The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Wednesday, October 10, 2001, Chandigarh, India

THE TRIBUNE SPECIALS

50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

TERCENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

M A I N N E W S

Pakistan deploys troops along international border
Tribune News Service

Jammu, October 9
Pakistan is said to have deployed its troops along with the Rangers on the 187-km-long international border in the Jammu sector. Besides this additional troops have been sent to some pockets on the LoC this evening.

A senior functionary of the Defence Ministry said: “We have no threat perception from Pakistan right now but we have to be on alert to foil its any game plan”.

He said during the past one week the level of Pakistani firing on the Indian border villages and posts along the border had declined but the rate of infiltration had gone up.

The Defence Ministry sources said despite “our preoccupation with the winter exercises in the area that falls under 16 Corps, we are under strict instructions to check infiltration at any cost”.

In reply to a question, he said “We have reports that the Pakistani agencies may encourage infilitration of Afghan refugees into our territory but we have orders to shoot anyone found intruding into the Indian territory”.

Asked if some Taliban and other Afghan refugees might sneak into Jammu and Kashmir the Defence Ministry sources said “We have instructions to treat any infiltrators as an enemy, irrespective of the country he belonged to”.

In reply to another question, he said one of the reasons for the deployment of troops on the border was to help the infiltrators to cross into the Jammu sector under the cover of Pakistani firing. “We have the will and the ability to foil it”, he said.

He said there would be no let up in anti-terrorism operations in the state and during the past three weeks the rate of elimination of ultras had increased though the level of infiltration had not declined.

Intifada-like attack in India feared
Ramesh Ramachandran
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 9
Although there is no cause for panic, security analysts believe there is an urgent need of an institutional mechanism to deal with a situation similar to the September 11 New York terrorist attacks. What is of particular concern to strategists is the spectre of an Indian version of Intifada spearheaded by the “alienated youth” of the country.

The ‘professionalisation’ of terrorists who are equipping themselves with knowledge and skills has added a new dimension to terrorism. According to counter-terrorism expert B. Raman, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical and biological weapons, poses a credible security threat, given that two of the five countries suspected of ‘hobnobbing’ in biological weapons are in India’s neighbourhood. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iran and Greece, he notes, have weak anti-terrorism apparatus in place. The existing treaties banning the use of such weapons have failed to deliver mainly on account of the fact that non-state actors are not under their purview. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), for instance, is known to possess unusually high levels of cyanide.

Some biological weapons that have wrought devastation across the world are lethal gases like sarin and mustard. Although not in the nature of terrorist acts, India too has had its share of disasters, beginning with the 1984 gas leak in Bhopal and the Surat plague of 1994. Experts, however, caution that instances like the poisoning of water supply at the height of the militancy problem in Punjab pales in significance before the new technological advancements made in the field of biological and chemical weapons and their use by ideologically-motivated elements.