Pakistan beefs up efforts to ensure CPEC security

By Ajmal Khan
Yousafzai

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan has beefed up security in the southwestern Balochistan province in efforts to protect the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects amid the surging terrorist attacks by proxies of hostile agencies especially threats from India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Pakistan Army’s spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Pakistan pays a lot of attention to CPEC, and after recent terrorist attacks, security for the CPEC has been beefed up directly and indirectly by providing more security to CPEC projects and enhancing security in the whole province to ensure smooth work at CPEC projects, Director General of the military’s media wing Inter-Services Public Relations, Major General Babar Iftikhar said in an interactive session with correspondents in Rawalpindi city. “We have raised two division size security settlements which are dedicated to provide security to CPEC, besides that we have increased the number of paramilitary troops’ units from one to two in the province to ensure security,” he said. Speaking on the security situation in Balochistan, he said that the capacity of the militants has been enhanced with using more sophisticated and modern weapons to launch attacks, but the military is going after them aggressively. The military has been carrying out intelligence-based operations against the militants, who are forced to come out of their hideouts in frustration and launch retaliatory attacks, but they are cornered and will be eliminated soon, said Iftikhar.
He said that there was regrouping of small terrorist outfits in tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, adding that the Pakistani army has arrested a few in actions on tip-offs.