National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf said on Wednesday claimed that social media accounts operated from India and Afghanistan were being used to malign Pakistan after Afghan authorities failed to stop advances of Taliban in war-torn country.
Moeed Yusuf, accompanied by Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry, said in a press conference that social media accounts from Afghanistan and India were being used to discredit Pakistan and its armed forces as a part of ‘information warfare’ against Pakistan.
The NSA shared data pertaining to anti-Pakistan social media trends that were launched between 2019 and 2021, the majority of which have been traced to India and Afghanistan, with the aim of running a “targeted, deliberate and conscious disinformation campaign against Pakistan”.
The NSA said the government’s social media teams and think tanks have worked extensively to gather evidence that shows that social media accounts from Afghanistan and India are being used repeatedly to malign Pakistan.
Yusuf said there are five broad themes that can be seen in social media trends:
- Discredit Pakistan government, and especially Pakistan Army.
- Fan fictitious sub-nationalism.
- Directly target CPEC through hybrid warfare.
- Push Pakistan into the FATF blacklist.
- Blame Pakistan for the chaos in Afghanistan.
Besides these there are efforts to blame Pakistan for all the failures that accumulated in the 20-year-long war in Afghanistan, the NSA went on to add.
“Afghanistan has a volatile situation now, but let me tell you Afghan and Indian accounts are being used to malign Pakistan,” he added, noting that ‘Sanction Pakistan’ was widely trended on Twitter to create a narrative against the country.
Moeed Yusuf regretted the “global silence” in response to India propagating disinformation against Pakistan. However, he said the government would keep presenting analytics-based data to show the “information warfare” against Pakistan.
The NSA said that an important thing to note is the use of “bots” which push trends artificially.
“Unfortunately, within Pakistan, people who are unaware, who think this is taking place organically, end up retweeting these hashtags. They think this is a natural, organic thing.
“A lot of the videos, let me tell you, are five years old, 10 years old, but because they suit the international media’s narrative right now, are being spread as if they are current,” Yusuf said.
He said that 30-40% of the activity is through these bots.