PUNE: The Indian government has decided to send troops to Afghanistan with a view to protecting the Indian nationals there in the aftermath of the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul last month.
According to defense analysts and diplomats, the government’s decision to send troops, including tanks, helicopters and planes, is a tactical move to tackle terrorism that is alleged to be coming from across Pakistan into Afghanistan.
The decision has the approval of Afghan President Hamid Karzai; the move also coincides with the government’s resolve to bolster its security and strategic assets in war and terrorism-ravaged country.
The Indian troops in Afghanistan appear to be a well drawn strategy to counter terrorists not only along the Indo-Pakistan border, but also the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In a way, Pakistan is cornered, a defense analyst told Arab News from New Delhi. The deployment is likely to be “of brigade strength”, but details about how many troops will be sent and when they will be sent will be decided shortly after the Cabinet Committee on Security meets.
In an unrelated development, peeved with the large-scale absenteeism of ministers and legislators of Congress party and its alliance partner the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the state assembly, the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Speaker Babasaheb Kupekar said that he has decided to write about this to the presidents of both the parties that form the Democratic Front government in Maharashtra.
“I would shortly be writing letters to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and NCP President Sharad Pawar along with the list of dates of the attendance of their respective party ministers and legislators,” Kupekar told journalists in Mumbai yesterday.
