Kleio posted the following comment under the Kuwaitis Stuck in Damascus post:
I was one of those people who was lied to by the Kuwaiti Embassy. They told us all to go up to the Safir hotel in Bhamdoun and that we would be able to catch buses out from there, so we did (two of us) on Friday morning. Once we got there, it was pure chaos. The embassy was totally unorganized and only had about three employees there at the hotel. Why tell all the Kuwaitis to go there if you don’t know how to deal with that many people? The embassy staff (consul and ambassador included) were unhelpful and rude. We couldn’t get on a bus that day because they were giving priority to people with children and elderly. We were told to wait for a phone call telling us when we were assigned to a bus. We naively believed that that would really happen. We missed like 8 buses out merely because we were following the “rules” that turned out to be complete bull. Then, the embassy didn’t offer to pay for the hotel room we had to reserve for the night (even though they had told me when I called that morning that we would “certainly” get a bus out that day).
Next morning, we were told that every single person who was put on a bus to Syria would be guaranteed a seat on a flight out that day. They also told us there would be embassy officials accompanying us to the border, more officials at the border, and then officials from the Kuwaiti embassy in Syria would be there to greet us at the airport. All B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. Nobody accompanied us – our Lebanese bus driver and one guy on our bus who volunteered to take charge took care of things at the border. Then once we got to the airport, there was no trace of the embassy. It was each man for himself. Went up to the Kuwait Airways office and it was chaos with an enormous waiting list. Guaranteed a seat, my a@@! Luckily, like Nat, we had our tickets booked for Sunday night on Jazeera from Beirut anyway (same flight as Nat, turns out), and so we were confirmed on the replacement flight leaving from Damascus on Sunday. However, we arrived at the airport on Saturday, thinking we had a Kuwait Airways guarnateed ticket out. Of course, all hotels in Damascus were fully booked, and the embassy did nothing to help us find accomodation (I never saw anyone from the embassy in the two days I was in Syria). We had to find our own shelter.
I’m not saying the embassy has to pamper us and do everything for us – quite the contrary, we were perfectly capable of making our own arrangements. All I’m saying is, don’t bloody lie to us and hundreds of others! I would rather they had told us up front: “Look, we’ll try to get you out but there are thousands of you and only a few buses at a time, so we don’t know how long before we can get you across the border. And all we’re doing is getting you to Damascus – from that point on, you have to make your own arrangements. We have extra Kuwait Airways flights arranged, but it’s up to you to get yourself on one of them.” Was that so hard? Why make empty promises and “guarantees” to people who YOU told to come to YOU for help?!
12 replies on “Kuwaiti Embassy Support”
Damn! I would be pissed at the damn Embassy if they lied too! He made a good point, let them not lie and people would deal with things! I heard the same things from other people.. the airport was chaos and every person was on their own.. I know some people who continued to Jordan because it was faster.. I just hope everyone remains safe!
And I could understand why Kleio would be paranoid to pull out his camera! I would be too!
He is a She 🙂
Hmm.. goes to show what Ive been so critical about ever since Day 1 of the attacks.
oh crap! sorry!
aham shy radetaw bel salama :/
wallah shy yaqher!!
Marzouq: No problem. 🙂 Just to add, I was also really surprised and disappointed at the behaviour of the majority of the Kuwaiti people who were at the hotel. They made a bad situation much worse. People started fighting and arguing with each other. Nobody would stand in line or behave in a civilised manner. It was partially their fault too that the system the embassy tried to implement fell apart. Oh well. At least we’re home now. Although there are still many people still stranded…
Shame on them they should’ve rented out a GulfStream Jet to pick you up kleio
I’d like to first of all say that the people working at the embassy are human beings and can only do so much to help.
You noted that there were only 3 embassy employees left, including the ambassador himself, which as shocking as this may be, this is not part of his job description. Frankly, I am impressed with what 3 men were able to do, since you clearly note that the place was a mad house, overcrowded with hundreds of people, also noting that the evacuation effort started on day 1 of the strikes, was nonstop, and had already evacuated hundreds, maybe thousands. Embassy workers were still in Lebanon yesterday, pulling people that did not want to leave Lebanon out of their homes.
I’d like to mention that the Kuwaiti embassy has not only helped Kuwaitis cross the border, but hundreds from other nationalities as well.
As bumpy as your experience may have been, you still made it out alive. This wasn’t an unorganized conference or meeting, it was an evacuation effort to avoid the kiling of thousands of people, displacing well over 500,000.
If telling people that a seat would be waiting for them at the airport in Damascus is what it takes to get them out of an area that has been ridden non-stop for days with air raids, then thats what they should do.
The three men that you labeled as “unhelpful and rude” liars, are heros that put their lives on the line to help others.
It’s war time for god’s sake!
I mean look at how the americans are dealing with the situation:
https://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/19/stranded.family/index.html
Just remember that what ever suffering you have faced there are people who wish to be in you place.
And, el7emdellah 3ala al salama 🙂
Next maybe she should consider saying “Beam me up Scotty !”. It might work !!
Unless you were there, it’s difficult for you to judge the situation. Every single person I encountered was pissed off with the way the embassy handled things. The Saudis, who had thousands more to evacuate than the Kuwaitis did, were much much much more organised and efficient. We saw them in the airport. Huge difference. As for the three embassy officials – it may interest you to know that the only person who managed to get things organized and who was actually helpful, and who worked through the night with no sleep, was a VOLUNTEER, and NOT an embassy official – a young Kuwaiti guy who was trying to evacuate like us that decided to take matters into his own hands.
As for them evacuating non-Kuwaitis as well – I saw them with my own eyes turning away Lebanese whose entire families were in Kuwait but who were not Kuwaiti by blood. The non-Kuwaitis they were evacuating were the maids that were accompanying Kuwaiti families, or ones who were married to Kuwaitis.
“The three men that you labeled as “unhelpful and rude” liars, are heros that put their lives on the line to help others.” –> I think that’s overdramatising things a little bit. And yes, a couple of them were very rude. One of the men kept refusing to talk to me. I kept saying “excuse me, excuse me?” and he kept ignoring me. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, or because I’m 27 – or both – but he didn’t think it necessary to take me or my concerns seriously. I would be waiting to speak to him, and then a man who’d come by like 10 mins later would get addressed first. It reached the point where I had to nearly grab him by the arm and force him to look at me and talk to me (and I don’t mean because he was so busy – he was sitting and drinking tea).
None of us who went through this expected to be pampered. We understood that we were in the middle of a war, and that it was an evacuation, not a “conference”. In fact, many of us told the embassy that we could find taxis on our own if it would make things easier on them, and they refused and said that going by bus was better because 1) the embassy would be accompanying us, and 2) if we took the bus we’d be guaranteed a seat on a flight. Why lie?? Why lie when people are volunteering to make their own arrangements? It wasn’t a matter of “If telling people that a seat would be waiting for them at the airport in Damascus is what it takes to get them out of an area that has been ridden non-stop for days with air raids, then thats what they should do.” It’s not as simple as all that. You had old people, families with children, even handicapped people, who arrived at Damascus airport only to find that they did not have a flight out like they had been told. Many people had also suggested to the embassy that they would go to the Kuwait Airways office in Bhamdoun and make their own flight arrangements out of Damascus, and the embassy officials told them it was not necessary – that it was all taken care of. All I’m saying is, why not just tell the truth? None of us wanted to be coddled – we just wanted to know what was really going on.
Anyway, I guess it doesn’t really matter now anyway, since we’re home.
“Shame on them they should’ve rented out a GulfStream Jet to pick you up kleio” and “Next maybe she should consider saying “Beam me up Scotty !”. It might work!!” –> Cute. Very cute.
Moayad – Wow, that article about the American evacuation actually sounds exactly like what we went through, but with buses instead of boats! The whole registering and re-registering and waiting for a phone call thing. Interesting. So maybe it’s not just the Kuwaiti embassy after all! 🙂