Hijacks and low diplomacy
International anarchy has had quite a week. An American ambassador has been traded against a group of Brazilian political prisoners. Yet another American airliner has been hijacked to Cuba, and the Syrians continue to hang on to the two Israeli passengers they picked up with the 'plane they exploded after it had been hijacked to Damascus almost a fortnight ago. Israeli embassies or airline offices in three cities have been the object of bomb attacks, and the Inter- national Federation of Airline Pilots has promised to ground the airlines of the world for twenty-four hours unless the Security Council does something positive about piracy in the air.
All of these incidents have one feature in common: they were designed to attract worldwide publicity, and in this they were highly successful. So it is as well to keep them in perspective. Col- lectively they caused no loss of life, and precious little loss of blood. In terms of human suffering they do not begin to compare with the carnage on the roads in a single day. They are, however, spectacular symptoms of the breakdown of traditional systems of international behaviour which has been going on ever since the end of the last war, but of which we are still only dimly aware. Fifty years ago an ambassador may have been 'sent abroad to lie for his country', but an assault upon his person was treated as a grave affront to the nation which sent him (two hundred years ago it was liable to cause a war). Then the lines between diplomacy and warfare, whether civil or international, were sharply defined. Today they are almost non-existent—as the scale of the latest Israeli 'raid' into Egypt underlines. So.
too, the area of warfare is no longer geographically circumscribed. The Arabs and Israelis, in extending their battle- field to cover large areas of the globe. are only copying the example set by the Soviet Union and the United States.
Kidnapping has always been regarded as a particularly abhorrent crime because it faces the community in which it urs with a choice between risking the life of the victims and encouraging repetition of the crime by giving satis- faction to the criminals. When the Purpose of the crime is political propa- ganda the dilemma is the more agonising because the death of the victims may serve the purpose of the kidnappers almost as well as the payment of the ransom.
Nevertheless, it is hard to believe that the decision of the Brazilian government to release fifteen assorted political detainees in exchange for Mr Elbrick was very much wiser than the decision of the British government to release the Krogers in exchange for Gerald Brooke. Admittedly some at least of those released in Mexico City—unlike the Krogers-- seem to have been guilty of nothing which would be regarded as a crime in a demo- cratic society. This does not alter the fact that other American ambassadors will sleep less easily in their beds for the fact that Mr Elbrick has been returned to his. The example of the Brazilian guerrillas will not be lost on other revolutionaries in other parts of the globe.
The modern ambassador may have to risk his life for the sake of his profession. Unfortunately the other form of inter- national brigandage so prevalent this year, the hijacking of airliners in transit. permits of no such simple solution. The hijacker is risking suicide if his bluff is called: but he could take scores (and in future hundreds) of innocent bystanders with him. The airline pilots are justified in feeling that this is a risk that they can- not be called upon to take.
So far the remedies advanced by the ICAO, the United Nations agency con- cerned with civil aviation, have not sounded very impressive. The Tokyo Convention of 1963 against Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed On Board Aircraft has no teeth in it, and all that the ICAO could think of doing in April was to set up a committee `to give immediate and continuing attention to future acts of un- lawful interference with international civil aviation' subject to the proviso that it would 'refrain from considering any case which may involve . . . matters of a political nature or of controversy between two or more states'.
In the light of this courageous stand the faith expressed by the International Federation of Airline Pilots (IFALPA) on Monday in the efficacy of preventive action through the UN seems rather touch- ing. The call for governments to agree to act collectively against hijackers blithely ignores the fact that the discriminating hijacker selects a destination where hospitality is assured. An airline boycott of Syria, for example. might possibly induce the Syrians to release the two unfortunate Israeli passengers they col- lected last month (although the threat of a boycott failed to persuade the Algerians to release another party of Israelis last year). But is it seriously contended that an Arab state would agree to try a Pakistani 'freedom fighter'. or that Fidel Castro would agree to return a Cuban hijacker to the United States for trial?
Yet this is the nub of the matter. The only effective response to a crime wave is to increase the chances of detection. and to ensure that the penalty for detec- tion is sufficient to discourage repetition. IFALPA had nothing to say about detec- tion, and the penalties suggested could not be enforced.
The pilots have got hold of the wrong end of the schedule. The place to deal with hijackers is at the point of departure. not the point of arrival. Gunmen thus uncovered would have to be given exemplary prison sentences (or perhaps shipped off in chains to Tel Aviv, Miami or Cairo, as the case might be). The frisk- ing of passengers on international flights before departure would no doubt be dis- tasteful to passengers and airlines alike: but it is surely preferable to a landing in the sea or an unintended diversion to Damascus.
Another precaution which should be considered is the provision of a bullet- proof partition between the flight deck and the passenger compartment. This also would be unpopular with the airlines, as it would reduce the payload. Nor would it eliminate the risk that other members of the crew, or passengers, could be held at gunpoint to induce the pilot to obey the hijackers' instructions. But it would increase the pilot's room for manoeuvre. and reduce the danger of an incident jeopardising the lives of all on board (the odd bullet hole is not sufficient to wreck the pressurisation of modern jets).
None of these precautions will remove the risk of piracy in the air. But they would surely be a good deal more effec- tive than empty threats from the United Nations—let alone the proposed twenty- four hour strike of all the world's airline pilots, a protest which would be far more embarrassing to thousands of innocent passengers than to the hijackers, for whom it would merely provide a further publicity bonus.
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