that India would offer its assistance to evacuate American citizens from Sanna to Djibouti. The US citizens have been advised to contact Indian diplomats in Embassy at Sanna for assistance for evacuation either by boat or air.
This is significant considering the fact that the US has strong naval presence as well as deployment of its Air Force in West Asia. France also has presence of its Navy in the region to counter piracy.
Yes…because economically developed does not equate to common sense developed. Of course, in India’s case, it seems to be making greater progress with economic growth than our country, too.
India also took the time to save its own citizens, as well.
India used small boats this weekend to ferry some of its citizens to a naval destroyer anchored near Aden, Yemen, as an operation to evacuate about 4,000 Indians from Yemen’s war zone entered a difficult phase.
…“It’s been a hard task, and as the situation worsens, the time available to us lessens,” he said. “Difficult situations now are becoming more difficult as time passes.”
Several thousand Indian women work as nurses in Yemen, and many have been reluctant to leave, despite the intensifying conflict, because their families are so heavily dependent on their remittances.
NDTV has the following video report:
Other groups, who have relatives trapped amid the chaos, have created a website: StuckInYemen.com
The website was initially designed to contact Yemeni-Americans, but is open to all U.S. citizens.
StuckInYemen.com was created after the advocacy groups began hearing from mostly Yemeni-American citizens who reportedly were being told by the U.S. State Department that there are currently no evacuation plans for Yemen.
…”We’re hearing from people that are stuck all over the country,” says Zahra Billoo, executive director of Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Within the past week, she says, there have been more than 200 entries on the website from people seeking help.
The U.S. State Department suspended its operations in Yemen on Feb. 11. Currently, there are no plans to evacuate U.S. citizens from Yemen, according to the State Department website. It states:
“There are no plans for a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of U.S. citizens at this time. We encourage all U.S. citizens to shelter in a secure location until they are able to depart safely. U.S. citizens wishing to depart should do so via commercial transportation options when they become available. Keep vital records and travel documents close at hand; U.S. citizens should be prepared to depart at a moment’s notice. The airports are currently closed, but may open unexpectedly; other unforeseen opportunities to depart may also suddenly arise.”
State Department spokesperson Marie Harf says American citizens should sign up on the department’s website, and that they will be alerted when there is an opportunity to leave Yemen.
Given the myriad of problems with Obamacare websites, I know which page I would use if I were in Yemen.
Strike that…I love Bollywood and chai tea, so I would call the Indians.
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Comments
Anyone who works for this country overseas had better plan their own departure, if needed. This incompetent administration doesn’t care what happens to American citizens.
Now, now. That all depends…
If you are deserter who has managed to get several of your fellow soldiers killed, you can count on the Obami. “No man left behind” and all that.
If you’re a meme schlub of an innocent American earning an honest living, you are TOAST.
It is probably not “incompetence”. The administration seems to prefer putting Americans at risk, and they seem to try to capitalize on a bad situation when bad things happen. If you have seen any Youtube videos that the administration wouldn’t like, they would appreciate the tip.
So – rather than have egg on its’ face, the DoS will leave American citizens in harms way.
Let me restate: They’ll let American citizens DIE or be kidnapped, raped, and / or tortured, rather than commit forces (and it would be on the news) and be shown to have failed in Yemen.
So, basically what they did in Benghazi, but on a larger scale.
State Department? Yemen is an active theater. This is the latest failure of the Abortionist in Chief… I mean Commander in Chief. Perhaps it was the result of adequate Planning, or a Choice that the human assets were underperforming or inconvenient, and he elected to liquidate (i.e. abort) them so that he may follow his secular profits of wealth, pleasure, leisure, and narcissistic indulgence.
So how’s that anti-abortion constitutional amendment coming Mr. johnie one note?
I did not mention abortion in the context of human life from conception to around birth. Your inference lead you to a prejudiced conclusion.
There is already a Constitutional provision that recognizes equal protection for all of its named parties: “We the People” and “Posterity”. The fact that the Court overrode the Constitution to grant women an exclusive right to terminate wholly innocent human lives when a human life is uniquely vulnerable for light and casual causes reflects the progressive establishment of a libertine (i.e. amoral) Church in America. If people choose to deny science, and, in fact, a self-evident cause and effect process (i.e. human evolution), and to furthermore adopt a degenerate religion (i.e. moral philosophy), then neither a judicial correction nor legal enforcement will be possible, and we will be consigned to accept a debasement of human life and its predictable consequences.
Combining unrelated issues is a good way to lose on both issues.
They are hardly unrelated. The ostensible demonstration of incompetence, or hiding a motive to change the post-WW II order in the Middle East, is a reflection of his pro-choice or selective principles.
I am not combining or conflating issues, but rather appropriating language and establishing correlations in unconventional contexts. Specifically to secure the original, unadulterated meaning of the terms that have been captured for leverage in political, social, moral, scientific, and cultural conflicts.
But, yeah, I may overdo it when the mood is right.
The Department of State has been acting hapless for years. When the situation got rough in Iraq, State declared it too dangerous, and withdrew. The US military subsequently took over the functions of the State Department, even to the extent of growing its own anthropologists. When the military wanted to bring Iraqi translators and their families home with them, they had to fight State to do it.
I strongly suspect that State has become a dumping ground for disfavored political appointees, none of whom know the first thing about running a Department. It probably has the same issues as the Secret Service.
They aren’t acting.
This administration should be tried for dereliction of duty.
Not a rhetorical question:
Which would be more dangerous, the incompetent Obama we have now, or a totally competent and effective Obama holding the same views, pursuing the same agenda?
Well a truly competent Obama would leave a lot of weapons behind, like Ghadaffi’s armory with a thousand shoulder fired missiles that can take down airliners, or Yemen’s weapon payload we lost as Obama contradicted the military “suggestions”, or Iran’s nuclear program, or America’s health care program, or our border patrol, or … sheeesh.
But I don’t view Obama as totally competent and effective, he seems more like a submissive, with Jarrett or others pulling the strings. The agenda and narrative are not designed by these boobs … they are just the instruments. As I see it.
“…or a totally competent and effective Obama holding the same views, pursuing the same agenda?”
An incompetent obama would get hammered by his own advisors, in and out of the “party”, and at least get his wording right.
After 6 years of this, it doesn’t really require more evidence that this president hates this country at best, and is an outright enemy at worst. The second option includes the first.
Of course Obama is incompetent and accordingly has assembled an incompetent team. Naturally, folks would prefer a competent president over an incompetent one. I was musing over whether it would be more or less dangerous for our country if Obama had been a competent, though ultra-liberal, president and had gotten his way on nearly everything he worked on. Yikes. Possibly worse.
India is just doing one of those jobs that “Americans” won’t do.
Meanwhile, we are selling combat aircraft to their enemy, Pakistan.
Why would the Obama administration not deploy at least some of our considerable military assets in the region to evacuate Americans from this collapsing country?
I can’t help but suspect that Obama administration is trying to downplay the disastrous situation in Yemen, especially after Josh Ernest persistently defended Obama’s claim that Yemen is a success. It is difficult to imagine television footage that would more strongly refute Obama than Marines rescuing fleeing Americans.
We have Naval/Marine forces deployed off Yemen. Based on input from Foggy Bottom, we refused to use them to pull out our Marines.
Like Sisi in Egypt, Modi could be one of our strongest new allies at a time we are in desperate need of them.
I hope their interactions with Republicans help them cope with the depredations coming over the next 652 days. God willing, help is on the way.
That said, thanks, India! Some of us won’t forget this.
Modi would be a fool to ally with us at this time. At the best of times, we are an unreliable ally. Under Zerobama, he would be nothing but a knife target.
To offer a note of moderation to the outrage:
There are a number of Yemeni nationals who have US green cards and even dual citizenship. The US Consul in Sana’a once told me that these folks numbered in the thousands. He said it was amazing how many social security checks are mailed to Yemen. The US responsibilities toward these folks is not clear.
Dit.. dit.. dit.. dit.. this just in:
AP/NY: UN officals report that India is helping Americans to escape from Yemen, but is refusing to release them once safely out of the beseiged country. They are reportedly kidnapping Americans and returning them to India where they are being forced to serve as Call Center Customer Service Representatives at Indian companies operating under contracts with large American corporations.