Social media accounts in Afghanistan and India are used to repeatedly slander Pakistan: Yusuf

Yusuf said that the government will use analysis and data to reveal the “information war” facing Pakistan. He said he especially wanted to talk about Afghanistan, where the Taliban and the government are at war. He said that the government’s social media team and think tanks have extensively collected evidence that “social media accounts from Afghanistan and India have been repeatedly used to slander Pakistan”. Yousef said that the recent #SanctionPakistan trend has spread online and it is worth investigating to see if it is organic. The US National Security Agency went on to say that in addition to this, there are people trying to blame Pakistan for all the failures accumulated during the 20-year war in Afghanistan. He said that as the U.S. forces began to withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban controlled the cities and provincial capitals. “There are more and more speeches against Pakistan in order to avoid being blamed for their failure.” “It is very unfortunate that some senior officials of the Afghan government are also involved, and some of them have also come out,” he said. He said that “many accounts are linked to the state” and through India and “a very coordinated campaign against Pakistan is underway.” “We will expose all these truths, not through fake news, but through data and facts. We will form a narrative that tells the world what it has done to Pakistan.” The National Security Agency then showed a few slides, including one. It is the timetable after 2019, and the others show how hashtags targeting Pakistan have emerged as the situation in Afghanistan intensifies. Yusuf said that five broad themes can be seen from these trends: 1. Defamation of the Pakistani government, especially the Pakistani army. 2. Fan sub-nationalism. 3. Directly target CPEC through mixed warfare. 4. Push Pakistan into the FATF blacklist. 5. Blame the chaos in Afghanistan on Pakistan. The National Security Agency said that an important thing to note is the use of “robots” to artificially promote trends. “Unfortunately, in Pakistan, those who didn’t know that this happened organically, and eventually reposted these tags. They thought it was a natural thing. “Let me tell you that many videos are five years old. 10 years old, but because they are now suitable for international media narratives, they are spreading as if they are the latest,” Yusuf said. He said 30-40% of activities are carried out through these robots.