Pak remains epicentre of armed Islamist insurgency and terrorism: General Bipin Rawat

New Delhi : Pakistan has continued to remain the epicentre of armed Islamist insurgency and terrorism, India's Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat on Friday.

He said for three decades now, the Pakistan Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence - known as the 'Deep State' have been waging a proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir.

"They are now increasingly resorting to non-kinetic means by launching vicious anti-India rhetoric on social media and propagating false communal narratives to create social disharmony within India," said General Rawat, while speaking at the Diamond Jubilee Webinar, 2020 organised by the National Defence College in Delhi.

He said that Pakistan's current economic crises, its inability to come out of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) 'Grey List', rising religious and ethnic fundamentalism, and internal power struggles will push it further into instability in the foreseeable future.

He also said that the unabated proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir being unleashed from Pakistan, a vicious anti-India rhetoric on social media and efforts to create social disharmony within India have taken the India Pakistan relations to a new low.

"The surgical strikes post Uri terror attack and the Balakot air strikes have delivered a strong message to Pakistan that it no longer enjoys the impunity of pushing terrorists across the Line of Control under the nuclear bogey," he said.

He said that the new Indian template has injected ambiguity and uncertainty in Pakistan, evident in its media reports, about Indian Armed Forces reaction, if Pakistan-sponsored terrorists cross the one threshold of tolerance.

Despite its internal instability, failing economy, international isolation and vitiated civil-military relations, Pakistan will continue to profess that Kashmir is the 'unfinished agenda' and its Army will continue to raise the bogey of an existential threat from India to justify its disproportionately large strength and need for funds to maintain its war fighting capabilities, General Rawat added.