Taliban Faces New Role as Hijacking Victim

In the unkind world of hijacking, a captain isn't supposed to go down with his ship — if anything, he's required to do his best to jump ship, because it can't go anywhere without him. Four senior crewmen escaped from a hijacked Afghan Boeing 727 on a London runway overnight Tuesday, after climbing out of the cockpit while their captors' backs were turned. Although some nine crew members remain on board with 156 hostages, it's uncertain whether any of them is able to fly the plane. But despite an hour of furious silence, the hijackers soon resumed negotiations with British authorities — after all, they may not be planning to go anywhere, since one of their primary demands is believed to be political asylum in Britain.

The hijackers, who support Afghanistan's anti-Taliban opposition, have released 10 hostages since arriving in London Sunday, after forcing the Ariana airlines flight to reroute from a domestic flight in Afghanistan, first to Uzbekistan and then to Moscow. There's an almost self-conscious element of irony in the hijackers' original demand for the release of a key Afghan opposition leader. The Taliban had, only weeks ago, played a questionable role in resolving the Indian Airlines hijacking, in which Kashmiri militants had demanded that India release one of their leaders. But it's an irony to which the Taliban — hosts of Osama bin Laden — appears oblivious, as it denounces terrorism and steadfastly refuses to negotiate. While in the Christmastime hijacking, the Taliban insisted on a negotiated end to the crisis and forbade India from storming the aircraft — to the point of surrounding it with their own troops to prevent waiting Indian commandos from making a raid — the movement's civil aviation minister Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor called Monday for British forces to storm the Afghan plane. "The British may be reluctant to storm the plane with so many women and children on board," says TIME correspondent William Dowell. "They're more likely to simply use boredom as a weapon, waiting out the crisis and letting the hijackers tire and then later offering them a way out."