India Offers Bases to U.S for Retaliatory Attacks

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 16, 2001; 4:58 PM

NEW DELHI, Sept. 16 – India will allow its military bases to be used as a staging ground for U.S. forces in a retaliatory attack on terrorist targets in Afghanistan, an offer that provides the United States with a new degree of strategic flexibility and additional leverage to elicit a similar commitment from neighboring Pakistan.

Indian officials have not publicly discussed their decision, apparently out of fear that it might inflame the country's Muslim minority. The decision was reached at a cabinet committee meeting on security less than two days after the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But Indian officials have privately told the United States that, if requested, they will allow U.S. troops and equipment to be temporarily based on Indian soil for the first time in the country's history. Although Indian officials said the United States has not yet formally asked to use any Indian facilities, Western officials and military analysts said the offer provides U.S. commanders with a nearby backup location for ground forces should Pakistan, which lies between India and Afghanistan, balk at allowing in U.S. combat units.

Pakistani officials have said the United States has not sought permission to put ground combat forces in Pakistan. If asked, the Pakistani government has said it would consider a request for a multinational force that includes representatives of Muslim nations – a condition not attached to India's offer.

"We have given unconditional and unambivalent support for any action the United States may take to deal with the problem of global terrorism," one Indian official said.

Staging ground troops in India could pose a challenge, however, because India and Afghanistan do not share a border. Any troops based in India likely would have to be transported by air over Pakistan, analysts said.

More significantly, officials and analysts said, Indian air bases could play a role in housing fighter planes and refueling long-range bombers. And Indian intelligence services, which have long tracked Muslim extremist groups in Afghanistan because of their support for separatist guerrillas in the disputed Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, could provide valuable information to U.S. commanders.

U.S. officials have identified Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, who is being harbored by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, as the primary suspect behind last week's attacks in New York and Washington.

Indian officials said they already have given the United States intelligence reports about the Taliban, bin Laden's training camps and other extremist groups operating in Afghanistan.

India's offer to cooperate with the United States is a significant milestone in efforts by the two nations during the past year to forge closer ties. Such a proposal, officials and analysts said, would have been unthinkable during the Cold War, when India led a nonaligned movement and had friendly relations with the Soviet Union.

"Within 72 hours of the attacks, India had reversed decades of policy with regard to cooperating with the United States," one U.S. official here said.

During the Persian Gulf War, India allowed U.S. planes to refuel en route from bases in the Pacific Ocean, a move that sparked controversy domestically.

"India could have offered what it did before and everyone would have thought, 'Great,' " a Western diplomat here said. "The idea of foreign troops on Indian soil has heretofore been anathema."

Indian officials, whose alacrity in proffering support surprised Western nations, see their wholehearted backing for the U.S. effort as a chance to seize the high ground over Pakistan, its longtime enemy, which has been more tepid in its endorsement of the U.S. campaign to avoid provoking its fundamentalist Muslim population. India contends that Pakistan has turned a blind eye to terrorist groups that operate on its territory.

For India, a predominantly Hindu country that has been a frequent victim of Islamic terrorism, any campaign to crack down on militant activity in Afghanistan also is welcome, if long overdue. India contends that the Taliban has provided support not just to insurgents in Kashmir but to a range of other terrorists, including those who hijacked an Indian Airlines plane in 1999.

In a nationally televised address after the attacks, India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, echoed President Bush's call for a war against terrorism. "The world must join hands to overwhelm them militarily, to neutralize their poison," Vajpayee said.

Although the rapprochement between Washington and New Delhi began in the final year of the Clinton administration, it has picked up steady momentum under Bush, who favors lifting sanctions imposed on India in 1998 after it conducted nuclear tests. The Bush administration has increased military cooperation, and during the past few months, a series of high-level U.S. officials have visited this capital, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.