Kazimah looks no different from other localities in Baghdad. On the afternoon of September 1, Arabic translator in the Ministry of External Affairs Indian official Zikrur Rehman was told to reach Kazimah. It was in this obscure locality that three Indian truck drivers held hostage for 42 days were waiting for Rehman.He drove to the house where the seven truck drivers — including Antaryami, Tilak Raj and Sukhdev — were huddled together. They had been driven in five minutes ago and asked to wait.Exactly a month before, Indian Ambassador to Oman Talmiz Ahamed and Rehman had reached Baghdad and made a quiet start, far from the spotlight on negotiations by the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport (KGL) company which had employed the truck drivers. As KGL lost faith in Iraqi tribal leader and interlocutor Sheikh Hisham Al-Dulaimi, the Indians had stepped up their efforts.Ahmed and Rehman in Iraq and Swashpawan Singh, the Indian Ambassador in Kuwait, stuck to their assignment — no direct negotiation with the abductors, no discussion on what the captors called ‘‘blood money’’.The only time the Iraqi group made such a demand to the Indian Embassy was shortly after it released a video, putting a gun to Antaryami’s head. The captors, Holders of the Black Banner, was one of the 12 to 15 groups regulated by a common general council with several Baathist leaders and Saddam’s army personnel among its members, and operating somewhere between Ramadi and Falluja. It was through the political wing of this council, comprising academics and scholars, that the Indian team made inroads.Ahmed and Rehman used every method of persuasion, even reminding the Iraqis how some Sikh and Hindu soldiers had been court-martialled for refusing to participate in British Army operations in Iraq during 1920. KGL was asked to declare it will cease all operations in Iraq and not facilitate supplies to the ‘‘occupying forces’’. This was mid-August.For the next 10-12 days, KGL refused to make a statement. On August 26, the abductors demanded a statement from KGL through a video. The next day, KGL made an unconvincing statement which translated as ‘‘We shall stop all operations.’’.It took the Indian team nearly 10 hours to convince interlocutors that the statement was well-intentioned. Four days later, Rehman was driving down Kazimah. The wait was over.
