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South Shore mother and son stuck in Qatar amid war in Iran
“They have reported to us that they’ve been hearing missile launches and perhaps drone explosions, things like that, which is deeply unsettling,” U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch said.
Almost a week after the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran upended regional air travel and left thousands stranded in the Middle East, some are still trying to find their way home — including several Bay Staters from the South Shore.
“It just feels so much like we’ve been abandoned,” Hingham native Stacey Schuhwerk told WHDH. She and her son, Tyler, were on vacation when the abrupt military action last Saturday forced them to take shelter in Qatar.
After struggling to get assistance from the U.S. State Department or the embassy in Doha, she appealed for help in a public Facebook post earlier this week.
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“Reaching out to friends and family for assistance in stepping up pressure on the US government to provide help to get stranded Americans out of the Middle East,” she wrote, adding, “Even just guidance on how to leave would be a help.”
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Schuhwerk did not respond to an interview request. Speaking to WHDH, however, she described a frustrating lack of guidance from the U.S. State Department.
“You get put in circles with automated messages,” Schuhwerk told the news outlet. “They say leave a number and they send you a text back saying ‘leave the country.’ Where are we to go? … If our own government is telling us to leave here, let us know how. How do we leave?”
U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, who represents Hingham in Congress, said his office has been back and forth with several constituents who found themselves stuck in the Middle East, including Schuhwerk and a man from Hull who has since evacuated Abu Dhabi via Cairo.
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Schuhwerk and her son are “sitting tight right now,” he said in an interview Thursday. “They seem to be comfortable but very, very apprehensive. They have reported to us that they’ve been hearing missile launches and perhaps drone explosions, things like that, which is deeply unsettling.”
Lynch said his office is working to help Schuhwerk find a way out, though he also feels the Trump administration should have done more to evacuate Americans from the Middle East before Saturday’s strikes.
“That was a missed opportunity. If the administration knew that they were going to launch this, … they could have easily ordered people to leave much sooner and protected them, and they did not,” he said. “So as a result, we’ve got quite a few people who were sort of stuck in place, and we’re still trying to get some of those people out.”
At a classified briefing earlier this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, and others promised to “redouble their efforts” to bring Americans home, according to Lynch.
“I’m pretty frustrated, but it does appear that Secretary Rubio … as well as General Caine, they’ve tried to make sure we had more aircraft available,” Lynch said. “They’ve gone to the commercial airlines and asked them to increase the capacity of their flights.”
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However, he said he’s also found the Trump administration “very closed-lipped” in general about plans for the ongoing military operation. “There’s been a lack of communication between Congress and the White House, … which is putting us, I think, at a disadvantage here,” he said.
Lynch was a cosponsor of a war powers resolution to halt President Donald Trump from continued military action in Iran without Congressional approval. The House of Representatives narrowly rejected the legislation Thursday, one day after the Senate defeated a similar measure.
Speaking to Boston.com before the House vote, Lynch noted Trump hasn’t ruled out deploying troops to Iran in what would be a massive utilization of military resources.
“So we need to talk about that,” Lynch said. “He needs to go to the American people, go to Congress, certainly, and make his case.”
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