In 1990, Air India entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the most people evacuated by a civil airliner from the war zone. The operation was carried out during Persian Gulf War to evacuate Indian expatriates from Kuwait and Iraq. The 1990 airlift of Indians from Kuwait was carried out from 13 August to 11 October 1990 after the Invasion of Kuwait. The rescue operation, which lasted for 59 days, evacuated over 111,000 people from Amman to Mumbai – a distance of 4,117 km.
Those days, India was in financial trouble and the VP Singh government was lacking support with the opposition trying to bring the government down. However, leaving all problems aside, the Indian government decided to rescue its citizens from that country.
Indian government, led by VP Singh, systematically flew over 488 commercial flights in association with Indian Airlines, ensuring safe return of all Indian citizens. However, back home in India, it was politically one of the most fragile times. And in 2015, Narendra Modi government carried out the rescue operation “Raahat” to evacuate Indian nationals from strife-torn Yemen. With nearly 3,300 of its nationals out of Yemen, the government wrapped up the evacuation operation in a couple of days. Complications arose due to significantly higher number of nationals requiring evacuation, lack of travel documents and poor communications.
Evacuating nationals from the conflict zone is one of the major tasks for any country, be it superpower United States of America or developing countries like India. There have been plenty of rescue operations done by the countries in the past but the credit of carrying the biggest ever air evacuation in the history of mankind goes to none other than India.
Initial efforts were made by the government of India to evacuate nationals by military aircraft. However, due to difficulties in air-space clearances the switch was made to civilian aircraft. Groundwork for the evacuation was laid during a visit by former Minister of External Affairs I. K. Gujral soon after the invasion. As a result of this visit, Iraq agreed to tacitly permit the Indian evacuation efforts. Air India’s efforts were coordinated by Mathunny Mathews (popularly known as Toyota Sunny), Harbajan Singh Vedi and others who were based in Kuwait.
Toyota Sunny, began work in Kuwait with the Toyota agency owned by the Al-Sayer Group and retired in 1989 as its MD, Sunny was in Kuwait since 1956 and went from India in ship. During his long years there, he was able to form a good network of friends and well wishers. He became chairman of the Indian School in Kuwait and held many top positions in various social organisations. He was one of the founding members of the Indian Arts Circle that brought Indians together. He encouraged a number of relatives and families from his village and other parts of Kerala to move to Kuwait and forge a prosperous livelihood fuelled by the oil economy.
Though, Saddam Hussein and Iraq invaded Kuwait, Kuwaitis have been friendly towards Indians stranded in Kuwait during that war and allowed them safe passage through Iraq to Jordan via Syria. Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd (TCIL) had a large project going on in Kuwait during that war time and as the Indian Embassy had become defunct then, S K Tandon then the project head of TCIL in Kuwait took upon himself the responsibility of taking all TCIL staff besides other Indians by road through Iraq and Syria to Jordan and then borrowing money from TCIL’s Jordanian associate air-lifted all of them safely to India. Kuwait possibly had other heroes like Tandon and Mathunny to rescue Indians there and take them to India safely.
Recalling the incidence, the recently released movie Airlift has puzzled the authorities. The Ministry of External Affairs termed this movie as a Bollywood film, as great entertainment but rather short on facts. This film and films often take liberties with actual events, facts. This particular movie has also taken artistic liberties in the depiction of the events as it actually happened in Kuwait in 1990.
Vikas Swaroop said those who remember the 1990 evacuation would also know the “very proactive” role that the MEA played. He mentioned that official delegation was sent to Baghdad and Kuwait and that tremendous coordination was put in place with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Air India and a host of other government departments. In the film, the MEA has been shown as lacking a proactive approach. He said that those who may not remember the 1990 evacuation would certainly remember the more recent evacuations that the MEA had coordinated from Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Ukraine.
