‘War on terror isn’t ending’: CDS General Rawat explains with a banquet analogy

Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat on Thursday said talked about the scourge of terrorism and the mayhem it can cause. For this, he used an interesting analogy - that is a banquet.

“Before I start talking about the main topic of the day, I would like to compare terrorism to a banquet table. You have a soup to be served, which is comparable to the cyber warfare that is going to be launched before any combat. You will have disruptions of military and civilian systems. And just when the soup is over, you will see that starters have arrived, in the form of missiles and drone attacks. So you will see all this happening in terrorism,” General Rawat said at the Raisina Dialogue.

He also explained in detail how the nature of terrorism is changing and what how it will evolve in the years to come.

“If adversaries are quite satisfied with the starters, they can go to the dessert, which is the negotiating table, and start negotiating. You feel that there is a happy ending to it. But that is not the way things will happen. You will have to go in for the main course, which is going to be mainly non-vegetarian. Lot of bloodshed on the battlefield, man-on-man combat, combat in the air and combat in seas. And when all that is over, depending on who is the vanquished, you will finally get the dessert,” said General Rawat.

“We might think there could be a happy ending but don’t forget that this banquet could be attacked by a swarm of bees in the form of terrorists. So this war is not ending,” he added.

General Rawat said that terrorism cannot be tackled unless we get to its roots. He then went on to target Pakistan, which he said is funding terrorism.

“You cannot be out partners and at the same time fund terrorism. The international community need to accept that yes, they are sponsors of terrorism. To say that they are not denying it, and that they themselves are the victims of terrorism cannot go on forever,” he added.