KARACHI: Only 500 of the thousands of Pakistanis — stranded in the Yemen capital after the launch of air strikes by Saudi Arabia against the Houthi forces there — were evacuated by Saturday evening, while a number of families residing here in different neighbourhoods of Karachi have been anxiously waiting for their safe return.

Responding to Dawn queries over the phone, the Pakistanis trapped in Yemen’s capital Sana’a said they were finally boarding buses to reach the nearest port from where they would be moved ‘most probably’ to Saudi Arabia.

“We are not sure yet,” said Imtiaz Noor, a Pakistani engineer in Sana’a who responded to Dawn minutes after he boarded the bus parked outside a Pakistan embassy school in the city.

“There are a total of 10 buses which carried some 500 people including women and children. We are being moved to the nearest port. We don’t know further plan but it is expected that from the port we would go to Saudi Arabia from where we would be picked by a Pakistani plane.”

Here in Karachi’s North Nazimabad area, the family of Imran Khan Ghori finally came to know his whereabouts through a news channel. They said they lost contact with him on Wednesday evening.

Hopes were fading when his voice was heard on a local news channel, they added. “The news of Pakistanis trapped in Sana’a started emerging on news channels on Thursday evening and earlier today (Saturday) we heard Imran talking to one of the news channels,” said Imran’s elder brother, Shaukat Ghori.

“We somehow approached the particular news channel which helped us a lot and finally let us talk to our brother. He is safe but obviously at risk like hundreds of other Pakistanis. As you just told us, we came to know through other sources also that they would be leaving Yemen by tonight,” Shaukat added.

The narrow escape

Ibrahim Shakir and his family, who reside in Gulshan-i-Maymar, were also in the dark until Saturday when they received a call from Ismail Shakir in Sana’a.

He told them that he and 17 other Pakistanis ‘escaped bombing miraculously’ on Friday night. Just minutes before the air strikes, he said, they had decided to hide in the car park of their residential apartments building.

“Ismail said the building had some 13 flats, mostly occupied by Pakistanis,” said his elder brother. “They were receiving reports of air strikes in other parts of the city and decided to go down to the underground parking section of the building. As they reached there, the building was bombed,” Ibrahim quoted his younger brother as saying.

Ismail also told the family about his expected return within the next three days as he also left for the nearest port with other Pakistanis in the 10 buses arranged by the Pakistani embassy in Sana’a. However, the family said they could not stop worrying for him till his safe return.

Neelma Abbas, her husband, two kids and her mother-in-law were also among the 500 Pakistanis who left Sana’a by Saturday evening in the 10 buses. She said it was ‘all well’ until a week back though they were intimated by the Pakistan embassy and local authorities that the situation could worsen. However, she said: “These are absolutely wrong and baseless reports that Pakistanis were asked to leave Yemen by Feb 27. If that was the case, how could I prefer to stay with my kids and aged mother-in-law?”

“We [the Pakistani community] even celebrated Pakistan Day on March 23,” she told Dawn over the phone from Sana’a while travelling to the nearest port in one of the 10 buses.

Accompanying the family and other Pakistanis, Ashraf Iqbal said it was a huge task to gather all the community members here in the embassy school, but it was done through joint efforts. However, Ashraf was not sure about the fate of the Pakistanis living in other cities of Yemen.

“We have heard there are Pakistanis in cities of Al Hudaydah, Aden and Al Arabiya, where the situation is not good,” he said. “We don’t know about their fate and are worried for their safe return. Our government moved and responded only after the situation turned worse with news appearing on the broadcast media,” he said.

Calling it ‘unfortunate’, he said this was not something that could be termed an ‘organised system’. He referred to the rapid response of the US and European countries for the safe return of their citizens without waiting for any hue and cry in the media.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2015

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