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‘ISI, Jamaat running terror camps in Gilgit, Baltistan’ |
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The leader of a political group from Pakistani-occupied Kashmir (PoK) claims that Pakistani intelligence and the Jamaat-e-Islami run several terrorist training camps in areas close to the Indian border.
Abdul Hamid Khan, whose Balawaristan National Front (BNF) is spearheading a campaign to secede the Gilgit-Baltistan region in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, says the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) works closely with the Jamaat to recruit youths for training at these camps. In addition to running a training camp in Mansehra district, adjacent to the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the ISI has camps in Ghowadi Skardu, Darel, Yashote, Astore and Gilgit, Khan has claimed. In his book “Balawaristan: The Last Colony of the 21st Century,” Khan writes: “In this regard, ISI relies more on Jamaat-e-Islami, tested in Afghanistan, and entrusts it with the duty of buying youths through (funds provided by Arab countries in the name of jihad).”
Youths from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir are trained at the camps run by the ISI in the Gilgit-Baltistan region. The youths are “instigated against non-Muslims of Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, the U.S. and other countries.”
Khan claims that members of the dreaded Sri Lankan terror group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also attend these camps.
He says the ISI has distributed “arms in massive quantities” among Pathans and other non-locals in Gilgit-Baltistan to suppress local groups opposed to Islamabad. The ISI has also sent in Pakistani and Afghan members of the Taliban “in the guise of traders” to occupy Gilgit-Baltistan. “They sell their goods... and keep vigil on every village, lane and road,” he writes.
Indian intelligence officials have said Pakistan-backed raiders used Gilgit-Baltistan to occupy strategic positions in the Kargil region on the Indian side of the Line of Control in 1999.
In his book, Khan claims that Islamabad used personnel from the paramilitary Northern Light Infantry (NLI), dominated by men from the Gilgit-Baltistan region, for the Kargil intrusion instead of the regular Pakistan Army as it feared that the death of the soldiers could lead to resentment among the majority Punjabi and Pathan communities.
“(The) Pakistan government and army did not show the least shame while pushing NLI troops into the Kargil war as mercenaries,” Khan writes.
Khan also claims that the arms and drug mafia, aided by Pakistani intelligence, has established a sizeable presence in areas close to the Indian border.
He says the drug cartels smuggle narcotics to Europe, North America and parts of Asia via China. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) “is fully involved” in supporting the activities of the groups involved running drugs and arms.
Indian intelligence agencies have for long said that the ISI is actively involved in aiding drug trafficking by terror groups like Afghanistan’s Taliban. The money made from such activities is used to fund the purchase of weapons and support terrorist activities within India, Indian intelligence officials say.
Khan says drug cartels operating in the Gilgit-Baltistan region are headed by Pathans from Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, a tribal area bordering Afghanistan that has been linked to arms and drug smuggling. The cartels are also involved in smuggling into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir chemicals used to process heroin from opium, Khan says. The easy availability of drugs has resulted in “hundreds of local youths” becoming drug addicts.
“Pakistani terrorists, drug and arms smugglers, Taliban and other terrorists are speedily settled in Balawaristan to turn the indigenous people into a minority,” he writes.
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