Indians split over hostage crisis
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - India's hostage crisis in Iraq continues to
play with emotions on the subcontinent, with the
weekend witnessing several heart-rending scenes of family
members and relatives of the three Indians appealing to
the government, as well as the captors, to help in the
release of their kin.
Given the nature of the
occupation of Iraq, with India declining to provide
direct and official assistance to the United States, the
Indian government is caught in a dilemma. It cannot and
does not want to involve itself in direct negotiations
to prevent the kidnappers from upping their demands,
while any assistance from the US-led coalition is ruled
out as such a move may further endanger the lives of the
three Indian truckers being held in captivity.
So far it is Kuwait and Gulf Link (KGL),
the company for which the three kidnapped Indian
truckers work, that has led the negotiations from the
Indian side. A spokesperson says the company has agreed to
the abductors' two main demands: that KGL will withdraw
from Iraq and pay compensation to the victims of the
bombings in Fallujah. The third demand of freeing Iraqi
prisoners in Kuwait has been put on hold, as clearly the
officials of KGL do not have any mandate to comment on
such issues.
India has invoked the teachings of
Islam and its close ties with Iraq to renew its appeal
for the release of the three Indian nationals taken
hostage by a terrorist group, which calls itself the
"Holders of the Black Banners", in that country on July
21. "Islam teaches everybody to be just and fair and the
people of India expect that captors will also honor the
Islamic way of thinking towards the innocent," Minister
of State for External Affairs E Ahamed said in a
statement in Arabic. "As far as I am concerned, I have
absolute faith in Almighty Allah to give hidayath
[wisdom] to the group who keep out people as hostages to
release them," Ahamed said. Indian Foreign Minister
Natwar Singh has issued a similar appeal through Arab
television channel alJazeera.
While the Indian government
might have gotten it right by not directly involving
itself in the negotiating process, it is under immense
pressure from another front, friends and family of
the hostages and the huge media build up, which is an indicator
- especially to the United States, with the maximum stake
in Iraq - that in such situations it cannot be just
objective matters of policy and security, but rather
emotions that can determine decisions.
The last time
the Indian government was faced with a major international
hostage crisis was in December 1999, when Indian
Airlines Flight IC 814 with more than 150 passengers
from Kathmandu in Nepal was hijacked and forced to fly
to Kandahar, Afghanistan, by Pakistani militants. Former
Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh was directly
involved in the negotiations, which ultimately led to
the release of several Pakistani militants holed up in
Indian jails, including Masood Azhar, the ideological
kingpin of several terrorist outfits, such as the
Lashkar-e-Toiba, which operates from Pakistan and which
has been instrumental in launching several attacks on
the citizens of India. The duration of the hijacking
witnessed relatives of the passengers laying a virtual
siege to the residence of then prime minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee.
The
ramifications of the current crisis are being played out in
the district of Una, with a predominant Punjabi community,
in the state of Himachal Pradesh, to which two of
the kidnapped truck drivers belong. The entire population is
out on the streets making demands of - as well as
criticizing - the government, urging it to play a more
proactive role in defusing the crisis. Elderly
parents, young wife, children, nephews and uncles; each are
being sought by the media for a personal anecdote to strike
a chord with the rest of the country. Last Friday, villagers
stopped 37 foreign tourists traveling on two buses, but
they were released after a protracted intervention by
the police. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally
called up the father of one of the hostages to impress
on him the government's efforts.
It was
a cruel blow to the families on Sunday evening when
KGL said the abductors had agreed to release the
hostages, marking widespread celebrations, but a last-moment
hitch, reportedly on an agreed ransom amount, led to the
kidnappers trashing the deal. Talks are said to have
resumed on Monday.
Indian officials are at pains
to point out that the Foreign Ministry is trying its
best to broker the release of the hostages. There are
already indications of several behind-the-scene
negotiations away from the media and public glare that
speak of Manmohan Singh issuing instructions to protect
the lives of the three Indian truckers at any cost.
Talmiz Ahmed, India's Arabic-speaking ambassador to
Oman, was sent on Saturday to oversee talks with the
abductors and officials of KGL.
But clearly the
government considers the current crisis a sticky
situation, and is putting a contingency plan in place to
ensure the safety of the 5,000-odd Indians who live in
Iraq. "We have told all our missions in the Gulf region
to assist any Indian who wants to come back to India,"
Ahamed told reporters on Sunday after a meeting of the
crisis management group that comprises the top security
officials of the country.
Om Sai Travels in
Mumbai, which fraudulently sent the three kidnapped
Indian truck drivers to Kuwait on a visitor's visa, is
now under investigation. The government has also issued
instructions to crack down on recruiting agencies that send
Indian workers, whether they be ex-servicemen, drivers, cooks
or menial hands, by issuing visas to Jordan or Kuwait
and illegally transporting them to Iraq. About 1.3
million Indians work in Saudi Arabia and 100,000 in Kuwait,
while some 3 million Indians are said to work in the
Persian Gulf region overall.
All of these efforts
point to one direction - that as matters slip in Iraq,
the US will find itself increasingly alone in handling
the country. The Philippines recently buckled when it
withdrew its limited troop presence in the face of one
of its citizens being taken hostage. With questions
about safety dogging even the supply of humanitarian
aid, the prospects of Indian troops being sent to Iraq
as peacekeepers seem to be remote now - with or without
the involvement of the United Nations.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
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