Iqbal Khan

As usual India has once again denied responsibility for the elaborate and reprehensible global disinformation campaign against Pakistan exposed by EU DisinfoLab. Latest developments and international exposés have clearly shown that India is neither ‘responsible’ nor a ‘democracy’.The latest revelations have established that no amount of Indian falsehoods can succeed in diverting attention from India’s war crimes in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). For far too long, India has masqueraded itself as a ‘victim’ of terrorism. It is time that the world saw the reality of India as a state-sponsor of terrorism and a purveyor of anti-Pakistan propaganda globally. Prominent political leaders of IIOJ&K have condemned India over its irresponsible behaviour.

A December 09 report by a Brussels based NGO EU DisinfoLab is just the tip of the iceberg.An 80-page investigative report has revealed how India used fake media outlets, defunct think tanks, NGOs and even a dead human right activist to target Pakistan.

The disinformation campaign is aimed at bolstering India’s global perception, which will ultimately allow New Delhi to bag more support from international institutions such as the EU and the UN.The operation’s mission is to discredit nations in conflict with India in the region, in particular, Pakistan and also China to a certain extent. The operation, which has been running for the past 15 years, has employed more than 750 fake media outlets, and more than 550 domain names in 119 countries to reinforce pro-India and anti-Pakistan feelings.

According to the report, there is a vast network of fake media outlets, think tanks and NGOs serving Indian interests. An earlier report had previously uncovered the Indian propaganda body, carrying out anti-Pakistan activities and cyber warfare against Pakistan led by Srivastava group of India and propagated by the Indian news agency ANI, since 2005.

In its initial reaction to DisinfoLab scandal, Pakistan has called upon the United Nations and UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to immediately begin an investigation into these startling revelations.De-listing of the 10 fake NGOs created by India to malign Pakistan should be the starting action. Pakistan has asked for a credible investigation into the manipulation of the EU Parliament and its legislative process by these fake organisations involved in anti-Pakistan propaganda under a fully funded disinformation influence operation run by India. It also called on the UN to create processes that ensure that the international system is not manipulated through such influence operations.

India’s Srivastava Group used Indian Asia News International (ANI) to spread fake news against Pakistan. Since ANI offers its services to many local and international media outlets, it helped India to give credibility to its fake campaign against Pakistan.The international news agency, Reuters, also has an agreement with ANI. Pakistan has askedsuch news outlets, including Reuters, to review their arrangement with the Indian newswire service,now proven to be repeatedly pushing fake news from two fake Indian created websites.

EU DisinfoLab’s investigation hasunearthed a massive disinformation campaign captioned ‘Indian Chronicles’.Operation was launched in 2005, aimed at undermining Pakistan internationally.Report has exposed anefarious network comprising hundreds of India sponsored websites spread across 119 countries,and within the European Union and the United Nations.

The Indian actors carrying out the latest malicious operation resurrected more than 10 defunct Human Rights Council accredited NGOs, registered with the names of deceased analysts and experts, created hundreds of fake journalists identities, generated more than 750 media outlets and registered more than 550 fake domain names.

Srivastava Group launched and backed the operation while Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI) boosted it. ANI is based in R. K. Puram, New Delhi that offers syndicated multimedia news feed to plethora of news-bureaus in India and abroad.ANI, repackaged and amplified the malicious content.

During the investigation, it was found that the former president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz — who said to have left politics — was now heading Canners International, an NGO dedicated to the promotion of food in cans was deeply involved in subversive activities against Pakistan.”We soon found the NGO he was supposedly leading officially ceased to exist in 2007 and was now regularly speaking at the UN Human Rights Council to slam Pakistan,” the report said.

The Indian Chronicles also resurrected a renowned international human rights lawyer Louis Sohn. He was listed as a participant in a UN event in 2007 as well as an attendee during an event in Washington DC in 2011 even though he passed away in 2006.

The report further said that outside the doors of the UN, Indian Chronicles also created and supported several NGOs and think-tanks in charge of lobbying, organising events and demonstrations, all favourable to Indian interests.At the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, the operation was used to arrange side-events and demonstrations in support of minority rights, impersonate extinguished UN-accredited NGOs and use speaking slots reserved to various NGOs whose original missions seem unrelated.

Campaign’s long-term objectives was to promote content against Pakistan and China, and consolidate India’s power at international forums such as the EU and UN. Project supports minorities, human rights NGOs, and think-tanks in targeted countries. It also gives the impression that the minority groups in Pakistan and China have institutional support from European institutions.

Prime Minster Imran Khan said: Revelations by DisinfoLab on the widespread Indian network of subversive activities vindicates Pakistan’s position and exposes its detractors.In a series of tweets, the prime minister said that “Pakistan has consistently drawn attention of international community to India’s subversive activities to undermine democracies in the region and export/ fund extremism through structures of fake news organisations and “think tanks”.

Such Indian ploys of spreading misinformation are doomed to fail. By spreading such falsehoods, India can neither cast a shadow on the international stature of Pakistan nor can it divert the attention of the international community from its horrendous human rights record.Instead of wasting more time in peddling falsehoods and fake news, India should put its house in order and take care of its own issues of poverty, grave human rights violations, exploitation of minority rights and rising radicalism.

India’s subversive activities against Pakistan have been ignored for far too long by the international community. The scope and extent of India’s operations against Pakistan under their hybrid war is now apparent for the world to see.

Indian actions involve criminality and breach of international law. International community has a responsibility to take heed of India’s agenda which threatens regional peace and continues to manipulate the international system.

Pakistan has already put forth irrefutable evidence, extensively documenting India’s active planning, promoting, aiding, abetting, financing and executing terrorist activities in Pakistan. Recently government of Pakistan has provided dossier to United Nations about India’s state terrorism projects in Pakistan. International community needs to take notice of a rogue Indian regime that now threatens the stability of the global systems.Australian National University Professor Dr Claude Rakisits has aptly commented: “It will be very obvious that India is not the Great Democracy.”

Truth cannot be hidden for long. India has a track record of interfering in its neighbours’ affairs through various facets of Hybrid warfare like: proxies’ employment, false flag operations, claims to victimhood, misrepresentation etc. Reaction from the important capitals has been rather subdued. Observers believe that if such an operation was carried out by countries such as China or Russia, the reaction from the world particularly from the western countries would have been far more different.

Writer is a freelance columnist. E-mail: [email protected]

Dr. M. Ali Hamza

There was a time when Pakistan’s economy was trending and had no comparison in growth. Beside agricultural advances, the industrialization started taking off. But then nationalization happened: the culture of state owned enterprises. The unmatchable economic growth of Pakistan came to stand still, corruption badly infected the institutions, and the era of unproductivity began.

Since then Pakistan is trying to get rid of it, and had tried de-nationalizing institutions, but it was never easy to reverse things, rather the antithesis produced the oligarchs: rich business leader with a great deal of political influence. And now most prominent oligarchs in Pakistan have become Machiavellian and threat to the state. The good fortune is that in Asia and to be more specific in our own region we have an example to learn from. A country that went through severer economic and political circumstances, formed and then de-formed the anti-state oligarchs, and currently they are back to the path of progress. Yes the Russia.

The economy of Soviet Union evolved exponentially till 1950s, mainly based on the agricultural sector. The industrial revolution, mass production and market competition in the west changed the entire game and business structure of USSR was a misfit to this latest revolution. Therefore by 1970s the Soviet Union entered the Era of Stagnation: the term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev in order to describe his viewpoint related to dilapidating economic, political, and social policies of the USSRinitiated by Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982) and sustainedunder Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenkofrom 1982 to 1985. The complex demands of the modern economy in the world, and the cumbersome procedures for bureaucratic administration that hampered free communication at the enterprise level in USSR overwhelmed and forcedthe central planners in Moscow to rethink. Moreover the corruption, information manipulation, and data fiddling became common practice among bureaucracy to report satisfied targets. But the reality was on the contrary. Finally in 1986, with Perestroika policyMikhail Gorbachev attempted to address economic problems by moving towards a market-oriented socialist economy. Though it failed, instead, to many it caused the breakup of USSR in 1991.

Russia in her struggle to coup up with this shift from state owned business to open market had to go through certain challenges.The first challenge was to find capable human resource that could run the business in a competitive market and had some familiarity of new trends of business. In fact for a very long time the business environment was state-owned and only government officials were aware of the business processes, but even those government officials had no clue how to run a private business. Operating a private enterprise is way different ballgame than overseeing state-owned financial affairs.Thus, the private business acumen was a rare commodity. Being a global players, and influencer, Russian political scenario could not afford to invite investors and businessmen from West to take over the Russian economy.  The government decided to find people among Russians who do have some exposure to private financial ventures.

The intelligence produced a few names from black market, who were involved in businesses like, financial speculation, smuggling of goods i.e. computers, jeans, for hefty profits during USSR regime, therefore many of them had been to imprisonment in Soviet times. One thing was common among all, and that was greed for money, so the intelligence knew that these guys cannot befullytrusted, but assured their loyalty to the state. Moreover the intelligence guaranteed that if ever they go against the state, they will be handled abruptly and adequately. Accordingly, as per plan the so-called voucher-privatization program of 1992-1994 was launched. Under this program business of oil, natural gas, nickel, coal, copper, chromium, automobile, mass media etc. were sold out to the selected individuals. Voucher-privatization program enabledthe handful of young men to become future Russian billionaires,in a very short span of time.Who were these people,why did some of them become anti-state and how Russia neutralized these traitors? Acase study of few of these individualscan make us learn and we could clearly understand the manipulative and Machiavellian nature of some of our own anti-state oligarchs those are trying to control Pakistan.

One of the prominent namesamong these selected individuals isBoris AbramovichBerezovsky. In 1989, Berezovsky took advantage by Perestroika policy. He established a company named LogoVAZ that used to developed software for AvtoVAZ, sold Soviet-made cars and serviced foreign cars. He profited from hyperinflation by taking cars on consignment and paying the producer at a later date when the money lost much of its value.One of Berezovsky’s early endeavors was All-Russia Automobile Alliance (AVVA), a venture fund he formed in 1993 and by 2000 AVVA held about one-third of AvtoVAZ; a Russian automobile manufacturer established in times of USSR in collaboration with Fiat. He profited from gaining control over various Russian assets. In 1997, Forbes estimated his wealth at US$3 billion. Berezovsky’s involvement in the Russian media began in 1994, when he was given access to control over ORT Televisionto replace the failing Soviet Channel 1.The quick money in billions, and control of the mass media created a sense of being king maker in Berezovsky. He used his wealth and opinion making tools to get into inner circle of Russian political system, got access to Russia’s security council and Duma; the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia. Though he funded Unity, a Russian political party that formed Vladimir Putin’s parliamentary base, however, following the Russian presidential election in 2000 he went in opposition with president Putin. One of the reasons is Berezovsky’s disagreement on constitutional reform proposed by Putin. Berezovsky used his media power not only against the proposed legislative reforms, those he called ‘a restoration of an authoritarian regime’ but started building an anti-Putin narrative.In an article in The Washington Post in 2000, Berezovsky argued that in the absence of a strong civil society it is necessary for capitalists to interfere directly in the political process.At this point of time Putin took a strong decision and announced that no criticism will be tolerated on the government by media that is in control of oligarchs and such blackmailing will not be allowed. Furthermore President Putin mentioned that the state has a cudgelwhich has been brandished and the day state get really angry, she won’t hesitate to use it. So the State used the cudgel.In 2001 a systematic takeover by the government of privately owned television networks began, in the course of which Berezovsky lost most of his media holdings. Berezovskysold his stake in ORT to Roman Abramovich; a pro-state oligarch. Later in 2003Berezovskywent to Uk, applied political asylum and was granted refugee status by the British Home Office.Ultimately till 2006 he sold his remaining Russian assets. In 2013 Berezovskydied and buried in England. Before his death he sent a letter to the Russian president, asking for permission to return to Russia and asking ‘forgiveness for his mistakes’, the permission was never granted. Berezovsky forgot that his empire was built on some promises. He disregarded the foundations of his surprising fortune. Some Oligarchs in Pakistan have also forgotten their promises, but who is in Pakistan ready to stand like Putin? Another case study will be presented in part 2.