India sets up military base in Tajikistan

India sets up military base in Tajikistan:

India has set up a military base in strategic Central Asia as global competition for access to the oil and gas-rich region intensifies, according to military and diplomatic sources.

The base, set up at Farkhor in Tajikistan, close to Afghanistan’s border, is the first such Indian military facility outside India and has been quietly operational since May.

The sources said the base had been helpful in transporting relief assistance. India has pledged to Afghanistan in view of the mutual ban on overflights India and Pakistan imposed on each other in December.

The ban has forced Indian relief planes to fly to Kabul by circuitous routes via Iran or Central Asia.

Though Farkhor had been used by these flights for refuelling, it meant use of smaller planes because it has only a short runway. “We had to fly 18 sorties up and down to ferry 18 tonnes,” a source said.

With the Indian base coming up in Tajikistan, larger transport planes are able to land and take off from the base.

The base was set up following a bilateral agreement reached during Defence Minister George Fernandes’ visit to the Tajik capital of Dushanbe in April.

The two countries have agreed to cooperate in the fight against terrorism because both are victims of the Taliban militia of Afghanistan.

During his visit, Fernandes held extensive talks with Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmonov, Prime Minister Akil Akipov and Defence Minister General Sherali Khairullayev.

He also presented two military helicopters to the Tajikistan Air Force. “The base was set up shortly after the visit,” a senior defence official told Indo-Asian News Service on condition of anonymity.

A high-ranking Indian military delegation visited Dushanbe in February.

During a visit by the Tajik defence minister to New Delhi in December, the two countries signed a protocol on military-technical cooperation and exchange of information in the fight against international terrorism and separatism.

India, Tajikistan, Russia and Iran backed the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in its fight against Taliban regime before its collapse late last year.

The Indian base has come up in the same area in Farkhor where an Indian military hospital functioned for many years to treat wounded soldiers of Afghanistan’s opposition Northern Alliance.

That hospital, where 25 Indian doctors and male nurses worked, has since been closed and shifted to Kabul, where the Indian Army has set up a 250-bed
hospital exclusively to treat Afghan soldiers.

The Indian Army is setting up a second hospital, a 200-bed one, at Kandahar,
some 125 km from the Pakistan border, and it is expected to become operational in a month, the sources said.

The sources said India’s decision to set up military hospitals in Afghanistan, where facilities for treatment of even civilians, leave alone military personnel, are far from adequate, has generated tremendous amount of goodwill, they said.

“When you treat a soldier when he is ill or wounded, that is when he remembers you most,” one official said.
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link: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_38460,00050004.htm