Foreign Office Dossier briefings mentioned 66 base camps in Afghanistan and 21 in India, a total of 87 camps used to train terror infiltrators into Pakistan. It’s interesting to note their locations and how these have been placed strategically – to support India’s grand design.
Sources familiar to the dossier reveal that five provinces of Afghanistan, bordering Pakistan, serve as “Main Hubs” Almost all 66 camps in Afghanistan are either in these five provinces bordering Pakistan – or have been managed from operational centres there. These five provinces are Kandahar, Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktika and Khost.
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The country has a total of 34 provinces. Kandahār is located in the southern part of the country, sharing a border with Balochistan, Pakistan to the east. Helmand surrounds it in the west, Uruzgan in the north and Zabul Province in the east.
Kunar located in the north-eastern part of Afghanistan was once famous for being the birthplace of Sayyed Jamaluddin Afghani (called “Al-Afghani” with affection), Central Asia’s influential Muslim scholar and philosopher of 19th century.
But at the beginning of the 21st century, it was one of the four feared “N2KL” provinces (Nangarhar, Nuristan, Kunar and Laghman). N2KL was the designation used by the US and Coalition Forces in Afghanistan for the rugged and very violent region along the Durand Line border opposite Pakistan’s erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). Kunar is the centre of the N2KL region. Khost and Nangarhar both are located in the eastern part of Afghanistan.
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To the east, Khost is bordered by North Waziristan and Kurram in Pakistan. Nangarhār, with Jalalabad as its capital, is also located in the eastern part of the country and shares an international border with Pakistan. Similarly, Paktia borders the Pakistani tribal areas of Kurram Agency to the northeast.
Pakistani officials’ public position remains that we have bilateral channels with the Afghan government, it has been informed and that we understand that Kabul suffers from capacity issues and may not be fully in control of the areas where training camps operate.
Privately, on strict confidentiality, officials agree that such a large number of Indian sponsored camps could not have existed without the active support of NDS, Afghan premier intelligence agency. India: Rajasthan is the Main Hub We have learnt that within India, Rajasthan, bordering Pakistan, has been the central operational hub for coordination entry into Pakistan.
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It is the largest Indian state by area and is located on the north-western side of India, where it comprises most of the wide and inhospitable Thar Desert (also known as the “Great Indian Desert”) and shares a border with the Pakistani provinces of Punjab to the northwest and Sindh to the west, along the Sutlej-Indus river valley.
Its proximity to Gujarat makes it ideal for sending infiltrators through sea route as well. RAW had been providing training to MQM militants (Altaf Hussain Era) and Baloch sub-nationalists for over two decades, and Rajasthan provided an ideal location for entries into both Sindh and Punjab – employing both land and sea routes.
Air travel on Afghan passports, under false names, via GCC countries (mostly UAE) has remained in practice. While Rajasthan has remained the hub, the terror training bases are spread over India at 12 main locations; these include Shivpuri, Chakrota, Patparganj, Rapur, Bhora, Bikaner, Lunkaransar, Anupgarh, Mahajan, Jaisalmer, Barmer and Takenpur.