The hijacking of an aircraft of the Indian Airlines Corporation (IAC) to Kandahar in
southern Afghanistan differs from the pre-1994 hijackings in three respects:
* It is the first hijacking since the mushrooming of private TV
channels. While their blow-by-blow account may help in informing and educating the public,
they add to the difficulties of the Government in handling a delicate crisis with
psychological dimensions in an effective manner.
* It is the first incident of this nature handled by the BJP-led
Government, which makes its response seem slow and uncertain.
* It has come at an inconvenient time when Indian interactions
with Pakistan have been scanty after the military take-over and those with the Taliban
were non-existent.
There have been serious breaches of security by the Kathmandu
airport authorities as well as by the IAC staff at the airport. While the Nepalese Govt.
has ordered an enquiry from their side, the Government of India should also find out as to
how the IAC Security Officer failed to notice that four tickets in the same name
(S.A.Qazi) had been bought and did not stop them for enquiries. This was shocking
negligence on his part.
The public and media criticism of the failure of the Crisis
Management Team to keep the aircraft detained or to raid it at the Amritsar airport is
understandable, but may not be totally justified. Raiding an aircraft by the
specially-trained intervention force requires careful preparations and the time available
might not have been sufficient.
Initial reports, subsequently found false, that the hijackers
were armed with AK-47 and other heavy weapons might have also made the initial response at
Amritsar hesitant. The action of the hijackers in killing a passenger due to the reported
delay in re-fuelling made a decision on a possible raid at Amritsar even more difficult.
One could justifiably fault the Government for not taking
advantage of the landing of the aircraft at a Dubai military airport for entering into
negotiations with the hijackers in the more friendly atmosphere of Dubai than in the
hostile atmosphere of Kandahar. In the 1980s, when Sikh extremists hijacked an IAC plane
to Dubai, the local authorities there were very co-operative in helping India successfully
terminate the situation. The Government does not seem to have made any attempt to have the
stay of the aircraft at Dubai prolonged.
Now that the aircraft is stuck in Kandahar since Saturday, the
Government of India is confronted with three cruel ground realities:
* Even in the totally unlikely event of the Taliban wanting to
intervene to rescue the crew and passengers, it does not have the capability to do so.
Pakistan has, but it is doubtful whether it would help India in view of the present state
of relations.
* The Indian intervention force has never operated in foreign
territory. Successful intervention in a foreign territory depends on accurate local
knowledge and the complicity, if not the co-operation, of the neighbouring countries.
Israel's Entebbe raid succeeded because of the excellent knowledge of Entebbe airport, the
co-operation of the Kenyan Government and the complicity of other regional governments,
which detected the movement of the raiding Israeli aircraft towards Entebbe, but did not
alert the Ugandan authorities. India has had no presence in Southern Afghanistan since
1979 and the contacts with India-friendly Pashtoon leaders of the North-West Frontier
Province and Balochistan in Pakistan and southern Afghanistan, which the pre-1996
Governments had maintained, have been allowed to be dried up by the post-1996 Governments,
which put all the eggs in the Nawaz Sharif basket. Thus, our knowledge of the Kandahar
area is bound to be out of date. For a raiding plane to be able to go undetected to
Kandahar, rescue the passengers and crew and bring them back, the question of the
co-operation or complicity of the Pakistani and Gulf Governments does not arise.
* Thus, it would seem that the Government has no other option but
psychological pressure and persuasion, for which negotiations with the hijackers are
necessary.
For the negotiations to succeed, we have to have the co-operation
of the US, which still has influence in Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi
Arabia, which have influence over Pakistan and the Taliban. Now is not the time to get
involved in a wrangling match with Pakistan over its complicity. The image of the BJP in
the Gulf as anti-Muslim is not going to facilitate our task.
There is no doubt that India has once again allowed itself to be
caught napping by the terrorists, either acting alone or at the behest of Pakistan and the
Taliban. This is not the time to indulge in endless discussions over the proclaimed
sanctity of the principle of "no concessions to terrorists." The 160 plus
innocent passengers and crew should not be made to pay with their lives for the negligence
of the Government.
The objective should be to have them freed without any further
loss of lives and agony for them and their relatives, even if it meant a temporary loss of
face for India. It is very easy for all of us not having any relatives in that aircraft to
boldly proclaim the need to give no quarters to terrorists, but before doing so, we should
put ourselves in the place of the passengers, crew and their relatives.
Our security agencies can easily recover from this temporary
set-back if they draw the right lessons and prevent a repetition in future.
The Government has all the available facts and non-governmental
analysts skate on thin choice in making suggestions for action. One does not know if the
release of some detenus is the only demand of the hijackers or they have made others about
which the Indian public has not been taken into confidence.
Moreover, the question of the future of the hijackers after the
release of the passengers and crew has not yet been decided. They were asking for asylum
in Taliban-controlled territory, which the latter has rejected. Our negotiators should not
walk into the trap of accepting the demand for the release of the detenus and releasing
them, only to find the hijackers coming forward with other demands such as political
asylum before releasing the passengers and crew.
B.RAMAN
(27-12-99)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India,and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai. E-Mail:corde@vsnl.com)
