Pak, India militaries to take part in SCO’s anti-terror drill

BEIJING: Militaries of Pakistan and India will be part of a mega anti-terror drill in Russia next week, which is being organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with an aim to expand cooperation among the member countries to deal with terrorism and extremism. The exercise is scheduled to take place from August 20-29 at Chelyabinsk city in west central Russia, official sources said here on Sunday.

About 300 servicemen from India and also around 100 Pakistani personnel were the first to arrive in the Chelyabinsk Region. The exercise will be joined by all SCO member countries including Russia, China, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The drill peace mission will take place nearly three months after the SCO in its annual summit in Chinese city of Qingdao resolved to deepen cooperation among their militaries to deal with threats of terrorism, extremism and separatism.

The broad objective of the exercise is to boost cooperation among the SCO countries to deal with challenge of terrorism and extremism. On the sidelines of the exercise, military officials of the SCO countries are likely to deliberate on ways to enhance cooperation to stop spread of terrorist ideologies and eliminate factors and conditions that facilitate terrorism and extremism. Overall, the peace mission drills will involve over 3,000 troops and about 500 pieces of military hardware.

According to Indian media, it will be for the first time since independence that Pakistan and India will both be part of a military exercise though the armies of the two nations have worked together in UN peacekeeping missions. Pakistan and India were admitted as observers of the grouping in 2005 and they were admitted as full members of the bloc last year.