Discovery of militant camps

THE law enforcing agencies deserve credit for the detection of a militant training camp in a remote forest area of Banshkhali in Chittagong on Saturday. The raid resulted from information provided by some of the nabbed extremists from a madrasa in Hathazari the previous day.  

This is for the first time that such a well organised setup for training extremists and storing weapons and ammunitions has been discovered. We are sure that this will to a large extent preempt any destructive activity that these militants may have been planning. But what should be of major concern for the agencies is the source of recruitment for this camp as well the source of finance and their weaponry, which, from the picture of the recovered weapon and ammo that we have seen, are high caliber weapons. 

We also wonder where the trainees might have disappeared since the Rab was able to arrest only five of the operators from the training camp. It would not be misplaced to suggest that their may be more such outfits elsewhere in the country's remote areas which must be neutralised at the earliest. And this will require beefing up the human intelligence capacity of the law enforcing agencies and involving the public more meaningfully in counter extremist exercise.  

What also need to be extracted from those apprehended are their internal and external links and their financer if the extremists and terrorists are to be successfully countered.