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| India-Pakistan |
| Usmani under protective custody? |
| 2003-11-25 |
| The Kandahar plot EFL "YOU should lose some weight, Maulvi Sahib," joked a prison guard at Jammu’s Kot Bhalwal jail, "maybe you should spend some more time digging tunnels." On June 14, 1999, a group of Pakistani terrorists in the city’s high-security Kot Bhalwal jail had made their way into a tunnel burrowed underneath the prison’s walls and barbed wire. The man for whom the jailbreak was organised, Maulana Masood Azhar, now commander of the Mujahideen Jaish-e-Mohammad, soon found that he had a serious problem in hand. The tunnel was simply too narrow to allow the portly terrorist through. Azhar made his way back into the prison. There were numerous attempts to free Masood Azhar from Indian custody, including the kidnapping and murder of 5 western tourists in Kashmir in 1995. Eventually, he and 2 other terrorists were freed by the Indians when an Indian airplane was hijacked and flown to Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 1999. Some time in the coming weeks, a team of officials from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is hoping to leave for Kandahar in Afghanistan to unravel the mechanics behind the December 25, 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814. The CBI team hopes to interrogate Mohammad Akhtar Usmani, the designated successor to Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar, who was then commander of its forces in Kandahar. A welter of new evidence, and the CBI’s earlier interrogation of Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, suggest that Usmani was the central conduit between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen members who carried out the hijacking on its behalf. Given that the United States is engaged in a war on terrorism, and given that an American national was on board IC-814, it would seem reasonable to expect that the U.S. would be only too happy to cooperate with the CBI. The sad truth, however, is that the U.S. will not even admit that it has Usmani in custody, an assertion rubbished with increasing candour by Indian and Afghan intelligence officials. That’s very interesting if true, I have no idea how credible the claim is, although if the intelligence agencies of India and Afghanistan are both claiming it to be true, and it is part of the attempt to reach an agreement with ’moderate Taliban’, it might well be. No public news has emerged of Usmani since March, when he was credited with several military actions in southern Afghanistan. Since then, neither the Taliban nor the U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan have issued word about him. Indian intelligence officials say that Usmani, like several other key Taliban commanders, is now being held under the protective umbrella of the U.S. military. Although it is unclear if the Taliban leader has actually been arrested, Indian intelligence officials believe that he has been cooperating with the U.S. in its efforts to stitch together some political entity out of the remnants of the far-Right Islamist organisation. The last thing the U.S. needs right now is a request from India seeking the extradition of one of its new-found potential allies - or embarrassing disclosures about the linkages between the "moderate Taliban", global terrorism and Pakistan’s intelligence establishment. After months of increasingly impatient prodding, officials of the CBI were allowed access only to Mutawakil, a small player in the IC-814 outrage. Informed sources say that U.S. officials were profoundly disinclined to grant access to the high-profile politician; at one point, India even considered issuing an Interpol alert that would have compelled Afghanistan to arrest the Taliban leader. In the event, Mutawakil said little that was not already known. Usmani, Mutawakil said, had handed over the IC-814 hijackers and the prisoners released by India to ISI personnel who were already stationed in Kandahar. Personnel from the ISI had played a key role in aiding the hijackers during their negotiations with Indian officials in Kandahar, and subsequently arranged for the group to be ferried across the border into Pakistan. After the hijacking, Masood Azhar went on a sort of terrorist tour of Pakistan, surrounded by dozens of AK wielding bodyguards (who were reported by the Pakistani press as being ISI agents), before announcing the creation of the Jaish-e-Mohammad at the gates of the Binori madrassa. The Jaish took with it about 75% of the membership of the Harkut ul Mujahideen, which had recently been declared a terrorist organisation by the State department. Omar Sheikh kept a much lower profile, although some say he became very close to al Qaeda. Zargar was a minor figure, best known for tying people to trees and taping live grenades to them. Early on, officials present at Kandahar say, it became evident that the ISI was playing a key role, guiding the hijackers with the demands to be made at each stage. Katju, Doval and Sahay were put up in a guest house, a short drive from the airport. The adjoining buildings were shared by guests who spoke Urdu, drove to the airport and back around the same time they did, and were treated with considerable respect by the Taliban. Two of these men were on the tarmac when the Indian aircraft arrived; others, recognised as ISI personnel from its special operations wing in Quetta, soon joined them. At 9-30 p.m. that evening, Katju made first contact with the hijackers on the aircraft’s own wireless communication system. Shortly afterwards it became clear that they were talking on hand-held walkie-talkie sets to their ISI handlers, a crude and easily intercepted communication system, but the only one available in Kandahar at that time. IN retrospect, there was little doubt about the Taliban’s own position on the affair. Although Mutawakil expressed great public embarrassment over the presence of IC-814 on Afghan soil, a line bought happily by the United Nations Coordinator on Afghanistan, Eric de Mul, the reality was different. Usmani arrived with commandos at Kandahar airport only after the arrival of the Indian team, a clear sign that he did not seem overly concerned with the prospect of the hijackers escaping or blowing up the plane. Soon afterwards, rocket launchers and tanks surrounded the aircraft. Since such weapons are not used in hostage-rescue operations, the effort was clearly to ward off any covert Indian rescue attempt. In 1999, the Taliban held all the spades. Even if Katju had been more pessimistic about the Taliban, it is far from clear whether India had any real policy options. Today, the Taliban has fallen, but given the thrust of the U.S. policy in the region, justice remains a distant deal for the victims of the Kandahar hijacking and their relatives. In New Delhi, anger is mounting over what seems like a duplicitous and unprincipled war against terror. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who has been thoroughly briefed on the CBI’s efforts, recently in Moscow called for an end to "double standards" in the war against terrorism and asserted that a "consistent and uncompromising" position needed to be taken. As things stand, the U.S. seems to be in no position to do any such thing. Desperately stretched in Iraq, south and central Asia have been consigned to the fringes of Washington’s consciousness. The Taliban, we have been told, is dead and buried. And yet, oddly enough, it lives, with the aid of the same people who claim to have killed it. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |