RAWALPINDI: A special PIA flight brought 328 Pakistani nationals, from Yemen here in the early hours of Monday, including, to the surprise of many gathered at the Islamabad airport to receive them, Pakistani ambassador to the war-torn country, Irfan Shami.

Family members of some evacuees expected the ambassador would stay in Sana, the turbulent capital of Yemen, until all the stranded Pakistanis had been evacuated.

But when a reporter put the suggestion to ambassador Shami he appeared offended. “No way could you stay there,” he shot back. With street-to-street fighting going on in Sana, he said everyone in the diplomatic community had to leave at short notice.

“I could not do anything by staying there, except (extend) moral support,” the ambassador said, closing the chapter.

While announcing the evacuation plan over the weekend, Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry had stated that only a third of the 3,000 Pakistanis living and working in Yemen wished to be evacuated home.

Monday’s was the first flight that evacuated 502 Pakistanis from Hodeidah city of Yemen. One hundred seventy-four of them disembarked in Karachi.

It landed at Islamabad airport at 3:15am and the emerging evacuees fell into the embraces of their waiting relatives, presenting emotional, happy scenes.

Both had to offer varied comments on their ordeals.

Middle-aged Shafqat Elahi was glad to see her daughter safely back from Yemen where she was a schoolteacher.

“Our government should be very careful in deciding to send troops to Saudi Arabia,” said Mr Elahi who worked at the Pakistan Embassy School in Yemen and returned to Pakistan last September. “Pakistan should not be part of any sectarian fighting,” he advised.

Ex-army man Jamshed Iqbal, also there to receive his daughter thought the government delayed the evacuation. “Like the United States and India, they should have taken the decision two months back,” he said.

But the Pakistani ambassador had calmed down worried relatives calling him that “everything is under control”.

Kamran Mughal was worried about the condition of his brother and his wife as “I could hear explosions going off and guns rattling nearby while talking to him on phone”.

Among the three children in the arriving evacuees was Meerib, a schoolgirl.

“It is a hard time for me. My studies are broken,” she said, intent upon resuming them “on my return to Sana”.

But her worry was that “the Yemeni people who loved Pakistan are now angry that Pakistan is joining the fight against them”.

Federal Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid and local PML-N MNA Dr Fazal Tariq arrived at the Islamabad airport before the flight’s landing time of 3:15am and given a tour of the renovated airport terminal by the special adviser to Prime Minister on Aviation, Tariq Azeem.

Relatives of the evacuees waiting for their dear ones felt disappointed that the official welcome party had no time to have a word with them as it was driven straight to the tarmac.

Later, the information minister told mediapersons that dues to government’s efforts, 502 Pakistanis have safely returned home and hoped the rest would also be brought back soon.

“It is government’s responsibility to provide protection to all its citizens, wherever they are,” the minister said.

PML-N leader Dr Fazal Tariq assured that Pakistan would play its role for peace in the region.

A PIA spokesman said that soon after the evacuation flight left, the Yemeni airport was bombed and closed. Further flights would be operated after the Islamabad Foreign Office permits them.

According to the spokesman a visiting Yemeni lady doctor was stuck in Karachi because of the suspension of air traffic. PIA could fly her home when the evacuation flights are resumed.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2015

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