As the frontier summer intensifies, the breeze in the serene mountain village of Hisari near Garhi Habibullah is pleasantly cool. South of the village, spread on the pine-covered slopes of a hill overlooking Kunhar River, is the guardroom of a camp run by Hizbul Mujahideen (HM). A jeep track leads past the barrier into the residential quarters, a series of barracks each with its small kitchen. A separate building houses the camp’s office and a small library. There is a mosque, which serves as the main lecture hall and a main kitchen that cooks three meals a day for the 250 residents.

But unlike the usual verve and operational precision that mark life at such camps, the atmosphere in the Hisari camp appears to be one of lethargy and disorientation. Some distance from the residential compound, on a level ground that is fenced off, a dozen men wearing T-shirts and track pants are playing football.

In the residential area, there are signs of gardening and rabbit farming by the residents who prefer to run their independent kitchens. Others loiter inside the office or library, or listen to patriotic songs on the cassette players they are allowed in the camp. What is going on? “The boys are frustrated,” confides a senior inmate. “The Pakistanis have cut off their budget and they are left with little hope of seeing action in the Indian Kashmir.”

Apparently, more than a thousand trained militants from the Indian Kashmir are currently stranded in three HM camps in the Hazara region of the Frontier province alone. Of these, the Hisari and Batrasi camps are located in the Mansehra district while a third camp is located in Boi in district Abbottabad. Sources say that thousands of other militants find themselves similarly confined to camps run by half a dozen smaller Kashmiri groups or predominantly Pakistani outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JM), Harkatul Mujahideen (HuM) and al-Badr Mujahideen (ABM) in the Frontier and Pakistan-administered Kashmir regions.

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