LAHORE - Tracing NDS footprints in the Punjab, the security services have spotted Afghan intelligence agency’s bids to create a subversive spying network in the province through their refugees, The Nation learnt through sources in the security agencies.
Against the backdrop of possible encirclement of Pakistan by Kabul, New Delhi and some western powers in the region, Afghanistan’s key intelligence service has made bids to erect a network of its agents in the Punjab. The probable network is aimed to launch subversion in the relatively calm province for multiple purposes of which CPEC routes can be the major target, they added.
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in some key operations, hunted down subversive spy rings of National Directorate of Security (NDS) from Taxila, Attock, Rawalpindi and Tarnol, Islamabad. Weapons and explosives were also recovered in the intelligence-led operations to create havoc on Pakistani soil.
The agency also caught a major spy ring of NDS from Balochistan, including a serving lieutenant of the Afghan National Army. In similar operations, the agency also hunted down a senior officer of Kabul’s army at Chaman border when he was on his second tour to Pakistan.
Two serving and one retired major general of the Afghan Army are carrying out NDS operations on Pakistani soil. Major General Naeem Baloch, a man with multiple postings in the Afghan intelligence, is the master handler of Afghanistan’s subversive operations.
According to security agencies’ sources, key intelligence services have some clues about NDS sending well-trained sleeper units to Punjab from Afghanistan in the recent past, who are part of their refugee population.
They didn’t share more on this point of information, restricting to the utterance that the intelligence agencies were trying to catch the NDS sleepers living among the Afghan refugees.
However, they added the Afghan refugees have become facilitators for NDS for different benefits mostly for financial gains and some on the promise of starting a good life on their return to Afghanistan.
The infiltration of the NDS agents has been made into Mianwali, Attock and Rojhan, Rajanpur, from Punjab borders with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
The latest catch of the NDS operative from Taxila, an officer of the Afghan Army, is being interrogated by a key intelligence service to know about targets and tasks in Pakistan. The interrogators believe the busted Afghan intelligence operative had been recruiting agents for NDS among the Afghan refugees living in the Pothohar belt, including Rawalpindi, Attock and Taxila, said the security agencies sources.
Key intelligence agencies are monitoring the Punjab borders with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan to catch some big fish. The major Afghan refugee areas under watch include districts of Mianwali, Sargodha, Attock, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Chakwal, they added.
Afghan nationals sought shelter in Pakistan during Soviet invasion in 1979 and some of them were given a refugee status under UN conventions.
NDS agents for Pakistan are trained in the Afghan provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Khost in the art of subversion. While an indoctrination centre is being operated in Badakhshan province with the assistance of Indian intelligence agency, RAW, for mind subversion, said the security agencies’ sources.
The physical subversion training programmes consist of two categories which include four-month regular combat training to launch small-scale hit and run attacks on the targets.
The other is special task force (STF) course of eight months. This special course trains militants in launching small-scale guerilla raids and engaging forces. The training includes sniper shooting, bomb making and handling technical equipment to spy on the forces. RAW is assisting all the programmes.
At the indoctrination centre, the selected recruits are bombarded with video material and lectures to transform the selected ones into sworn enemies of Pakistan, they added.
