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Shooting in dark: India hostage to security crisis?
Published on Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 07:57, Updated on Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 08:38 in Nation section
Tags: Face The Nation, Hostage Crisis
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Three terrorists holed up inside a house in Chinore near Jammu were killed in a gunfight with the security forces on Wednesday night.
The terrorists took seven persons hostage on Wednesday morning and shot dead three others before being killed in a 20-hour security operation during which the sound of machine guns and exploding grenades rang the air.
The Army had two options during the hostage crisis: breach the single-story house the terrorists had taken over or wait and wear them out.
The Army didn’t have the specialised weapons to confront the terrorists without harming the hostages. It couldn’t have brought the house down without harming the hostages, so it had to go for the option of wearing out the terrorists and waiting for them to exhaust their ammunition. The second option was risky and bloody but it was all the Army had.
Was the Army handicapped? Are we ill equipped to deal with hostage crisis situation? CNN-IBN’s Bhupendra Chaubey asked this on Face The Nation.
The guests on the show were Saibal Kar, a passenger on Indian Airlines flight IC 814 which was hijacked and taken to Kandahar in 1999, Brig (retd.) Gurmeet Kanwal, director of Centre for Land Warfare Studies, and Steven Herman, South Asia Bureau Chief of Voice of America.
Kar said the situation in Kandahar and Chinore were different. “There was scope of negotiation with the plane’s hijackers but the terrorists on Wednesday just wanted to kill as many people before being killed. We (IC 814 passengers) never thought we come out alive; we all know how botched that rescue operation was,” he said.
Kanwal said the security operation was the “best way” to rescue the hostages. “The aim was that the hostages don’t come to harm; the terrorists are tired out and then go in at the dead of the night,” he said.
India has an embarrassing record of giving in to kidnappers: the country’s Foreign Minister took four terrorists in his plane to Kandahar in return of the safe release of IC 814 passengers in December 1999.
Years before that, in December 1989, the Central government released five terrorists to secure the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, the kidnapped daughter of Kashmiri politician Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
Security forces tried to get a maulvi (Muslim cleric) on Wednesday morning to speak and convince the terrorists to surrender but when that failed no further attempts were made to get a negotiator. Was that an error?
European and American security forces have a “tremendous body of knowledge” in dealing with hostage situations, said Herman. This knowledge doesn’t come from weaponry but from the experience of police agencies and security forces in dealing with terrorists and criminals.
“It is important for India to exchange information with law enforcement agencies and militaries around the world to gather what are the best strategies to tackle such situations,” said Herman.
“Professionals in this area believe that innocents must not be harmed. The fact that the operation in Jammu went on for 20 hours is not relevant—the fact is that the innocent people were rescued. If that takes 48 hours or 60 hours so be it.”
Politics takes hostage policy
The UPA Government had planned to put in place a new and tough anti-hijack policy in February 2008. It promised to follow a no-negotiation policy with hijackers and death penalty for them.
The Government said it had the right to shoot down a hostile plane if there is evidence that the plane is likely to be used as missile. It promised better coordination among security agencies during a hostage or hijack crisis. The proposals were so radical that there was an uproar in Parliament and the Opposition refused to back the policy.
India is good at conceptualising but not as good in executing concepts. “The (anti-hijack) policy is good but sufficient organisational structures have not been put in place to give effect to that policy,” said Kanwal.
“We forget that the Indian Army’s primary task is defending the borders. Getting involved in internal security duties, like counter-insurgency operations, is a secondary task. Hostage rescue is an extremely specialised operation and it needs to be undertaken by specially trained and equipped forces,” he said.
There is no “one-size fits all” solution for hostage crises. “India needs to have trained personnel at all levels to deal with such situations. You have to study all variables and cases around the world to create a system. Somebody has to be in charge,” said Herman.
Autocratic nations can deal with hostage situations brazenly but democracies can’t do that. India has to care for the innocents before it gets terrorists.
SMS poll on: are we ill equipped to deal with hostage crisis situation?
Yes 71 per cent, No 29 per cent
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Read Comment | Post Comment
off course Indian force is ill equipped when it comes to using modern weapons and using specialised knowledge to deal
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Listen DEAR IBN FOLKS,
For security there are no more than 2 scenarios
Hostage killed
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Yes, There is no Legal Way but the Violence is not the alternative. It has not succeeded. It has created
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What Indian army has done is there duty, and the terrorist doesnât deserve any sort of mercy itâs not a
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What Indian army has done is there duty, and the terrorist doesnât deserve any sort of mercy itâs not a
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