Khaksar said that, as a senior Taliban official, he attended an al-Qaeda demonstration at the camp in early 2001 in which terrorist trainees -- including Middle Easterners, Pakistanis, Chechens and others -- showed off kidnapping and assassination techniques. US warplanes bombed the camp into ruin on the first night of the Afghan war.
"It was one of the biggest camps and they were extremely well trained," said Khaksar, who secretly contacted the US in 1999 to seek American help in stopping the Taliban, and renounced the religious movement after their collapse. "Now these men have all returned to their homes. It is a grave risk for the security of the world."
At Rishkhor, a field and workout course once used for al-Qaeda drilling has been cleaned up and retooled for training by Afghan soldiers, many of whom have taken up residence in the bombed out buildings that once housed thousands of militants.
Abdul Fatah, 48, who cooked at the camp when al-Qaeda was in control and cooks today for the Afghan troops, describes the day in early October 2001 when the terrorists made a quick exodus from the camp, ahead of the US warplanes.
"They got a call from someone who said there was going to be bombing and just like that they all left. By the time the bombs fell I was the only one here," he said. "I guess they are all still out there somewhere," Fatah said.
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