The so-called world’s biggest secular state of India is busy in its bids to manipulate and to force-regulate the Internet which has come to fore last week. As a matter of fact, these latest reports concerning Indian Government  attempts to infiltrate the security system of Twitter through  enforced employment of Indian agent is a matter of serious concern. 

As  reported,  an ex-Twitter Inc security head has alleged that the Indian authorities made hectic attempts to  force the social media company to place a government agent on the payroll with  a view to having access to sensitive data which is against the security policies of the Internet. This is the latest in series regarding the Indian government concerted bids to misuse the Internet.

This is not the first time that such allegations are surfaced against Indian Government. India has been involved in blocking the twitter accounts of number of Kashmiri political leaders, media persons and also the Pakistani missions abroad and the Pakistan Radio.  On the complaints of the Pak diplomatic Missions abroad, the Foreign Office also apprised the Modi Sarkar about these heinous practices and called upon India to immediately unblock the accounts but to no avail. These tactics by the India government are tantamount to suppressing the voices of dissent and against the freedom of expression and the world should take note of such heinous practices as it is against the international norms. The Twitter management should also spring into action and take stern action again action as this is not only biased but a total suppression of the information for which India should be condemned at international level. It may be recalled here that India has been indulging in anti-Pakistan propaganda on social media for quite some years, particularly during the 2020 and after the fall of Kabul. Its machinery is totally focused on maligning Pakistan and its armed forces.

Deliberate attempts are being made by the Modi administration to fund   massive social media campaigns to put the entire blame on our country and term it responsible for whatever has been happening in Afghanistan for the last 20 years.  A massive social media campaign is underway against Pakistan. The entire Indian media and its mainstream social media accounts have churning the mills of fake news and rumours, terming Pakistan responsible for the Afghans situation.  Reasons being India’s leverage with ex-President Ashraf Ghani and the ex-Afghan intelligence apparatus, who was supporting militants in Pakistan. Since we are living an internet age, the Indian machinery is making all out use of the fake accounts for the negative progranda to fulfil its nefarious designs against Pakistan. The target of such a campaign is our armed forces as they want to discredit Pakistan and its security apparatus.  China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is also the subject of their campaign and all it is aiming at building a narrative to  retain Pakistan on the FATF grey list or black list. also mainly aimed at triggering communal hatred, linguistic conflicts and violence in Pakistan.

India had used its vast network for Websites to give credence to fake news-based trends by the Pashtoon Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) and Baloch separatists. It has been discovered that these anti Pakistan elements are making use of as old as decades-old materials consisting of videos clips and photos to add weight to their narrative. 

The latest example is that of #SanctionPakistan trend,  but  This is just the creation of sick mind funded by India and on the ground there is there is no such move as there exists no logical reasons to enforce sanctions against Pakistan. One would advise the countrymen and overseas Pakistan to check and verify the various hashtags used to malign Pakistan and not   believe everything they come across on social media. Many people unknowingly become part of the campaign as they don’t know the intentions of the campaigns.

Our security forces and the government should also remain alert and vigilant to counter this negative propaganda. As reported,  last month India was behind the two camapns launched by  PDM and Baloch separatists and as many as the 150,000 tweets came from India alone on August 14, 2020, with #BalochistanSolidarityDay hashtag. similarly, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) created 150 trends against Pakistan with the support of Indian state machinery.  

The latest hashtag #SanctionPakistan has been used over 730,000 times, according to the data from a social media insight company, Talkwalker. Around 37 per cent of those tweets originated from Afghanistan. The data collected from May 2020 to Aug 2021 indicates key narratives, networks and user accounts running disinformation operations. A comparative analysis focused on online hashtag activity with offline political and regional security events. Pakistan has repeatedly pointed how India and several other countries were engaged in the fifth generation warfare (5GW) against it, a fact that came to fore with the shocking disclosures made by the EU Disinfo Lab.

The G5iO pointed that the frequency and intensity of these campaigns increased dramatically over the last three months once, particularly after the announcement of the final withdrawal date of the United States and as the Taliban gained military advances. A timeline of social media hashtags centred on state-run disinformation campaigns by both India and Afghanistan showed clearly the intent and the targets. The hashtags included #FreeBalochistan, #14AugustBlackDay, #CivilWarinKarachi, #KarimaBaloch, #HazaraGenocide, #SanctionPakistan.

The details of coordinated network activity show that most of these campaigns were built on common narratives being propagated by both India and Afghanistan and comprised of known state-linked accounts. #On August 14 last year, some 150,000 anti-state trends against Pakistan were tweeted from India on #Balochistansolidarityday - the target of some 145,000 tweets were from Pakistan.

The target was Pakistan Army. Senator Usman Kakar died of brain hemorrhage, but India spread dis-informative trends on social media stating that #StateKillsUsman. Over 2,000 tweets were from social media accounts of India.  Just imagine India went to the extent of showing an old footage of a US F-16 flying in the UK, a video of a crashed plane from 2018 and even footage from a video game to try and prove that the Pakistani air force was assisting the Taliban in overrunning the last resistance stronghold in the country. It is ironical that despite the Indian set up is exposed by the internet companies for leading the disinformation campaigns against Pakistan through fake media accounts, the world countries are keeping a mum over the issue and do not stop India from such negative tactics which can destabilize peace in the region.

Published in The Daily National Courier, August, 31 2022

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