On his return to Pakistan, Omar Syed Sheikh was handled by one Brigadier Ejaz Shah, now Musharraf’s director general of the Intelligence Bureau. Sheikh was the conduit for transferring $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leader of the hijacking teams which carried out the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. Sheikh has been sentenced to death for his involvement in the brutal assassination of American journalist Daniel Pearl. There is evidence to suggest that the sentence has not yet been carried out because Sheikh’s links with the ISI would be exposed.

Mushtaq Zargar is in Muzzafarabad, busy participating in the ISI’s jihad in Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan has also not escaped the blowback of its involvement in the IC 814 hijacking. The Jaish-e-Mohammed has joined the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to wage terrorist attacks on its erstwhile mentors in the Pakistani military establishment. General Musharraf himself has been targeted by Masood Azhar’s followers.

Has New Delhi learnt any lesson from the Kandahar hijacking fiasco? Evidently not. While the government has recently announced a policy of not yielding to terrorist demands, such a policy will carry little credibility unless it is backed by a unanimous Parliament resolution, supporting legislation and public will. During the Kandahar hijacking, the Taliban continuously reminded us of how we yielded during the Rubaiyya Sayeed kidnapping in December 1989. Would New Delhi refuse to yield to hijackers or other terrorists if VIPs or their relatives are kidnapped? Would we be prepared to cross borders covertly to deal with those who seek to wage undeclared war against us? Sadly, given the widespread impression that we are a “soft state”, our adversaries do not yet appear to believe that we will be unyielding and firm on such occasions.

... contd.