Posted on 05/30/2003 7:40:05 AM PDT by knighthawk
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- India is moving 10,000 more soldiers to the Kashmir border with Pakistan and erecting electric fences, after discovering Islamic militant bases inside Indian territory, the army said Friday.
Engineers are also building roads in remote border areas along the Line of Control, the cease-fire line that divides the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir between India and Pakistan, Indian army spokesman Brig. Shruti Kant told The Associated Press.
Columns of soldiers, backed by helicopter gunships, currently surround mountaintop hideouts of militants in Doda, Punch and Rajauri areas, according to a Ministry of Defense official.
The Indian army does not say how many troops it already has on the border, but approximately half a million security forces are estimated to be posted in the entire state of Jammu-Kashmir, according to Indian intelligence officials.
At least 65 militants have been killed in an ongoing military operation in the region called "Crush the Serpent," Kant said.
India claims those militants and thousands of others are trained and armed by Pakistan and sent across the frontier to wage terror attacks. Islamabad denies the charge, insisting it only offers moral support.
The Islamic militants are seeking independence for India's only Muslim-majority state, or its merger with Pakistan. The insurgency has claimed more than 63,000 lives since 1989. India and Pakistan -- both of which now have nuclear arms -- have fought two wars over Kashmir.
Despite the troop buildup, peace moves have been under way since Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in April ended two years of stonewalling Islamabad's offers of talks.
Vajpayee has been invited to Pakistan, and both countries have appointed ambassadors and said they would soon resume rail and road links.
One of the fiercest gunbattles between the militants and the army was in Hill Kaka, a region inside Indian territory about 335 miles northwest of New Delhi, where the army said it wiped out a large compound set up by the militants.
Several hundred militants are believed to have fled the camps when the army moved in.
The main base was in Hill Kaka, where there were extensive bunker complexes, security posts and large meeting rooms, an intelligence official in Kashmir said on condition of anonymity. The camp was stocked with some 6 tons of rice, pulses, spices and other rations.
The discovery of the camps recalls the 1999 incursion by Pakistani fighters, some of whom were allegedly soldiers, into Indian territory in the mountainous region of Kargil in northern Jammu-Kashmir state. The men occupied ridgelines well inside Indian territory, provoking a mini-war.
On the ground, their international border is marked by pillars about 200 yards apart, and long sections are fenced with electric barbed wire 150 yards inside Indian territory.
The cease-fire line that divides Kashmir, however, is unmarked, though understood by local commanders on both sides by bushes, rocks, a stream or a line of trees.
So far, neither country has erected any demarcating structures on the Line of Control to prevent the semblance of any permanence to the disputed border.
However, a senior defense ministry official said Friday that electric fences were being erected about six miles inside Indian territory along hundreds of miles of the cease-fire line. The fencing by 4,000 soldiers from the engineering regiments would be completed by next year, he said.
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