American Realignment

The aftermath of the Kandahar hijacking put Washington on the defensive and enabled stronger India-US ties

- R. PRASANNAN

THE LAST FEW weeks of the last two years of the 1900s were testing times for the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Its May 1998 nuclear tests were being condemned by the world as an act of nuclear irresponsibility by a small power that was yet to develop a robust national security apparatus. And so when the Navy chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, defied the orders of the civilian cabinet, though over totally unrelated issues, that was being seen across the world capitals as further proof of the lack of maturity of India’s democratic institutions. The stand-off finally led to the ignominious sack of the chief, a first in independent India, on December 30, 1998.

A year later, on the Christmas eve of 1999, the regime faced blackmail from terrorists who had hijacked an airplane and were asking for the freedom of three of their leaders in return for the lives of the passengers. If the Vajpayee government had showed spine in handling the year-end crisis of 1998, it capitulated before the blackmailers in the 1999 crisis. Not only did the government free the terrorists, it even sent a cabinet minister and its intelligence chief to escort them to safety.

Much had happened in the intervening year that had tested India’s security nerves. The military crisis of 1998-end was followed by a series of attempts by the Vajpayee regime to repair the frayed relations with Pakistan. The attempts culminated in Vajpayee’s much-hailed Lahore peace bus trip, but within weeks Pakistan mounted a military aggression on the Kargil hills.