good news: Indian nurses in Iraq freed, to reach Kerala tomorrow

[prasad1]

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All 46 Indian nurses held captive by Sunni insurgents in Iraq have been freed and will return to India on Saturday, according to reports.


The nurses are with Indian officials and are being taken to Erbil airport, from where they will return to Kerala on a special flight.


Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy also confirmed that the nurses are on their way back home.


Chandy told IANS over telephone from New Delhi that an Air India flight will depart from the Indian capital Friday evening to Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan.


"There will be one official each from the Kerala and central governments on the plane," he said. "The nurses will board the flight at Erbil and the plane will reach Kochi at 7am tomorrow."
Indian nurses in Iraq freed, to reach Kerala tomorrow - The Times of India

 

[Brahmanyan]

good news: Indian nurses in Iraq freed, to reach Kerala tomorrow.

Good news. Congratulations to Mrs Sushma Swaraj and Modi Government for the immediate action taken in this regard. Great to have a positive thinker like Mr Narendra Modi at the helm of affairs. Thanks to MEA Spokesperson
Mr Syed Akbaruddin for breaking the good news.

Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.

 

[sarang]

And credit for keeping a low profile and active in the background without leaks. Bureaucracy has risen to the occasion. Only the media is irresponsible making wild speculations.

 

[vgane]

This is really great news! Those with a modicum of doubt about Modi's capability will now run for cover! The back door but silent diplomacy has worked!

 

[V.Balasubramani]

[h=1]How India got the nurses back from Iraq[/h]Forty-six Indian nurses initially stranded at a hospital in Tikrit and later moved to Mosul have been freed by the fighters of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The nurses have been moved to Erbil from where they’ll be flown into Kerala on a special aircraft arranged by the Indian government. Vicky Nanjappa explains how the crisis was handled in a swift manner.

The move could be considered as a major achievement for the Indian government.

There are several questions being asked about what suddenly changed the minds of the ISIS militants, and how a decision to release the nurses was taken so quickly. Was there a deal or was it plain negotiating skills with the help of the Iraq Red Crescent and some authorities from Saudi Arabia, or was there money involved? Sources, however, tell rediff.com that no money involved.

“It must be noted that the ISIS does not need money as it has that in abundance -- they are worth $4 billion. Moreover, the ISIS considers ransom as un-Islamic. The same was found during the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in 1999, when one of the negotiators was told that Taliban chief Mullah Omar had not approved the demand for money,” says a source
[h=1]“There was a great deal of negotiation to bring the nurses back. The Indian government had also sought the help of Saudi authorities who too put in a word with the ISIS. However, one must bear in mind that the ISIS was not trying to create a hostage situation with Indians, as they need the skilled Indian labourers, and would want to have them around when they decide to run their ‘caliphate’,” adds the source.[/h][h=1] Read more: How India got the nurses back from Iraq[/h]

 

[vgane]

Let us also compliment Kerala CM Oommen Chandy who was camping in Delhi during the crisis days and was coordinating efforts with various agencies! Good work by Chandy too!

 

[prasad1]

Who did we compliment? This is the reason I do not trust Party mouthpiece.
Key Indian businessmen helped secure release of nurses
TNN
Contacts in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other Gulf nations, and a couple of prominent Indian businessmen are believed to be among those who assisted the Indian government in ensuring safe release of 46 nurses who were stranded in the area controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).


With concerns about the safety of another 50 Indians, including 39 workers who are in ISIS captivity, high on its mind, the government was tightlipped about the various strands of negotiations used to ensure the safe release of the nurses. Till the time of going to the press, officials insisted no ransom was paid.


External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj was personally in touch with all the major Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Through informal channels, New Delhi had also established peripheral contacts with ISIS, and some splinter groups in Iraq. At least a couple of prominent Malayalee businessmen were active along with various contacts in Gulf region, activated by Kerala government, to work behind the scene, sources said.


According to Kerala chief minister Oomen Chandy and others, the ISIS militants who moved the nurses from Tikrit to Mosul, which is 250 kilometers away, provided them food and accommodation in Mosul, and allowed them to contact their families in Kerala. In fact, none of the nurses have yet complained of any ill-treatment by the hardline Sunni faction.

 

[V.Balasubramani]

No doubt that the crisis was handled in a swift manner and they are back home safely. Thank God!!

News:

'Reunited with families, Kerala nurses say 'nation's prayers helped us return unscathed' - Hindustan Times

In tears, they kissed the ground. Some of them could not talk for a while. Others fell on chief minister Oommen Chandy's feet, thanking him for their release.

Emotions ran high in Cochin International Airport on Saturday as 46 Indian nurses briefly held hostage by ISIS militants arrived in a special Air India (AI) flight around noon.

They had no idea what prompted the Sunni insurgents, who have waged a bloody war in Iraq, to let them go. But, some cursed themselves for casting aspersion on the authorities.

"The entire nation prayed for us. The prayers helped us return unscathed," said Marina Joseph, one of the abducted nurses.

Since Friday night, their relatives, mediapersons and workers of political parties had thronged the airport, where the authorities faced a tough challenge to control the teeming crowd.

Interestingly, emotions swept away rivalry, as workers of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) raised slogans for Chandy and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.

Both Chandy and Swaraj are believed to have been instrumental behind the diplomatic push that eventually led to the release of all 46 nurses.

Read more at: Reunited with families, Kerala nurses say 'nation's prayers helped us return unscathed' - Hindustan Times

 

[Naina_Marbus]

No doubt that the crisis was handled in a swift manner and they are back home safely. Thank God!!

Both Chandy and Swaraj are believed to have been instrumental behind the diplomatic push that eventually led to the release of all 46 nurses.

Read more at: Reunited with families, Kerala nurses say 'nation's prayers helped us return unscathed' - Hindustan Times

Here is some more info:
Nurses return home: Indian diplomacy gets shot in arm - News Oneindia

 

[prasad1]

Amnesty International India has said that Indian authorities have failed to act responsibly in the matter of evacuating a group of nurses detained in Iraq.


This was despite the human rights organisation having sounded an alert about the evolving situation there, said Shashikumar Velath, Deputy Chief Executive, Amnesty International India.
He said this while speaking to newspersons after Amnesty India released its latest report, Exploited Dreams: Dispatches from Indian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.’


Velath also blamed infirmities in the Indian Emigration Act that allowed employers abroad to hide more than what they should reveal about the exact nature of engagement of migrants and working conditions.


Information gathered from Iraq suggests that most of the nurses were not paid their wages for the first four full months of their engagement, Velath said.
G Ananthapadmanabhan, Chief Executive of the organisation, said that the conditions of migrant labourers were more or less the same in West Asia, whether in conflict or during peace time.


He picked out Iraq, Saudi Arabia as also Qatar, where thousands of Indian migrant labourers are building the infrastructure for the 2020 FIFA World Cup.


Lack of effective regulation of visa brokers and rogue recruiting agents make them vulnerable to serious human rights abuses, said the new Amnesty International India report.

It is good that these nurses are back in Indian soil. PIO do survive in bad condition IN_SPITE of Indian official it is not because of the officials.

Prayers to God may be as effective as Indian Government. (this a joke).

 

[vgane]

A welcome Editorial giving the credit to the agencies involved! Welcome the change
in approach towards the new regime!

Welcome homecoming
Welcome homecoming - The Hindu

The safe return of 46 Indian nurses from Iraq is the result of astute diplomacy and a calibrated exercise of soft power by multiple agencies of government. While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj engaged her counterparts at the political level in West Asia, including Foreign Ministers of the six oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council, sound tactical leadership seemed to have been provided by Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. Moments of diplomatic imagination during the crisis were discernible when, for instance, South Block decided to widen the scope of the diplomatic engagement. Thus, the outreach to Jordan, Turkey and Syria — countries with rich experience in extricating hostages from jihadi captivity — would have provided valuable insights into the rapidly mutating structure and operational mechanics of jihadi groups, which are enlarging their footprint across regions where Indian blue- and white-collar workers live and work. An unfinished power struggle between ex-Baathists loyal to former President Saddam Hussein who seem to have forged a tactical alliance with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), provided sufficient headroom for diplomatic manoeuvring. Apparently, Indian officials on the ground managed to activate their decades-old links with former Baathists, who played a significant role in ensuring the return of the health-sector workers.


The episode demonstrates the enormous value of making long-term investments in soft power, which has included since the Nehruvian era invitations to promising students and personnel from the Global South to Indian universities and professional institutions. Consequently, people-to-people diplomacy has provided nodes of influence, which have yielded dramatic results during moments of crisis. India has demonstrated during the 2004 Asian tsunami and subsequently during mass evacuations from Beirut in the aftermath of the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah, its capacity to deploy warships and aircraft to evacuate Indians in distress, as well as people of other South Asian nationalities. But crisis-forecasting and tighter standard operating procedures may now need to be evolved, including pre-positioning and deployment abroad of civil and military assets for mass evacuations whenever warranted, especially in the Persian Gulf countries where millions of Indians reside. The irreversible trend of globalisation is bound to push more and more Indians abroad, where they could come in harm’s way. However, the risks can be minimised with improvement of domestic working conditions, which would then discourage people from migrating out of economic compulsions to dangerous conflict zones, far away from Indian shores.

 

[sarang]

One respectable columnist has forecast that monarchs of several gulf countries will lose their crown in the coming decade. It will be necessary to issue advance warning to indians there to leave early.

 

[krish44]

return of nurses is only the starting points . thousands in southern iraq are folding up to return.
india has enough expertise and clout to evacuate its nationals.only the will is exercised a bit late
during last war thousands from gulf were brought back by india . this time it has been done a bit early smoothly. full marks to modi govt.