Between death and freedom

The fate of seven truck drivers, including three Indians, of a Kuwaiti company remains uncertain with the twists and turns in the negotiations involving their Iraqi captors and Kuwaiti employer as well as their countries.

in Bahrain

BARELY two months since it assumed office, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh was literally staring down the barrel of a gun. Three Indian truck drivers, Antaryami, Sukhdev Singh and Tilak Raj, who were part of a group of seven drivers working for a Kuwaiti transport company, had been kidnapped in Iraq.

Employed by the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company (KGL), the largest haulage firm in the emirate, they had been driving regularly across the border to destinations deep inside Iraq. But on July 21, the drivers had lost their way. A wrong turn had taken them into Fallujah, the heart of the Iraqi resistance movement against the United States-led occupation forces. Fallujah, approximately 60 kilometres from Baghdad, had virtually become a "liberated zone" after the Americans withdrew from the city towards the end of April. Under an agreement reached then, a group of former Baathist officers, who once served in former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's Army, and a network of tribal leaders began "governing" the city. Conditions inside the city, however, worsened, mainly on account of the punishing U.S. air raids that were taking a heavy toll of Iraqi lives. The Americans justified the attacks saying that their bombs were targeting safe houses, used by supporters of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the alleged mastermind of a spate of suicide car bombings in Iraq, who is suspected to be having Al Qaeda links. On the ground, however, it was a different story. Most Fallujians saw the American air attacks as an expression of the collective punishment delivered on them because their city was standing up to alien rule.

Having entered restive Fallujah, the truck drivers - who included three Kenyans and one Egyptian apart from the three Indians - were taken hostage by the Black Banners Brigade of the Islamic Secret Army. The group was unknown until then; hence the initial impression in intelligence circles was that the kidnappers were "amateurs" who did not belong to a battle-hardened outfit.

While the governments concerned continued to analyse the nature of the kidnapping, the abductors began to build up sustained pressure. On July 22, a statement made by Tilak Raj was released in a video and distributed among international news agencies. Tilak Raj said that the kidnappings were carried out because the captives had been involved in supporting the American occupation of Iraq by delivering supplies to the American forces in Iraq. A representative of the Kenyan and the Egyptian hostages, Mohammed Ali Sanad, also came on air and condemned the Americans. The kidnappers by now had placed their demands. The group wanted the Kuwaiti transport company to cease its operations inside Iraq. It also demanded a total withdrawal from Iraq of countries whose citizens had been kidnapped. Besides, it sought freedom for Iraqis languishing in Kuwaiti jails. In case its demands were not fulfilled, the group threatened to behead a hostage every 72 hours.

As was expected, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh's utterances - that the kidnappers were seeking to derive monetary benefits - did not go down well with the group. It warned New Delhi to show restraint in its statements. To reinforce the point that it meant business, the Black Banners Brigade on July 29 released a video of a visibly frightened Antaryami sitting on the floor, with one of his captors pointing an M-16 rifle to his head. Most alarmingly, he was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, similar to the ones worn by inmates of Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. detention facility in Cuba. The orange jumpsuit was an ominous sign because, in the recent past, captives were made to wear these clothes just prior to their execution.

This video jolted the government into action. The news of the execution of two Pakistanis, Raja Azad and Sajad Naeem, working for a Kuwaiti company added to the sense of urgency in New Delhi . A statement accompanying the video footage on Antaryami added to the discomfort. "The lack of sincerity of the Indian government with its people is far from the way of (Mahatma) Gandhi in realising peace and rejecting occupation, so we have decided that these are (Indian hostages) fighters supporting the infidel in transporting supplies to them," read the statement.

Saving the lives of the kidnapped became a priority because the hostage crisis had begun to feed into domestic politics. Angry crowds had started pouring into streets in the hometowns of Antaryami and Tilak Raj in Himachal Pradesh. In New Delhi, a Crisis Management Group (CMG), headed by the Minister of State for External Affairs, E. Ahamed, was formed. A decision was taken to fly to Baghdad Talmiz Ahmed, India's Arab-speaking Ambassador in Oman, who had served long years in the region. While Talmiz Ahmed headed for Iraq from Muscat via the Jordanian capital Amman, Zikur Rahman, an Arabic language expert was sent from New Delhi to Amman, en route to Baghdad.

In Iraq, events were moving at a frantic pace. Sheikh Hisham Al Dulaimi, a 44-year-old tribal leader from Fallujah, began sending feelers to the Indian embassy in Baghdad of his readiness to intervene to bring an end to the crisis. He had successfully mediated to free three Japanese, two Russians and most recently an Egyptian diplomat. In these instances, Al Dulaimi had used television to communicate with kidnappers. After airing his message, he later would wait for the kidnappers to respond to him through their videos. A similar pattern was to find expression in seeking the release of the seven hostages.

India's engagement of Al Dulaimi, who had been nominated by the Black Banners Brigade as its mediator, appeared lukewarm initially. In fact, the Iraqi negotiator was forced to declare on July 27 that the response of the relevant "embassies" and KGL had been unsatisfactory. But, after July 29, with the threat of the execution of one of the hostages in the next 24 hours, Al Dulaimi's position as the key negotiator became firmly established. E. Ahamed, in a statement made the same day, also cited a declaration by the Indian Embassy in Iraq that the three Indian truck drivers were not working for the "occupation forces in Iraq". The statement appeared to address the kidnappers' reported demand that India should make a statement specifying that Iraq was under "occupation".

Al Dulaimi, assured of his key role, played his hand on July 30, when he publicly appealed to the kidnappers not to implement their threat of executing one of the hostages by 9.30 p.m. IST on that day. The kidnappers abided by Al Dulaimi's appeal. Meanwhile, the Indian Embassy in Kuwait, headed by Ambassador Swashpawan Singh, was busy forging a durable negotiating link between KGL and Al Dulaimi, as the Government of India could not be seen to be negotiating directly with the kidnappers. KGL spokesperson Rana Abu Zaineh went on record to say that the company was in regular contact with the Indian Embassy. The Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry was also actively monitoring the developments, with Foreign Minister Mohammed Sabah al Salem al-Sabah taking a personal interest in the case.

The diplomatic exertions in Kuwait soon began to yield results. KGL sent its representative Mehdi Saleh to Iraq to negotiate with Al Dulaimi in his office on the outskirts of Baghdad. On the evening of July 31, after several hours of talks with the KGL representative, Al Dulaimi announced that the negotiations were yielding positive results, and asked the kidnappers to give more time "so that we can achieve a positive outcome". The deadline for the execution of a hostage was also extended by another 24 hours. However, all was not well with the negotiations between Al Dulaimi and KGL. The issue of "compensation" for the people of Fallujah for the losses inflicted by the American bombardment began to acquire greater prominence. KGL authorities began to express discomfort about coughing up money for this purpose, saying that the kidnappers' demand was political, which was outside their domain. This set the ground for the breakdown of negotiations.

On August 1, Talmiz Ahmed arrived in Baghdad to build on the groundwork done by the Indian Ambassador to Iraq Brij Bhushan Tyagi, Charge de Affaires M.C. Pandey and a young Iraqi staffer employed by the Embassy. Ahmed's first priority was to create an environment that would make the execution of a hostage unacceptable. This he sought to do by "internationalising" the kidnapping as much as possible, by reinforcing links with a network of Arab diplomats in Baghdad who had influence at the grassroots level. Besides, the engagement of "opinion makers" such as religious and tribal leaders, who could influence the Islamic Secret Army, the parent body of the Black Banners Brigade, was stepped up. While this network was being expanded, Al Dulaimi was kept in the picture throughout. The effort was apparently successful, and enough links were established in Baghdad among Iraqis, so that, if required, a new set of negotiators could be activated in case the primary track of talks involving Al Dulaimi and KGL failed. A contingency plan had begun to surface, but much more work was required to position it firmly in place. By then, the Indian intelligence had also made its assessment that the hostages would not be harmed.

Negotiations between Al Dulaimi and KGL broke down on August 1 over the issue of "compensation" for Fallujah victims. Al Dulaimi informed that the Black Banners group had asked him to withdraw from the talks. The Iraqi negotiator's brinkmanship appeared to work, for KGL spokesperson Rana Abu Zaineh went on air on the Dubai-based Al Araybia television channel urging Al Dulaimi to get back to negotiations and adding that the company was ready to accept "all demands" of the kidnappers. By that evening, Al Dulaimi said he was ready to get back to talks, provided the Black Banners Brigade issued him another letter seeking his intervention.

The Al Dulaimi-KGL track was being repaired, but on August 3 Rana went on air again and made some tough demands. She said that the company could not accept Al Dulaimi as the sole mediator. The firm, she added, was ready to send representatives to Iraq, but only after sufficient homework had been done and after Al Dulaimi had made a commitment that he would not walk out of the talks again. Within an hour after the broadcast, Al Dulaimi reverted to KGL expressing his readiness to resume talks.

"Wrap-up" negotiations between the KGL official and Al Dulaimi were held at an undisclosed location in Iraq on August 7. The stage seemed set for the release of the hostages, but there was yet another dramatic twist. Rana said the company had decided to walk out of the talks, blaming Al Dulaimi of raising fresh demands at the eleventh hour. KGL officials hinted that the payment amount to be given to the kidnappers had been settled, but Al Dulaimi had then brought up the issue of making additional payments for the victims of Fallujah.

The Iraqi negotiator, however, has denied these charges, saying that the outcome of the August 7 negotiations had been conveyed to the Islamic Secret Army. The group was yet to revert back to him, and the exercise could be time-consuming. As for the compensation for 250 families in Fallujah, this demand had been raised much in advance, he said. The deadlock on "track-1" between Al Dulaimi and KGL persists at the time of writing, but diplomatic sources have told Frontline that they do not expect this breach to be permanent.