NEW DELHI, Sept. 18
EVIDENCE that terrorist groups were recruiting pilots trained in the United States was available two years ago -- but seems to have been ignored by that country's intelligence services.
The story of Nadeem Khatib, a top terrorist killed by Border Security Force troops in an encounter on February 21, 1999, is strikingly similar to those of the pilots used to crash aircraft into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
Khatib, the son of retired Jammu & Kashmir Government chief engineer Inayatullah Khatib, is believed to have been recruited by a terrorist group, al-Ansar, linked to Osama bin Laden. He was recruited while studying to obtain a commercial pilot's licence from the South East School of Aeronautics in Georgia, United States.
Khatib, 32 years old at the time of his death, formed an early relationship with terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir. A close associate of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Ishfaq Majeed Wani, Khatib remained on the edges of the violent secessionist movement until his mentor's death in 1990.
Soon afterwards, the affluent Khatib family decided to send him outside the State and fund his desire to learn how to fly. Khatib, however, completed merely 17 of the 300 flying hours required for a commercial pilot's licence before returning home to Srinagar.
Soon afterwards, Khatib left for the South East School of Aeronautics, Georgia, where he obtained a licence and some 700 hours of flying experience. It is during this time that the young Srinagar resident is believed to have come in contact with the Islamic far-Right.
Little is known about the US operations of al-Ansar, but several bin Laden-linked organisations have used the same name, which literally means "the helpers". For example, both the Isbat-ul-Ansar in Lebanon and the Harkat-ul-Ansar (now Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) in Pakistan have been funded and trained by bin Laden.
After obtaining his pilot's licence, Khatib returned briefly to India in 1995, ostensibly to search for a job. He soon left for the US, this time to complete a jet pilot's course from an institute in Atlanta. In the event, he continued to work in that city as a commercial pilot and instructor. In the meanwhile, Khatib's links with al-Ansar deepened.
Before his final visit to Jammu & Kashmir, the pilot is known to have trained and served with terrorist units in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. No one knows for certain just why he was despatched to Jammu & Kashmir in 1999, for the Khatib family claims to have lost contact with their son several months before his death. A caller from London, family sources say, told them of Nadeem Khatib's death in Udhampur.
Over the next year, new evidence emerged on possible links between Nadeem Khatib's activities in the US and terrorism in India. On September 23, 2000, the Srinagar police arrested the pilot's elder brother, millionaire businessman Wasim Khatib, on charges of helping to build an overground network for the ultra-Right al-Badr terrorist organisation.
Investigators found that Wasim Khatib was handling hawala remittances from West Asia and Pakistan for al-Badr leader Arifeen Khan, who uses the code-name Lukmaan. Interestingly, Khatib was a prominent member of the Srinagar Golf Club, and his membership had been sponsored by an influential local resident. Sources say Arifeen Khan escaped arrest at the Khatib residence because police officials, apprehensive of the family's association with the influential person, failed to carry out a search.
Incredibly, sources told Business Line, United States intelligence officials showed no interest in the Khatib story, although it was widely reported in India at the time. India and the US have regular exchanges of intelligence information. The Intelligence Bureau regularly passes on material of possible operational significance to the Research and Analysis Wing, which in turn handles international interaction.
While Indian officials had no further interest in Khatib after his elimination, no one seems to have any clear explanation of why US organisations showed no interest in exploring his background and connections.
"The fact is," says one senior Indian intelligence official, "that the Americans just weren't bothered as long as the terrorists didn't kill Americans."