“There are no plans for a US government-sponsored evacuation of US citizens at this time. We encourage U.S. citizens to monitor the news and seek available departure options from Yemen, via air, land, or sea.”
Feeling abandoned
Three stories of Americans in Yemen and the campaign trying to help
Reporting by Malachy Browne and P. Kim Bui
At least 10 countries have evacuated citizens from Yemen as fighting continues. Americans, however, do not have a way out right now, at least not according to the U.S. State Department.
That answer isn’t sufficient to Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
“This is unacceptable, that they’ve effectively been abandoned by their country,” she told Reported.ly Friday.
A press conference with several advocacy organizations and family members took place earlier today in San Francisco announcing a campaign, StuckInYemen, to collect names of Americans who need help. CAIR, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus (ALC) are behind the campaign.
In the day since the campaign began, more than 100 names have been collected from all over the United States.
Billoo said as soon as the group has a good idea of how many Americans need help (estimates they’ve received are in the thousands), then they’ll look at options.
Evacuating the stranded themselves is “a bit out of the wheel house for all of us,” Billoo said, but they plan to keep pressing the U.S. government and see if there is a way to facilitate evacuations with the help of other countries. Bangladesh asked India earlier this week for assistance with evacuations of Bangladeshi nationals.
Reported.ly tried to contact the Overseas Citizens Services at the State Department, but was unable to reach anyone.
Stories of Americans in Yemen, collected by Reported.ly.
Yasmin A.: Waiting in Cairo for her daughter
Reported.ly spoke with a Yemeni woman, Yasmin A., who is trying to have her five year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, evacuated from Yemen.
She contacted the U.S. Embassy in Yemen and in Egypt, but was not helped. She’s frustrated.
“They were the worst,” she said.
Mokhtar Alkhanshali: Two attempts to make it home
Yasmin’s experience mimics stories Billoo has heard, like that of Mokhtar Alkhanshali. Alkhanshali’s brother, Wallead Alkhanshali spoke at the StuckInYemen press conference.
In one of Alkhanshali’s recent Facebook posts, he expressed his fear:
“My heart bleeds every night as my family and I listen to the sounds of war and destruction all around us.”
Billoo told Reported.ly that Alkhanshali, who lives in the Bay Area, was in Yemen working on his start-up company when he was stranded.
He tried to leave by ship and then by plane, but was unable to.
He’s also asking his friends to write to their elected representatives.
“What we’re hearing from US citizens is that this is a feeling of abandonment,” she said.
The first American casualty: Jamal al-Labani, father of three
Earlier this week, Al Jazeera reported on the first American casualty since the Saudi-led airstrike began more than a week ago.
Mohammed Alazzani, his cousin, spoke to Al Jazeera.
“[He] tried his hardest to escape. Do they just not consider Yemeni-Americans to be real Americans? If they were Caucasian, would they have acted already?”
