Confusion Amid Pan Am Hijacking : Pakistani Rescue Effort: Case of Too Many Leaders

As many as seven different senior Pakistani officials were involved in making decisions and giving orders during last week’s hijacking of the Pan American World Airways jumbo jet at Karachi International Airport, resulting in confusion that apparently delayed the reaction by army commando units when the four Palestinian hijackers began firing wildly at the passengers.

The officials--including military and police commanders, elected leaders, the country’s civil aviation director and the provincial governor--also failed to act on a warning from Pan Am executives that the plane’s generator would probably fail.

When the generator’s fuel ran out and the cabin lights dimmed, the hijackers apparently panicked and began shooting, killing 17; one passenger, a California businessman, had been slain earlier.

According to government and diplomatic sources here, confusion over who was in charge--in part caused by Pakistan’s recent emergence from eight years of martial law--led to key communication failures and later to the circulation of misinformation about what happened in the last moments of the hijacking.

While authorities here initially reported, for example, that army commandos stormed aboard the aircraft and captured it immediately after the hijackers started firing, it has since become clear that the commandos did not approach the plane for between three and 15 minutes after the attack.

The passengers who escaped the plane by jumping off the wings or sliding down evacuation chutes were helped only by cabin attendants and, in at least one case, broke down a door themselves.

The most glaring communication breakdown involved the generator, or auxiliary power unit, that provides lighting and air conditioning while the Boeing 747 aircraft is on the ground. Pan Am officials here and in the United States insist that they informed some Pakistani officials at the airport that the power unit would fail some time Friday evening, but other authorities said they were never advised.

According to passengers interviewed afterwards, the generator went out about 9 p.m. Friday Karachi time, and its failure caused the four hijackers to panic and open fire with automatic weapons and hand grenades.

Gov. Jahandad Khan of Sind province said Tuesday that he was never told of the possibility that the power unit would fail. Khan was the senior official at the airport during the 16 hours the hijacking was in progress.

Practicing on a 747

Despite the information supplied by Pan Am, the sudden failure of the power unit caught Khan and some of the other officials by surprise. At the time, according to several sources, at least some of the commandos brought in to mount a rescue operation were a considerable distance away from the Pan Am plane, carrying out a practice exercise on a Pakistan International Airlines 747.

“I think it was just a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing,” one diplomatic source said. “Just think, you had federal authorities, military authorities, provincial authorities. . . .”

All of the passengers interviewed here said they saw no sign of the commandos or policemen when they reached the ground.

“When we came out, there was nobody,” said Clarence Maloney, 52, of Montclair, N.J.

Nonetheless, some Pakistani officials promptly announced that the commandos, elements of the army’s Special Operations Group under the command of Brig. Tariq Mahmud, had stormed the plane and freed the passengers. Mahmud himself said his commandos arrived at the plane only two minutes after the hijackers opened fire.

One official, Air Marshal Khurshid Anwar Mirza, the Pakistan director of civil aviation, who served as official spokesman during the incident, said the power unit failure and the consequent dimming of the lights had been the signal for army commando units to advance.

Mirza also said the commandos had killed two of the hijackers.

Contradicted by Official

The next day, another official, Brig. Tariq Rafi, airport security force commander, said none of the hijackers had been killed.

“The problem is we had too many . . . versions from various authorities,” said Karachi newspaper editor Wajid Shamsul Hasan, one of the many journalists trying to sort out the contradictions.

The erroneous early reports led to widespread misconceptions and misunderstandings. They are what led President Reagan, among other world leaders, to praise Pakistan for its “bold and decisive” action against the hijackers.

Still, U.S. officials here defend the President’s statement, arguing that although the Pakistanis failed to mount a commando attack on the plane, they showed courage and resolve in deciding not to grant the hijackers’ demands and let the plane leave for Cyprus.

“There was bold action,” one U.S. official said. “The plane stayed on the ground. They could have brought a crew in and taken off but they left the plane on the ground.”

Yet there was disappointment among the Americans when it was learned that the commandos had been late, this official said, and added: “We wondered, where was the cavalry?”

Contradictions Explained

Later, Pakistani authorities had some explanations for their contradictory statements. Mirza said he had been misled by intelligence agents about the two hijackers he mistakenly reported as being dead.

Security sources said they first identified the body of a slain Pan Am ground crew worker as one of the hijackers. The ground crewman was caught on the plane during the hijacking, which began while passengers were boarding the plane. He was wearing a uniform similar to those worn by the hijackers, who disguised themselves as airport security officers to enter the airport.

The report of the second dead hijacker, they said, came because one of the hijackers, identified as Bomer Hussein, 25, was seriously wounded in the chest and they thought at first that he was dead.

(Several passengers said they saw Hussein, who acted as leader of the four hijackers and used the name Mustafa when negotiating with Pakistani authorities, shot on the airplane by one of the other hijackers).

Hoping for Credit

According to Hasan, the editor, much of the misinformation might be attributed to a scramble to take credit for what appeared at first to be a successful rescue mission.

“I think they thought they had done something big with minimal casualties,” Hasan said, “and then, when they came to know the number of injured and dead, they began to have afterthoughts.”

The officials involved in the hijacking often offered directly contradictory reports on the same events, perhaps another sign that the line of command became blurred.

Brig. Mahmud said it took only two minutes for commandos to arrive after the hijackers began shooting. Gov. Khan said Tuesday that the actual response time was six to seven minutes. Air Marshal Mirza first said the commandos arrived almost immediately, but later contended they were as much as 15 minutes late. Two days after the incident, he said they were on the scene after three minutes and denied making all of his previous statements.

Other officials involved in making decisions and giving orders in the course of the incident were Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shamim, army corps commander for the Karachi district; Chief Minister Jhous Ali Shah, the senior elected official of Sind province, and Zain Noorani, the minister of state for foreign affairs.

Hampered by Phone Trouble

Noorani and Ali Shah, whose involvement signifies the increased civilian participation in the government since Zia lifted martial law last December, were in Sukkur, 200 miles north of Karachi, when the hijacking took place. They flew immediately to Karachi to help decide how to deal with it. According to U.S. officials, both figured in the decision against granting the hijackers’ demands.

Aside from the key communications breakdowns involving the auxiliary power system, there were other breakdowns. Pakistan’s never-reliable telephone system prevented Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo from taking part in many decisions. Like Noorani and Ali Shah, Junejo was in Sukkur when the plane was seized.

Because of the quality of the telephone system, the U.S. Consulate here had two employees who might have been useful elsewhere engaged in keeping lines open to the airport.

Despite all the difficulties, U.S. officials warned against being overly critical of the Pakistanis. One said:

“This was the government of Pakistan’s show. Somebody had to make decisions no one wanted to make. You just can’t blame the government of Pakistan when you are dealing with a bunch of. . . . “