most of the rich and educated IMs I have come across seem to have spent some stint working in gulf , somewhat like every itvity munna has worked in the US/Uk atleast for some time.

Might be a good idea to offer to evacuate all SAARC citizens.
India preparing for 'mammoth' Libya evacuation Many foreigners are now trying to get out of Libya. The Indian government has said that it is preparing for a "mammoth operation" involving planes and ships to evacuate its nationals from Libya.
Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said Delhi was in the process of obtaining permission from Libya for its aircraft to land in the country.
The Bangladeshi government has also restated its plans to repatriate 50,000 mostly manual labourers in Libya.
The Pakistani embassy in Libya says that 18,000 Pakistanis there are safe.
"We have not received any report regarding untoward incidents against Pakistanis. We have no consulate or a commercial section in [the eastern city of] Benghazi but we are in contact with Pakistani people living there and according to them they are safe," Pakistan's acting ambassador to Libya, Ali Javed, told the BBC.
"So far we have not received any reports about injuries or deaths of Pakistanis," he said.
Turmoil
The Nepalese embassy in Libya meanwhile says that it is continuing with efforts to evacuate immediately about 600 Nepali migrant workers stranded in the city of Darnah.
It says that plans have been initiated to bring the workers 800km (497 miles) from Darnah to Cairo after the South Korean construction company which employs them said that it was unable to arrange for their evacuation because of the turmoil in Libya.
"We will rescue the workers by Thursday," First Secretary Tirtha Aryal said in Kathmandu. "We have already initiated a process to obtain legal permission from the Egyptian authorities to rescue our citizens."
There are about 2,000 Nepali labourers in Libya.
Most Bangladeshis in Libya work in construction Of some 18,000 Indians in Libya, about 3,000 are reported to be in Benghazi working for car companies and hospitals.
Ms Rao said an Indian passenger ship was on standby in the Red Sea which could carry 1,000 people to safety.
The Indian foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned the violence, saying that it gave cause for "serious concern".
"The government [of India] deplores the use of force which is totally unacceptable and must not be resorted to," it said.
The Bangladeshi government says it will do "everything it can, whatever it takes, to ensure the safety and security of our workers, but the situation is very, very volatile".
He is pre-empting everything I said. They know what the problem is, and they are moving early and fast before there are any problems. This is King Abdullah for you.Ameet wrote:Saudi king back home, orders $37 billion in handouts
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/ ... ational%29
Saudi King Abdullah returned home on Wednesday after a three-month medical absence and unveiled benefits for Saudis worth some $37 billion in an apparent bid to insulate the world's top oil exporter from an Arab protest wave.
Significantly, Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa was among the princes thronging the tarmac when Abdullah flew in.
King Hamad freed about 250 political prisoners on Wednesday and has offered dialogue with protesters, mostly from Bahrain's Shi'ite majority, who demand more say in the Sunni-ruled island.
Riyadh would be worried if unrest in Bahrain, where seven people were killed and hundreds wounded last week, spread to its own disgruntled Shi'ite minority in the oil-rich east.
Hundreds of people have backed a Facebook call for a Saudi "day of rage" on March 11 to demand an elected ruler, greater freedom for women and the release of political prisoners.
Billions of riyals to boost housing, social security services and education for needy in Saudi Arabia
* By Abdul Nabi Shaheen, Correspondent
* Published: 16:16 February 23, 2011
* Gulf News
Riyadh: Shortly before his return to Riyadh from a three-month treatment and convalescing trip, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz issued several orders aimed at boosting monetary outlays for housing, social security services and university education for members of needy families.
The first order grants Saudi Riyal 40 billion (Dh39.2 billion) to support the capital of the Kingdom's Real Estate Development Fund to enable it to finalise all pending loan applications and accelerate new loans. The order also stipulates granting a waiver to all previously unpaid housing loans.
Another order allocates SR1 billion for raising the maximum number of members of a family covered by social security from eight to 15. The decision also grants another SR3.5 billion for supporting social security programmes.
This aims at increasing allocations for people with special needs, and boosting the capacity of rehabilitation centres and medical services provided to them.
The Saudi monarch has also allocated SR1.2 billion for increasing the number of beneficiaries from social development funds and establishing vocational training programmes for women.
Among other Royal Orders, broadcast on Saudi TV on Wednesday, the Saudi Housing Commission was supported with SR15 billion. Government employees will continue to receive a 15 per cent allowance for the high cost of living.
King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz also decided to grant SR100 million in support of co-operative societies and increase the assistance provided to charitable societies by 50 per cent.
A total of SR476 million is to be allocated annually for supporting the Ministry of Education's needy
students' programmes. This includes providing clothing, school bags and other essentials. Saudi students studying abroad at their own expenses will be covered by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Overseas Scholarship Programme.
Giving more attention to needy and poor families, the King ordered some university seats to be reserved for students from these families. Conditions for admission for such students are to be eased and they are to be exempted from pre-admission fees and some other expenses. The students will also be given priority in campus housing and temporary jobs at the universities.
The decisions, which are said to have surpassed all expectations of the Saudi people, also include freeing large numbers of prisoners convicted of public rights crimes.
Moreover, the decisions grant SR10 million for every literary club in the Kingdom.
In statements to Gulf News, foreign diplomats said the King's new package was the biggest direct financial support to be given to the people in the modern history of Saudi Arabia.
Pff... this article is kind of accurate and interesting, but regarding Bahrain, they dont really understand the problems, family politics etc.By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: February 19, 2011
WASHINGTON — There comes a moment in the life of almost every repressive regime when leaders — and the military forces that have long kept them in power — must make a choice from which there is usually no turning back: Change or start shooting.
FACEOFF Bahraini protesters confronted army tanks last week. Unlike Egypt’s military, Bahrain’s would open fire.
Egypt’s military, calculating that it was no longer worth defending an 82-year-old, out-of-touch pharaoh with no palatable successor and no convincing plan for Egypt’s future, ultimately sided with the protesters on the street, at least for Act 1.
In so doing, they ignored the advice of the Saudis, who, in calls to Washington, said that President Hosni Mubarak should open fire if that’s what it took, and that Americans should just stop talking about “universal rights” and back him.
As the contagion of democracy protests spread in the Arab world last week, Bahrain’s far less disciplined forces decided, in effect, that the Saudis, who are their next-door neighbors, were right. They drew two lessons from Egypt: If President Obama calls, hang up. And open fire early.
It is far too early to know how either of these reactions will work out. But in both countries, as in nearly all police states, the key to change lies with the military. And as with any self-interested institution, the military’s leaders can be counted on to ask: What’s in it for us, long and short term?
Egypt’s military leadership came to the same conclusion that South Korea’s did in the 1980s and Indonesia’s did in the 1990s: The country’s top leader had suddenly changed from an asset to a liability.
The military, with its business enterprises, to say nothing of its American aid and high-tech arms, required a transition that would let it retain power while allowing Washington to herald gradual, substantive reform.
In Bahrain, on the other hand, the military seems to have concluded that adapting to change would do them no good — that the protesters were far too great a threat to their very command of society. So the country that acts as host to America’s Fifth Fleet decided to ignore President Obama’s advice, which it regarded as assisted suicide.
None of this came as much of a surprise to the White House, which last summer, at President Obama’s request, began examining the vulnerability of these regimes and more recently began examining what makes a transition to democracy successful.
“There are many different factors involved in the cases we have looked at: economic crises, aging authoritarians, negotiated transitions between elites,” said Michael McFaul, a top national security aide at the White House who runs what he jokingly calls the White House “Nerd Directorate.”
He spent the past few weeks churning out case studies for President Obama and the National Security Council, as it sought lessons about how to influence the confrontations that have engulfed close American allies and bitter adversaries. “There is not one story line or a single model,” said Mr. McFaul, who drew on work he did as a professor at Stanford. “There are many paths to democratic transition, and most of them are messy.”
Egypt certainly started out that way, with street battles between police and protesters, and a rampage by thugs to rout the protesters from Tahrir Square. But American officials, recalling their strained conversations with Egyptian counterparts, say they knew that Mr. Mubarak’s days were numbered eight days into the crisis, when the military made clear that — except in some extreme cases — it simply would not fire on its own people.
“You could almost hear them making the calculations in their heads,” said one senior American official who was involved in the delicate negotiations. “Did they want to stick with an aging, sick leader whose likely successor was his own son, who the military didn’t trust? And we just kept repeating the mantra, ‘Don’t break the bond you have with your own people.’ ”
Their words were persuasive, in no small part, many American officials believe, because of the revered role the military has long had in Egypt and its deep ties to the American military. A 30-year investment paid off as American generals, corporals and intelligence officers quietly called and e-mailed friends they had trained with.
Related
But now comes the trickiest part, which is making the military hold to its promises to allow a civilian government to flourish. That will mean the military must give up its monopoly on power, and that isn’t easy for any leader of a regime, especially one deeply invested in its country’s economy — a trait Egypt’s army shares with the People’s Liberation Army in China. Already, Egypt’s generals have balked at Mr. Obama’s demand for an immediate end to emergency rule.
The question is whether Egypt’s military can manage a transition to democracy, as the militaries of South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile have.
South Korea is perhaps the clearest example of a good outcome, for both its citizens and the United States. The country is now among the most prosperous in the world, and the government, after some very rocky years, is now Washington’s favorite ally in Asia. In the face of large street protests in the mid-1980s, the generals gradually allowed free elections. In those days, rumors of coups were rampant, and the first freely elected president was a general. But the last four have been civilians, including one Nobel-prize winning dissident.
Then there is Indonesia. General Suharto ruled for 31 years — then ran out of gas, just as Mr. Mubarak did. Washington ignored Suharto’s many human rights abuses because he was a steadfast anti-Communist. But he lasted only two and a half weeks after street riots broke out in 1998, triggered by the Asian economic crisis.
Suharto’s cold war utility had expired. Karen Brooks, a former White House expert on Indonesia, wrote last week for the Council on Foreign Relations about the similarities between Suharto and Mr. Mubarak: “Both demonized Islamist political forces and drove them underground; both kept a tight lid on the media, the opposition and all forms of dissent; both accumulated massive amounts of wealth while in power” and, of course, “both enjoyed the support of the United States.”
After Suharto was finally forced out, it took the Indonesian military little more than a year to hold elections. Ms. Brooks said that a clear deadline was important, but so was allowing the Islamists to enter politics. They did so on an anti-Israel, anti-American platform. But even in the world’s most populous Islamic nation, she notes, the Islamic parties have remained a small minority, because once they were inside the system “the party found itself participating in the same unseemly activities” as everyone else, from corruption to deal-making.
That example leaves the Israelis, among others, unimpressed. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, they point out, is far better organized, and more disciplined. “History is rife with cases in which well-intentioned revolutions are hijacked,” said one senior Israeli official, echoing a point that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made the weekend before Mr. Mubarak’s fall.
One can make a good case that Washington’s comfort with years of slow, incremental change contributed to the crisis sweeping the region. When American officials visited Bahrain, the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, usually said the right things: The country’s dispossessed Shiite majority was gradually getting a larger share of the national wealth, and slightly greater political freedoms. In private, though, the Bahraini military would tell the Pentagon that it would never allow Shiites into serious positions. “We were told the Shia would all be spies for Iran,” one former senior official in the Defense Department said last week.
So when the protests started, the military decided that if it held its fire, Egypt-style, it would have no future: The Shiite majority would take over the country. Military leaders doubled their bet on King Hamad and his son, Crown Prince Salman, who on Friday was placed in charge of starting a “national dialogue.” The same day troops opened fire again.
Abderrahim Foukara, the bureau chief of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service in Washington, said the crackdown’s consequences are predictable. “Once you shoot women and children at 3 in the morning, you may be able to hold on to power for a while, but any sense of legitimacy is gone,” he said.
He may prove right. But other people said the same thing about the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing when it opened fire in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The army’s bet on firepower that June day has paid off many times over: Today it has far-flung business interests that make it so rich and powerful that most of China’s leaders will not mess with it.
As Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep notes, former Harvard reseacher Gene Sharp has been an inspiration to young revolutionaries in countries such as Serbia and Egypt, where they used his manual From Dictatorship to Democracy and his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action to help guide them through what turned out to be successful — and peaceful — revolts against oppressive regimes.
"I was amazed when I saw, very early on in the Egyptian struggle, this testimony — 'we're not afraid anymore, we've lost our fear,' " Sharp says. "That is something Gandhi always advocated. He said 'cast off your fear.'
Thanks ramana ji, for your concerns for fellow subcontinentals. Hopefully all stranded people will be able to safely get out.ramana wrote: Might be a good idea to offer to evacuate all SAARC citizens.
B Ramanji and I were talking about this today and what the option is. Basically, these are your options for evacuation:Bade wrote:How did the evacuation happen during Iraq ? Mostly by air isn't it. Here the civil war will make getting people out to the airports via road quite a task. You cannot rely on either side for a safe corridor.
But demonstrators have maintained their loyalty to Bahrain. The head of the largest Shiite party, Al Wefaq, said that the party rejected Iran’s type of Islamic government. On Tuesday, a leading member of the party, Khalil Ebrahim al-Marzooq, said he was afraid that the king was trying to transform the political dispute into a sectarian one. He said there were rumors the king would open the border with Saudi Arabia and let Sunni extremists into the country to attack the demonstrators.
“The moment that any border opens by the government, means the other borders will open,” he said. “You don’t expect people will see their similar sect being killed and not interfere. We will not call them.”
But, he said, they will come.
Is Tripoli port not usable?shyamd wrote: B Ramanji and I were talking about this today and what the option is. Basically, these are your options for evacuation:
- Benghazi Port. Relatively peaceful, no problems at all at the moment. Chinese are using this for evacuation.
- Tripoli Airport. You'll be lucky to get there
- Egypt/Libya border. This border is unmanned on the libyan side so there is free movement. Chinese have diplomats at the border welcoming Chinese here.
Then why are they so surprised? That their studies came true? Or they didn't believe them?None of this came as much of a surprise to the White House, which last summer, at President Obama’s request, began examining the vulnerability of these regimes and more recently began examining what makes a transition to democracy successful.
“There are many different factors involved in the cases we have looked at: economic crises, aging authoritarians, negotiated transitions between elites,” said Michael McFaul, a top national security aide at the White House who runs what he jokingly calls the White House “Nerd Directorate.”
He spent the past few weeks churning out case studies for President Obama and the National Security Council, as it sought lessons about how to influence the confrontations that have engulfed close American allies and bitter adversaries. “There is not one story line or a single model,” said Mr. McFaul, who drew on work he did as a professor at Stanford. “There are many paths to democratic transition, and most of them are messy.”
In almost all the cases where the military ruled in the region, they achieved certain degrees of development. In Egypt, the slogan in mid-50’s was to build one school every two days. That was more or less done. In the beginning of the 60’s it was “1000 factories”. Literacy was at its highest in record. Kids used to receive a healthy free meal in schools. The Aswan dam was built. Hospitals were clean and free.
But all this occurred without “democracy”. In fact, a horrifying police state was being built behind the smoke of “national victories”. East German and Soviet experts in internal security were invited to design this whole structure. But Nasser did not allow that to stop him from arresting all Egyptian communists, hanging the leaders of the Muslem Brotherhood and banning any political activity except his own...
....
In Libya, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, and Yemen it was a similar story with different levels of intensity. The military regimes achieved some very essential social and political goals in return for a “blank check” from the population. In all these countries silence was imposed and a decorative political life was staged for deception purposes. But the equations were all the same : We will give you food, stability, education, infrastructural projects, national pride, jobs in the public sectors, price controls, etc., and you will give us total silence and submission. That was the deal.
But, times changed. The achievements were lost one after the other like the feathers of an old bird. What remained was the oppressive machine, the army that was in power, and some empty slogans.
Any armed intervention may backfire. Gaddafi and others like him will raise the arabs within hours. IMO these chain revolutions are sucessful because of inaction of west.Lalmohan wrote:i guess we need to see if an Italian led 'NATO force' decides to intervene in the Libyan civil war, with the backing of the Egyptians to secure the oil fields...
For a ship to sail from Libya to India it takes six days. Out of the 18,000 Indians in Libya, around 12,000 live in the capital Tripoli, and around. It takes four hours from Tripoli to Valletta, from where they can be flown out.
Benghazi, which is reported to be in the hands of the protesters has an Indian population of 3,000.
A ship can reach Alexandria in Egypt in 8-9 hours from there. A passenger ship, which is the Mediterranean Sea, that can carry 800 people, has been directed to drop anchor in anticipation of an evacuation. However, direct flights can operate from Sebha, which along with nearby areas have 2,000 people and Kufra has an Indian population of 1,000 people.