Pakistan Army Chief Nuclear Sabre-Rattling Draws India’s Criticism

New Delhi :Pakistan army chief nuclear sabre-rattling remarks during his US visit have drawn strong condemnation from India. India says the Pakistan army chief nuclear sabre-rattling comments are irresponsible and heighten tensions. The government warned that such Pakistan army chief nuclear sabre-rattling threatens regional peace. Experts agree that Pakistan army chief nuclear sabre-rattling is a dangerous escalation that must be checked.

During his US visit over the weekend, Munir has warned that Pakistan will never allow India to choke the Indus River and will defend its water rights at all costs even if the forces will have to destroy any dam that India sought to build on it.

“We will wait for India to build a dam, and when they do so, we will destroy it … The Indus River is not the Indians’ family property. We have no shortage of resources to undo the Indian designs to stop the river,” Munir was quoted as saying by leading Pakistani daily Dawn at an event organised by members of the Pakistani-American community in Tampa, Florida.

India, which has already made it clear that it will not give in to nuclear blackmail, reacted strongly to the comments made by Munir.

“Our attention has been drawn to remarks reportedly made by the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff while on a visit to the United States. Nuclear sabre-rattling is Pakistan’s stock-in-trade. The international community can draw its own conclusions on the irresponsibility inherent in such remarks, which also reinforce the well-held doubts about the integrity of nuclear command and control in a state where the military is hand-in-glove with terrorist groups,” read a statement issued by Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Monday.

Munir, the Pakistani media reported on Monday, visited two US cities over the weekend and flew to Belgium on Sunday after completing his second high-profile trip to the United States in less than two months.

“It is also regrettable that these remarks should have been made from the soil of a friendly third country. India has already made it clear that it will not give in to nuclear blackmail. We will continue to take all steps necessary to safeguard our national security,” the MEA statement mentioned.

Munir’s visit to the US capital in June was overshadowed by widespread protests led by members of the Pakistani diaspora and supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. While Rawalpindi was projecting Munir’s visit as a step towards strengthening military and strategic ties with Washington, the backlash from overseas Pakistanis turned his stay at the luxury hotel in Washington into a scene of charged demonstrations.

Protesters chanted slogans accusing Munir of human rights violations, branding him as “Pakistanio ke qatil” and “Islamabad ke qatil” — meaning “killer of Pakistanis” and “killers of Islamabad”, respectively. A video widely circulated on social media showed one protester yelling, “Geedad, geedad, geedad (jackal, jackal, jackal)”, a derogatory term used to suggest cowardice and deceit. The clip quickly went viral and was described by analysts as a public embarrassment for the Pakistani military establishment.

Analysts reckon that Munir’s treatment as the true interlocutor in Washington and Beijing recently, highlights how far Pakistan’s military has overreached into domains traditionally managed by the elected representatives.

“Asim Munir’s aggressive diplomacy abroad is only one facet of a broader power consolidation at home that has pushed Pakistan into what can only be described as a military-led ‘hybrid authoritarianism’. Behind the civilian façade, the military establishment has pulled all institutional levers to dominate the judiciary, the economy, and the legislative process,” an defence expert told IANS.

“Perhaps the most damning indictment of Asim Munir’s tenure is not just the scope of his ambition, it is the cost at which it has come. Munir may go down in history as the army chief who has lost hundreds of soldiers to insurgent attacks in merely two years of his tenure. From Balochistan to the tribal hinterland of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Pakistani troops have come under relentless assault from a rejuvenated insurgency, especially by groups like Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP),” he added.

In April, India had hit out strongly at the Pakistani Army Chief for referring Kashmir as Islamabad’s “jugular vein”.

“See, how can anything foreign be their jugular vein? This is a Union Territory of India. Its only relationship with Pakistan is the vacation of illegally-occupied territories by that country,” said Jaiswal during a regular media briefing on April 17.