Explained: History and geography of terror camp Balakot, recently reactivated by Pakistan

Balakot, and indeed the entire Mansehra district, has long been central to the Pakistani security establishment's jihadist project. The area has a very large number of mosques and madrassas, and this is where the first camps were set up to train jihadists for the Afghan war and later, for Kashmir.

Balakot is in the Mansehra district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, 63 km north of Abbottabad, where United States special forces killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

Army Chief General Bipin Rawat has said that Pakistan has “reactivated” the Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist training camp at Balakot “very recently”. The camp, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, had been struck by the IAF in February this year. A recall of what and where this camp is; how it is placed in Pakistan’s longstanding scheme of exporting terror to India: