Stranded US

From the Stars and Stripes:
"Americans face harrowing escapes from Yemen, says US envoy in Djibouti"

American citizens escaping Yemen, including small children and some frail elderly, are arriving exhausted in Djibouti after harrowing journeys from the besieged country, where a U.S.-supported Saudi Arabian bombing campaign is entering its fourth week, the U.S. ambassador to the small Horn of Africa country told McClatchy on Thursday. Calling the flight from Yemen “a tough experience” for many of the evacuees, the U.S. envoy, Tom Kelly, said hundreds of Americans have arrived in Djibouti in recent days aboard foreign ships and aircraft after journeys that for some included hundreds of miles of dangerous land travel from Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, to the ports of Hodeidah and Aden. In one case, Kelly said, some would-be evacuees were left behind at the port of Aden because they had been unable to climb up rope ladders to board an Indian navy frigate from smaller boats that had ferried them to the larger ship, which had been unable to dock because of fighting in the city. “Not all were able to get on board,” he said. The 500 or so who did included dozens of Americans, who were brought aboard the frigate, the Tarkesh, to Djibouti on April 11, he said. The arrival of American evacuees from Yemen has overwhelmed the diplomatic mission in Djibouti, a former French colony across the Red Sea from Yemen that has just 800,000 residents. “We don’t have a large embassy, but we’re working around the clock to make sure we can provide care and shelter to everyone coming from Yemen,” he said. Kelly said the U.S. State Department is dispatching more consular affairs officers to Djibouti to help with the expected crush. How many Americans ultimately will make it to Djibouti is unknown, but Kelly said he is preparing to receive “a large number,” though he cautioned that many who want to leave Yemen may not be able to. “The situation in Yemen is tough, and it’s hard for people to get out,” he said in a telephone interview. On Thursday, 59 American citizens, and 40 relatives, were among 400 passengers evacuated from the Red Sea port of Hodeidah by the Indian navy ship the Sumitra, Kelly said. The Obama administration so far has declined to organize a rescue mission for the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 U.S. citizens in Yemen. U.S. officials have said they believe it is too dangerous for U.S. military assets to enter Yemeni waters and airspace. They’ve also suggested that organizing Americans to meet at a single departure point would put them at risk of attack from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula or other terrorist groups seeking American hostages. That, however, has left Americans largely on their own to find a way out of the country. The U.S. Embassy in Sanaa has been closed for months, and the last American troops in the country were evacuated last month, a few days before the Saudi bombing campaign began. In a message posted on its website, the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa advises that an Indian naval vessel will be leaving Hodeidah for Djibouti and that it had been informed that Americans would be welcomed. But the embassy also noted that “unfortunately, we don’t have information on who to contact to board this ship. A few dozen Americans have made it aboard U.N.-organized evacuation flights from Sanaa to Khartoum, Sudan, and others have made it out aboard Russian ships, according to news accounts. But the largest number seem to be bound for Djibouti, where Kelly said he travels to the port daily to greet the new arrivals. To date, he said, “I have not seen any people injured,” but he added that many have required medicine or other kind of assistance.

 

^ I give both the US State Department and President Obama a big, fat F for simply abandoning Americans in Yemen. The US Government had enough time to close their embassy and to evacuate their soldiers yet did nothing to help ordinary civilians. This isn't the first time Obama has failed at evacuations. After the nuclear plant disaster and tsunami in Japan he decided not to evacuate Americans stationed at US bases in Japan because he didn't want to cause panic among the Japanese people - forgetting his own people and their safety. The only good thing is that we have less than a year before he becomes a figment in our nation's history (like Carter and Ford.) I can only hope that the next President will be able to fix the messes that he left us - both domestically and internationally - and evacuating Americans in danger spots should be included in that list. ^

http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/americans-face-harrowing-escapes-from-yemen-says-us-envoy-in-djibouti-1.340628