Author: David Rohde
Publication: The New York Times
Date: December 6, 2001
The tiny piece of paper is inscribed
with the names, ages and nationalities of the hostages. Four Spaniards
at first. Then an American. A 71- year-old Frenchman wrote his name and
his wife's, the last name in capital letters, the first name in cursive.
One captor, for some reason, kept this reminder of the lives he once held
in his hands.
This scrap of paper from an Indian
Airlines hijacking in 1999 was one item among scores of documents including
terrorist training manuals found here Sunday in a house neighbors said
was a headquarters for Pakistani militants.
Five men carried out the hijacking:
four ticket stubs from the flight, two boarding passes and an Indian Airlines
Airbus 300 safety procedure card were among the souvenirs left behind in
the house along with the handwritten list of hostages' names.
The house was also filled with scattered
documents - business cards, boxes of cassette tape labels, sheets of blank
stationery, recruitment literature and fliers - bearing the name of Harkat
ul-Mujahedeen, a Kashmiri Islamic extremist group that American officials
believe has long been supported by Pakistan. It has been on the State Department's
terrorist organizations list since 1997.
The group was accused in the hijacking,
but denied involvement. Its presence here suggests why a Taliban-run Afghanistan
was of such strategic importance to Pakistan over many years: the country
provided a haven for Islamic militants who could later be deployed to fight
Indian rule of mainly Muslim Kashmir. Successive Pakistani governments
have attached great importance to this campaign.
Along with the Harkat ul-Mujahedeen
literature were more than a dozen small green artillery instruction booklets
with "Al Qaeda" printed on their front cover. There also was an Arabic-language
guide to making weapons that was dedicated to Osama bin Laden.
An examination of thousands of pages
of documents left behind in seven houses and what appeared to be a training
camp suggests that terrorists in training lived or worked in the houses.
Northern Alliance officials say
there are scores of houses here like this one, abandoned since the fall
of Kabul but once inhabited by Arab, Chechen, Pakistani and other militant
foreigners.
American officials said they had
removed chemical samples from 40 Al Qaeda sites and training bases here.
This reporter visited one of those houses along with six other houses and
the camp, all of which contained documents of various militant groups.
This house, like others, was pointed
out to Northern Alliance officials by neighbors who were canvassed. They
said they had noticed many Pakistanis and other foreigners using the house
during the Taliban rule.
Some of the houses were open and
could be entered. Others were guarded by alliance soldiers who allowed
journalists to enter them. All the houses had been entered by Northern
Alliance officials or soldiers or civilians living in Kabul. Many appeared
to have been ransacked, some appear to have been cleaned out in part before
they were abandoned, and in most there was evidence of some papers having
been burned. It is not clear who might have been in the houses since the
fall of the Taliban; nor is it clear whether anybody may have tampered
with or left the documents during this time.
The Central Intelligence Agency
has examined documents left in houses in Kabul, according to an American
intelligence official. While the government has found some materials that
show that Al Qaeda had an interest in weapons of mass destruction and was
collecting materials on the subject, the official said nothing found was
considered sensitive.
The array of materials found in
the seven houses include forged visas, altered passports, listings of flight
schools in Florida and registration papers for a flight simulator.
The groups seem to have been highly
organized and appeared to share research sources and other materials. The
same standardized terrorism textbooks, religious booklets and military
manuals were in several houses this reporter visited.
The occupants kept detailed records,
listing expenses on ledgers, using computers, setting up complex course
schedules and grading their pupils as they progressed.
Books and materials found in the
houses made mention of nuclear weapons, anthrax and other biological weapons,
sarin gas and poisons like ricin.
There is also a lack of sophistication
to the training materials and documents. While the groups may have dreamed
of weapons of mass destruction, no evidence has emerged here of their actually
having obtained any. Many of the texts in the houses are outdated and the
plans sketched out in notebooks are crude.
But the house here and the Indian
Airlines hijacking suggest that a combination of crude tactics, luck and
determination can succeed, as they did on Sept. 11.
On Dec. 24, 1999, the five hijackers
armed with knives and guns seized control of the flight from Katmandu,
Nepal, to New Delhi with 155 people on board. The hijackers directed it
from India to Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates and finally, on Dec.
25, to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
During the stopover in Dubai, the
hijackers called a group of strong- looking men to the front of the plane
and made an example of one, Ripen Katyal, a 25-year-old newlywed. As the
men watched, the hijackers slashed Mr. Katyal's throat and let him bleed
to death.
Over the next week of negotiations,
one hijacker seemed to befriend the hostages, leading them in singing games
and joke contests. When talks broke down on the seventh day, he threw open
the doors of the plane, woke up the passengers and told them to pray. In
30 minutes, he said, they would be shot one by one.
The next morning, everyone was freed
in exchange for three jailed members of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, which opposed
Indian rule in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir. The five hijackers were
allowed to escape with them.
Taliban officials gave the hijackers
10 hours to leave the country and won international praise for their role
in ending the standoff.
American and Indian officials demanded
that Pakistan shut down the group, but Pakistani officials refused, saying
that could spark violent protests. Maulana Masood Azhar, a militant leader
freed from prison in India as a result of the hijacking held public rallies
in Pakistan and started an even more militant sister group, Jaish-e-Muhammad.
The hijackers were believed to have re-entered Pakistan and disappeared.
Numerous documents related to the
hijacking were found in the house in the upper-class Wasir Akbar Khan neighborhood
near the embassy district. They included a receipt from the purchase of
one hijacker's ticket, that hijacker's fake Indian identity card, airport
departure fee receipts and train passes two hijackers used while living
in India planning the attack.
The business cards of Harkat's general
secretary, blank stationery, enrollment forms and letters to leaders of
the group were found in the same room as the hijacker's tickets. Letters
of introduction from Jaish-e- Muhammad, ask Harkat officials to enrol young
men arriving in Afghanistan "in school."
The documents could prove embarrassing
to the Pakistani military, which American officials believe has covertly
supported Harkat for years.
Other documents show close ties
to the Taliban. One paper listed the units and commanders of Taliban forces
on the front lines near Kabul and their code names.
Neighbors said the house served
as a military headquarters, with scores of Pakistanis arriving there to
receive orders about deployment.
The house, which is being guarded
by alliance soldiers but apparently has not been inspected by American
intelligence officials, includes a list of trainees' names, home addresses
and code names. There were also several copies of publications by American
extremist groups that described poisons, espionage, disappearing ink and
exploding pens.
