DG ISPR dismisses Indian army chief’s threat as ‘routine rhetoric for domestic consumption’

F.P. Report

KARACHI: The Pakistan Army has brushed aside the top Indian military commander’s threat of invading Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) as “routine rhetoric for domestic audiences”.

Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane – who earlier this month threatened to carry out “preemptive strikes” in Pakistan – said on Saturday that the Indian army would take steps to take control of AJK if the Indian government gave such an order.

“[The] statements by [the] Indian COAS to undertake military action across [the] LoC are routine rhetoric for domestic audiences to get out of ongoing internal turmoil,” the chief spokesperson for Pakistan Army said in a Twitter post.

“Internal turmoil” was a reference to the ongoing widespread protests in India against highly divisive and discriminatory laws introduced by the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of his Fascist agenda to turn India into a Hindu state.

Unsettled by its failure to quell the ranging protests, the Modi administration is now seeking to divert the attention of local populace by raising the bogey of war with arch nemesis Pakistan.

“Pakistan Armed Forces are fully prepared to respond to any act of Indian aggression,” Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, the director general of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), said while responding to the Indian army chief’s latest threat.

Belligerent rhetoric of Gen Naravane, who took over as India’s army chief on Dec 31, appears to be aimed at staying in the headlines in India’s jingoistic media which thrives on an anti-Pakistan narrative.