25 Years After the Hijacking of IC 814

In the last week of December, 25 years ago, even as the rest of the world was readying to welcome the new millennium, India was grappling with one of its worst crises in decades. Indian Airlines flight IC 814 from Kathmandu to New Delhi had been hijacked on Christmas Eve. On board were 190 passengers and crew.

Harkat-ul Mujahideen, a Pakistan-based terror group active in Jammu and Kashmir, had carried out the hijacking. Among its demands was the release of several top Islamist terrorists in Indian jails.

After stopping at Amritsar, Lahore, and Dubai, the hijacked plane landed at Kandahar in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. India couldn’t have been in a worse situation. It had to deal with the Taliban to reach out to the hijackers, but it had no contacts with the group. In 1999, the Taliban were still close to Pakistan and would not have acted without approval from Pakistan’s intelligence wing, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

To stage a rescue operation, India would have needed access to Pakistani air space not only for an Indian assault team to enter Kandahar airport and conduct the operation but to exit with the passengers and the hijacked aircraft. Such support was not forthcoming from Pakistan. Relations between India and Pakistan were at rock bottom; in May 1998, the two neighbors had carried out tit-for-tat nuclear tests, and five months prior to the hijack, their armed forces were engaged in a near-war at Kargil.

Consequently, doing a deal with the hijackers was New Delhi’s only option.

On December 31, 1999, Omar Sheikh, Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Zargar were freed in exchange for the passengers and crew of IC 814. The Taliban provided the hijackers and the three freed terrorists safe passage to Pakistan.

Fast forward 25 years. How are the main actors of the hijack drama of the final days of 1999 faring?

The stock of the three freed terrorists grew remarkably in global jihadist circles in the years after their return to Pakistan. From bases in Pakistan, Zargar funded terrorist activities in Kashmir. He was declared a designated individual terrorist under India’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in 2023. Sheikh is in jail for the brutal slaying of journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. Azhar has orchestrated several major terror attacks in India, including those on India’s Parliament in 2001 and Pulwama 2019. While his Jaish-e-Mohammed is designated a terrorist group by the United Nations, India, the U.S. and several other countries, Azhar was listed as a global terrorist by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee in 2019. He roams free in Pakistan.

And the Taliban have returned to power in Kabul. Hopes that Taliban 2.0 would be less brutal and misogynistic have been dashed. If at the time of the IC 814 hijack, very few countries – including Pakistan and the UAE – had recognized it, 25 years thereafter, no government has formally recognized the Taliban government.

What has changed remarkably is the Taliban’s relations with India and Pakistan. The ISI-Taliban relationship is not one of a patron-protégé any longer. Indeed, over the past two years, relations between Kabul and Islamabad have deteriorated dangerously over the Taliban regime’s alleged support for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

And in sharp contrast to the situation in 1999, India not only has contacts in the top echelons of the Taliban regime but is engaging with officials at ever higher levels. On November 4-5, an official Indian team led by a joint secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs met Taliban Acting Defense Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob and Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, among others. Days later, the Taliban announced the appointment of a “second secretary” at the Afghan consulate in Mumbai.

Significantly, Taliban appointees have taken charge of the Afghan embassy in New Delhi and consulates in Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Indian officials say that India’s sizable investments in Afghanistan made between 2002 and 2021 and the protection of its national security interests underlie New Delhi’s intensifying efforts to build relations with Taliban 2.0.

“India does not want to be in the situation it was in December 1999, with no one to turn to in its hour of crisis,” a former official of the Indian security establishment told The Diplomat on condition of anonymity.

But will its courting of the Taliban yield positive results for India? Would the Taliban 2.0 provide support in the event of another crisis on Afghan soil?

“India does not have options. It will have to do business with whoever is in power in Afghanistan,” the former official said.

A former Indian diplomat said that India does not have any illusions about the Taliban.

After all, the group “has gone against its long-standing patron, Pakistan, to protect the TTP.” Likewise, “the possibility of the Taliban regime standing by an allied terrorist group against India cannot be ruled out,” the diplomat said.

Twenty-five years ago, India did not have contacts in the Taliban regime. Today it can boast of contacts at the higher echelons of the regime. But does it actually have friends in high places? It does not.

What is certain, however, is that in the course of courting the Taliban regime India has lost the goodwill of the Afghan people.