It has been a frenzied week for global diplomacy, most of it centred on Delhi. The terrain of the war against terrorism now appears to have shifted to India and Pakistan. There may be an element of political grandstanding in the diplomatic sparring that is going on these days, but the issue of terrorism is closer to us than we realise. Every day the ideology of terror is being disseminated, acts of terror are being planned and carried out. Our cover story this week uncovers a link in this perverse process.

MINEFIELD: Unnithan (left) and Saxena at the Rishkhor camp

During their travels in Afghanistan, Principal Correspondent Sandeep Unnithan and Senior Photographer Sharad Saxena visited one of the most heavily bombed Al Qaida training schools at Rishkhor, 15 km south of Kabul. Accompanied by gun-toting boy soldiers, Unnithan found the abandoned compound strewn with papers. The papers contained printed and handwritten notes in the Arabic script, diagrams, charts and illustrations which showed weapons, vehicles and buildings. Unnithan says, "It was the drawings that made me believe we were on to something."

As his mastery of the Arabic script does not match his knowledge of military hardware, Unnithan did the next best thing: picked up the papers and brought them all back. What he had gathered, Arabic translators reveal, was a treasure trove. It was an exhaustive Al Qaida training manual that explained means and methods to be used in terrorist strikes. It accounted for every emergency scenario that a potential terrorist might find himself in. There were letters and diaries of Pakistani jehadis too. The training given at Rishkhor was intensive and exhaustive.

We have had to be circumspect in our use of the material from the Rishkhor papers, and have chosen to gloss over the specifics for obvious reasons. It still makes for very chilling reading and even more chilling when you think about the fact that jehadis are infiltrating into India from Pakistan to apply their murderous lessons here.

(Aroon Purie)