Afghan security agencies have rejected reports by Indian media which say the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist group has relocated its training camps to Afghanistan.
The officials said that the terrorists’ hideouts are all located in Pakistan and are supported there.
Hindustan Times reported on July 7 that India’s diplomatic missions and offices in Kabul and Kandahar have been put on high alert after intelligence inputs indicated that cadre of two terror groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, have shifted to Afghanistan.
Indian Air Force (IAF) Mirage jets attacked JeM’s Balakot terror camp at Manshera in Pakistan, retaliating to the February 14 attack by a Jaish suicide-bomber on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, the report said.
According to documents reviewed by Hindustan Times, both the Pakistan-based proscribed groups have joined hands with the Afghan Taliban and Afghan insurgent group, Haqqani Network, across the Durand Line that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan, for training their extremist cadre in subversive activity. It is perhaps due to this reason that the Modi government has not taken at face value the action taken by Pakistan’s Imran Khan government on July 1-2 on 15 over-ground LeT leaders and five charity organizations linked to terror funding.
“The terrorists’ hideouts and terrorist networks enjoy safety inside the Pakistani soil and its very clear,” the Interior Ministry’s spokesman Nusrat Rahimi told TOLOnews on Monday.
“Terrorists’ leadership has safety in Pakistan and it is very clear. Members of terrorist networks are funded in Pakistan, equipped and trained there and are being sent to Afghanistan for terrorist activities,” he added.
Indian security agencies believe that the terrorist cadre’s shift to across the Durand Line has been done to avoid black-listing of Pakistan by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in its Paris conference later this year. The multilateral body formed to crack down on cross-border money laundering and terror financing has been extremely critical of Pakistan and placed it on a greylist.
“When we talk about foreign intelligence agencies in Afghanistan, each one of them is pursuing their own interests in the country,” said Basir Ahmad Yusufi, a political analyst in Kabul.
The Indian embassy in Kabul has not commented on the reports.
On February 25, For the first time in five decades, Indian warplanes crossed into Pakistani territory and conducted airstrikes on the militant group’s training camp.
The airstrikes followed a deadly attack on a convoy of Indian army personnel in Indian-controlled Kashmir in which 40 officers were killed.
