ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Army said on Monday that the past decade was tenuous but it was able to defeat militancy and all other external threats with the help of the nation.
Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar, the spokesman of the army's media wing - the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), made the remarks during a press conference wherein he highlighted the challenges Pakistan faced in the last 10 years.
"The last 10 years were a challenging time in every aspect for Pakistan," he said.
"Despite all these challenges, the state, institutions, the armed forces and intelligence agencies and most importantly the Pakistani people unitedly faced these challenges to restore peace."
He claimed that various militant outfits were being facilitated to harm Pakistan on the Western border, which posed a major threat along with the traditional threat by India.
"Whether it was India's designs or hybrid warfare, whether the challenges were internal or external, we not only showed and identified (threats) but also combatted them successfully and the world is recognising it too," he claimed.
The spokesman also alleged that India was involved in promoting the anti-Pakistan agenda as he raised the Kashmir issue and the abrogation of Article 370.
India has categorically told the international community that the scrapping of Article 370 was its internal matter.
It also advised Pakistan to accept the reality and stop all anti-India propaganda.
Maj Gen Iftikhar said that concrete steps taken along the Pak-Afghan and Pak-Iran borders due to successful operations against terrorism, helped to restore peace in the area.
He claimed that there was no organisational structure of terrorism in Pakistan as it eliminated all terrorist strongholds.
He said an operation launched three years ago to a large extent destroyed the terrorist support base along with its facilitators, abettors, financiers and weapons.
He said 371,000 intelligence-based actions were conducted under the operation.
"If we evaluate the manifestation of success, in 2007-08, only 37 per cent of the areas in the tribal areas were under state control. Today, they have all become part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa," he said.
He announced that there was a 35 per cent reduction in major terrorism incidents in 2020 compared to 2019, while incident of terrorism fell to 30 from peak of 90 in 2013.
Maj Gen Iftikhar said that the coronavirus pandemic and locust attacks emerged towards the end of the decade to endanger Pakistan's food security and economy but the country tackled them well.