Resolving the Hijack Crisis

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

OK, lets take this step by step...

Question: Are the hijackers acing totally independently or are they just `operatives` of an `agency` that planned and was/is/will be providing moral, logistic & financial support?

Possible Answer A: The hijackers are members of a J&K/ P.A.K (Pakistan Administered Kashmir) based organization that unilaterally took this action to free Maulana Azar & friends. Just based on the fact that last four attempts to free the Maulana have come from a group attached to the Harkat-Ul-Ansar/ Mujahedeen, they would have to be the prime suspects.

Possible Answer B: The hijackers may or may not be members of H.U.M but they are fully controlled by an intelligence agency. And the nominees are... CIA, Mossad, ISI, RAS. And the winner is? Can we safely narrow this down to ISI & RAS by popular demand?

I would personally lean towards Answer B.

Here is the amount of stuff these people smuggled in. Handguns, knifes, hand grenades (eye witness reports indicate that the famous five are not quite sharing one of each, they all have their own fire power). That`s an amazing volume of contraband to take past security. And then there are the unconfirmed reports of bullet proof vests, laptops, satellite phones, bullet resistant pants (!) and what not. How do you get past security with all this? Can you bribe your way into an aircraft with the nature of booty being so frightening? Seems highly unlikely. These folks have been helped out by somebody really high up on the totem pole. Does anybody on chowk have any possible answers? As ridiculous as Zeemax`s food cart theory sounds, it is the only theory so far that explains this.

Before we inspect/ accept the `agency` paradigm, let me just say one thing to all those people who ask ``Why would a `government` plan or execute such an audaciously risky maneuver?`` I am sure you guys are aware of the CIA sending poisoned cigars to Castro and other such hilarious escapades (I think they sell the CIA Bloopers video for 14.95 at Kmart). If somebody alleges that RAS had something to do with this operation, they are not exactly insinuating that the Lok Sabha passed this operation with a voice vote. Intelligence agencies around the world almost feel remiss if they take their respective governments into full confidence.

So which agency is it? I think if you argue that these are Kashmiri freedom fighters and members in good standing of the august institution of Harkat-Ul-Mujahedeen, then you automatically concede that its an ISI operation. ISI provides training, manpower, logistics, infrastructure, funding & command structure to H.U.M. So if its an H.U.M operation, then its an ISI operation. I think ISI has far more to gain and lot less to loose than RAS. In fact the way it has gone so far, it seems extremely unlikely that RAS had anything to do with this whatsoever. If anybody can give me a good reason as to why the RAS would subject the Indian people & government to such an ordeal, I would be really grateful.

In summation I would like to say that I wouldn`t put a `contrived hijacking` or any other sinister plot past the RAS. They are insidious scumbags like any intelligence agency worth its salt should be. But the way this is shaking down, I think its pretty obvious that RAS had nothing to do with this (unless of course they`ve been completely bought over by ISI and their goal now is the destruction of India!). It would be interesting to find out the extent of the role ISI played in this but to concede that this is a Mujahedeen operation and then to release ISI of all culpability is a trifle oxymoronic.

Regards

THANK YOU UMAIRR

I know what you mean, thank you anyway.

I WOULD REQUEST EVERYONE IN THE DISCUSSION TO STOP POINTING FINGERS TO EACHOTHERS AND PRAY FOR THE PLANE PASSENGERS AND CREW AND ALSO VICTIMS ON THE GROUND. ALL THE PAKISTANIS AND INDIANS COME TO YOUR SENSES AND TRY TO REALISE THE GROUND REALTIES WHICH ARE THE ROOT CAUSE OF ALL THIS.

TO ALL OUR CRITICS WHO DO NO LET A MINUTE GO BY CRITICISING ISLAM IN GENERAL AND PAKISTAN IN PARTICULAR SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF KINDNESS AND FORGIVENESS AND SO ARE PAKISTANIS VERY FRIENDLY, HOSPITABLE AND PEACE LOVING PEOPLE. AN ACT OF AN INDIVIDUAL/S CAN NOT BE BLAMED ON A NATION. FOR INSTANCE THE PEOPLE WHO KILLED AUSTRAILIAN PRIEST AND HIS FAMILY WAS ACT OF CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS NOT OF A WHOLE NATION.

PEOPLE WHO DEMOLISHED BABRI MOSQUE WERE ALSO FEW EXTREMISTS AND FUNDAMEMTALIST HINDUS THAT DOES NOT MEAN THE WHOLE HINDU NATION IS FULL OF HATRED AND VOILENCE.

NOW AS FAR AS WHAT ISI IS DOING? THAT QUESTION CAN BE ANSWERED WHAT RAW, CIA, MOSSAD OR FOR THAT MATTER ANYOTHER MILITARY INTELLIGENCE IS DOING. THEY ARE ALL DOING THEIR JOBS WITH THE BEST WAY SUITED TO THEM. IN SOME CASE THEY ARE GIVING BEFITTING REPLY TO EACH OTHER`S ACTIONS.

AS FOR AS DIVISION OF UNITED INDIA WAS WRONG, IT IS ABSOLUTE INCORRECT. WE PAKISTANIS HAVE UNDERSTOOD THE SEPARATION OF EAST PAKISTAN BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THEY WANTED FOR THEMSELVES. TODAY ALMOST EVERY PAKISTANI RECOGNISES BANGLADESH AS A SEPARATE ENTITY OR NATION, ANOTHER COUNTRY. SO WE HAVE NO COMPLAINTS EACH OTHER. ON THE CONTRARY INDIA AS GOVERNMENT AND INDIAN PEOPLE HAVE NEVER GIVEN PAKISTAN RECOGNITION THAT IS WHY THERE IS SO MUCH HATRED IN THE SUBCONTINENT. INDIA AND INDIAN SHOULD LEARN FROM THE NEW WORLD ORDER, AND LIBERATE KASHMIR, KHALISTAN, NIXLES, AND ALL OTHERS WHO DO NO LIKE OF WISH TO LIVE UNDER INDIAN COLONIALISM.

IF INDIA ADHERE TO NON-COLONIALISM,NON ANNEXATION AND NON IMPERIALISM, THERE WOULD BE AN ETERNAL PEACE IN SUB CONTINENT.

LONG LIVE PAKISTAN, PAKISTAN PAINDABAD. LOVE PAKISTAN OR LEAVE PAKISTAN.

I CANNOT BELIEVE

Hamidm,

This is what people have been talking about, Y2K and end of the world, the new millineumm, unbelievable events, pigs flying and indo pak understanding.

Best wishes, happiness, long productive life and every thing worth while in the world for you. I completely agree with you.

Regards

Jay.

vineet 69: ``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.`` Seems like the guy who wrote the article hasn`t read the BJP party manifesto. It is available at www.bjp.org. It is the furthust thing from being liberal or secular. Here is some minor snippets from the website.

``The BJP is convinced that Hindutva has immense potentiality to re-energize this nation and strengthen and discipline it to undertake the arduous task of nation-building. This can and does trigger a higher level of patriotism that can transform the country to greater levels of efficiency and performance. It is with such integrative ideas in mind, the BJP joined the Ram Janmabhoomi movement for the construction of Shri Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. This greatest mass movement in post-Independence history reoriented the disoriented polity in India and strengthened the foundation of cultural nationalism.

The BJP is committed to facilitate the construction of a magnificent Shri Ram Mandir at Ram Janmasthan in Ayodhya where a makeshift temple already exists. Shri Ram lies at the core of Indian consciousness. The BJP will explore all consensual, legal and constitutional means to facilitate the construction of Shri Ram Mandir at Ayodhya.``

``The future of Bharat is set. Hindutva is here to stay. It is up to the Muslims whether they will be included in the new nationalistic spirit of Bharat. It is up to the government and the Muslim leadership whether they wish to increase Hindu furor or work with the Hindu leadership to show that Muslims and the government will consider Hindu sentiments. The era of one-way compromise of Hindus is over, for from now on, secularism must mean that all parties must compromise.``

Please do not try to misinform anyone about the BJP. Any party that specifically mentions in their manifesto the destruction of a mosque, based on 400 year old history is not liberal or secular. Any govt. that is ordering the killings of thousands of Muslims in Kashmir is not quite liberal or secular to me. It is as fundamentalist as they come. How is Vajpayee going to get anymore fundamentist than this.

Re: the happy one Reply #: 67

``That`s an amazing volume of contraband to take past security... And then there are the unconfirmed reports of bullet proof vests, laptops, satellite phones, bullet resistant pants (!) and what not. ``

Apart from Zeemax`s food cart theory, I have another. At Kathmandu, they carried in whatever little they could (knives, pistol,etc). Once they landed in Kandahar (their own backyard), they were supplied with the other stuff by the Taliban, just in case. They are relaxed in Kandahar - home sweet home. There`s nothing anybody can do to them now. And this laxity has transferred over to the passengers.

Since they are obviously receiving orders from pakistan (everyone knows this, and pakistan knows that everyone knows this) killing the passengers is out of the question. Apart from the sheer stink that this would raise, retaliation in the form of shooting down a PIA flight is easy.



Pakistan was given a lesson in kargil that two can play a game. For 2 Migs, a Helicopter and 5 lives, the price they paid was a $100 million plane and 16 lives. It seems they have short memories. (A certain thick-skinned pakistani is ever fond of bringing up the issue of shooting down an unarmed plane, etc. etc.etc).

The irony is that in spite of all the patriotic arguments offered by the pakistanis, they have no say in ANY matter in their country. Their military govt. is answerable to no one. Apart from the relative anonymity of the web, none of the pakistani spokesmen at Chowk would dare question their govt`s actions inside Pakistan.

regards,