New Delhi, April 8: The Yemen crisis has elicited from India's political and foreign policy leadership what decades of diplomacy and a common love of cricket haven't - rare, lavish praise for Pakistan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar independently thanked Pakistan for its gesture in first rescuing 11 Indian nationals from Yemen and then flying them home on a special plane.
"This is a very, very good gesture," Jaishankar said today, an hour before the Pakistan Air Force plane carrying the Indian nationals landed at New Delhi airport. "They have taken great trouble to do this, and we must appreciate that."
Veteran diplomats said they could not recall any past instance of such rich, public expression of gratitude by either of the South Asian siblings for the other. But the gratitude was only one of the rare sights involving the Indian evacuees from war-torn Yemen today.
India allowed a Pakistan Air Force plane to land at its capital's airport - in itself a diplomatic statement that New Delhi would not allow raw sentiment rooted in decades of mutual hostility to stand before Islamabad's humanitarian gesture.
Greeting the 11 returned Indians with bouquets of flowers was Pakistan's high commissioner Abdul Basit, representing his country's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, who had yesterday offered the special plane.
"I welcome our 11 citizens who have returned from Yemen with help from Pakistan," Modi said on Twitter later in the evening. "Thank you, PM Nawaz Sharif, for your humanitarian gesture."
A Pakistan naval ship had plucked the 11 Indians out from Al Mukalla, a southern Yemen port that last week fell into the hands of the Al Qaeda following a jail break. The Indians returned with the ship to Karachi, where Sharif offered that a Pakistan Air Force plane could take them back home - an offer India accepted.
The praise for Pakistan's assistance capped a day when India thought it had successfully ended its evacuation efforts from Yemen, that have included the rescue of at least three Pakistan nationals who were brought to Djibouti, the tiny speck of a nation located on the Horn of Africa. India has evacuated nationals from Yemen to Djibouti, from where they have been flown back home.
Today, Air India planes plucked out over 400 Indian nationals from Sana'a. Over 4,100 Indians have been evacuated from Yemen over the past eight days - a fraction of the effort India had to put in during the 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait, but the largest rescue operation by any country in the current conflict.
But the Indian mission in Sana'a received frantic phone calls in the afternoon from a group of 140 nurses who had not contacted the embassy earlier.
India will try and fly one last plane into Sana'a tomorrow to evacuate these nurses, foreign office spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said.
In all, India has evacuated 409 foreign nationals from 32 countries, Jaishankar said. "People often think it's just a slogan, a posture, but the reality is that in difficult situations you do require different countries to work together," Jaishankar said. "This adversity has brought out the best of everyone."
