President of India's Message (Indian Airlines Flight IC-814)
25th December 1999
The heinous terrorist action of hijacking an Indian Airlines flight causing death, injury and grievous trauma to innocent passengers needs to be condemned in the strongest terms. This incident once again highlights the need for concerted international action to prevent terrorists from holding the world to ransom in the name of whatever causes they may claim to espouse.
I would like to express India's appreciation to all countries that extended cooperation in dealing with this serious incident. I join the nation in mourning the loss of life and in extending sympathetic support to the passengers and their near and dear ones who are undergoing prolonged anxiety and agony as a result of this dastardly act.
Prime Minister's Statement on Hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814
New Delhi, 25th December 1999
My first concern is the safety of the passengers and the crew on board the aircraft. We are doing everything possible to ensure that they return home unharmed.
These last 20 hours have been extremely stressful for the families of the passengers and the crew. I understand and fully share their anxiety.
I also share the anger and grief in the country, particularly over the killing of Rupin Katyal.
I and my colleagues have been constantly monitoring the situation. We are in touch with various countries, as well as the United Nations.
By Vir Sanghvi
Few Indian politicians can match Pervez Musharraf’s verbal dexterity. For all of last week, as the General has toured the United States, I have watched his progress with astonished fascination. As much as we in India may like to pretend otherwise, there is no doubt that the General has invented a fairly convincing persona for himself.
According to this image, he is a bluff, military man with a pragmatic and completely secular outlook who risks his life each day, fighting, along with the forces of civilisation (i.e. George W. Bush and Colin Powell), against the evil-doers (i.e. Muslim fundamentalists) who threaten the very foundations of the Western way of life (i.e. the security of the United States).
The General plays this role so well that listening to him, it is easy to forget that there are more holes in this re-invention of his persona than in a pair of fishnet stockings. You forget, for instance, that far from fighting the forces of terror (i.e. the Taliban), the General and his beloved Pakistan army actually created the Taliban state and ran it by remote control. Even as American planes were bombing Afghanistan and while the General was singing The Star Spangled Banner, hundreds of Pakistani army regulars were fighting alongside the Taliban. Eventually, they had to be evacuated by the Pakistani Air Force.
You forget also that, according to the General, any Islamic fundamentalist who threatens his position is a dangerous terrorist who must be handed over to Colin Powell. But any Islamic fundamentalist who murders Indians is a brave freedom fighter who must be allowed to remain in Pakistan and must, under no circumstances, be sent back to face trial in India.
I don’t know how much longer Musharraf can prevent the gaping holes in his cover story from being apparent to the American people whom he is now so assiduously wooing. But when his legend begins to unravel, it will be something like the Daniel Pearl kidnapping that will do it.
We now know that Omar Sheikh, who kidnapped Pearl, was actually arrested before Musharraf reached Washington. We know also that he said that Pearl was dead. But Musharraf was so desperate for his visit to the US to succeed that this news was suppressed. Instead, the General blamed the kidnapping on India.
In his eagerness to blame India, he made what could prove to be a potentially fatal error. He raised the subject of Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar, both terrorists freed by India in return for the passengers on IC-814. The hijacking connection will, eventually, come back to haunt him.
The IC-814 hijacking is perhaps the biggest defeat ever suffered by India in our war against terrorism. We have always believed that the hijacking was organised by Pakistan. We think that the hijackers came to Kathmandu from Karachi and boarded the plane to Delhi within hours of their arrival.
We believe that the hijackers had always intended to take the plane to Afghanistan so that they could have the protection of Pakistan’s Taliban allies while Islamabad could handle the operation at arm’s length.
All this is, naturally enough, denied by Pakistan.
But there are some things that Islamabad cannot deny. Ultimately, the hijackers set the passengers free after securing the release of three terrorists: Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar alias Latram. All three were released on the tarmac at Kandahar and then melted away. Where did they escape to? We think they went to Pakistan.
The same is true of the hijackers. At least one of them we now know was Masood Azhar’s brother. We suspect that the hijack was planned by Azhar’s family to get him out of jail. Where did all these people go after the hijack?
Similarly, international law tells us that in no circumstances is hijacking ever justified. Any hijacker, no matter how noble you regard his motives as being, is a terrorist and must be treated as such.
If Islamabad is going to stick to its position that it had nothing to do with the hijacking and that it was the work of disgruntled Kashmiris, then it has to prove that it did not offer refuge to the men who planned and carried out the hijacking. And that it did not immediately welcome the terrorists whose release was secured by the hijackers.
It is now becoming clear that Musharraf has been lying — on both counts.
Take Masood Azhar, whom he now calls an Indian agent and a kidnapper. Until two months ago, Pakistan denied that Azhar was anything other than a Maulana. Even when he founded the Jaish-e-Mohammed and encouraged Pakistanis to join the jehad in Kashmir, Musharraf refused to take any action against him.
But now, we have proof that this man found refuge in Pakistan and that he is a terrorist —and we have Musharraf’s word for it.
But the plot gets murkier. After the General had failed to blame the kidnapping on India, the Pakistani police announced that Pearl had actually been kidnapped by Omar Sheikh.
And who was Omar Sheikh? He was yet another of the terrorists freed in return for the passengers on IC-814. He too, it seems, had found his way to Pakistan from Kandahar. And, according to the Pakistanis themselves, he went back to his old trade — kidnapping and terrorism
.Till now, Pakistan had claimed that it had no idea where Sheikh was. Then suddenly, the police went so far as to get Azhar to phone Sheikh from his jail cell to ask him to release Pearl.
Not only had they known that Sheikh was in Pakistan all along, but the cops even had a phone number for him!
But wait, it gets even richer.
On Friday, Sheikh admitted that he had kidnapped Pearl, but said he had done all this at the urging of Mansur Hasnain, in whose custody he had left Pearl. And why had he done all this for Hasnain? Well, because according to the Pakistani police, Hasnain was the mastermind behind the IC-814 hijacking. So Omar owed him one.
So much for the claims that the hijacking was the work of disgruntled Kashmiris; that no Pakistani was involved; that Islamabad had no idea where the three released terrorists went.
Now the Pakistani police themselves are claiming that it was masterminded by a Pakistani.
The whereabouts of the hijackers themselves are a little more mysterious but even there, the information we now possess makes a mockery of Islamabad's claim that it had nothing to do with them. When US forces moved into Kabul after the defeat of the Taliban, they found the house in which the hijackers had stayed. According to the Americans, they also found passports and other documents that suggested a strong Pakistani connection.
General Musharraf keeps telling Washington that he is fully involved in the fight against terror. I think that it is now time to call his bluff.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the Kashmir militancy, nobody who claims to fight terror can support hijackers, kidnappers or terrorists released as a consequence of a hijacking. Morally — and legally — such people are much worse than the Taliban soldiers currently incarcerated by the US at Camp X-Ray.
Musharraf does not want to hand anybody over to India. Fair enough; that is his prerogative. But my suggestion is this: if he is serious about fighting terror, he should round up the hijackers of IC-814, those who helped them, and those who were exchanged for the passengers. By any definition, these people are terrorists. Once he’s rounded them up, let him ship them to Camp X-Ray and let the Americans look them up along with the Talibs.
If he does that, we’ll know that his participation in the war against terror is genuine.
And if he doesn’t, we’ll have proof of what we’ve always suspected: the old humbug changes his story to suit the listener.
No comments:
Post a Comment