Author: Praveen Swami
Publication: The Hindu
Date: November 13, 2003
URL: http://www.hindu.com/2003/11/14/stories/2003111402811100.htm
Yesterday's India-Russia joint declaration
condemning "double standards" in the United States' war against terrorism
may have been provoked by the recent developments in the ongoing investigation
of the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814. CBI officials and
their counterparts in the Indian intelligence services are increasingly
worried about what they see as United States protection for Taliban and
Pakistani intelligence officials responsible for the outrage.
Earlier this month, CBI officials
leaked news that they hoped to interrogate the former Taliban Corps Commander,
Akhtar Muhammad Usmani. Usmani commanded Taliban forces in Kandahar at
the time of the hijacking, was later nominated heir-apparent to the organisation's
head, Mullah Mohammad Omar. What the media missed was that no one in or
outside Afghanistan actually claimed to have captured Usmani. He was last
heard of in March, when the Taliban claimed credit for a major ambush in
southern Afghanistan. Since then, the United States has maintained a stoic
silence on a person one would expect to be high on their list of targets
in Afghanistan.
That, Indian intelligence officials
insist, is because Usmani has been in the quasi-custody of the United States
for several weeks, possibly months. While he has never been arrested or
jailed, India believes he operates under the protective umbrella of the
United States military. "Like a lot of other top Taliban officials," says
a senior intelligence official in New Delhi told The Hindu today, "you
could describe his relationship with the United States as the kind a kite
has with the hand that holds the string". The fact there has been no Afghan
or United States reaction to Indian media reports on Usmani, he suggested,
was a tacit admission of his position.
CBI officials who visited Afghanistan
earlier this year to interrogate the former Taliban Foreign Minister, Wakil
Ahmed Mutawakil, came back with the same impression. The interrogation
came after months of effort, and a blunt Indian warning that it would have
to issue an Interpol request for arrest if custodial access to Mutawakil
was not granted. Mutawakil said little, but did affirm that arrangements
to ship the IC-814 hijackers and the three prisoners released in return
for the lives on board the aircraft, were made by Usmani in cooperation
with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. The CBI has now put up a formal
proposal to the Union Government to request Afghanistan to permit Usmani's
interrogation.
Much of what Mutawakil said was
already known. Indian communications intelligence experts travelling in
the aircraft which flew in the then External Affairs Joint Secretary, Vivek
Katju, to negotiate with the hijackers picked up dozens of wireless conversations
they had with Urdu-speaking handlers on the ground in Kandahar. Interestingly,
Mr. Katju and his fellow-negotiators, the Research and Analysis Wing's
C.D. Sahay and the Intelligence Bureau's Ajit K. Doval, were put up in
a guesthouse just yards away from where their ISI counterparts were housed.
Doval is quoted in a recent book by French philosopher and journalist,
Bernard-Henri Levy as saying the released prisoners, Maulana Masood Azhar,
Syed Omar Sheikh, and Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar, were welcomed warmly by ISI
personnel on the tarmac in Kandahar. Levy's book Who killed Daniel Pearl
examines the connection among the ISI, Masood Azhar and Sheikh.
CBI investigators hope Usmani will
provide key clues to just what the ISI's role in the hijacking was, and
who asked the Taliban to ship hijackers and prisoners across the border
into Pakistan.
India has been trying, without success,
to access logbooks and wireless records of Kandahar Air Traffic Control
and the records of the Taliban Consultative Council meeting on the hijacking
on December 29, 1999.
These documents may be among several
tonnes of documents seized by United States intelligence officials during
their post-September 11, 2001, war on the Taliban. But so far repeated
requests for access to this material have been stonewalled.
Indian officials believe the United
States is reluctant to share information because of its short-term political
objectives in Afghanistan. Stretched to the edge by its military commitments
in Iraq, the United States hopes to reduce its troop commitments in Afghanistan
through a deal with what some policy-makers in Washington D.C. describe
as "moderate Taliban".
Pakistan's military ruler, President
Pervez Musharraf, the author of the term, would also be happy with such
a deal, for it would place figures close to the ISI in positions of authority
in Afghanistan.
The United States also hopes that
a repackaged Taliban political component from southern Afghanistan would
help limit Russian, Iranian and Indian influence in the region.
