LAHORE - About a dozen banned outfits, majority of them active in Balochistan, are using Karachi as the base for publication and promotion of their propaganda material.

The proscribed organisations using the country’s most populous city for the production of such poisonous material are also involved in other anti-state activities including suicide attacks, security agencies sources told The Nation yesterday.

Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) headed by Harbiyar Marri, Baloch Republican Army (BRA) controlled by Brahamdagh Bugti, Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) of Allah Nazar Baloch group commanders, Lashkar-e-Balochistan (LeB) steered by Javed Mengal and Baloch Republican Party (BRP) of Brahamdagh Bugti are among the first category.

The second category of the organisations publishing the propaganda material from Karachi is: Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaishul Nasr, Jaishul Adal and Jandullah.

The propaganda material which includes printed and audio-video is then smuggled into the restive Balochistan to spread among the targeted audience, disclosed the security agencies sources.

An official of the Frontier Corps Intelligence Unit (FCIU) who could not be named because of the sensitivity of his task, confirming the development told this Paper that nearly 5.2 ton of printed and audio-video propaganda material has been seized so far.

National Directorate of Security (NDS), the key security service of Afghanistan, and India’s RAW are funding subversive propaganda operations from Kandahar, Helmand and Spin Boldak, he said. Some captured agents working as local facilitators for the NDS and RAW told the security agencies about their role for channelising funds and other means to feed and run the subversive propaganda operations in Balochistan, he added.

“It is a very complex and difficult warfare. The facilitator is an unidentified face of the terror industry but the vital one. He can be spotted with layers of human intelligence operations which takes time. The entire terror operation focuses on the facilitator sleeper cell support, said the FCIU official.

Balochistan Home Minister Sarfraz Khan Bugti told the Paper inter-provincial efforts to neutralise the terrorist rings and their facilitators have been carried out time and again following actionable intelligence.

Security agencies though seized propaganda material in different parts of Balochistan several times. But the key lead about making of the material in Karachi reached a premier intelligence agency when its officials raided a secret office of the online Baloch separatists’ paper in Lyari (Karachi).

The agency also detected some other grey properties in Karachi being used for producing similar material for the banned outfits operating in Balochistan, disclosed the security agencies sources.

The tenant of the premises in which Baloch separatist online paper was shut down, later identified himself as the chief handler of Commander Kulbushan Yadav’s operations in Karachi, New Delhi’s chief spy for Balochistan and Karachi operations.

The chief handler of Yadav in Karachi approached the regional headquarters of a premier secret service in Sindh and became a “walk-in, talk-in informant” to save his skin and thus became the key to the capture of RAW’s high-ranking spy, they added.