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| India-Pakistan |
| Afghan border too hot, Pak bats in Kashmir |
| 2008-09-08 |
| The Pakistan army has found in Kashmir an excuse to keep its soldiers from doing duty along the Afghan border, sources in Delhi said. Border Action Teams (Bats) of soldiers and militants, dormant for the past two years, have been revived and stationed along the Indian border after General Ashfaq Kayani took over as army chief in November last year, the home ministry sources said. Their prime objective, the sources added, is to stall the polls in Jammu and Kashmir. The team, made up of 10-25 men each, raid isolated BSF and army posts and clear the way for infiltrators, the sources said. The three militants who took nine people hostage in a Jammu house last month and killed eight Indians had been helped across the border by one such Bat, they added. “We know the Jammu incident was not meant to be the last one,” a BSF source said. Pakistan is known to have used Bats to its advantage in the late nineties. Even three years ago, they had raided army posts, the sources said. After Kayani took over from Pervez Musharraf as army chief, he was faced with a large number of desertions by soldiers who did not want to be posted along the northern Afghan border where the casualty count was high. But Pakistan was under pressure from the US to crack down on militants there. Kashmir gave the army the perfect excuse: since it had to deploy soldiers along the Indian border, it could not possibly send too many to the troubled north. “We found out that many of them did not want to fight on the Afghan border. Now, they have opened a new front as a ruse for not sending men to the northern border,” a source said. So, Bats were back in action. “Many team members are highly motivated local boys,” a source said. Delhi brought in commandos from Chandanwari in Himachal Pradesh to tackle the three “Punjabi-speaking” militants behind the Jammu hostage horror. The security forces are not taking any chances, given that a militant killed in Samba last year had 15 grenades on him besides an AK-47 and an Uzi sub-machine gun along with ammunition that could rival any commando’s. |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #1 I have to marvel at India's patience. If this kind of crap were being used against me, I'd get tired of it very quickly and see how much I could do to put a stop to it. If it meant pushing an army to the banks of the Indus River (from which India got its name, BTW), I think I'd do it, not worrying how many military or civilians I killed along the way. I also don't think I'd leave any building standing that was a |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-09-08 15:15 |