At the dawn of 21st century, as most of the world was shutting down to celebrate Christmas Eve, policymakers in India were suddenly very busy.
On Dec. 24, 1999, Indian Airlines Flight 814, commonly known as IC 814, was on its way from Kathmandu in Nepal to Delhi when it was hijacked by five men belonging to the Islamist terrorist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. After stops in Amritsar, India; Lahore, Pakistan; and Dubai, the plane eventually landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Dec. 25. The city was a Taliban stronghold, and India, having closed it embassy in Kabul in 1996, had no officials available to talk to the Taliban. India’s top intelligence officials flew there to negotiate with the hijackers and the Taliban, and after eight days, all passengers and crew were released in exchange for three top Pakistani militants from Indian prisons: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who went on to be arrested in Pakistan for the kidnapping and killing of the journalist Daniel Pearl; Maulana Masood Azhar, who within days of his release launched the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, the organization responsible for the suicide car bombing in southern Kashmir in February 2019 that set off airstrikes and border skirmishes between India and Pakistan; and Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar, who is connected to armed militancy in Indian Kashmir and is ensconced in a “safe house” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
