Posted on 05/29/2002 8:14:58 PM PDT by Sawdring
Canberra, May 29 (Reuters): Australia and New Zealand urged their citizens today to leave India and Pakistan as war fears simmered between the neighbours.
The advice escalated earlier warnings by Canberra and Wellington, which in the week urged citizens to leave the region if they felt their safety was at risk and to defer all non-essential travel to both countries.
The governments are now urging Australians and New Zealanders to defer all travel to either country and ``strongly advised'' citizens to consider leaving India and Pakistan.
``Australians who choose to remain in Pakistan should register with the Australian High Commission in Islamabad, exercise very high levels of personal security awareness and understand that foreigners may be the targets of terrorist acts,'' the Australian foreign affairs department said on its website.
Translation...
We'd like to get started compiling a database of your dental records for the graves registration sections that will accompany the decon teams assigned to survey that sector when background radiation levels permit.
Anyone not wearing a 15 million+ sunblock is going to have a really bad day.
I say that unless you've got a dog in this fight, then it's time to bug out.
That's not a risk I'd be willing to take. There are no guarantees in war, and no one knows what'll happen if that many nukes go off more or less simultaneously: it's never been done before.
Better safe than a glow-in-the-dark corpse.
Tuor
The US has about 20 000-40 000 in both. Australia isn't counting on the US for anything when it hits the fan for the reason that the US is going to hard pressed to get its own citizens out.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is drawing up plans for a mass evacuation of some 64,000 Americans from India and Pakistan as tensions escalate between the two nuclear foes over disputed Kashmir (news - web sites), USA Today reported on Thursday.
A U.S. government team is in India working on a contingency plan to evacuate 1,100 U.S. troops on three bases in Pakistan and up to 63,000 U.S. citizens in both countries, the newspaper reported.
State Department officials are working with officials from the U.S. military's Pacific Command on plans for a massive airlift of American civilians, the paper reported, citing an unnamed Pentagon (news - web sites) official with access to the plan.
A State Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
India and Pakistan have been exchanging mortar and machinegun fire across the frontier in disputed Kashmir for days as fears of an all-out war heighten. The two countries have fought three wars since 1947, including two over Kashmir. Both sides have mobilized a million men along their border in a confrontation triggered by a December raid on India's parliament which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic rebel groups fighting Indian rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir. Tensions soared after a May 14 raid on an Indian army camp in the Himalayan region that India blamed on the same guerrillas it said attacked the parliament. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage will visit India and Pakistan on June 6 and 7 on a mission to attempt to defuse the crisis, which threatens to disrupt the U.S. military campaign against remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda in western Pakistan and nearby Afghanistan (news - web sites). U.S. networks ABC and NBC reported on Wednesday that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also might be dispatched to the region to try to head off a war. The White House referred questions on the reports to the Pentagon, where a spokesman said he had no information on a possible visit by Rumsfeld to South Asia.
I'm not trying to get in a pissing match here; I'm simply saying that we would be called on to evacuate far more people than just Americans. In fact, the 150,000 number I remembered above is incorrect, and far too low. From http://www.msnbc.com/news/753586.asp:
Meanwhile, the U.S. military is planning for the possibility of a large-scale evacuation effort for Americans and nationals from allied countries living in India an Pakistan.Source: NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski.There are an estimated 80,000 Americans in India alone, but Pentagon officials estimate that any large-scale evacuation may involved as many as 250,000 people.
Good thing about nukes is that it renders war between nuclear foes obsolete, for the most part.
I trust that these two nations are sane enough not having to resort to use nuclear weapons similiar to the Russians and the Americans during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The kind of terrorism we're seeing in Kashmir, had it occurred in Washington during the Cuban Missile Crisis, certainly would have result in World War. That's what we're looking at here.
I think your trust in Pakistan's sanity may be misplaced.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.