Critics, however, argue that it was Bhat’s hanging that accelerated radicalisation, separatism and terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). On the other hand, the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction in 1989, and the state’s subsequent capitulation, is widely seen as the immediate cause of the near complete breakdown of state authority in J&K, and the trigger to the following decades of terrorism. Of course, the state’s response in the IC 814 hostage crisis in December 1999 has become a byword of state capitulation, and is widely regarded as having significantly contributed to a sharp escalation in terrorism in J&K, with the formation of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) under the leadership of Maulana Masood Azhar, one of the terrorists released in this deal with the hijackers. The incompetence that attended the security response at the Amritsar Airport, where IC 814 remained for at least 47 minutes, moreover, offers a sharp contrast to the response to two incidents of hijacking, which were ‘resolved’ at the same Airport, with a strong and effective security response, under K.P.S. Gill’s command in 1993. The termination of the 1993 hijackings sent out a strong ‘dampening’ message to terrorists planning such future actions.
Clearly, however, no ‘formula’ of response can be derived from these and other conflicting experiences.
Much of the present discourse on the hostage issue has also been undermined by contra-factual stereotypes. Israel and the US, it is asserted, have an uncompromising ‘no-negotiations policy’, and this, it is claimed, has served them well, and is what India needs. The truth is, while both these countries have a declared no-negotiations policy, negotiations— and dramatic concessions to terrorists— have, in fact, been the rule. The Israeli example during the hostage crises at Munich (Germany), Entebbe (Uganda), and at Ma’a lot (Israel)— the last of which involved 105 children, among 115 hostages, at a school— are often cited as exemplars of a successful ‘no-negotiations’ approach. Crucially, and more recently, however, Israel chose to release as many as 1,027 prisoners— including no less than 280 terrorists serving life sentences for various terrorist crimes, and who were collectively responsible, according to Arab reports, for the loss of 569 Israeli civilian lives— in exchange for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Despite the tremendous complexity of hostage situations, a number of utterly facile, and at least occasionally nonsensical, statements on a ‘hostage policy’ or even ‘standard operating procedures’ (SOPs) for hostage situations, have recently emanated from the corridors of power. Opportunistic elements within the UPA have sought to mix in the present controversy over the National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) with the hostage crises, claiming, without any adduced evidence, that the NCTC alone could help resolve such problems. That the MHA has remained almost entirely passive through the recent hostage situations, however, is entirely ignored by advocates of increasing centralization of such responses.
Within this context, it is, indeed, ironic that, as far back as September 2004, the UPA government had announced that it was planning a “no nonsense hostage policy”. Its “cornerstone”, we were then told, was to be “the principle of no negotiations”. Even more ironic was the fact that this announcement came in the wake of the negotiated release, after meeting terrorist demands, of three truckers abducted in Iraq.
There is evidence, here, of persistent and tremendous political incompetence. At its core is an episodic focus, ordinarily in the face of ongoing crises, on issues crucial to national security, and a refusal to sustain such a focus once the crisis has passed.
If any rationality is to attend our responses to hostage crises, the first element that demands recognition is the fact that options arise out of capacities. The second is that hostage-taking is just one among a wide range of insurgent/terrorist tactics. The third is that all terrorist tactics are adopted within a calculus of success that is integrally linked to relative insurgent/terrorist capabilities and state/security capabilities. Many have argued that releasing prisoners in exchange for hostages has an inevitable ‘demonstration effect’ and encourages future abductions. This, however, is only the case where the state fails to impose unbearable costs on the responsible insurgent/terrorist grouping in the aftermath of the hostage exchange. Where such costs are imposed, anti-state groupings quickly abandon such tactics. The imposition of such costs, however, is not a function of ‘hostage policies’, SOPs, or ‘negotiating skills’, but of general policing or security capabilities, the availability and deployment of state Forces on the ground, and the relative dominance, in specific affected areas, of state and rebel Forces. Essentially, a no-negotiations position, SOPs, or ‘mechanisms’ of response, makes sense only if there is significant punitive capacity and will. Otherwise, these translate into nothing more than a callous and boastful posture of strength, in the absence of real power, at the expense of the hostages, and offer no strategic or tactical advantage.
Critically, no policy or standardized response pattern or mechanism can secure appropriate responses in all situations. The effectiveness of responses will depend purely on the efficiency of the state’s Forces, and on the ability to predict and prepare for all patterns of rebel activity. Abduction is just one among an entire range of Maoist tactics, and relies on the wider capabilities of the rebels and of state Forces. There can be no effective response to a hostage crisis, when the state lacks the capacities, the capabilities and the will to respond effectively to the broader challenge of the Maoist rebellion; to daily killings of its Security Forces’ (SF) personnel and civilians; and to the complex and rampaging depredations of Maoist cadres, militia and fronts across wide areas of the country.
The state has been driven to paralysis by the abduction of a couple of inconsequential foreigners, an MLA and a DC. One can only cringe at the possibility of a Beslan in India— the September 2004 incident in a tiny Russian town, where Chechan terrorists took nearly 1,200 hostages, including at least 777 children, in a school gymnasium. In the eventual SF action at Beslan, at least 334 hostages, including 186 children, were killed. How would India cope with a challenge— and with a catastrophe— of such dimensions?
The gibberish about ‘policies’, ‘SOPs’, the centralization of responses, the transformation of ‘tactics’, ‘terrorists’, and other such twaddle, is nothing more than a diversion, an attempt by bankrupt politicians and force commanders to direct attention away from the awful crisis of capacities that undermines India’s security and all dimensions of governance. It is not the Maoists that hold India hostage today, but the enduring venality, the incompetence and the collapse of imagination of the country’s leadership.