India (Superthread)

[twistedcables]

:-X

By Aijaz Hussain, The Associated Press

SRINAGAR, India - One of the two Indian men arrested for illegally buying mobile phone cards used by the gunmen in the Mumbai attacks was a counterinsurgency police officer who may have been on an undercover mission, security officials said Saturday in demanding his release.

The arrests, announced in the eastern city of Calcutta, were the first since the bloody siege ended.

But what was touted as a rare success for India's beleaguered law enforcement agencies, quickly turned sour as police in two Indian regions squared off against one another.

Senior police officers in Indian Kashmir, which has been at the heart of tensions between India and Pakistan, demanded the release of the officer, Mukhtar Ahmed, saying he was one of their own and had been involved in infiltrating Kashmiri militant groups.

Indian authorities believe the banned Pakistani-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has links to Kashmir, trained the gunmen and plotted the attacks that left 171 people dead after a three-day rampage through Mumbai that began Nov. 26.

The implications of Ahmed's involvement - that Indian agents may have been in touch with the militants and perhaps supplied the SIM cards used in the attacks - added to the growing list of questions over India's ill-trained security forces, which are widely blamed for not thwarting the attacks.

Earlier Saturday, Calcutta police announced the arrests of Ahmed and Tauseef Rahman, who allegedly bought SIM cards by using fake documents, including identification cards of dead people. The cards allow users to switch their cellular service to phones other than their own.

Rahman, of West Bengal state, later sold them to Ahmed, said Rajeev Kumar a senior Calcutta police officer.

Both men were arrested Friday and charged with fraud and criminal conspiracy, Kumar said, adding that police were still investigating how the 10 gunmen obtained the SIM cards.

But the announcement had police in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir, fuming.

"We have told Calcutta police that Ahmed is our man and it's now up to them how to facilitate his release," said one senior officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. Other police officials in Kashmir supported his account.

The officer said Ahmed was a Special Police Officer, part of a semiofficial counterinsurgency network whose members are usually drawn from former militants. The force is run on a special funding from the federal Ministry of Home Affairs.

"Sometimes we use our men engaged in counterinsurgency ops to provide SIM cards to the (militant) outfits so that we track their plans down," said the officer.

Police said Ahmed was recruited to the force after his brother was killed five years ago, allegedly by Lashkar-e-Taiba militants for being a police informer.

About a dozen Islamic militant groups have been fighting in Kashmir since 1989, seeking independence from mainly Hindu India or a union with Muslim-majority Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region, which is divided between them and claimed by both in its entirety.

The bungling and miscommunications among India's many security services comes as police said they were re-examining another suspected Lashkar militant who was arrested nine months before the attacks carrying hand-drawn sketches of Mumbai hotels, the train terminal and other targeted sites.

Rakesh Maria, a senior Mumbai police officer, said the man, Faheem Ansari, was being transported to Mumbai from northern India where he has been in custody for further questioning, hoping he could shed more light on the attacks.

Maria said there was a definite connection between Ansari and the Mumbai attacks. "Ansari was trained by Lashkar and sent to do reconnaissance," he said.

And a day after India's top law enforcement official apologized for security "lapses" that allowed the gunmen to rampage through Mumbai, there were new embarrassments - this time with holes in the prime minister's security.

Police preparing for a visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh near Calcutta hired high school children for the equivalent of $2.50 each to sit in trees for the day and look out for suspicious people.

Local police chief L.N. Meena defended using children in the prime minister's security detail, saying there were too many trees in the area and not enough policemen.

"The area is full of trees, so to check them to see if there were any anti-social elements or anyone making mischief, we employed the youths," he said.

Television footage showed dozens of the youngsters perched in trees, with yellow paper badges that read "security pass" pinned on their chests.

Meanwhile police continued the interrogation of the lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who has disclosed that the gunmen had detailed pictures of the locations, Maria said.

"They were pretty elaborate photographs," he said, adding that they had also used maps from Google to study the targets.

Kasab has told interrogators he had been sent by Lashkar and identified two of the plot's masterminds as being involved, two Indian government officials familiar with the inquiry said. Police had earlier identified the prisoner as Ajmal Amir Kasab.

Lashkar changed its name to Jamaat-ud-Dawa after it was banned in 2002 amid U.S. pressure, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. lists both groups as terrorist organizations.

Kasab told police that a senior Lashkar leader, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the group's operations chief, recruited him for the attack, and that the assailants called another senior leader, Yusuf Muzammil, on a satellite phone before the attacks.

In Pakistan, the Interior Ministry chief told reporters he had no immediate information on Lakhvi or Muzammil.

According to the U.S., Lakhvi has directed Lashkar operations in Chechnya, Bosnia and Southeast Asia, training members to carry out suicide bombings and attack populated areas. In 2004, he allegedly sent operatives and funds to attack U.S. forces in Iraq.

 

[a_majoor]

There is obviously a lot more to the story of who planned and supported this operation:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/12/15/081215taco_talk_packer

Risk Factors
by George Packer December 15, 2008

A few days after well-armed men mowed down scores of helpless people in Mumbai, an American commission released a report on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. “World at Risk” is one of those conscientious, bipartisan efforts, its importance signalled by publication as a trade paperback, whose sober findings and pragmatic recommendations momentarily give you the sense that every problem—even one as alarming as the likelihood that “a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013”—has a common-sense solution. The report includes chapters on biological and nuclear risks, and one titled “Pakistan,” which would seem to suggest that the nation itself is a kind of W.M.D.

According to intelligence reports, the attacks in Mumbai were carried out by terrorists who had received extensive training from the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Pure. Its agenda has been to force India to give up control over the disputed northern mountain region of Jammu and Kashmir. More recently, the group’s leader, Hafiz Saeed, spoke of creating a Muslim south Asia—thus, the band that carried out the killings called itself the Hyderabad Deccan Mujahideen, implying a holy war extending down to the south-central Indian region that, in the late eighteenth century, marked the farthest limit of the Mughal empire.

The name has the ring of nostalgic grandeur common among jihadist groups elsewhere, with their historical claims on far-flung places like Al Andalus, also known as Spain. And the designated targets in Mumbai suggested an ambition on the terrorists’ part extending well beyond the local troubles of Kashmir: hotels, a café, a hospital, a train station; foreign visitors, well-heeled Indians, Jews. The terrorists tortured their Jewish victims. They demanded to know the caste and home state of Indians. They held conference calls with their superiors in Lahore and Karachi to determine whether or not a certain hostage should be killed. When the goal is a Muslim south Asia, the answer is almost always yes.

The operation was so skillful and deadly, complete with a maritime landing by inflatable craft, that one security expert said that Navy SEALs would have had a hard time pulling it off. The sophisticated tactics, as well as electronic evidence, point to the involvement of top Lashkar figures, and also, according to Indian sources, of current or former officers of Pakistan’s intelligence and military. So the murders have led to a familiar volley of accusations, denials, counter-accusations, and threats between the nuclear-armed governments of India and Pakistan. They have also inspired a degree of restraint on India’s part and pledges of coöperation on Pakistan’s that are less familiar and more encouraging.

In one sense, the most appropriate response—articulated by commentators and ordinary people after the terror was over—is to express solidarity with the victims, and also with the idea of Mumbai, which, like the idea of New York, represents a vision of society that is the opposite of the vision behind names like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hyderabad Deccan Mujahideen: impure, secular, modern, open. But moral revulsion doesn’t suggest an intelligent course of action. The attacks in Mumbai reveal the vexing complexity of the interconnected conflicts throughout south Asia. At the urging of the United States, Pakistan had moved six divisions from its eastern frontier with Indian Kashmir to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan; now the terrorists have succeeded in inducing Pakistan to threaten to cut back its pressure on the tribal areas and redeploy its troops to the east. Islamist radicalism is the main spark that keeps inflaming these conflicts.
 
Some commentators have simply demanded that Pakistan rid itself of the virus of extremism that threatens its own security as well as its neighbors’. But which Pakistan is going to do it? The weak civilian government of President Asif Zardari? The two-faced security services? The tribal leaders along the Afghanistan border? The huge, overwhelmingly poor, tumultuous population? The core problem is that Pakistan is no longer really a country, if it ever was. “Our Pakistan strategy is hopelessly at odds with reality,” David Kilcullen, a former counterinsurgency adviser to the State Department, said. “We treat it as an earnest but incapable ally in the war on terrorism.” In fact, some civilian elements of the government are American allies; some military elements are American enemies. The wild northwest, where Islamist militants have extended their control and created a safe haven for Al Qaeda, has thwarted those who would govern it for a long time. Lord Curzon, the British viceroy of India at the turn of the last century, fumed, “No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes . . . are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.”

American policymakers must be tempted to agree. Years of U.S. efforts in Pakistan—military aid, air strikes, Special Forces operations, bilateral diplomacy, coaxings, warnings—have been patchwork, and they have failed. Different approaches, including ones suggested in “World at Risk,” such as putting more effort into development and governance in Pakistan’s northwest, or bringing other regional countries to the table, offer some promise. But, in Kilcullen’s words, “Iraq might be easier than this. It’s a very, very difficult problem, and we don’t have much leverage in it.”

In the days after the Mumbai attacks, the Washington Post reported that the Obama transition team was considering Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy to the region. The position would create a kind of civilian counterpart to General David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, filling a diplomatic void in U.S. foreign policy that the military has occupied throughout the Bush years. The Administration has always regarded terrorism in the narrow terms of war, and this myopia led it to deal with the region’s countries in isolation from one another, so that the policy in Kabul sometimes contradicted the one in Islamabad, which in turn was undermined by the growing partnership with New Delhi, and all of them were hampered by the refusal to talk to Tehran, whose role in the affairs of its neighbors to the east receives little attention. A special envoy would have to see the problem whole.

Holbrooke is the most experienced diplomat in the Democratic Party, and the aggressive negotiating skill he showed in brokering the Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia is badly needed in south Asia. But a legacy of the Bush Administration is that America can no longer sweep in and impose a solution on a crisis. The answers for Pakistan lie largely in its own hands—that’s the most frightening thing of all. ♦

 

[CougarKing]

The question now is whether Washington and the rest of NATO will accept the offer of reinforcements from an unexpected source?

0230 December 29, 2008

www.longwarjournal.org,

India offers US 120,000 troops for Afghanistan

Please note that Pakistan has withdrawn a second divisional HQ from the NWFP. We assume its is HQ 23 Division plus the one brigade that went with the HQ to NWFP; Mandeep Singh Bajwa will let us know when he has confirmation. we are approaching the point where two-thirds of the reinforcements sent west are in the process of withdrawing. Please also note Bill Roggio at Long War Journal reports that in the Orakzi agency, one of the seven tribal agencies of the NWFP, Taliban has enforced Sharia law on 15 of 21 tribes in the agency. In other words, the Talibanization of the NWFP is proceeding rapidly. We also have an analysis on why Pakistani soldiers are refusing to fight the insurgents - we already knew why, but for the first time we have information from someone on the scene. We will give it to you tomorrow. But all in all, the US by insisting Pakistan fight the insurgents set itself up for failure. Again, we have said this before, we can now say it from another angle. US policy in the region has to change dramatically if there is to be hope of success in Afghanistan.

Our trusty correspondent, Mandeep Singh Bajwa, informed us this morning that India has offered to send 120,000 troops to Afghanistan. Naturally we asked Mandeep "are we being used by the Indians in a psyops game to put pressure on Pakistan?" Not that the Government of India knows we exist, but in all the movies about the media the Editor always asks if the paper is being played.

Mandeep's answer, paraphrased, was this: "I don't know at what level the offer has been made, but the Indian Army and Air Force are down to identifying specific units, formations, and squadrons..." - details, as we said, at Long War Journal - "...as well as discussing a specific name for force commander, plus working on the details of pre-deployment training, so this is a lot more elaborate than needed for a psyops game.'

We'd prefer to discuss this after we learn more, rather than waste your time with elaborate theories spun out of nothing ("Orbat.com's military sources say..."). But the following points are immediately apparent.

For the new US administration, this offer would be heaven-sent and just making it would put the US Government in debt to the Indians - "your other friends/allies talked, we walked." The administration could turn around to to its own people, and say: "Americans, you complain we are carrying the Afghan burden by ourselves, now we have a partner."

At Orbat.com we've been constantly talking about the need for more manpower; well, here you have a whacking big increment of manpower. With US/Allied troops it takes one to 75% of what Orbat.com considers a minimum force if Afghanistan is to be won.

In one deft swoop, India forces the Americans to chose Delhi over Islamabad. To the Indians the constant US attempt to "balance" the two countries has been a source of serious blood pressure since the 1940s; obviously if the Americans accept it has to be India First from now on and Pakistan gets marginalized. Moreover, the Indians put America up the creek without the paddle regarding Pakistan: "what is it your so-called ally is doing, compared to what we are willing to do."

The devious cunning of the Indian move becomes more apparent when you consider if the US government refuses, the American people are going to get on the Government's case: "The Indians are offering and you're still sticking with those slimey two-timers the Pakistanis?"
For India, offering a huge contingent takes the pressure off the Indian government to act aggressively against Pakistan. India does not have a launch a single sortie against Pakistan to punish it for acting against India. Indian government can tell its own people: "What good will a pinprick do? The Israelis have been bashing up the Palestinians for two decades, and where are the results? What we are doing is to strike a hard blow at Pakistan without crossing the Pakistan border and getting beat up by everyone for provoking war."

Plus India neatly destroys Pakistan's strategic depth objective. The Indians have been wanting to get into the act in Afghanistan for several years, because they know a Taliban government means more fundamentalist pressure on Pakistan and thereby on India. But the Americans have been refusing India help for fear of offending the Pakistanis. For India to get into Afghanistan in force is to again change the paradigm of Indian-Pakistani relations as happened in 1971 when India split East Bengal from Pakistan. For the last almost 40 years India's efforts to marginalize Pakistan have been stymied. If the US accepts the Indian offer, India gains hugely.

But right now a lot of American decision-makers do not care if Pakistan is offended because they see the latter has no interest in fighting the insurgents or helping the US against the Taliban. Once alternate supply routes are available, US can write off Pakistan and as a consequence, paradoxically, vastly increase its leverage in that country.

As for Pakistani/jihadi retaliation against India or the Indian contingent in Afghanistan, we've said before the Indians don't care. Their point is India is squarely in the sights of the jihadis: India is already under severe, sustained attack and unable to retaliate. As for the security of the Indian troops, that really is the last thing the Indians are concerned about. They want to go to Afghanistan to fight, not to protect their troops against suicide bombers.

Two other minor points in passing. By making this offer, India takes the wind out of Pakistan's sails because the latter has very successful turned the world's attention from the Bombay atrocity to getting the world to stop escalation between India and Pakistan. Every day that goes by, India has less diplomatic/geopolitical freedom to hit Pakistan. But if India has offered several divisions for Afghanistan, obviously the last thing the Indians are thinking of is attacking Pakistan - 3/4th of the Army troops (as opposed to the CI troops) India is earmarking for Afghanistan are from the three strike corps. So India undercuts Pakistani claims that Delhi is preparing to attack.

The second point we find interesting. PRC knows if Pakistan falls to the jihadis, Sinkiang is the next target. By offering to go to Afghanistan, India is directly helping Beijing. Which puts Beijing in a very awkward spot as India is a big rival for influence in Asia. Not only will Indians be helping PRC, if China does send troops to Afghanistan, Delhi will canoodle with Washington without competition from China. The Chinese will have no choice but to join the Afghan venture or lose influence in South and Central Asia, and with Washington.

To sum up: Orbat.com has been second to none in bashing the Government of India as incompetent and impotent. But with this offer, India has overnight changed the rules of game in South/Central Asia and struck a potentially fatal blow at Pakistan. In the end, this could become much, much bigger by an order of magnitude than breaking off East Pakistan in 1971.

0230 December 28, 2008



"Not tonight, dear, we have a headache" is what the Editor wants to say. This India-Pakistan thing is boring beyond words, and sorting out media misinformation/hysteria is neither fun, or educative, or easy. The matter becomes so complicated readers are tempted to say, to heck with the fine points, lets just go with the meme. So beyond a point the exercise becomes steadily less productive.

Further

Pakistan is now in the process of withdrawing at least six and possibly seven of the 12 brigades it sent as reinforcements - under American pressure - to the NWFP. Troops are returning to XXXI, IV, and XXX Corps, all defensive corps against India. Insofar as Pakistan does not wanting to be fighting the fundamentalists/Taliban, who are their own people operating in Pakistan's national interests, the Bombay attack has proved heaven-sent. And insofar as the Pakistanis weren't any fighting worth mention, there is minimal loss to the GWOT. A bigger problem is the security of the Peshawar-Kabul supply route, and Pakistan has refused to do anything about that aside from from assigning a paramilitary Frontier Corps wing for escort. The problem being, ha-ha, the wing was already assigned to this duty.

None of this means the Pakistanis are bad, evil, duplicitous. If the US reserves the right to assure its national security as it sees best, why should not Pakistan? And to Pakistan, the US/NATO presence in Afghanistan is not a solution, it is the root cause of the problem because it reversed Pakistan's carefully thought out and well-executed policy to gain strategic depth through the tool of the Taliban. It is not our place to run down the Pakistanis: they are doing what they have to, and lets leave moral judgments from America out of the discussion. After all, the Pakistan lives in that part of the world, not America.

Please do not pin any significance to the Israeli presence in India As explained by Bill Roggio in www.longwarjournal.org the Israelis have been running around India for years on a variety of technical, weapons, and special forces training programs. Indeed, we are surprised www.Debka.com has not given the details.

India is not moving troops for any confrontation with Pakistan. Its winter exercise time; these exercises are planned years in advance and are a critical component of readiness. You can't just cancel them just to deny the media a chance to make up stories.

Mandeep Bajwa has pointed out to us that conventional warfare training for Pakistan's India-front defensive formations has gotten disrupted because of the deployments to NWFP. It is perfectly reasonable for the Pakistanis to catch up on their large formation training, and they are doing just that.

India may be considering a UAV strike - at least that's we gather from our Pakistani sources. They say that they will not tolerate such a thing. Our advice? Take a Chill Pill, mates. Letting India bust up a couple of tents and huts in Kashmir is not going to cost you anything. Its truly unrealistic of you to think you can hit Bombay and India will meekly accept. Yes, you have been hitting India for decades, and India has been meekly accepting. But that game is over now.

So please don't retaliate, because then the Indians are going to be forced into major walloping and head thumping. Yes, Orbat.com believes no good will come out of it for either country. Easy enough for us to say, we're not responsible to the people of India and the government. We can give any amount of free advice without consequence. Indeed, the Editor's house is full with baskets of advice. Stop by and pick up a few, it'll help him.

Whatever India does, what it needs to do is capture the Indian smuggler and Pakistan ally Dawood Ibrahim and bring him to India for trial. Its not conceptually difficult, the man moves around Dubai and parts of Karachi as if he owned the place; Indian intelligence in Karachi is good, in Dubai its excellent. Our advice to the Indians is: whacking this man will do much, more more for Indian morale than blowing up empty terror camp huts with UAVs.

Meanwhile, the idea that the US needs to get the Indian Army into Afghanistan is growing. Which is to say, if the idea was 1 on a scale of 10, it has moved up to 2 on a scale of 10. We've said before the Indians had offered and the US, nervous to keep Pakistan happy, said no. Indians were quite miffed.

There was the objection that Pakistani/fundamentalist terror activity against India would increase and the Indian force in Afghanistan would also become a fat target.

The thing is the Indians don't care about increased terror activity against India because this is increasing by leaps and bounds anyway. As for the Indian Army, all we usefully say is that they absolutely do not care what sort of opposition they will face. They will take no prisoners anyway, the usual thing with foreign fighters they capture in Kashmir, so it hardly matters if the man blows himself up or if he is decapitated after capture. The Indians have a very high tolerance for casualties, by the way. Its almost as if they look at force protection as cowardice. They operate on a fraction of the logistics load the Americans/NATO require, and they have no problems tromping up the mountain and down the mountain every single day. These are the sorts of troops you need in Afghanistan.

On the US side, the factions that say Pakistan remains a valuable ally and must not be pushed beyond a certain point are losing ground. We don't think tipping point has been reached when American decision makers accept as a consensus that Pakistan is neither an ally nor a friend, and is kept superficially cooperative at gunpoint - not a useful way to keep people working for you, no? But the tipping point is coming. If earlier the overall balance was 7-3 in favor of keeping Pakistan happy, after Bombay its shifted to 6-4.

When the US sets up alternate supply routes, you will see the balance move to 5-5.

As for the Pakistanis, they are already examining the consequences for their own security given a two-corps Indian deployed to Kabul and surrounding provinces. Two corps: repeat after me, six divisions, likely 70-75 infantry battalions, each battalion of four rifle companies, plus 15+ special CI battalions of six rifle companies each.

You wanna win in Afghanistan? Make nice with the Indians.

Is this a good idea? War in this part of the world is never a good idea. The Law of Unintended Consequences will run wild. But when you run out of peaceful options, what do you do? Best India and Pakistan disengage and terminate their destabilization efforts. Is that going to happen? The Editor's History of India further back than 700 AD is murky to the point of non-existence. But if the history of the last 13 centuries is any guide, this will NOT happen. You cannot have multiple centers of power in South Asia. Its that simple.
http://www.orbat.com/


 

 

[1feral1]

Won't Pakistan be pleased with this news.

OWDU

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

China as well I bet.

 

[john. M]

not a reliable source and 120,000 troops in Afghanistan is a logistical nightmare for India

 

[Michael OLeary]

not a reliable source and 120,000 troops in Afghanistan is a logistical nightmare for India

Can you provide an alternate source.

Also I'd like to see your views on the "logistical nightmare". For an army of the size of India's, I think they might have had people working on the logistics issues even before the offer was made.

Perhaps one part of the evolving plan is for the US to convince Pakistan to allow a corridor between India and A'stan to move troops and materiel.  In that case, India might be using the current situation to make a play at placing a significant force of its own in their "enemy's" rear. 

 

[tomahawk6]

Long War Journal isnt a reliable source ? You gotta be kidding right ? This isnt the first time that India has offered troops for Afghanistan and most likely will get the same response "Thanks but no Thanks".

India has not offered US troops, but is working on a proposal to make an offer, to the new Administration. We got the military details because the military was quick off the mark with a response.

 

[Marshall]

not a reliable source and 120,000 troops in Afghanistan is a logistical nightmare for India

To be fair, I believe he was referring to source as in the source of the troops. Could be wrong though.

I can't see this not being a good thing? Even if it does force a chain of pressuring to some countries to help out. Seeing 120,000 Indian soldiers and then possibly a load of Chinese. The Taliban would not have a single rock to hide under in all of Afghanistan.. 

 

[TCBF]

- To me the statement that should be in bold is this:

"When the US sets up alternate supply routes, ..."

- Anybody looking at a map right now?  I have one in my head, and I don't like what I am looking at...

 

[geo]

If India goes to Afghanistan.... where do you put them ???

If Indian troops were posted to the North West Frontier, facing Pakistan, then the Pakistanis would find themselves facing off against India - on two very distinct fronts & that would not be a very popular situation for the Pakistani government.  The people of Pakistan would be clamoring for their gov't to do something - more akin to supporting the Taliban than opposing it...

... Indian troops on the Iranian or Chinese border ?
... Indian government agencies participating in the reconstruction of Afghanistan is something that would be more agreeable to most all parties IMHO

 

[GAP]

Seems to me that this would be a very apt moment to have some chats with the Pak government with regards to sorting out the supply problems and what's to done in the NW Frontier area.....why the US might have to take India up on it's offer to help Afghanistan protect it's eastern border, but that wouldn't be necessary if the US could rely on Pakistan to take care of an in house problem....hint, hint.....

 

[karl28]

        I know that I am not a military expert as I am just a Civilian but this sounds like good news no ?  I mean if various nations can come together to fight the pirates off the coast of Africa . Than why can't some one else come in to help in the situation in Afghanistan ?

 

[George Wallace]

This It may be a great political move to accept such an offer.  With the state of Indian/Pakistani relations these days; it may be a means to get Pakistan to reassign all the troops that it moved from the Afghan Border to the Indian Border back to the Afghan Border.  This would prevent the Taliban and AQ from having free reign in those regions.

 

[geo]

George,
Yes, with 120000 Indian troops IN Afghanistan, Pakistan would station more troops on the NW frontier with Afghanistan BUT, IMHO, they would probably be facing down the Indians and not the TB + AQ... thus, an oportunity lost

 

[The Bread Guy]

It appears that it's NOT as impending as the initial report portrays - from the Orbat.com web page (highlights mine)...

....Correction: India mulling offer of 120,000 troops for Afghanistan Thanks to some quick work by Bill Roggio and Mandeep Singh Bajwa we were able to avoid getting a big smack on our news story yesterday. India has not offered US troops, but is working on a proposal to make an offer, to the new Administration. We got the military details because the military was quick off the mark with a response....

Also, as of this posting, I can't find a link to the original story on LW Journal, either...

 

[Kirkhill]

And now, after that brief intermission brought to you by Honourable East India Company, we now return you to the previously scheduled event: Moguls vs Mahrattis.

Waiting in the wings for the opportunity to play off against the winner/survivor are the Sikh.

Enjoy the main event.

 

[Kilo_302]

What level of quality and equipment would these troops possess? I know India is embarking on a massive modernization program for its military, but does it have an "army within and army" like China, or is it incrementally increasing the capability of all of its regular forces? I'm thinking primarily in terms of communications gear here, there could be potential for plenty of FF.

 

[geo]

For the most part, the Indian Army is very well equipped & manned.
You might see pictures of troops with Enfield or FN FAL rifles... but a lot of those are paramilitary.


this link is wikipedia... but it will give you a good general idea about their capabilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Armed_Forces

 

[tdr_aust]

It appears that it's NOT as impending as the initial report portrays - from the Orbat.com web page (highlights mine)...
Also, as of this posting, I can't find a link to the original story on LW Journal, either...

LWJ pulled the story. I asked Bill there about it as i was not able to find teh story on his site, (LWJ). His reply was "

I did not publish on that story. I talked about this with Ravi, but my investigations on the US side told me no such offer was made. So the only info I had was from Ravi's guy in India (who is very plugged in on the Indian and Pakistani militaries BTW) which tome was not enough to go on.

Ravi later deduced this was a trial balloon.

I think Ravi assumed that since I was looking into this that I would actually publish on this... I do not have control over that.

To some extent I have some doubts on this story.

As a follow on from orbat.com

0230 January 2, 2009

The Indian Troops To Afghanistan Story

Mandeep Singh Bajwa says this story is an effort by India to gauge US reaction to a potential offer of troops for Afghanistan. India is talking at several back channels level with the US. We weren't meant to get the story, but once we got it, the Indian Army, at least, wasn't uncomfortable with that. Given we are read by perhaps 4000 people a day and have a reputation in many circles of being a fringe blog, the Indian Army doesn't even have to bother denying the story, its easy enough to say "off source" that's its our wild imagination.

So we wildly imagine the following possible offer to the United States:

Lt. General Bikram Singh as Force Commander (tentative)
HQ III Corps or HQ XXI Corps
4th Infantry Division
6th Mountain Division
23rd Infantry Division
36th RAPID Division
30+ Rashtriya Rifles CI battalions
2 Reconnaissance and Observation squadrons (Army Aviation)
1 Il-76 squadron
2 An-32 squadrons
4+ Mi-17 helicopter units
1 UAV squadron
2 fighter squadrons
Undetermined number of paramilitary security battalions

HQ III Corps is the counter-insurgency corps in Eastern Command, it is dual-tasked to the western front. In exercises and on operations it has functioned, on different occasions, in three different sectors. HQ XXI Corps is the third Indian strike corps, but is not as critical as the other two strike corps and is dual-tasked as India's intervention force corps. So there's good reasons to take either.

The infantry divisions include a tank battalion. 36th Division has one tank and two infantry brigades. All four divisions are part of strike corps and so are not deployed on the front, but India will give up its ability to sustain a major offensive against Pakistan if these divisions are overseas.

The only thing that needs explanation for our non-Indian readers is the Rashtriya Rifles. These are specialized for counter-insurgency and have six rifle companies vs the usual Indian infantry battalion's four. CI is, after all, a manpower intensive business. The troops are all regular Army and do a 3-year rotation with the RR from their affiliated regiments with the RR. Each Army regimental center has 3 or more RR battalions affiliated.

Because the Indians tend to bulk up their divisions with extra brigades and their brigades with extra infantry battalions when on CI, its probably reasonable to assume the four divisions will have 50 battalions with them (including corps independent brigades).  With the RR, that's 380 rifle companies, or the equivalent of nine US divisions. (We count the US brigade as having 10 companies, because the cavalry squadron in the brigade is very manpower short. We're sure it's all well and fine in the type of high-tech/sensor dense environment for which it is designed, but we're talking CI here. 

Our Humble Opinion

The United States would be mad to refuse the Indian offer.
The Indians would be mad to actually follow through.

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