Islamic Terrorism in India breeds in Pakistan with the help of Pak military.

"There are two bodies running these affairs: mullahs and retired generals," he said and named a number of former military officials involved in the programme, including former chiefs of the intelligence service and other former generals.

"These people have a very big role still," he said.

Maj Gen Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former intelligence officer who was convicted of attempting a coup against the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and who is now dead, was one of the most active supporters of the militant groups in the years after Sept 11, the former commander said.

He said he saw General Abbasi several times: once at a meeting of Taliban and Pakistani militant leaders in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province as they planned how to confront the American military in Afghanistan; and twice in Mir Ali, which became the centre for foreign militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, including members of Al Qaeda.

The Pakistani military still supports the Afghan Taliban in their fight to force out American and NATO forces from Afghanistan, he said, adding that he thought they would be successful.

The ISI also still supports other Pakistani militant groups, even some of those that have turned against the government, because the military still wants to keep them as tools for use against its arch-rival, India, he said.

The military used a strategy of divide and rule, encouraging splits in the militant groups to weaken and control them, he said.

Although the military has lost control of many of the firebrand fighters, and has little influence over the foreign fighters in the tribal areas who belong to Al Qaeda — some of whom openly oppose the Pakistani government — it was reluctant to move against them, he said.

"Many of the thousands of trained Pakistani fighters turned against the military because it treated them so carelessly", he said.

"Pakistan used them and then, like a paper tissue, threw them away," he said.

Indeed, he was first trained for a year by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba at a camp in Kunar Province, in Afghanistan, in the early 1990s.

The entire enterprise was supported by the Pakistani military and executed by Pakistani militant groups, he said.