OPERATION KAVERI - INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
News: Operation
Kaveri: 229 persons, including 125 from Karnataka, reach Bengaluru
What's in the news?
● India
flew back the first group of citizens who were stranded in crisis-torn Sudan.
The development came after several days of preparation and was enabled with
support from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and other stakeholders.
● This
airlift is expected to be followed by similar flights if the 72-hour ceasefire
can hold.
● The
fighting between Military and paramilitary forces in Sudan broke out with such
speed and ferocity that many Indians who had been living in the country for
multiple generations did not have the time to collect their identity papers.
Temporary Identity cards:
● Indian
officials from the Ministry of External
Affairs (MEA) who are coordinating the evacuation from Port Said and Jeddah had to overcome challenges in processing the
evacuation of a large number of those who did not have such documents and
officials provide temporary ID cards to the Indian nationals.
Operation Kaveri:
● Operation
Kaveri is a codename for India's evacuation effort to bring back its citizens
stranded in Sudan amid intense
fighting between the army and a rival paramilitary force there.
● The
operation involves the deployment of Indian
Navy's INS Sumedha, a stealth offshore patrol vessel, and two Indian Air
Force C-130J special operations aircraft on standby in Jeddah.
● There
are about 2,800 Indian nationals in Sudan, and there is also a settled Indian
community of about 1,200 in the country.
Conflict in Sudan:
1. Conflict over resources:
● The
latest war has also brought the spotlight back on the enormous resources at
Sudan’s disposal. In 2022, the Sudanese Mineral Resource Company announced that
it had extracted 18 tons of gold from its mines, the largest production of gold
in the history of the country. This only highlights the resource potential of
the country which is also known for its vast
agriculture and livestock sector.
● The
narrative of the war on the ground, according to several evacuees, is that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Mohamed
Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti” and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under General
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan are both trying to hold on to territory and resources as
the war is expected to linger. Indians who are being evacuated said that the
RSF fighters are often non-Arabic speakers. Outsiders have noticed that the
younger fighters of the RSF speak French, which indicates that mercenaries from
Chad and Niger that are part of Francophone Africa have joined the RSF.
Other similar evacuation operations:
Operation Ganga:
● 2022
● The
mission is started to bring back all the stranded Indians in the Ukraine area
in the middle of Russia - Ukraine
conflict.
Operation Devi Shakti:
● 2021
● Operation
Devi Shakti was India's complex mission to evacuate its citizens and Afghan
partners from Kabul after its swift
takeover by the Taliban.
Vande Bharat:
● 2020
● When
the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, the Centre launched the Vande Bharat
Mission to bring back Indian citizens
stranded in foreign countries.
Operation Samudra Sethu:
● 2019
● It
was a naval operation as part of the national effort to bring home Indian citizens from overseas during the Covid-19 pandemic.