Pak-Taliban truce not direct threat to India: Thamburaj

A day after Defence Minister A K Antony said that the truce between Pakistan and Taliban has added to India’s “worries” over the security scenario in the region, Army Vice Chief Lt Gen Noble Thamburaj was of the view that it was not a “direct threat” to India.

A day after Defence Minister A K Antony said that the truce between Pakistan and Taliban has added to India’s “worries” over the security scenario in the region, Army Vice Chief Lt Gen Noble Thamburaj was of the view that it was not a “direct threat” to India.

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“Taliban is an organisation, which generally has its influence in Western Pakistan and Afghanistan and there is no known influence of Taliban inside India. So, there is no direct threat as of now,” Thamburaj told reporters in New Delhi on Saturday.

He said that if there was any threat in the future from Taliban, the Army was prepared to tackle it.

“Whatever are the threats which may manifest itself in the future, Indian Army is totally prepared for all different scopes of warfare,” Thamburaj said.

Antony had on Friday said the truce between Pakistan and Taliban has added to India’s “worries” over the security scenario in the region.

He said that with the Pakistan Army under pressure on its western frontier, it was in a “dilemma” over its troops deployed along Indian border after the Mumbai terror attacks.

“After 26/11, three to four of their brigades have shifted from their western border to Indian border. With the pressure on them on the western side, they are in a dilemma as what to do,” he said.

He said that the Pakistan Army had deployed 22 brigades on its western border in the area of Swat, Baloochistan and other places.

Thamburaj said the Pakistani troops on the Indian border were in a “defensive kind of deployment” and the Army did not visualise any “major problem” with their presence.

When asked about the expected rise in infiltration in summers in Jammu and Kashmir, he said, “Infiltration has come down in Kashmir in the last couple of years after the fence is in place and we have put more troops on the frontline in counter infiltration role.”

He said that people’s waning support for terrorists has also led to a change in the environment in the state.
“The environment in Kashmir has also undergone a major change. People have come up and proved that they are for peace with their participation in the assembly elections in the srate and there was hardly any terrorist activity in the last few months. We feel that as long as the people are not supporting them, terrorist activities are on the wane,” Thamburaj said.