Admiral Willard: US Troops in India

US Embassy Denies Report From Pacific Commander

We learned today that there are US ground troops in Yemen, but what about India? Depends on who you ask.

US Pacific Command head Admiral Robert Willard announced today that US special forces have been deployed to India, along with Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives, as an effort to fight the Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT), a militant faction mostly active in Kashmir.

Though Willard was very clear about there being teams deployed to India, the US Embassy and the Indian Defense Ministry later denied the claims, saying that there are no US troops of any type inside India.

The revelation is already causing political waves in India, with the opposition Communist Party demanding to know why parliament wasn’t consulted. The External Affairs Ministry’s statement that the US never sought nor had India approved any deployment seems difficult to believe.

Admiral Willard’s admission is particularly interesting because none of the five nations he mentioned was known to have ground troops in it. With the Yemen deployment coming out today, and that only because there happened to be an attack, it seems increasingly the US is making deployments which, if not actually a “secret” they are likewise not being made public in a timely fashion.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.