Sheikh Mushtaq
SRINAGAR, Feb 4 (1996) – Western hostages in Kashmir began their eighth month in captivity on Sunday with efforts to win their release from Moslem abductors at a standstill, officials said.
American Donald Hutchings, German Dirk Hasert and Britons Keith Mangan and Paul Wells have been held since last July, the longest stretch any foreigners have been kept hostage in the Himalayan region since a separatist revolt broke out in 1990.
Indian authorities and diplomats said they believed the four tourists were alive and well. But they disagreed over their whereabouts and said there was no sign that Al-Faran separatist militants would release their captives soon.
“There isn’t much new to say about the hostages,” said an official with the government of Jammu and Kashmir state. “Nobody thought it would go on this long.”
Hutchings, Mangan and Wells were captured while trekking in the Kashmir mountains on July 4. Four days later Al-Faran abducted Hasert and Hans Christian Ostroe of Norway. Ostroe was found beheaded in a forest on August 13.
Negotiations between Indian officials and Al-Faran, conducted over telephone or radio, broke down in November. Al-Faran, unknown before the kidnappings, insisted India release some 15 jailed Moslem separatists. New Delhi refused to accept the deal.
A Western intelligence expert said Al-Faran provided the last positive evidence the hostages were alive in August when each captive tourist replied to a series of personal questions.
But Kashmiris have periodically sighted the hostages and their armed captors — trekking through the mountainous terrain, buying medicine at shops, even taking local buses.
“In the absence of any adverse report, we believe that they are in good health,” said a spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir government.
From the outset India, backed by the foreign governments, has ruled out a rescue raid as too risky.
The wait-and-see strategy has been bolstered by the militants’ apparent reluctance to follow through on threats to kill the hostages. They beheaded Ostroe, but his death was not linked to any deadline and remains a mystery to authorities.
To judge by the authorities’ conflicting accounts, the hostages have been moved over a wide swathe of the Kashmir valley and even south into the warmer Jammu region.
A police official in Jammu, the state’s winter capital, said Al-Faran recently shifted the four to Doda district, south of Pahalgam where they were captured and outside the valley.
But other officials and a Western diplomat said the hostages were very near the spot where they were abducted.
Al-Faran has not been out of touch. “They do send us messages,” one official said. “They say, ‘Why don’t we sort this out. We’ve spent a lot of money keeping them in custody. Won’t you help pay?’ But our policy is not to respond with money.”
Al-Faran telephoned British High Commissioner Sir Nicholas Fenn in late December to ask for ransom. He declined.
The All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, which bands more than 30 separatist Kashmiri groups, recently said it would try to negotiate with Al-Faran. “We have not been able to contact the abductors,” Hurriyat chairman Omer Farooq told Reuters.
Unwilling to bargain, authorities are waiting for Al-Faran to make a move. “If Al-Faran is looking for a way out, they could free them on the Friday after the Moslem holiday Id when Moslem families gather,” the state government official said. The festival, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, falls around February 21.
“If they are looking to make a magnanimous gesture, that would give them an Islamic excuse.”
