Sir — Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy may thank the Union Government for helping bring back the trapped nurses from Iraq, but it looks like he was deliberately underplaying the role of another factor key to ending the crisis: The clout his State enjoys in the Gulf.
It is true that the Ministry of External Affairs, Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval all played pivotal roles in building emergency alliances across nations and communities to facilitate the nurses’ release.
But the influence that the Malayali expatriate community wields in West Asia has also been critical to the success of the rescue efforts.