Infantry: Holding The Passes Until Winter

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October 16, 2011: Indian troops in Kashmir are bracing for lots of action along the Pakistan border in October and November. These are the last two months that Islamic terrorists based in Pakistan can sneak across, before snow closes the passes for five months.

Over the last decade, Indian Army troops have increased their border defenses, using heat sensors and night vision equipment, plus other new equipment, to make it more difficult for infiltrators to get across undetected. Thus, so far this year, 80 Islamic terrorists have been killed on the border, with many more captured or forced to retreat back into Pakistan. This has caused a growing shortage of trained Islamic terrorists inside Indian Kashmir, and made that do survive more vulnerable. It's believed that only 30-40 terrorists made it across so far this year. A side effect of the shortage of personnel is that the remaining terrorists are more vulnerable. Thus so far this month, 20 Islamic terrorist leaders in Kashmir were killed, one of them the longest surviving (since 1989) Islamic terrorist in the Kashmir.

These improved border defenses have caused problems back in Pakistan, where terrorist training camps have prepared more men for action than can be gotten across the border. Terrorist morale has suffered and the trained terrorists have become difficult to control. Some have gone elsewhere in the Pakistani tribal territories, to join other terrorist groups that stage attacks inside Pakistan. This is not what the Pakistani government wanted when they set up those terrorist training camps years ago.