Kashmir Cell, ran jihadi operations in Indian-occupied Kashmir. In recent decades, officers at Section 21 liaised with the Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s exiled leadership council. Even inside the ISI, its work was considered secretive. Most of its officers in Quetta were army officers, Ashraf said, and they tended to work through “cutouts” – paid tribal strongmen who lived in the ethnic Pashtun villages around Quetta, where Taliban fighters sheltered.
