Chapter 3 continues…

Terrorist groups and their sister organizations in Pakistan and PoK earned goodwill and sympathy for their role in relief work in the wake of the earthquake of October 2005. Pakistan Government tacitly supported various terrorist organizations in their endeavours.
Statistics, however, show a decline in infiltration and terrorist violence since 2001 in J&K because of stiff counter-insurgency measures8 by the Indian Army.
The terrorist infrastructure has however remained intact in Pakistan and PoK.

There are reportedly 52 terrorist camps which are functional despite repeated claims made since 2006 to the contrary?9 However, to add credibility to its claim of being a leading nation in the “Global War on Terrorism,” Pakistan has continued with the policy of shifting and relocating the camps to reduce verifiability of its support to cross-border terrorism, and make its denial credible. Deniability claims of Pakistan, however repeatedly suffered serious blows and caused considerable embarrassment to the establishment. A Pakistani weekly [The Herald, Karachi, July 2005, p. 5] long ago carried a report revealing the existence of 13 camps in the vicinity of Mansera along with photographs. Eric Benn, a satellite imagery expert with The US Defence Intelligence Agency, has also opined that there was “70 per cent probability” that satellite images pointed to a militant camp near Balakot in NE Pakistan. Such satellite proof has been produced by FBI in US courts as evidence against terrorists from Pakistan facing trial. Of course, in 2017, the BJP Government bombed these camps after producing photo/video proof of such camps.


Latest reports indicate existence of three camps in Mansera and Abbottabad districts, besides presence of thousands of militants of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). Harkat-ul- Mujahideen (HuM), Al Badr, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and other smaller Tanzeems in Frontier and PoK regions. The catch-22 situation the West found itself in both needing Pakistan to deal with terrorism in Afghanistan especially of Al Qaeda, and requiring to humour Pakistan’s propensity to promote terror across its borders had encouraged Pakistan to continue maintaining the terrorist infrastructure to destabilize Jammu and Kashmir.

To be continued…