India’s brinkmanship: Army chief vows to defend every inch of Pakistan

Says let there be no doubt about armed forces’ capability

ISLAMABAD: Army chief General Raheel Sharif vowed on Friday to defend ‘each and every inch’ of Pakistan in a calculated statement aimed at sending a message to India to desist from any military adventurism in the wake of last week’s militant attack on a military base in Uri, Indian occupied Kashmir.

“Let there be no doubt that our valiant armed forces have the capability to counter complete threat spectrum,” Gen Raheel told officers and jawans during a visit to the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) located near Kharian.

The statement came a day after media reported that India was mobilising forces along the Line of Control (LoC) triggering speculations of a possible military showdown between the two nuclear armed neighbours.

Indian commentators, including retired generals, have been calling for military strikes in Pakistan to avenge the killing of 18 Indian soldiers in the Uri assault.

Without mentioning India’s war mongering, Gen Raheel said the armed forces would defend Pakistan at all costs. “Insha Allah with the backing of the entire nation we will defend each and every inch of our beloved country, no matter what the cost,” he added.

Despite India’s sabre-rattling, Pakistani officials are trying to play down the hype, although they are saying that the country’s armed forces are on ‘high alert’ to deal with any situation. Pakistan Air Force is currently busy in weeklong exercises during which its fighter jets are practicing landing and take-off on the motorways. The maneuvers led to speculations that Pakistan might be preparing for a possible military action from India.



The PAF, however, clarified that the exercises had nothing to do with the ongoing tensions with India.

Officials say Pakistan has no intention to escalate the situation rather it was India which was giving signals of some kind of military adventurism.

Meanwhile, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said the army chief also inaugurated NCTC’s state-of-the art features to upgrade its infrastructure to accommodate foreign armies and our own LEAs’ (law enforcement agencies) growing demand for training with Pakistan Army.

“Addition of new facilities have turned the NCTC as the best counterterrorism training facility amongst contemporary armies,” the army chief said.

Gen Raheel was briefed by Lt Gen Umar Farooq Durrani, Commander of the Strike Corps, about various aspects of the NCTC and apprised him that so far 231,000 troops and 3,483 officers and men of police and civil armed forces have been trained at the NCTC.

He said that besides imparting anti terrorists training at the centre, five joint exercises had also been conducted at the NCTC with friendly countries, including China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Turkey.

The army chief appreciated all those responsible for imparting training at the NCTC with a focused approach in enhancing capacity building of the LEAs through quality training.

He also said that Pakistan had been victim of terrorism for over a decade and sacrificed a lot but “we have turned the tide against terrorism primarily due to resilience displayed by the whole Nation and professionalism of our security forces”.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2016.