India Airlifting Prisoners from Afghanistan: Reports
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| Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners in
cages. |
By
IOL South Asia Correspondent
NEW
DELHI, July 30 (IslamOnline) - Pakistani, Kashmiri and Arab prisoners
presently incarcerated in Afghanistan prisons are being allegedly
airlifted by India, Pakistani newspapers have claimed. Quoting
diplomatic sources, the reports said that India has airlifted a third
group of Pakistani, Kashmiri and Arab prisoners from Afghanistan's
capital city of Kabul on July 16 by a special aircraft.
Indian
newspapers have so far refrained from publishing the reports, although
the prominent daily The Times of India, Monday, July 29, carried
excerpts from a Pakistani newspaper, The Frontier Post. The same
newspaper in its July 8 issue had earlier carried excerpts of a
similar alleged airlift of 30 Pakistani prisoners published in another
Pakistani daily, The News.
Reports
said that on earlier occasions two batches of prisoners were
respectively transferred to India from Afghanistan.
The
first batch of prisoners to be allegedly taken to India comprised 110
Pakistanis, who were taken into custody after the fall of the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan. Pakistan's popular daily Dawn (December 20,
2001) quoting two top Pakistani officials, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said that "Afghanistan's northern alliance handed over
110 detained Pakistani Muslim militants to India, and that "India
then airlifted them to New Delhi for interrogation."
According
to a Pakistani human rights activist quoted by The News (Dec. 20,
2001), India sent an aircraft to Afghanistan's Bagram air base, 40
kilometers north of Kabul, on December 5 last year to pick up the
Pakistanis, who had been detained by the anti-Taliban Northern
Alliance. Before picking the prisoners, the Indian Air Force planes
flew over the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan, the reports
alleged. The newspaper report said that the reported airlifting took
place when the conference on future political structure of Afghanistan
was being held at Bonn in Germany. Reportedly this was the same plane
which brought the family of Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah
from India to Afghanistan.
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| Taliban prisoners in a courtyard in Mazar-i Sharif. |
In
June, 30 Pakistani prisoners in Afghanistan along with some Arabs were
allegedly shifted to India from northern Afghanistan town of Kunduz
via Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe. Two helicopters were reportedly
sent for the purpose under arrangement between the Defense Minister of
Afghanistan, Gen. Fahim, and India's premier intelligence agency, RAW,
according to Balochistan Post (June 19, 2002). Allegedly they were
taken to a Central Asian country from where they were shifted to
India.
Officials
at India's Defense Ministry and at its air force have said that they
had no information on the accusation, according to the Dawn report
(Dec 20, 01).
India
has maintained good and steady relations all along with the leaders of
Northern Alliance. It has been quite close to them during the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan, and lent them full moral and material support
to fight the Taliban regime. Even after the fall of the Taliban, India
is continuing with its support and is trying to make its political
presence felt in Afghanistan, now being ruled by Hamid Karzai of
Northern Alliance.
Pakistani
human and civil rights activists have raised concern over India's
reported actions. Ansar Burney, noted human and civil rights activist,
expressed apprehension and said that India would use the prisoners in
a manner so as to defame Pakistan in the eyes of the world, even when
it would not be involved in disruptive activities inside India.
Mr.
Burney said, "I fear that India would present the prisoners as
saboteurs by creating incidents of violence in its own country and
would attempt to portray Pakistan as agent provocateur. After
committing the acts, they would release the photographs of these
prisoners to the international media for their so-called involvement
in various self-created terrorist activities and incidents of violence
in India and in its part of Jammu and Kashmir, aimed at giving
credibility to their claims that Pakistan is a terrorist state."
Northern
Alliance may have tried to return its due to India for its continued
and unstinted support during the Taliban era. The leaders in the
Northern Alliance harbour deep aversion for Pakistan, and therefore
their cooperation with Indians.
But
all along, the entire episode raises some disconcerting questions. Why
should India be interested in getting some Pakistani prisoners from
Afghanistan? Why should the Afghan captors hand them over to India and
not Pakistan? What are the likely adverse consequences and
implications for Pakistan? Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, noted Pakistani
columnist, asked in the News, a reputed Pakistani newspaper.
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