 "The community helped organise people and bring them to Baghdad and we took over from there: Kamal Bakshi")
"An Iraqi biscuit is all I can offer you." This is what the Indian ambassador to Iraq is heard telling Ranjit Katyal (played by Akshay Kumar), a Kuwait-based Indian businessman, when he approaches the ambassador for help during the 1990 Iraq war in the movie Airlift. Kamal Bakshi, the real-life Indian ambassador in Baghdad during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, was, however, far from the helpless, incompetent officer projected in the movie. He takes Veenu Sandhu through the events as they occurred then
At what stage of Iraq's invasion did you realise that Indians needed help?
Iraq occupied Kuwait on August 2, 1990. This was not anticipated by most diplomats in Baghdad. We were trying to understand what implications this would have when three days after the invasion, a group of Indian pilgrims came to me. They had performed Haj and had come to Iraq for pilgrimage to sites that are sacred to the Shia Muslims like Najaf and Karbala. They had return tickets of Air India but now all flights into or out of Iraq were banned. I suggested they go to a neighbouring country and take a flight from there. But we soon found they couldn't go to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Syria. The only place they could fly out of was Amman in Jordan. But there were no buses that would take them from Baghdad to Amman.
So, I talked to the Indian ambassador in Amman and we decided to get six buses from Amman to Baghdad for these 300 pilgrims. The buses travelled 850 km to Baghdad, picked the pilgrims and took them to Amman from where they flew to India. That is how it started. That was our trial run for sending Indian citizens from Kuwait and Iraq back to India.
What happened as the crisis escalated?
Foreign minister I K Gujral came to Baghdad and met Saddam Hussein who assured all cooperation for the evacuation of Indian citizens. Gujral then went to Kuwait and took me along. To a large gathering of Indians there he said, "Iraq doesn't recognise Kuwait as an independent country. It says it is a part of Iraq now. It does not recognise our ambassador and embassy in Kuwait. So, I have brought with me Kamal Bakshi who is our ambassador in Baghdad. You come to Baghdad and he will arrange your evacuation to India."
When the panic started, the people to run really were the worker class. There is a system in West Asia even now that the passport of a worker is taken by the employer. Hundreds of workers fled Kuwait and reached Baghdad. Ninety per cent of them did not have their passports. The first thing we did was give them emergency passports or else they would not be allowed to cross over to Jordan.
Secondly, till we arranged buses for them, they had to be looked after. We didn't have the accommodation and we couldn't cook for all of them. So, without any authorisation from the Indian government, I started giving them $5 a day for food and accommodation. The money was entered in their temporary passports.
Eventually, the Iraqi government also helped us set up a camp for them with basic facilities. This went on from August till part of November. While we did this in Baghdad, the Indian government, external affairs and civil aviation ministries and Air India organised flights from Amman to India to evacuate the people.
This must have required tremendous coordination?
This was possible because of the coordination among our missions in Kuwait, Baghdad and Amman and with the community in Kuwait. The community helped organise people and bring them to Baghdad and we took over from there. This was in the middle of summer - August and September are very hot in Iraq. But not one Indian national died due to lack of medical attention and not one Indian woman was badly treated.
This was the time before mobile phones and the internet. How difficult was the communication?
There was no communication from Delhi for a while. All this that I was doing was on my own. Sometimes we had a telephone or telex connection, but most of the times we did not. Our contacts with Amman were better, but there were hardly any telephone links with Kuwait. The decision to give money to Indian nationals, to get the buses - all this was paid for by the embassy in Baghdad. I spent enormous amounts of money without any sanction from the Indian government, which was, I must admit, given to me post facto by the government.
At what stage of Iraq's invasion did you realise that Indians needed help?
Iraq occupied Kuwait on August 2, 1990. This was not anticipated by most diplomats in Baghdad. We were trying to understand what implications this would have when three days after the invasion, a group of Indian pilgrims came to me. They had performed Haj and had come to Iraq for pilgrimage to sites that are sacred to the Shia Muslims like Najaf and Karbala. They had return tickets of Air India but now all flights into or out of Iraq were banned. I suggested they go to a neighbouring country and take a flight from there. But we soon found they couldn't go to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Syria. The only place they could fly out of was Amman in Jordan. But there were no buses that would take them from Baghdad to Amman.
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What happened as the crisis escalated?
Foreign minister I K Gujral came to Baghdad and met Saddam Hussein who assured all cooperation for the evacuation of Indian citizens. Gujral then went to Kuwait and took me along. To a large gathering of Indians there he said, "Iraq doesn't recognise Kuwait as an independent country. It says it is a part of Iraq now. It does not recognise our ambassador and embassy in Kuwait. So, I have brought with me Kamal Bakshi who is our ambassador in Baghdad. You come to Baghdad and he will arrange your evacuation to India."
When the panic started, the people to run really were the worker class. There is a system in West Asia even now that the passport of a worker is taken by the employer. Hundreds of workers fled Kuwait and reached Baghdad. Ninety per cent of them did not have their passports. The first thing we did was give them emergency passports or else they would not be allowed to cross over to Jordan.
Secondly, till we arranged buses for them, they had to be looked after. We didn't have the accommodation and we couldn't cook for all of them. So, without any authorisation from the Indian government, I started giving them $5 a day for food and accommodation. The money was entered in their temporary passports.
Eventually, the Iraqi government also helped us set up a camp for them with basic facilities. This went on from August till part of November. While we did this in Baghdad, the Indian government, external affairs and civil aviation ministries and Air India organised flights from Amman to India to evacuate the people.
This must have required tremendous coordination?
This was possible because of the coordination among our missions in Kuwait, Baghdad and Amman and with the community in Kuwait. The community helped organise people and bring them to Baghdad and we took over from there. This was in the middle of summer - August and September are very hot in Iraq. But not one Indian national died due to lack of medical attention and not one Indian woman was badly treated.
This was the time before mobile phones and the internet. How difficult was the communication?
There was no communication from Delhi for a while. All this that I was doing was on my own. Sometimes we had a telephone or telex connection, but most of the times we did not. Our contacts with Amman were better, but there were hardly any telephone links with Kuwait. The decision to give money to Indian nationals, to get the buses - all this was paid for by the embassy in Baghdad. I spent enormous amounts of money without any sanction from the Indian government, which was, I must admit, given to me post facto by the government.