India and Humanitarian Assistance & Disaster Recovery (HADR)
Posted: 26 Feb 2016 12:16
I am starting this thread to specifically track India’s involvement in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations. For a long time now, modern India has been involved in such assistance. The earliest I can think of is the assistance rendered by Dr. Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis to serve the Chinese in the late 1930s, especially Chinese army units that had been hit by a virulent strain of plague, during the aggression by Japan in the Second World War. He was sent there along with four other Indian doctors by the Indian National Congress. His tending to the emaciated and injured Chinese soldiers made him a household name there. After Independence, India has rendered enormous assistance to countries in our neighbourhood even when she herself was under immense strain, as it happened during the 2004 tsunami when we sent help to Sri Lanka and Indonesia while reeling under its impact ourselves. The earthquake in Nepal in April, 2015 showed the enormous capacity of India to mount huge rescue and relief efforts at very short notice. The huge C-17 Globemasters and C-130J SuperHercules transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force transported several hundred rescue workers of the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF), scores of doctors and tonnes of relief material at a very short notice. We have even sent water to Maldives to help its water crisis in late 2014. Amidst all these, India had its own share of disasters to take care of like the Gujarat Earthquake of c. 2001, the tsunami in Dec. 2004, or the Kashmir Earthquake of c. 2005, the Uttarakhand floods in c. 2013, or the latest Chennai floods in Dec. 2015 and many more.
We were also engaged in some of the largest evacuations in history such as the air bridge setup in c. 1989 to evacuate a very large number of over 170,000 Indian expatriates from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as Iraq invaded Kuwait. In 2006, the Indian Navy evacuated a sizeable number of stranded Indians from Lebanon as the Israeli-Hezbollah war heated up. An impressed USA asked India to join the “core group” of the U.S.-led Combined Support Force (CSF-536) operating out of Utapao, Thailand. Later, it even led to the Americans asking the Indian Government to post a liaison officer at its Pacific Command (PACOM) in Hawaii. When war broke out in March 2015 in Yemen between the Shi’a Houthis and the Sunnis who were supported by a ten-nation coalition supported by Saudi Arabia, it was the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force along with Air India which evacuated not only 4741 Indians but also 1947 foreign nationals belonging to 48 countries under most difficult circumstances in an exercise called Op. Rahat. In fact, the US had advised its nationals to contact the Indian Embassy in San’aa for evacuation. Indian naval assets INS Sumitra, INS Mumbai and INS Tarkash along with IAF’s C-17 Globemasters were employed amidst raging bomb attacks and gunfire to effect the rescue first to Djibouti from Sana’a and Aden and thence to India.
In its initiative to forge working-level jointmanship and interoperability among the Navies of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), the Indian Navy has been conducting a biennial exercise with navies of the region, called Exercise Milan, since 1995. The tenth edition in Februray 2014 was by far the largest with 17 countries participating in that. Ex. Milan is an international event aimed at enhancing mutual understanding and cooperation in anti-piracy and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations among navies in the Bay of Bengal, South East Asia and the larger Indian Ocean region.
India has also been participating in the ASEAN Regional Forum’s (ARF) Disaster Relief Exercise (Direx) by sending its naval assets to the exercise. The aim of ARF DiREX is to exercise information sharing and networking among national agencies of this region towards providing Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) during natural calamities like Earthquakes, Tsunami, etc as well as Search and Rescue (SAR) for ships and aircraft lost at sea.
With its inventory of C-17 Globemasters, C-130J Hercules, Il-76 heavy-lifters, ships like INS Jalashwa and the increasing long-range deployment of frontline warships, the Indian state has become a prominent player in HADR activities extending from West Asia to East China Sea and now South Pacific ocean as well. In December 2015, in order to further boost its Blue Water capabilities, the Indian Navy decided to buy five self-propelled Fleet Support Ships (FSS) that should be capable of transferring all types of stores, ammunition, fuel and personnel to naval units while underway at sea and with an endurance of 12000 nautical miles. This would help in HADR activities of the IN as well significantly.
Let us use this thread therefore to track India’s involvement in HADR activities.
We were also engaged in some of the largest evacuations in history such as the air bridge setup in c. 1989 to evacuate a very large number of over 170,000 Indian expatriates from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as Iraq invaded Kuwait. In 2006, the Indian Navy evacuated a sizeable number of stranded Indians from Lebanon as the Israeli-Hezbollah war heated up. An impressed USA asked India to join the “core group” of the U.S.-led Combined Support Force (CSF-536) operating out of Utapao, Thailand. Later, it even led to the Americans asking the Indian Government to post a liaison officer at its Pacific Command (PACOM) in Hawaii. When war broke out in March 2015 in Yemen between the Shi’a Houthis and the Sunnis who were supported by a ten-nation coalition supported by Saudi Arabia, it was the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force along with Air India which evacuated not only 4741 Indians but also 1947 foreign nationals belonging to 48 countries under most difficult circumstances in an exercise called Op. Rahat. In fact, the US had advised its nationals to contact the Indian Embassy in San’aa for evacuation. Indian naval assets INS Sumitra, INS Mumbai and INS Tarkash along with IAF’s C-17 Globemasters were employed amidst raging bomb attacks and gunfire to effect the rescue first to Djibouti from Sana’a and Aden and thence to India.
In its initiative to forge working-level jointmanship and interoperability among the Navies of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), the Indian Navy has been conducting a biennial exercise with navies of the region, called Exercise Milan, since 1995. The tenth edition in Februray 2014 was by far the largest with 17 countries participating in that. Ex. Milan is an international event aimed at enhancing mutual understanding and cooperation in anti-piracy and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations among navies in the Bay of Bengal, South East Asia and the larger Indian Ocean region.
India has also been participating in the ASEAN Regional Forum’s (ARF) Disaster Relief Exercise (Direx) by sending its naval assets to the exercise. The aim of ARF DiREX is to exercise information sharing and networking among national agencies of this region towards providing Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) during natural calamities like Earthquakes, Tsunami, etc as well as Search and Rescue (SAR) for ships and aircraft lost at sea.
With its inventory of C-17 Globemasters, C-130J Hercules, Il-76 heavy-lifters, ships like INS Jalashwa and the increasing long-range deployment of frontline warships, the Indian state has become a prominent player in HADR activities extending from West Asia to East China Sea and now South Pacific ocean as well. In December 2015, in order to further boost its Blue Water capabilities, the Indian Navy decided to buy five self-propelled Fleet Support Ships (FSS) that should be capable of transferring all types of stores, ammunition, fuel and personnel to naval units while underway at sea and with an endurance of 12000 nautical miles. This would help in HADR activities of the IN as well significantly.
Let us use this thread therefore to track India’s involvement in HADR activities.
