Fateful hijacking

The hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in December 1999 (how quickly we forget) had fateful consequences for future terrorist activities against the US and the world. Flight IC814 from Kathmandu to Delhi was hijacked by five armed men (all Pakistani and Indian Muslims) and was redirected first to the Indian city of Amritsar. When the plane was on the ground in Amritsar the Indian Government was paralyzed by inaction and failed to take the opportunity of preventing the plane full of passengers from taking off (with almost no fuel) and landing in Lahore, Pakistan. There the Pakistani authorities refused to allow the passengers to be off-loaded (they did not want to be blamed for the hijacking by India), but allowed the plane to be refuled and then it went to Dubai and finally to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Why did the hijackers choose Kandahar? Because then the Taliban were in power and they actually cooperated with the extremist Islamist hijackers, helping them to negotiate with the Government of India. Since the hijackers held 180 passengers hostage, mostly Indian nationals, and since they showed that they were ruthless by stabbing one young Indian to death, the Indian Government had little choice but to negotiate with the hijackers, against their stated policy.
The terrorists first demanded the release of 35 terrorists imprisoned in India and m$200, but after many days of negotiations they settled for the release of three terrorist leaders in exchange for the passengers. The primary one was Maulana Masood Azhar, and it turned out that the chief of the hijackers was his brother. Maulana was head of the proscribed terrorist group Harkat ul-Mujahideen, and it was he who supposedly subsequently planned the recent attack on Mumbai that cost ca. 200 lives. One of the two other terrorists released was Ahmed Omar Said Sheikh, the subsequent killer of Daniel Pearl and other Western hostages.
This hijacking showed significant deficiences in the Indian anti-terrorist organization, some of which reappeared during the Mumbai attacks more recently. They failed to stop the plane while it was still on Indian soil, they failed to take into account the poor security at Kathmandu airport, they failed to take seriously at first the demands of the hijackers and finally they released three terrorist leaders who went on to plan and perform very significant terrorist acts in Pakistan and India. This should be a lesson to all the world that airport security and reacting quickly to a hijacking (not necessarily attacking the plane but controlling the environment) are major factors in the war against terrorism, so that they do not have any more victories. Releasing terrorists can have very dangerous consequences, let's hope Olmert does not try to stage a last minute before the election release of Gilad Schalit in exchange for 1,000 terrorists.
(This hijacking was featured in a National Geographic series on plane crashes and hijackings).