Pakistan wants to bleed India by thousand cuts, we drew new red lines to combat terror: Gen Chauhan

In an address at the Savitribai Phule Pune University, Gen Chauhan appeared to reject criticism against him for acknowledging that India lost an unspecified number of combat jets during the initial phase of the operation.

Pune: Asserting that India was not going to live under the shadow of terror or nuclear blackmail, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan on Tuesday sent out yet another clear message to Pakistan saying that state-sponsored terrorism must stop as a new red line had been drawn.

“Pakistan’s strategy to bleed India by a thousand cuts will no longer go unanswered,” the top military commander and strategist said.

The CDS also slammed Pakistani army chief Asim Munir, whom he accused of “spewing venom” against India and Hindus just weeks before the Pahalgam terror attack on tourists in Jammu & Kashmir.

“We have drawn a new line of military operation against terror. We’ve connected terrorism to critical resources like water,” he said referring to suspension of the Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan.

Gen Chauhan, while addressing on the issue ‘Future Wars and Warfare’ at Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Savitribai Phule Pune University in the education capital of Pune, said: “The whole starting point of this particular war was the Pahalgam terror attack. Is terrorism rational act of warfare? I don’t think so, because terrorism has no defined logic”.

“In 1965, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared a thousand-year war against India when he addressed the United Nations Security Council,” he said about Bhutto, the fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan - a reference to Operation Gibraltar.

“As far as our adversary is concerned, it has decided to bleed India by a thousand cuts,” he said in what was a reference to military dictator and former President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s doctrine of “bleed India through a thousand cuts" by covert and low-intensity warfare with militancy and infiltration as part of Operation Tupac.

On the recent strikes inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, he said: “The thinking behind Operation Sindoor is that state-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan has to stop and that country should not be able to hold India hostage to terrorism.”

He said India had informed Pakistan after the strikes on terror camps on 7 May and had warned that any escalation would meet with harder action.

“We had informed Pakistan on the day we launched the surgical strikes on 7 May… when there was rhetoric from the Pakistani side, we also said that in case Pakistan hits us, hits the military establishments, we are going to hit them back, hit them harder," Gen Chauhan said.

According to him, a rattled Pakistani side had to pick up the phone seeking ceasefire. “On the 10th of May, at about 1 am, their aim was to get India to its knees in 48 hours. Multiple attacks were launched, and in some manner, they have escalated this conflict, which we had hit only terror targets. Operations which they thought would continue for 48 hours folded up in about 8 hours, and then they picked up the telephone and said they wanted to talk," he said.

"When the request for talks and de-escalation came from Pakistan, we did accept it,” Gen Chauhan said.

“As far as the Pakistani side is concerned, I can make two guesses…that they were losing things faster at a very long distance, and they thought that if this continued for some more time, they were likely to lose more, and hence they picked up the telephone," he said.