Bollywood movie 'Airlift' is about evacuation of 170,000 people from Iraq in 1990

Bollywood star Akshay Kumar's latest offering is 'Airlift' - it is undoubtedly a different type of movie and not the run-of-the-mill affair that Bollywood dishes out. "airlift' is the story of evacuation of 170,00 Indians who were trapped in Iraq in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 25 January 2016.

The release of the film 'Airlift' just before India celebrates its 67th Republic day augers well for the film and it is sure to do good business as patriotic fervor grips the country.
Airlift is a story of one of the largest air evacuations of people in the world when Iraqi president Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and as many as 170,000 Indians were trapped there. All of them wanted to leave and it caught the government of India unawares. The Indian mission in Kuwait was shifted to Basra in Iraq due to security reasons and the Indians were left stranded.
That is when Akshay Kumar steps in. He plays the role of Ranjit Katiyal, a wealthy businessman with good connections in Kuwait. He finds himself homeless and sets out to organize and facilitate the evacuation.
The Indian government did not want to invite the wrath of the international community by making deals with Hussein but the Indian foreign minister did get an assurance of safe passage for the Indians from the Iraqi president. However, there was no mechanism on ground to evacuate such a huge number.
It was the wealthy businessman who arranged it all. Every day thousands of stranded Indians were taken into Jordan, from where they were repatriated. However, there is no mention of the contribution of this businessman in any official records.
Except for a few thousand, who decided to stay back in Kuwait, all the remaining were taken out before the start of Operation Desert Shield. It involved a total of 488 Air India flights and a few military aircraft and the evacuation of all Indians was done in 59 days.
In contrast, the "Berlin Airlift" at the end of the Second World War was the evacuation of 48,000 people over a period of two years.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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