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There is no known connection between Khatib and the Flydubai Omani pilot as well as their circumstances, but their motives were entirely the same: to kill innocent people
Khatib’s journey — from a school in Srinagar, to a flight school in America, and eventually to an Al-Badr unit in the mountains of Jammu and Kashmir — remains one of the more unusual stories of Kashmir’s insurgency. Image: Special Arrangement
Two pilots. Two very different eras. And two extraordinary stories in which men entrusted with flying aircraft turned towards terrorism and wanted to kill innocent people.
In the latest case, an Omani co-pilot attacked Indian Captain Smit Machchhar and attempted to seize control of a Flydubai aircraft carrying 174 people, with Israeli officials saying he appeared intent on crashing the plane. Machchhar, despite being stabbed, fought back and helped prevent the aircraft from becoming a mass-casualty disaster.
Machchhar is being hailed as a hero not only by India but globally for saving lives.
Nearly three decades earlier, Nadeem Khatib — a commercially trained pilot from Kashmir who had built a career in the United States — made an altogether different but equally dramatic choice. He abandoned aviation, joined the terror group Al-Badrunderwent weapons training in Pakistan and returned to Kashmir as an armed terrorist.
There is no known connection between Khatib and the Omani pilot as well as their circumstances, but their motives were entirely the same: to kill innocent people.
This raises an uncomfortable question: how does someone with education, professional training and opportunities come to embrace an ideology in which violence becomes acceptable?
Khatib’s life offers a striking case study.
At A Glance
Nadeem Khatib, born in Srinagar in 1967, became a commercially trained pilot in the United States.
Khatib trained at a flying school in Georgia and became a flight instructor at the same institution.
He abandoned his aviation career, joined the terror group Al-Badr, and underwent weapons training in Pakistan.
Khatib returned to Kashmir as an armed terrorist and was killed on February 21, 1999, in an encounter with the Border Security Force.
His family believed he was pursuing an aviation career in America while he was training with Al-Badr.
He had the career many could only dream of.
Born in Srinagar in 1967, Nadeem Khatib came from a relatively well-off family. His father, Inayatullah Khatib, was a government engineer.
He studied at Tyndale Biscoe School in Srinagar and wanted to become a pilot.
In the early 1990s, he left Kashmir to pursue aviation training. His journey eventually took him to the United States, where he obtained a commercial pilot’s licence after training at a flying school in Georgia.
He then became a flight instructor at the same institution.
Khatib was therefore not simply someone who had learnt to fly. He was qualified to teach others how to fly.
He had education, international exposure and a specialised profession. He was also living in a country that offered him considerable opportunities for a career in commercial aviation.
From the outside, his future appeared secure.
But his ideological journey was moving in another direction.
The transformation
Accounts of Khatib’s life indicate that he became increasingly interested in conflicts involving Muslims around the world and was drawn towards an ideology centred on armed struggle. Jihad became his motive.
His experience abroad appears to have played a role in changing his worldview, although the precise details of his radicalisation are not fully documented.
He eventually abandoned his aviation career and travelled to Pakistan.
There, according to accounts of his life, he joined Al-Badr, a terror organisation involved in the armed insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir.
He underwent weapons and combat training before eventually crossing into Jammu and Kashmir.
The transformation was extraordinary.
A man who had spent years learning about aviation and teaching others to fly had now chosen a completely different path.
The cockpit had been replaced by the battlefield.
His family did not know
Perhaps the most striking part of Khatib’s story was that his family did not initially know what he had done.
In 1996, he reportedly told his parents that he was returning to the United States to look for employment with an American airline.
His parents believed him.
He continued communicating with them, reinforcing their belief that he was in America and pursuing his professional career.
But according to accounts later reconstructed about his life, Khatib had travelled to Pakistan and entered an Al-Badr training camp.
He was being trained for terrorism while his family believed he was trying to advance his aviation career.
For his parents, the truth emerged only much later.
They had thought their son was building a future in America.
Instead, he had entered the armed insurgency in Kashmir.
The educated face of radicalisation
This is what makes Khatib’s story particularly relevant today.
He did not fit the simplistic image sometimes associated with radicalisation.
He was not without education.
He was not without professional opportunities.
He was not isolated from the outside world.
He had travelled internationally and lived in the United States.
He had acquired a highly specialised professional qualification.
And he had a career.
Yet none of these things made him immune to extremist ideology.
That does not mean education has no role in preventing radicalisation. Education, employment, social integration and strong family networks can all act as protective factors.
But Khatib’s case demonstrates that they are not guarantees.
Radicalisation can involve a complicated mixture of ideology, identity, political grievances, personal experiences, social networks, propaganda and the search for belonging or purpose.
A person can be professionally successful while simultaneously undergoing a profound ideological transformation.
From flight instructor to terrorist
The contrast between Khatib’s two lives could hardly be greater.
In America, he was learning and teaching aviation.
Later, he was being trained to fight.
His professional identity disappeared behind a militant identity.
The man who once prepared others to safely operate aircraft was now part of an armed organisation operating in Kashmir.
His story also demonstrates how radicalisation can take place away from public view.
To his family, he remained the son pursuing a career abroad.
To the terror organisation, he was a trained recruit who had voluntarily abandoned his previous life.
The change was not visible to everyone around him until it was too late.
The final encounter
Khatib eventually returned to Jammu and Kashmir as an Al-Badr terrorist.
On February 21, 1999, he was killed in an encounter with the Border Security Force in the Gool area of Jammu and Kashmir.
Accounts place the encounter near Buthal village in the Gool heights of the then Udhampur district.
He was 32.
His death finally exposed the reality of the life he had been leading.
The young man his parents believed was pursuing opportunities in America had instead become an armed militant.
The Flydubai ‘connection’
The Flydubai incident and Khatib’s story have no known connection.
The comparison is about something else.
In the latest incident, Indian Captain Smit Machchhar was reportedly attacked inside the cockpit but continued fighting despite being wounded. His actions helped passengers and crew intervene and the aircraft was eventually brought safely to the ground.
Khatib represents the opposite trajectory.
He had voluntarily abandoned the profession and opportunities he had worked years to obtain and entered an armed terrorist organisation.
One story is about an Indian pilot using his training and courage to help protect passengers.
The other is about a pilot who abandoned aviation after an ideological transformation and ultimately became part of an armed insurgency.
The uncomfortable lesson
Nadeem Khatib’s story matters because it challenges a deeply rooted assumption about radicalisation: that extremist ideology belongs primarily to the uneducated, the unemployed or the socially marginalised.
Khatib had education.
He had a profession.
He had international exposure.
He had America.
He had opportunity.
And still, he became a terrorist. Sounds similar to the Omani co-pilot whose identity is yet to be fully revealed to the world.
That does not make education irrelevant. It makes the problem more complicated.
A degree does not determine a person’s ideology. A successful career does not guarantee immunity from extremist propaganda. And international exposure does not necessarily prevent radicalisation.
Khatib’s journey — from a school in Srinagar, to a flight school in America, and eventually to an Al-Badr unit in the mountains of Jammu and Kashmir — remains one of the more unusual stories of Kashmir’s insurgency.
Nearly three decades later, the story of an Indian pilot fighting to prevent an aircraft from being taken over offers an unexpected reminder of how much can lie behind the identity of the person sitting inside a cockpit.
Nadeem Khatib was trained to fly. He had built a life in the United States. But somewhere along the way, an extremist ideology became powerful enough to make him abandon that life — and ultimately take up arms.
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Ask News18Nadeem Khatib was a commercially trained pilot from Srinagar, Kashmir, who obtained his licence and worked as a flight instructor in Georgia, United States. Despite his successful aviation career and international exposure, he abandoned his profession to join the terror group Al-Badr.
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