Terrorists enjoy both local and foreign support: DG ISPR

DG ISPR Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said the strongholds and sponsors of terrorists involved in cross-border attacks are based in Afghanistan

Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said that terrorists enjoy both local and foreign support. The strongholds and sponsors of terrorists involved in cross-border attacks are based in Afghanistan.

Addressing the nation’s ongoing security challenges and counter-terrorism efforts in a press conference held at the Corps Headquarters in Peshawar, he said whenever Pakistan’s security forces take action against terrorists, voices calling for dialogue emerge. “Through politics, confusion is created, and misleading narratives on terrorism are propagated,” he said.

The DG ISPR questioned whether negotiations were the solution to every problem. “If dialogue were truly the answer to all issues, would it have been right for Pakistan to hold talks with India after being attacked?” he asked.

Referring to the Doha Agreement, he reminded that it was agreed that Afghan soil would not be used against any country. “India is using Afghanistan as a base to carry out attacks against Pakistan,” he added.

The DG ISPR asserted that Pakistan will not tolerate a lenient attitude toward terrorism. “The state of Pakistan cannot be left at the mercy of any individual’s whims,” he stressed.

Sharing details of the country’s counter-terrorism operations, he said that this year alone, over 10,000 intelligence-based operations were conducted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, during which more than 900 terrorists were eliminated. He also said that 516 soldiers and civilians embraced martyrdom in these operations.

He added that the highest number of militants in a decade had been neutralized this year, while over 30 suicide bombers had infiltrated from Afghanistan.

DG ISPR has issued a stern warning to terrorists’ facilitators, saying that “political-criminal nexus” is responsible for the surge in militant incidents in the province.

“In 2014 after the incident of Army public school tragedy, the government of the that time and the military began rooting out the menace of terrorism from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” said the DG ISPR.

Later on, the ISPR chief said that terrorists and their facilitators were given space in KP under the “well thought out plot”.

“A fake and fabricated narrative is being built against the ongoing operations against terrorism and martyrs of Pakistan Army and police are being ridiculed,” he noted, while describing it as a “nexus between political and criminal elements”

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