Can Britain Afford to Give Hijackers Asylum?

Now here's a question for the British government: Nobody can blame desperate souls for trying to flee Afghanistan's medieval Taliban regime any way they can, but granting 19 hijackers asylum in Britain would undermine international efforts to curb terrorism. The hijacking drama came to a peaceful end Wednesday night as the hijackers allowed the last remaining passengers to leave, and then walked off the plane and into police custody. Despite a call early on in the ordeal for the release of an Afghan opposition leader, the hijackers had made no specific demands after forcing the Ariana Boeing 727 to fly from Moscow to London on Sunday, and had released small groups of hostages almost daily as they negotiated with British police. Although no details of those discussions were released, it was widely assumed that the hijacking was in fact a mass escape from Afghanistan, and that the hijackers' only demand was for political asylum.

As if there weren't enough irony to go around in a hijacking drama that had the hosts of Osama bin Laden vowing not to negotiate with terrorists — and urging Britain to storm the plane when they'd prevented India from doing the same to a hijacked Indian Airlines plane only weeks earlier — many of the hostages may actually have been grateful for the hijacking: Besides the 19 people now in custody, at least 60 of the hostages have applied for political asylum in Britain. And while Home Secretary Jack Straw might be sympathetic toward people condemned by history to live under the Taliban, he's wary of turning Britain into the destination of choice for the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. He'll find it hard to show leniency toward those who used knives, guns and hand grenades to reroute an airliner. After all, the very premise of the global fight against terrorism is that the ends don't justify the means.