India-Pakistan: April 27, 2003

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  In Kashmir, 40 local policemen mutinied over not being paid, agreed to return to work. The men fled to the mountains with their weapons and it took four days of negotiations to resolve the problem. 

Elsewhere in Kashmir, army operations left four rebels dead. 

In northwestern Pakistan, police raided a tribal compound and seized 99 surface to surface missiles, 27 missile fuses, six remote-control bombs and three anti-tank mines. These weapons were thought to have been smuggled in from Afghanistan.

Unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan uses force to stop poppy cultivation. Tribesmen protested poppy fields being burned in Baluchistan (in the southwest), claiming that troops killed six of their number during an anti-drug operation. The government has destroyed 1,500 acres of poppies so far in this area. Pakistan stamped out poppy growing in the late 1980s, mainly because drugs were so cheap that many Pakistani were becoming addicts, and the money was allowing tribes to buy more powerful weapons and bribe government officials. Since then, poppy growing has moved across the border into Afghanistan.

 

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