For journalists reporting one grave crisis after another, life would have been grim if it were not for situations which are bizarre in the midst of these crises.
When innocent Sikhs were being butchered in Delhi after Indira Gandhi’s murder, orders went out from the army headquarters to move a unit to the capital to reinforce the inadequate security arrangements. It was only after the unit set out from Pune that the army’s top brass realized that the regiment which was being sent to the capital was made up of Sikhs. Half way into their journey, the unit was diverted to another city.
After the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the authorities similarly despatched an army unit to Ayodhya, but discovered too late that there was a problem. The battle cry of the unit was “Jai Sri Ram”. Once the unit reached Ayodhya, it was ordered to change its battle cry to “Har Har Mahadev”.
To be fair, such bizarre situations are not unique to India. When the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, decided to send his troops into Mogadishu to check the disintegration of the Somali state, the US army started looking for American citizens who spoke the Somali language. It was not easy, but ultimately a young marine called Hussain Aideed was appointed as the interpreter and liaison officer.
It was not until many weeks later — and after the Americans had suffered casualties — that the Pentagon realized Hussain Aideed was the son of Mohammed Farah Aideed, the very Somali warlord whom the US forces were trying to subdue.
Of all the stories which one has heard about the recent hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814, the most bizarre is the one about how the ministry of external affairs first heard of the sky piracy.
The airport control tower in Lucknow was the first to pick up the message from IC 814 that the aircraft had been hijacked. Simultaneously, the prime minister’s aircraft, which was returning from Patna to Delhi, also picked up the radio message.
Not surprisingly, the airport control tower in Lucknow was at sixes and sevens over the emergency message. However, that did not prevent air controllers from talking about the hijack to all and sundry at Lucknow airport. They did a thorough job of gossiping, but took their own sweet time to convey the message to the right people in New Delhi.
Meanwhile, one lowly police constable on duty at the airport was among those who had picked up the gossip. He was beholden to a senior officer in South Block who had once done the constable a good turn. The officer, Ajay Singh, joint secretary (security), needless to add, is not a professional diplomat. The external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, who has known him for many years brought him to the MEA to clean the Augean stables of South Block’s security.
Ajay Singh, who has a reputation as a cop with a heart, is also said to command extreme loyalty across the board — and cutting across ranks — in the police force, wherever he has worked. The loyalty of the constable at Lucknow airport was, on Christmas eve, a godsend to South Block.
As soon as the constable picked up the gossip at Lucknow airport about the hijack, he went to an STD booth in the terminal building, spent his own money and called up Ajay Singh in the hope that the information may be of use to him.
Ajay Singh, who was completely taken aback, straightaway informed the foreign secretary, Lalit Mansingh. The foreign secretary, the cautious diplomat that he is, naturally asked Ajay Singh to confirm the tip-off so that he could act on it.
Since South Block had come to hear about the hijack in so bizarre a fashion, it is not surprising that its mandarins were way off the mark in their assessments of the crisis or in their efforts to find a way out of it.
There is little sympathy among New Delhi’s large diplomatic community for Indian diplomacy whining in the aftermath of the hijack that the Americans let India down. And the attitude of these diplomats reflects the considered opinion of their governments that India’s recent expectations from the US have been not only unrealistic but also immature.
Take, for instance, the landing at Minhad air base near Dubai. Officials of the US administration are now putting out the story that they tried to persuade Dubai to detain the plane at Minhad and terminate the hijacking there. According to these officials, Dubai did not want to get involved in the hijacking lest it should subsequently be at the receiving end of an Islamic backlash for any help given to India.
The tragedy is not that the Americans are putting out this story, but that the Indians — including some ministers whom the US envoy, Richard Celeste, has met recently — are swallowing it hook, line and sinker.
Minhad, for the uninitiated, is an air base located in Dubai, but it is not controlled by Dubai authorities. Originally meant to be Dubai’s second airport, it was converted into an air base during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and placed totally under the charge of the US air force for operations against Iraq.
After the Persian Gulf war, the air base reverted to local authorities, but only nominally. But meanwhile, the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates were unified, liquidating the central military command which was Dubai’s fiefdom. What this means is that although Minhad is in Dubai, it is actually under the charge of the unified UAE defence command.
The chief of the unified command is Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed, son of Abu Dhabi ruler and UAE president, Shaikh Zayed. The chief of UAE’s secret police is Shaikh Hazaa, another son of Shaikh Zyed. It is one of the worst kept secrets in the Persian Gulf that the US played a key role, post-gulf war, in unifying the UAE defence command. An apocryphal story in the Persian Gulf is that these two sons of Shaikh Zayed do not even rearrange the furniture in their offices without consulting Martin Indyk, US assistant secretary of state for the Near East, a former ambassador to Israel. It indicates the kind of influence that the US has over the UAE defence set up, of which Minhad is a part.
The Americans are, therefore, correct in saying that Dubai was not in a position to detain the Indian plane. They could not have, even if they wanted to. Only the two sons of the Abu Dhabi ruler, who are in charge of defence and the secret police, could have stopped the plane. The million dollar question is: was India able to persuade Indyk to talk to either of these princes?
When India opened the high profile anti-terrorist dialogue with the US some months ago, this column had warned that New Delhi was chasing a mirage. The UAE experience involving the US during the hijack should be an eye opener to those in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government who believe that India and the US are potential allies.
The US did not become a super power by protecting the interests of other countries. It remains a super power by ensuring that its own interests are well taken care of. America will go along with India in New Delhi’s efforts to contain and fight terrorism. But it will not fight India’s battle against terror. IC 814 has, hopefully, disabused any illusions South Block may have had in this regard.
