In latest development, a hacking gang in India has been found to be snooping on Pak politicians and general. One fails to understand as what the Indian government and Modi’s agents are up to.  According to private British investigators, the hacking gang is based in India and they targeted Pak politicians and generals. As a matter of fact, India has always been indulged in spying on Pakistan governments, embassies and its missions abroad. Though India has always been on the forefront of misleading propaganda against Pakistan, but in the wake of Fall of Kabul last year, its machinery is totally focused on maligning Pakistan and its armed forces.

One wonders why the world is silent over such a massive propaganda against Pakistan by the Indian government.  May be the Indian lucrative market offer them much of solace due to which they favor Indian despite its indolent in anti-peace overtures and massive human rights violations in held Kashmir. 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 against Pakistan.  We are living in internet age and 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 malign Pakistan. Their campaign is 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.

Earlier last year,  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.

Last year, 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 and Afghan sets up are 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, December, 13 2022

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