There is no organized terrorist infrastructure like in the past, says DG ISPR

Director-General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar said that there is “no organized terrorist infrastructure like in the past.”

He is addressing a press conference on Monday (today). He said that the objective of holding the press conference was to discuss the security of the country as well as the border situation. He also said that the objective of holding the conference was to present an analysis of the security challenges of the past decade.

He said, “The last 10 years were a challenging time in every aspect for Pakistan.” He added that in 2020 alone, the coronavirus pandemic and locust attacks put Pakistan’s food security and economy in danger.

Moreover, he said that proscribed organizations were being helped to harm Pakistan on the western border.

“Despite all these challenges, the state, institutions, the armed forces and intelligence agencies and most importantly the Pakistani people unitedly faced these challenges,” he said. Babar added that socioeconomic projects had been launched along with restoring peace in the tribal districts along with the western border.

“Concrete steps were taken to solidify the Pak-Afghan and Pak-Iran borders and “as a result of successful operations against terrorism, the security situation improved considerably,”

“Whether it was India’s designs or hybrid warfare, whether the challenges were internal or external, we not only showed and identified [them] but also combatted them successfully and the world is recognizing it too because the truth always prevails.”

Apart from that, DG ISPR said also talked about operation Raddul Fassad. He said that the operation had “consolidated the achievements of the entire decade”.

“Through this operation, the support base, facilitators, abettors, financiers [of terrorism] and weapons were destroyed to a large extent. Thankfully, today in Pakistan there is no organized terrorist infrastructure like in the past,” he added.

Under the operation, 371,000 intelligence-based actions were conducted in the last three years alone, he said. “If we evaluate the manifestation of success, in 2007-08, only 37 percent of the areas in the tribal areas were under state control. Today, they have all become part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” he further said.

Above all, Iftikhar informed the attendees that there had been a 35pc reduction in major terrorism incidents in 2020 compared to 2019, while terror incidents which had hit an annual peak of 90 in the year 2013 had now fallen to around 30.

“Law-enforcement agencies also averted more than 50pc of the terror threats over the last year”.