Bungling that proved costly

By Harkishan Singh Surjeet

WITH THE hostage crisis now resolved, the week-long ordeal that began on Christmas eve for the passengers and crew of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight has ended. The whole nation heaves a sigh of relief at the safe return of all but one of the passengers.

Despite this overwhelming sense of relief, there is less to cheer about. For the relief has been purchased at a heavy cost. Three top extremists were swapped in exchange for the hostages. While securing the release of over 150 traumatised passengers, the Vajpayee Government compromised severely the national interest. International pressure should have been mounted. The release of Maulana Masood Azhar, Mustaq Zargar and Syed Ahmed Umar Sheikh, represents a surrender by the Vajpayee Government in its fight against extremism in the Kashmir valley.

The bargain ultimately struck with the hijackers goes against the spirit of the declaration adopted at the all-parties meeting held on 27th December, 1999, to discuss the hijacking issue. The statement issued at the meeting had said that whatever the Government decided must be based on two factors: the safety of the passengers and the overall interests of the nation.

The whole gamut of the hijacking and the way it was mishandled raises several questions. Firstly, the Government let the initiative pass into the hands of the hijackers by letting the plane take off from Amritsar. It is not for us to spell out the methods of doing so - but as various analysts have indicated during the course of the last several days - such a situation could have been created enabling us to detain the aircraft at Amritsar. This was the first and most serious mistake in the entire bungling that the episode has come to signify.

It has now been established that the hijacking was organised by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, an extremist group based in Pakistan. Maulana Masood Azhar and the two others released from jail owe allegiance to the Harkat-ul-Ansar, the precursor of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The hijacking and subsequent release of three hardcore extremists is part of the overall plan drawn up at the behest of the Pakistani ruling establishment to intensify extremist activity in the Kashmir valley. The largescale infiltration across the line of control in Kargil last year and the simultaneous induction of a large number of armed militants into the valley are all part of the same gameplan. The hijacking episode is yet another link in this chain.

How far has the Pakistan ruling elite succeeded in its aims? Kargil had focussed international attention on Kashmir and made the U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, show ``personal interest''. The militants who were inducted simultaneously into the valley have been going about the task designated to them. In a change of tactics, the militants are not seeking soft targets. Instead, they are now concentrating on police, military and paramilitary pickets. This has the twin objective of both demoralising the forces as well as instilling fear among the people. And now comes the hijacking. The release of the three Harkat leaders has resulted in a boost to the activities of the militants in the valley. This is precisely what the hijackers had bargained for.

After going out all in praise of the efforts of the unrecognised Taliban regime in Afghanistan in ending the crisis, the Vajpayee Government is now seeking to make amends. At the all-parties meeting many others, apart from us, had pointed out that we should not jump to any conclusions with regard to the Taliban. The Taliban is a force, which was reared in Pakistan. It is ideologically and politically nearer to the cause espoused by the hijackers and is in no hurry to break its isolation from the international community. All through the hijacking episode, the Taliban, even while giving sermons against hijackings, was supportive of the actions of the hijackers. What else can be read into its declaration that it would not permit commandos from any other country to storm the plane? What should one surmise from the deadline issued by the Taliban authorities to settle the issue and the simultaneous threat to force the plane to leave Kandahar? Moreover, it is also noteworthy that hijackers with a political mission always seek asylum. In this case they did not. Why? Without seeking asylum or promise/agreement of a safe- passage, how were the hijackers allowed to proceed towards Pakistan? The Taliban did not seem to exert any pressure either on Pakistan or the hijackers to release the hostages. After incorrectly depicting the role of the Taliban, now the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, comes up with the revelation that all along the hijackers were holding consultations with the Taliban.

The hijacking episode also reveals the lack of coordination among different wings of the Government. The Civil Aviation Minister, Mr. Sharad Yadav, is reported to have said that both he and the Prime Minister were informed only 40 minutes after the hijacking had taken place. One wing of the Government did not know what the other was doing. Even the Crisis Management Group was not equipped to handle such a situation. It did not even have the telephone numbers of the Amritsar airport! The delay in taking decisions also cost us heavily. It was this that permitted the aircraft to take off from Amritsar - robbing us of the initiative. The bungling at Amritsar was to prove very dear. It limited our options, with the plane leaving Indian airspace and finally landing in unfriendly territory.

But the first mistake was committed at the Tribhuvan airport. Knowing fully well that Nepal is a hotbed for ISI-sponsored extremist groups' operations, the India needs to take more precautions and have its own mechanism for conducting security checks on passengers boarding Indian Airlines flights from Kathmandu. Such a mechanism could have prevented such a crisis and would have proved a deterrent to mischief-mongers.

Apart from all these inadequacies, there is another failure of the Vajpayee Government that has not received the attention that it deserves. And that is the political response. Political pressure should have been mounted on the hijackers. The Vajpayee Government failed miserably in mobilising international opinion and mounting pressure on the hijackers, their mentors in Pakistan and the Taliban authorities. There can be no excuse for this lapse. In the ultimate outcome of the hijack crisis, mounting international pressure could have played a positive role in resolving the crisis to India's advantage. The world gendarme, the United States, took a full four days to react to the hijacking. The British have been conspicuous by not stating anything. And what about the other western powers? Their response if anything was lukewarm. It is such a response that provided sustenance to the hijackers. The shrill cries that were heard during the Gulf war or the aggression in Yugoslavia were totally absent. Could the U.S. not have pressured Pakistan into taming the hijackers? Did the Government of India, with its new-found love with the U.S., try to adopt such a course? Mr. Jaswant Singh could have been trusted to accomplish this given his close rapport with the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. Strobe Talbott, or the U.S. Secretary of State, Ms. Madeleine Albright, after all his talks shrouded in secrecy over the CTBT.

This secrecy was evident during this crisis also. Even after the deal was struck in the morning and Mr. Jaswant Singh was to leave for Kandahar in the comfortable company of the released militants, the Prime Minister informed me at 2 p.m. that the hijackers had scaled down their demands and that he was sending Mr. Singh to Kandahar for further talks. Why he was hiding the fact that Mr. Singh was accompanying the released extremists, is something difficult to comprehend.

Now that the crisis is over, we have to see what its fallout will be in the Kashmir valley. As I had noted earlier, the release of the three key militants, will boost the morale of the militants in the valley. While it will have a negative affect on the people, the forces pitted against the militants will feel let down and demoralised. It is after shedding much blood that they have been able to nab some of these extremists. But the boost in morale of the extremists will see a surge in extremist activities in the State. As many analysts have pointed out, in the immediate post-Rubaiya Mufti period, there was an upswing in extremism and support for it among the people. Not all apprehensions on this count are unfounded.

(The writer is general secretary, the CPI-M).

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