U.S. Contingencies For Kashmir Crisis
The U.S. government is drawing up plans for a mass evacuation of more than 60,000 Americans from India and Pakistan as tensions escalate between the nuclear foes over disputed Kashmir, USA Today reported on Thursday.
The newspaper said a U.S. government team was in India working on a contingency plan to evacuate 1,100 U.S. servicemen on three bases in Pakistan and more than 60,000 U.S. citizens in both countries.
The newspaper said U.S. State Department officials were working with officials from the U.S. military's Pacific Command on plans for a massive airlift of American civilians. It cited an unnamed Pentagon official with access to the plan.
In another key development, Pakistan has begun moving troops from the Afghan border, where they have been aiding U.S. forces in the search for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, due to the military crisis with India, the government's top spokesman said Thursday.
The forces may be shifted to Pakistan's eastern border with India. Pakistan and India already have amassed a million troops in the disputed Kashmir region.
The United States earlier expressed concern about reports of plans for the redeployment, saying it could hurt the effort to seal the Afghan border and prevent the escape of Taliban and al Qaeda or their re-entry into Afghanistan to regroup or stage attacks.
Rashid Quereshi, chief spokesman for President Musharraf, claimed the redeployment will not affect Pakistan's relations with the U.S.-led coalition.
"We are extending the best possible support to the coalition forces in the war against terrorism, and this support will continue in the days to come," Quereshi told The Associated Press by telephone.
Quereshi said the troops were being sent to areas "where they are needed in the prevailing situation on the borders."
Musharraf, who is also head of the armed forces, on Wednesday assured troops during his visit to border areas that the entire nation will support them if India makes aggressive moves.
Witnesses in the northwestern frontier area said Thursday they had seen scores of army trucks moving troops.
"I have seen at least 30 trucks from the Pakistan army taking hundreds of troops to eastern Punjab province," storekeeper Iqbal Khan, who works along the highway between the border town of Miran Shah and Bannu, told AP by phone. "These troops were coming from the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan."
Residents in Miran Shah — a remote border town near Afghanistan said they also saw truckloads of light weapons being shifted to Punjab province.
The border interdiction effort has yielded the arrests of hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, including Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Abu Zubaydah, now in U.S. custody.
Pakistan is a chief supporter of the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Coalition forces are still using the country's air bases and other facilities to pursue those it says are responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
However, without Pakistani troops' presence, the U.S.-led coalition has little short-term prospect of finishing off al Qaeda or the Taliban, many of whose leaders are thought to have taken refuge in western Pakistan's lawless tribal regions.
India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbors, have been on a war footing since a Dec. 13 attack on India's parliament which New Delhi blamed on two Pakistan-based militant groups and the country's spy agency. Pakistan and the two groups have denied the allegations.
Tempers were further inflamed after an Indian army camp in the disputed Kashmir region was attacked, leaving 34 dead, two weeks ago. Dozens of people on both sides have been killed over the last three weeks from intense cross-border shelling.
Pakistan has also said the threat of war may force it to redeploy troops from Sierra Leone, where it is part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission.
A Pakistani pullout from Sierra Leone would have serious repercussions for efforts to foster stability in the West African nation. The 14,500 troops there comprise the world's largest international peacekeeping force, and Pakistan has contributed the largest contingent.
Also Thurdsay, police said they killed Islamic guerrillas holed up in a base in Indian-controlled Kashmir, ending a 15-hour standoff in which four officers were killed.
A police official reported the standoff was over but provided no details on how many militants were involved and how they were killed. Defense Minister George Fernandes, in an interview with The Associated Press, said four police officers had been killed in the attack.
The base was in a suspected stronghold of Islamic rebels in a mountainous area 110 miles northeast of Jammu, the winter capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.