'Hundreds of Fighters, 11 Training Camps': UN Report Reveals Taliban's 'Aid' to JeM, LeT in Afghanistan
A new UN report has revealed that Pakistan-based terror outfits Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) still have hundreds of fighters in Afghanistan and both terror groups are operating at least 11 training camps in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces.
In the first official confirmation, the report from the team monitoring the UN Security Council’s sanctions on Taliban says the terror camps in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar are operating under Qari Ramzaan who represents JeM.
The JeM is operating eight camps, with three directly under the Taliban, while the LeT is also operating three camps in Kunar and Nangarhar, the report said.
This is the first report by the monitoring team, which assists the UN Security Council’s 1988 Sanctions Committee, since the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August last year.
According to the findings, LeT — which was formed in Afghanistan in 1990 — has maintained close ties with the Afghan Taliban leadership, with LeT leader Mawlawi Assadullah meeting Taliban’s deputy interior minister Noor Jalil in October 2021.
Within Afghanistan, LeT is led by Mawlawi Yousuf. Members who were a part of the terror group in the past include Aslam Farooqi and Ejaz Ahmad Ahangar alias Abu Usman al-Kashmiri, both of whom joined the Khorasan chapter of the Islamic State.
The report added that JeM, a group led by Masood Azhar, is “ideologically closer to the Taliban”. Qari Ramazan is the newly appointed head of the group in Afghanistan. Azhar formed JeM in early 2000 after he was freed along with two more terrorists in exchange for passengers on an Indian Airlines flight hijacked by Pakistani terrorists from Kathmandu to Kandahar.
The findings also debunk the claims of the Taliban of not allowing Afghan soil to be used by foreign fighters since the UN report said several other foreign terrorist groups were still active in Afghanistan, including the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Jamaat Ansarullah.
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