Pak Troops Put On High Alert Along LoC
New Delhi, May 8 : Pakistan Army has put its troops along the Line of Control (LoC) on a high state of alert as it scrambles to emerge from the embarrassment of having been caught
New Delhi, May 8 : Pakistan Army has put its troops along the Line of Control (LoC) on a high state of alert as it scrambles to emerge from the embarrassment of having been caught unawares by the US troops in the Abbottabad operation, says a media report.
Official sources said, all units of Pakistani Army along the entire 740-kilometer LoC and the 110-km Actual Ground Position Line in Siachen were on Friday put on a "higher state of alert".
Accordingly, "active deployment" has been beefed up along forward posts, said a senior official of Indian Army.
The officer said Indian Army has been careful not to respond to the high state of alert by Pakistan and "would not respond to it." Traditionally, the two sides are used to tit-for-tat responses to military actions.
Pakistan Army's move came a day after its corps commanders met with Army chief General Pervez Kayani to warn India against any misadventure.
The statement was meant to be retaliation for remarks of Indian Army and Air Force chiefs that India has the capability to carry out an operation like the one executed by the US Seals in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Army top brass said in a statement on Thursday, "The forum, taking serious note of the assertions made by Indian military leadership about conducting similar operations, made it very clear that any misadventure of this kind will be responded to very strongly. There should be no doubt about it."
According to Indian military sources, ever since the last Monday raid by US troops to kill Bin Laden, there has been panic, embarrassment and disbelief in the Pakistan military over the way US helicopters travelled through their airspace, carried out the Special Forces Operation in Abbottabad, and went away with bin Laden's body.
All the way through, the Pakistani air defence did not pick up any signals of the 'intrusion'. Worse, the first Pakistani fighters were scrambled almost a full hour after the American helicopters entered the Pakistan air space.
Indian security establishment has been getting a stream of inputs showing the state of confusion and disbelief in the military.
One senior officer pointed out that Pakistan Army's decision to put its units on high alert is reflective of the frustration of the strategic vulnerability exposed by the US operation.
Khan Research Laboratories at Kahuta, the nerve centre of Pakistan's nuclear programme, isn't very far from Abbottabad, meaning even strategic assets of Pakistan suffer from similar vulnerability, sources point out.
As more clarity emerge about the US operations, Indian military sources are now beginning to suspect that Americans may have deployed electronic counter-measures to jam Pakistan's radars from picking up the movement of the helicopters to Abbottabad and back, thus mocking normalcy.
There are contradictory reports emerging from within Pakistan about what really happened to the radar network.
While its foreign secretary hinted at the possibility of radars being jammed, the air force maintains that its radars were inactive on the particular day.