Resolving the Hijack Crisis

There is no way to jusify the hijacking, regardless of what the Indian army is doing in Kashmir. Similarly, there is not way to justify what the Indian army is doing in Kashmir, regardless of how many hijackings take place.

The killing of all innocent civilians should be condemned equally, regardless of who does it. I condemn the actions of the hijackers as well as the actions of the Indian army and govt. in Kashmir equally. I hope both do not succeed in their repective endeveours, because both are holding the lives of innocent people in their hands.

Interesting! Did hijackers threatened to carry out any action if the ill passenger was not to return or it is just good faith on Indian Government`s part towards hijackers? Why did Talibans return the passenger to the plane?

Ill Hostage Returns to Hijacked Jet

By AMIR ZIA Associated Press Writer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A cancer-stricken hostage was temporarily taken off a hijacked Indian Airlines plane today for treatment as Indian negotiators reportedly haggled with the captors over the release of Kashmiri militants.

The ailing passenger, an Indian national named Simon Berara, who the Taliban said suffers from stomach cancer, was allowed to leave the aircraft for 90 minutes for treatment at a Taliban military hospital. He was seen returning to the airport in an ambulance and slowly climbing the stairs to disappear inside the aircraft, which was parked at the airport in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

harish3 Reply 64: ``Partitioning didn’t work well for Pakistan`` How have you come to this conclusion? I wish Indians would stop making pre-meditated conclusions about Pakistan. You shouldn`t buy into the Indian media line on everything. I don`t mean any disrespect to India, but I think if you ask Pakistanis, an overwhelming amount would agree that they are happier not being a part of India. They have many complains about Pakistan, but not being with India is not one of them. Even now when Pakistan is at its lowest economic ebb, the average Pakistani still has a higher living standard than the average Hindu India, and a much much higher living standard than the Muslim Indian. Perhaps Indians should let the Pakistanis decide what is good for them, and the Kashmiris decide what is good for Kashmir. Please stop trying to make decisions for others, they have not requested you to do so. Your energies will be better spent trying to solve your own problems.

Regarding migration, the number of Muslims who migrated out of India is far far far higher than the number of minorities that migrated out of Pakistan. Even now, many more Muslims are being killed in India, then Hindus being killed in Pakistan. Kashmir alone has had tens of thousands of deaths. India is being run by a fundamentalist religous govt., even though it claims to be a secular state.

Pakistanis and Kashmiris do not want to decide the future of India, why is that there are so many Indian commentators on this site who have made it a point to make statements about whether Pakistan and Kashmir should be a part of India. Why do you want people to live in your house who do not want to? How about just being friendly neighbors. Live and Let Live....

i read S. P. Udayakumar article and just want to say that what he writes in his article `` Needless to say that the people of Kashmir themselves should not be objectified in such discussions as if they were herd of cattle who India or Pakistan owned. After all, they have the right to decide their own political destiny.`` is what is Pakistan`s stand on the issue of Kashmir.

Washington Post Editorial

Lessons From the Hijacking

Thursday, December 30, 1999; Page A30

HIJACKINGS HAVE their own peculiar horror. A group of unsuspecting innocents is selected from among millions of air travelers, with the random carelessness of an earthquake or a hurricane; then, with contrasting deliberateness, it is threatened with the kind of calculated brutality that only rational beings can concoct. While the victims are held under a death sentence, the rest of the world is left confused and mostly impotent: hoping for the captives` safety, yet knowing that concessions to the hijackers may only ensure that more hijackings take place.

At the time of writing, on the sixth day of the Indian Airlines hijacking, there was no guessing its outcome. Of the nearly 200 passengers and crew who boarded the short flight from Katmandu to New Delhi, at least 155 remained entrapped; 27 had been released; one had been murdered. After stops in India, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, the plane rested uneasily in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The ordeal could end instantly, either peacefully or amid horrendous bloodshed. Or it could just continue: In 1968 Palestinian terrorists held an Israeli airliner hostage for 40 days.

Though the last chapter of this hijacking is uncertain, its main lesson is already evident. Islamic terrorism, which was once headquartered in a few states such as Libya and Lebanon, has diversified. It has a new western outpost in Algeria, two of whose nationals were recently seized trying to enter the United States under suspicious circumstances. And it has an eastern concentration in the Himalayan territories of Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India.

The group that hijacked the Indian aircraft seeks the independence of Muslim-majority Kashmir from predominantly Hindu India; many of its leaders come from Pakistan; many of its fighters have been trained in Afghanistan. All these places share the lack of legitimate government that earlier made Lebanon a terrorist haven. Kashmir has been in rebellion against the authority of the Indian central government for a decade; Pakistan is riddled with corruption that recently helped provoke an army takeover; Afghanistan is under the partial control of fundamentalist guerrillas. Add in a plentiful supply of weapons, courtesy of endless wars and interventions in Afghanistan, plus a thriving drug trade, and it is not surprising that this area has become a terrorist`s paradise.

That terrorism combines alarmingly with the region`s nuclear capability. The Indians blame Pakistan`s government for sheltering and possibly inciting the group that did the hijacking; the Pakistanis retort, brazenly, that India might favor the hijacking as a means to damage Pakistan`s international reputation. Earlier this year, these newly self-declared nuclear powers marched to the brink of warfare, then retreated. The recriminations surrounding the hijacking could yet rekindle their advance.

Officially, no government in the region condones the hijacking. Pakistan, which supports the Kashmir separatists, has condemned it. Afghanistan`s militia government, which openly hosts the world`s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, declares that it will not tolerate the murder of captive passengers on its soil. These anti-hijacking homilies represent the only shard of opportunity in this episode. The rest of the world should now demand that these governments make good on their rhetoric by clamping down on terrorist groups rather than sheltering them. Deporting Mr. bin Laden would be a good start.

International Herald Tribune

Opinion

Whatever the outcome of the hijacking of the Indian Airlines jet and the fate of its 161 passengers and crew, India`s governing Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to come under increasing pressure to beef up military capability and adopt tough measures on a range of issues connected with security and foreign policy.

The Christmas Eve hijacking of the Airbus A300 on a routine flight from Katmandu to New Delhi shows, in the words of an official Indian spokesman, that the government ``cannot be seen as soft towards terrorists.`` Nor can Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee afford to preside over a soft state in which saboteurs, agents provocateurs and terrorists are free to work their mischief.

Many Indians fear that this has become possible largely because the genial Mr. Vajpayee still subscribes to the liberal secular values and notions of a benign and enlightened state bequeathed by India`s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Their growing feeling is that only a strong government acting in concert with like-minded countries can save India now that the center of Islamic fundamentalist activity has shifted from the Middle East to the Pakistan-Afghanistan region.

The renegade Saudi Arabian tycoon Osama bin Laden, whom the United States accuses of masterminding terrorist attacks against American targets in various parts of the world, is based in this region.

Reflecting this intense public concern, India might well seek an explanation from the United States. Washington is accused of turning a blind eye to Pakistani support for terrorist groups in spite of its opposition to global terrorism.

Many Indians would also like Nepal to be forced to close its borders to India`s enemies. Several recent bomb outrages in India were masterminded in the Himalayan kingdom.

Other Indians suggest technical and operational cooperation with Israel, which has shown that it can stand up to fundamentalist militancy.

In South Asian diplomacy, the millennium`s first casualty will be whatever survives of the confidence-building process that Mr. Vajpayee and Pakistan`s ousted prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, started.

That process was dealt a severe blow when General Pervez Musharraf overthrew Mr. Sharif in October. Pakistan and India have been locked in a struggle to control Kashmir for the last 50 years, and the general is said by Indian officials to have close links with militant Kashmiri separatists, such as the five men who hijacked the Indian Airlines plane.

The Indian government has been caught napping twice in less than six months. In the case of the recent conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir, it took several months before India`s military intelligence discovered the incursion of soldiers in Kargil, on the Indian side of the Line of Control that divides Kashmir. According to New Delhi, the infiltrators had been armed, trained and financed in Pakistan.

They were evicted, but only after an intense, expensive and long military campaign, and President Bill Clinton`s personal intervention.

This time, Indians want to know why their commandos could not overpower the hijackers in Amritsar, the Indian city where the hijacked Airbus stopped briefly before going to Kandahar in Afghanistan, via Lahore and Abu Dhabi.

Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh says that his government`s ``topmost priority is the earliest release of the passengers and the crew,`` but anguished relatives of the hostages who stormed his New Delhi press conference on Sunday do not believe that the government acted quickly enough, or with the right measures.

India has to walk a delicate path between capitulation to the hijackers and appearing callous about the hostages. Even if it had Israel`s capability to mount an Entebbe-style commando rescue, a bristly Pakistan would refuse overflight permission. The Taleban government in Afghanistan, which India does not recognize, would also oppose any such Indian operation.

The politics that underlie the hijack crisis are as disturbing for India as the ordeal of the hostages. The United Arab Emirates refused to allow the Indian ambassador access to the hijackers when the aircraft landed there on its way to Kandahar. This confirmed that the Islamic community stands united when it comes to largely Hindu India.

Pakistan`s dismissal of the crisis as ``stage-managed`` has strengthened Indian suspicions of where the plot may have originated. But it is the position of the Afghan Taleban that is most intriguing. It insisted on United Nations intervention and demanded that India negotiate with the hijackers, while itself refusing to intercede with them. This suggests that the aim was to drag the Kashmir dispute back onto the world`s agenda.

Such a move, coupled with the denial of asylum to the hijackers, might be expected to win favor in Washington. It could also imply collusion with Pakistan and explain Mr. Singh`s uncharacteristically blunt statement that the hijacking was one in a series of ``repeated attempts by the Pakistan government and terrorist organizations there`` to secure the release of 31-year-old Maulana Masood Azhar.

He is the Pakistani leader of the Harkat-ul-Mujahidin organization, one of the most ruthless of the Kashmir separatist groups, who has been in an Indian jail since 1994.

Mr. Masood`s group called itself Harkat-ul-Ansar until the United States declared it a ``foreign terrorist organization`` after the New York World Trade Center bombing. Rivalry between it and the better known Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is also based in Pakistan, could be an added complication, with the former now hoping to recapture supremacy in the terrorist hierarchy of Kashmir.

The larger challenge, bigger even than the Kashmir dispute between nuclear-armed neighbors, is to global stability. Terrorism will have won a signal victory if America remains inactive in this crisis, either because Pakistan might be involved or because the terrorists invoke a cause that seems just.

If America is serious about combating Osama bin Laden, it should cooperate to combat his ideas and followers wherever they sprout. The case for Mr. Clinton`s famous ``facilitation`` is as strong now as ever it was during the Kargil crisis.

This time it might save innocent lives, warn the Pakistanis and the Taleban of the danger of international brigandage, and persuade India that its security is also a U.S. concern.

Is this country called Pakistan for real? From Jung.

IA hijacking: majority believes it`s a plot

(Updated at 2330 PST)

KARACHI: According to a poll conducted by the The News and Jang

Internet as to what was behind the Indian government`s inability to

prevent the hijacked plane from leaving Amritsar. 82 per cent of the

voters believed that this was a plot rather than an act of negligence.

Dust in every bodys eyes- the hijackers and arms all had been boarded on its initial journey to Kathmandu!

That is the only comprehensive reason why India did not want the idiots to land at Lucknow!

The plane had 40 minutes fuel seeking permission to land at Lahore and eventually when it landed at Amritsar it had 15 minutes fuel. Why insist on landing at Lahore when the plane had 40 minute fuel and not try and make to home air field Amritsar where they had every and indegenous option! THE INDIANS WANTED TO INTERNATIONALISE IT.

tariqlodi

Dust in every bodys eyes- the hijackers and arms all had been boarded on its initial journey to Kathmandu!

That is the only comprehensive reason why India did not want the idiots to land at Lucknow!

The plane had 40 minutes fuel seeking permission to land at Lahore and eventually when it landed at Amritsar it had 15 minutes fuel. Why insist on landing at Lahore when the plane had 40 minute fuel and not try and make to home air field Amritsar where they had every and indegenous option! THE INDIANS WANTED TO INTERNATIONALISE IT.

tariqlodi

Arun #46:

It is not the question of polemics: no first strike policy, no war pact, dee dah dee dahdah.

What was terrifying, and is terrifying is the evident absence of a quick response mechanism. I agree with you that a hijack and a nuclear accident or attack are two different things. Politician generally are known for lethargy and inaction: do nothing unless absolutely necessary. This psyche is more true of our politicians.

Let me throw in a hypothetical scenario. After the disintegration of the former USSR three multiple nuclear warheads that were based in Ukraine are missing. What if one small tactical device finds its way to Chennai and is exploded?

How soon can the appropriate national agency discover the truth? How soon can they report it to the politicians? How soon can they react? And what if they go for a knee jerk reaction, blame it on ISI and go for a city in Pakistan?

Those possibilities, and the ensuing comedy of errors are what are terrifying.

regards,

t


P.S. Jay, go fly a kite.
And, may the rooster swallow you.

Fh # 55

Thanks for the response.

1.You agree that no side is innocent in Kashmir and I can respect your belief that kashmiris should have self-determination. I, however, disagree and explained why in a lengthy note in reply #50. the ultimate goal for all s. Asians should be individual liberty. This isn’t necessarily achieved by breaking apart. Partitioning didn’t work well for Pakistan and it would not have worked for the southern states during the American civil war. Kashmir, as well as the rest of s. asia, must have a secular government – it is the only way to protect the rights of the minorities. In fact, it is the only way to protect the rights of everyone b/c a religious government can basically do anything it wants – look at iran where many of the people who supported the revolution are now struggling against the hard-line government. Many in the east (especially in the muslim world) believe that secularism is a western fad. They think that the s. asians who subscribe to secularism, including m. a. jinnah, are just brainwashed fools. Secularism, however, is necessary to ensure individual liberty.

2. the fact that Pakistani muslims are an indigenous people and that a majority (not all) Israeli jews migrated to Palestine recently is a moot point. The real issue is that in the creation of both Pakistan and Israel, religious minorities were forced to flee their land to make way for the creation of a religious state. This is the ultimate hypocrisy of Pakistan because Pakistanis say that their state was created to protect the rights of their muslim minority. What they fail to mention is that this right trampled over the rights of the local hindu, sikh, and other religious minorities. It is a further disgrace that these same Pakistanis attack Israel for doing essentially the same thing. It was not right in either situation. Now if jews came to Palestine and lived as peaceful neighbors to the palestinians in a secular state, that would be a different story. The same goes for s. asia.

I’m not against the Pakistani position on Kashmir b/c I support India. I am against it b/c it is wrong.

http://www.stratfor.com

The Hijacking of Pakistani Foreign Policy

Four days ago, hijackers took control of an Indian Airlines plane, which now sits with more than 150 hostages trapped inside on a runway in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. Indian officials are now negotiating with the hijackers, who demand the release of Pakistani Islamic cleric Maulana Masood Azhar, arrested in Indian-held Kashmir in 1994, and that of several other prisoners. The incident has strained already tense relations between Pakistan and India, re-igniting the issue of Kashmir, where both countries claim land.

Kashmiris, Pakistani nationals and Pakistan’s intelligence agency are the most likely suspects in the hijacking. But whoever is responsible, the hijacking has the same result: It usurps control of Pakistani foreign policy, undercutting Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s attempts to focus the government’s attention on domestic problems.

In recent months, Musharraf has attempted to step back from regional conflicts, wanting to attend to domestic issues facing the new regime. He has weakened his government’s traditional support for Afghanistan’s Taliban, whose forces have fought alongside Pakistani rebels in Kashmir. He has also made efforts toward defusing conflict along the disputed India-Pakistan border.

The hijacking disrupts both of Musharraf’s initiatives. First, it highlights the relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban, damning any attempts by Musharraf to disassociate the two in the international eye. The plane sits grounded in Kandahar, where Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban is based. And although the Taliban is reportedly ready to sabotage the hijackers if they harm passengers, its connection to Pakistani radicals is well-known.

Second, and more significantly, the hijacking forces the Kashmir issue back into the forefront. As well, it increases tensions between Pakistan and India. Each country has blamed the other for the hijacking. On Dec. 27, Musharraf reiterated that resolving their territorial dispute must take first priority in any future talks with India.

India has accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), of organizing the attack. There may be truth to New Delhi’s allegations. The ISI is well-known for its support of militants in Kashmir and has recently been implicated in separatist violence in India’s state of Assam.

The involvement of the Pakistani spy agency would indicate that Musharraf has not fully consolidated power in Pakistan. In addition, it would suggest that old rifts between the ISI and Musharraf have not been resolved.

If the ISI is acting on its own initiative, any attempts to reorient Pakistan’s regional position, particularly with regard to the Taliban and Muslim radicals, may be doomed from the beginning.

But regardless of whoever masterminded the attack, one thing is clear: For the time being, the hijackers control not only the fate of 150 passengers, but also the fate of Pakistan’s foreign policy.

On Saturday, December 25, the hijackers of Flight 814 demanded the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, Pakistani militant , secretary general of the Harkat-ul Ansar, who is imprisoned in Jammu`s Kotbalwal jail.

On Tuesday, the hijackers added 35 more militants to the list. Who are these men?

rediff.com obtained a partial list on Wednesday night. Most of them are foreign nationals, and are accused of serious crimes against the Indian State.

1. Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar

2. Nasrullah Largya

3. Naved Iqbal, son of Mohammad Iqbal, resident of Mirpur, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (Pakistani calls it Azad Kashmir)

4. Muzamil Ahmad Dar, s/o Ghulam Mohammad, r/o Kotli, PoK

5. Sayeed Mehboob, s/o Afsar, r/o Rawalpindi 6. Mohammad Akran Baloch, s/o Dalil Khan, r/o Balochistan

7. Naseer Ikram, s/o Qazi Ikramul Haq, r/o Gujranwala, Pakistan

8. Suhail Ahmad, s/o Shahbaz, r/o Dangikotli PoK

9. Saifullah Khalid, s/o Sher Khan, r/o Mang, PoK

10. Ruhail Ahmad, s/o Mohammad Zaman, r/o Kahuta, Pakistan

11. Sofi Jamal, s/o Bulund Khan, r/o Rawalpindi

12. Nasibullah, s/o Nazir Ahmad, r/o Afghanistan

13. Sultan Ahmad, s/o Bashir, r/o Khanabal, PoK

14. Mohammad Farooq Raju, s/o Mohammad Sharief, r/o Kotli

15. Sayed Khalid Hussain, s/o Sayed Khadim Husaain, r/o Panjgram, Muzaffarbad

16. Gulla Bhat, s/o Haka Bhat, r/o Kahuta, Pakistan

17. Bashirat Ali, s/o Ali Asghar, Bhimber, PoK

18. Sayed Sajjad Ali, s/o Shah Pal, r/o Mirpur

19. Mohammad Sayed Khan, s/o Mohammad Sulaiman, r/o Mehmanpoora Bagh

20. Abdul Hai, s/o Ajmal Malik, r/o Haqnawazsheikh, Pakistan

21. Mohammad Yussuf, s/o Mohammad Ayub, r/o Nowkote, Mirpur

22. Zaffar Ali, s/o Sabir Ali, r/o Gujara, Muzaffarabad

23. Alam Khan, s/o Bahram Khan, r/o Shredara, Muzaffarabd, PoK

24. Sultan Maina, s/o Gulam Jeelani, r/o Khanabal, PoK

25. Waqar Shah, s/o Imran Shah, r/o Hazara Sarhad

If Kashmiris want independance, terrorism is the last thing they should adopt. All it would do is make the Indian population & govt dig its heels in & resist. Thats why the rest of the world (except Pakistan) is avoiding the Kashmir issue like the plague.

The Palestenians have/had a noble cause.However, they did`nt get an inch of territory with their terrorist activities. Its only when Arafat renounced all forms of terrorism, that America dragged the reluctant Isrealis to the negotiating table.

If Pakistan really wants to achieve its Kashmiri goal, it should stop providing ``moral`` support to these terrorists. Kashmiris have many leaders who can adopt true nonviolent Gandhian principles & keep provoking the Indian authorities with nonviolent civil disobedience. If anything can ``terrorise`` India & bring international attention to the plight of the Kahmiris, it would be a genuine non violent Gandhian resistance.

Time magazine`s runner up -man of the century- has inspired leaders like Lech Walesa, Dalai Lama, ML King Jr,Aung Kyi etc etc who have brought respect & international recognition to their cause.

No matter how much noise Pakistan has made about Kashmir, it has failed miserably.Even your allies in the Arab world sympathetically make very muted murmurs about honoring UN resolutions--nothing more. Hardly the type of rhetoric that could move India to adopt a different policy.

Jay,

It is ironic but I agree with you in many respects. Islamic Fundamentalism is a big threat to peace and prosperity, particularly for the people of Pakistan. It is also true that Zia-ul-Haq created a monster which successive governments have tried to use to achieve their goals. Pakistan chose the right path in trying to conduct a low intensity covert war in Kashmir, which in the long run had some possibility of bringing India to the negotiating table, but choosing the half-crazed warriors of God was a bad choice - a choice that will come back to haunt us. Unfortunately, these Afghan War veterans and brain-washed graduates of Zia`s madrassas were a a convenient choice - and, I must say they have done a pretty good job so far. But, what is next ?

Just like Hamas, which was created by Israel to counter the PLO, these fanatical militias, with the support of religio-political parties like the Jammat-i-Islami and the Jamiat-i-Ulema, are now poised to actually threaten the government of Pakistan. These parties, which have always failed miserably in the elections, could come in through the back door a`la Hassan Turabi in Sudan. And then our, yours and mine, worst fears will come true. Inspit of the fact that I am an advocate of taking a tough military stance towards India on the Kashmir issue, I was hopeful that we would be able to meet our objectives without resorting to an all-out religious war. However, militant Islam, is a very powerful and convenient tool, and maybe the only one available at this time, to conduct a proxy war in Kashmir. There is no shortage of volunteers - Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Afghans, Sudanese, Chechens and even some second generation Americans, all willing to embrace shahadat.

So what is my solution ? The ISI should take over the entire operation, reign in the maverick groups and put in a central command and control structure while denying any involvement whatsoever, and sticking to the indigenous Kashmiri Mujahideen story-line. They should also keep a wary eye on their domestic activities and ruthlessly deal with the Mullah with political aspirations. Only military targets in Kashmir should be attacked and hijackings and kidnappings should be discouraged and punished. For example, Pakistan should categorically state that it will not accept Maulana Azhar and his cohorts in Pakistan if they are released. Will this lead to an eventual resolution of the Kashmir problem ? I don`t know, but what other choices do we have ?

Actually, it is a pretty hopeless situation. No government in Pakistan or India can give in on Kashmir. Inspite of all the divisiveness in Pakistan there is one issue that most of the people agree on - and that is Kashmir. I am sure it is the same in India. But, then again, if England and France can survive hundreds of years of war, we should be able to muddle our way through history for a while. In the meantime, let`s load up on internet and wireless technology stocks.

hamid,

Convey my regards and best wishes to Tehsin. Yes I do agree that there is going to be a major war, with in ten years. Not that I welcome it, but the way things are going, it cannot be avoided. The first indicator will be the type of govt in pakistan, more overt army of God, than the present will be the first.

I can see the unavoidability, right or wrong, the stereotyping of a religion, the inability and unwillingness of nations and to correct it, the oft repeated claim of individuals that islam is/is not and the blame to interpreters, the refusal to accept responsiblity and condemn those are building up the major encounter. Many believe that pakistan is the emerging threat, a country created for the religion is atlast taking its natural role as a leader of islam, as front line jihadic force. The number of foreigners killed and in indian jail is a testimony to the new pak role. All of the prisoners to be released by the hijackers are apparently foregn nationals.

I do believe that the crap about human rights in kashmir should be cut, should be viewed in the context of TNT and jihad. That should lead to a tangible solution and a few years of peace.