India’s Fake News Factory

By Amir Zia
Monthly Hilal Magazine
November 2021

If on the one hand, India’s Fake News Factory is targeting Pakistan, on the other it is gunning for the religious minorities, especially Muslims, living within the boundaries of this Hindu-majority state, as well as the people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Fake news being produced and disseminated on a mass-scale is now a global challenge, but the infamy of running such a racket at the state level, and that too in the most-crude, blatant and into your face style goes to the much-touted world’s largest democracy – India.
One would have thought that after the exposure of ‘India’s Fake News Factory’ by the EU DisinfoLab in December 2020, there would at least be a brief halt in the production of bogus content by the extremist Hindu state or some change in tactics. However, the operation of India’s “Fake News Factory” continues uninterrupted and unhindered, fanning hate, inciting violence and terrorism, and attempting to advance Indian interests by hook or by crook as the global power centers look the other way.
The EU DisinfoLab exposé – dubbed as Indian Chronicles – had uncovered an enormous fake news operation being run by India from Brussels and Geneva that produced and circulated content mainly targeting Pakistan. It focused on international institutions to advance Indian objectives through a web of resurrected dead media, dead think-tanks and NGOs that spread false content against Pakistan, according to the EU DisinfoLab.
Now, almost one year down the road, if on the one hand, India’s Fake News Factory is targeting Pakistan, on the other it is gunning for the religious minorities, especially Muslims, living within the boundaries of this Hindu-majority state, as well as the people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed, the agenda of the extremist Hindu rulers is divisive, violent and hegemonic both within India, its occupied territories and the region.
Pakistani authorities have significant evidence of as to how Twitter and Facebook accounts operating from India created trends, which fomented sectarian, religious and ethnic hate with the sole aim to destabilize Pakistan. Fake news and other content was created and uploaded on shady websites specifically meant for Pakistan.

Before the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul in August this year, Indians also used Afghanistan to wage Twitter and Facebook assaults on Pakistan. A handful of Pakistan’s liberals settled in Western countries and some fringe elements within the country echoed those trends originating from India and Afghanistan either by design or default.
For example, in October 2021, Indian-managed or sponsored accounts created a #SanctionPakistan trend on Twitter in which Pakistan was held responsible for the victory of the Afghan Taliban, with fabricated stories made against Pakistan Armed Forces and spy agencies. Even India’s mainstream media joined this chorus as its anchorpersons and bands of analysts and commentators echoed a similar line in angry and frenzied voices.
In September, barely a month after the Afghan Taliban’s march into Kabul, one of India’s far-right and warmonger anchorpersons working for the pro-government news channel, Republic TV, claimed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was operating from the fifth floor of Serena Hotel in Kabul. His concocted story claimed that the ISI officers were helping Taliban in capturing the Panjshir Valley. But, much to the dismay and embarrassment of the anchorperson, Kabul’s Serena Hotel turned out to only have two floors.
The same channel, along with a UK-based Afghan channel, Hasti TV, came out with a bizarre story that Pakistan Air Force (PAF) pounded Panjshir Valley to help Taliban seize it. Soon afterwards, other mainstream Indian channels, including Zee TV and Time Now, also started showing footage of the alleged airstrike which was in fact obtained from a video game.
India Today, considered a serious media outlet, aired a clip of an American F-15 calling it the "first visuals of a fighter jet, allegedly belonging to Pakistan, hovering over Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan." The same channel also showed a photograph claiming that it was a Pakistani F-16, which was shot down. But a U.S. website, military.com, busted this claim by sharing factual information that the photo was actually from an accident of a U.S. F-16 that crash-landed during a training flight near the Arizona-California border on April 24, 2018.
The abrupt cancellation of New Zealand’s cricket team’s recent Pakistan tour was also because of fake information being disseminated from India. 
One can quote example after example of such fake stories churned out by mainstream and new media outlets operating from India and their fronts and shells in various parts of the world. The production and sharing of fake content aimed at Pakistan is a sustained and organised effort rather than an occasional exercise.
Pakistani officials have already raised a red flag over the way social media accounts from India tried to spark sectarian tension and violence ahead and during the Islamic months of Muharram and Ramadan. These conspiracies were foiled by the Pakistani authorities before they could fully unroll and inflict harm to the country.
Similarly, it is not just the sectarian and religious card which the Indians try to use in an attempt to destabilize Pakistan, but they also remain focused on triggering provincial and ethnic discord through fake news and content. On this front, Pakistan’s biggest city and financial hub, Karachi as well as the erstwhile tribal areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan province remain the key targets.
Indeed, disinformation has emerged as the latest form of state-sponsored violence from India. 
Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter, mainly ignore the avalanche of fake news generated from India because of their business interests. A recent research report based on the classified documents called the Facebook Papers, obtained by several U.S. publications, shows that this social media platform remains unable to control fake news, hate speech and inflammatory content, including celebration of violence coming out of India – its biggest market. 
The most worrying aspect is that both Twitter and Facebook managements know that their algorithms encourage users to watch violent videos, hate speeches and conspiracy theories aimed at inciting violence both within India and abroad. And all this is being done because of monetary considerations. 
The international community, especially the Western capitals, must connect the dots to find how fake news/content breeds terrorism and violence both within India and the region, particularly Pakistan. In many ways, the Fake News Factory of India and its operations remain as lethal, if not more, as that of terror financing.
The Hindutva ideology of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) remains the main force behind India's fake content operations, which are being carried out with two objectives. The first is to establish Indian hegemony in the region, for which Pakistan is the main target. The second objective is to promote Hinduism within India by squeezing the space for religious minorities, particularly Indian Muslims.
Here again, propaganda is the first weapon of choice of the chauvinistic arm-chair Hindu warriors belonging to BJP or its allied extremists, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that target Muslims and incite the masses against them by disseminating half-truths or outright lies. These Indian state-sponsored extremists use technologies to generate fake content and manage to ensure centralized control in order to spread disinformation. This disinformation emitting from the social media platforms and shadowy news websites is then legitimized by India’s mainstream media and the BJP and RSS leaders. 
Love jihad is one such theme – propagated both by the mainstream Indian press and social media – in which Muslim men are being accused of marrying Hindu women in a bid to expand their population. This propaganda has resulted in the victimization and even killings of countless Muslim men. 
Then, slaughtering of cows by Muslims is another storyline which sells like hotcakes among many Hindus. This has resulted in public lynching and murder of dozens of Muslims and manhandling and beatings of countless others.
The crackdown against Muslims, particularly in Bengal, in the name of curbing illegal immigration is yet another example in which India’s mainstream and social media has been operating as a vanguard to advance the extremist Hindutva agenda. Poverty-stricken Muslim families are being harassed, rounded-up, forced to leave their shanty homes, beaten and even killed in the name of operations against illegal immigrants.
The Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is another heart-wrenching story where India’s Fake News Factory is working 24/7 not just to cover up the crimes of Indian security forces against Kashmiri Muslims, but also to cheer them on for all the atrocities and human rights abuses. As the extremist Modi-led government is trying to orchestrate demographic changes in this Muslim-majority state, the hostile Indian media are distorting facts and working overtime to paint the victims as troublemakers and terrorists.
While most of the world capitals have turned a blind eye towards these monstrous acts by India, some international non-governmental organisations working on media and human rights have been trying to expose the world’s biggest Fake News Factory and its human rights abuses. However, they have yet to give context that this whole state-sponsored and promoted fake news operation is responsible for fanning violence and terrorism within and outside India as well as threatening the regional peace and stability.
This is also intensifying polarization within India and sharpening as well as widening its fissures which remain detrimental even for this Hindu-majority state itself.
Pakistani authorities and state institutions, as well as its private media outlets, must work in tandem to expose India’s Fake News Factory at the international level and continue its efforts on a war footing to counter the propaganda and false content generated from its eastern border. 
In the 21^st Century, fighting the enemy on the media front also falls in the ambit of national security. Yes, before the fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, missiles and soldiers move, the words would go to the battlefield first and may decide the outcome of a conflict even before the first shot gets fired.

The writer is an eminent journalist who regularly contributes for print and electronic media. E-mail: amir.zia@gmail.com, Twitter: @AmirZia1

 

The Baqir Blunder

By Amir Zia
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
Bol News

The massive devaluation under Dr. Baqir is just one example of where he led the government on the wrong path. By pushing interest rates to the highs of 13.25% soon after he assumed charge at the SBP, Dr. Baqir ensured that Pakistan’s debt became unmanageable.

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government has made several questionable appointments, but the most controversial of them all remains that of Dr. Reza Baqir as the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). In London, his recent remarks about the benefits of currency devaluation for Pakistanis living abroad created an uproar, but they are a minor faux pas considering the way he practically damaged Pakistan’s economy and dragged the Central Bank into unnecessary controversies.

What Dr. Baqir describes as a “benefit” for overseas Pakistanis because of a more than 10 percent slide in the value of the local currency against the dollar in recent weeks has added at least 1,890 billion rupees to Pakistan’s public debt in one go. If the interest rate component of around 76 billion rupees is also included in this amount, then it means that Pakistan’s debt has shot up by 1,966 billion rupees – and that too without fresh borrowing.

These calculations have been made by Pakistan’s veteran economist, Dr. Ashfaque H. Khan, who had served as the Finance Ministry Advisor and held the important position of Director-General Debt Office for years.

In dollar terms, this means a staggering increase of around $11.1 billion in the overall foreign debt. Dr. Ashfaque H. Khan’s calculations show that if one adds to this the past impact of devaluations and high-interest rate of 13.25 percent under Dr. Baqir’s stewardship of the Central Bank, then it means that Pakistan’s economy has been burdened by more than $50 billion.

No wonder, Pakistan debt payments have soared by more than 80%  during the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf’s (PTI) government as Islamabad struggles to get the stalled tranches of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) loan of a mere $6.0 billion under its Extended Fund Facility.

Many economists and leading businessmen say that the recent rapid and unnecessary devaluation of the rupee remains beyond comprehension given Pakistan’s liquid foreign exchange reserves of more than $24 billion, record-high remittances of $29 billion, and expected record exports of $30 billion. Just on the basis of a two-month current account deficit, this kind of devaluation remains unjust as it inflicts huge losses to the national economy.

The massive devaluation under Dr. Baqir is just one example of where he led the government on the wrong path. By pushing interest rates to the highs of 13.25% soon after he assumed charge at the SBP, Dr. Baqir ensured that Pakistan’s debt became unmanageable. By bringing in hot money during the initial period of his term at high interest rates, and then now under the Roshan Digital Account, Dr. Baqir has compounded Pakistan’s economic vulnerabilities. The situation has deteriorated to a level that in the next fiscal year, after making the debt and interest payments, Pakistan will be forced to make allocations for the development and defence budget on borrowed money, which is a national security risk.

No wonder that for the first time in history, the SBP and its Governor find themselves in the middle of controversies and face severe criticism from various stakeholders, including top economists and businessmen.

The ongoing cycle of devaluation of the rupee – one of the prior-conditions of the IMF for the resumption of talks – has shaken the confidence of businesses, investors and common Pakistanis, who are already suffering the brunt of high global commodity prices.

Pakistan’s economic gains in exports, increased business activity, especially in the construction, IT and textile sectors now stand overshadowed because of the unstable currency rates, which the SBP should have managed rather than orchestrating the free-fall of the rupee.

Economists and business people see a method to the Governor SBP’s madness which appears aimed at wrecking Pakistan economy and preventing its take-off by creating uncertainty on the economic front which feeds political uncertainty and chaos. That’s the reason that not just in the circle of economists, but even many politicians describe Dr. Baqir as an “economic hit-man,” working at the behest of Western players, who want to see a pliant and economically dependent Pakistan.

The long-term objective of these forces appears clear; weaken Pakistan’s economy to an extent that it is forced to compromise on its core national security interests – from the defence budget to the nuclear programme, and the unjust status of the occupied Kashmir to accepting Indian hegemony in the region. Indeed, Dr. Baqir and many others like him in Pakistan’s corridors of power are instruments to serve this purpose. Their actions speak louder than their words.

Many veteran economists had raised red flags at the time of Dr. Baqir’s appointment in May 2019. Their first concern was that Dr. Baqir, being a mid-level official of the IMF — serving as the head of its mission in Egypt — remains too junior to hold the coveted position of the SBP Governor. In the past, Pakistani economists working for the IMF, the World Bank and other multilateral financial institutions were brought in and appointed at key positions, including Dr. Ishrat Hussain and Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, but they all had served at senior positions. An IMF’s country-head – Dr. Baqir’s last position at the Fund in Egypt — is merely equivalent to the deputy-secretary level in Pakistan – a grade 19 position.

This number one concern that Dr. Baqir — being too junior for this post — would fail to do justice as the top-man at Pakistan’s most important regulator of the financial and banking sector has been proved 100 % right. The other point of unease was that his primary loyalties would be with the mother institution from where he was imported. Being a relatively young person, he would like to go back to the IMF’s fold after completing his stint at the SBP. This meant that he would be IMF’s man at the Central Bank, pushing its agenda rather than that of the country.

However, both these objections were ignored as mere conspiracy theories at the time of his appointment. His IMF credentials were sold to the PTI’s inexperienced government, ignoring that Egypt, where Dr. Baqir served last, paid a heavy price because of the prescription thrust by the Fund to fix its economy in terms of whopping inflation, currency devaluation and overall slowdown of its economy.

Strangely, the same set of prescriptions was handed down to Pakistan as many senior economists pleaded unsuccessfully that Pakistan should not turn to the IMF for the 22^nd programme as they all only added to the miseries of the common man without fixing the country’s economy.

The IMF has the same set of conditions for every country whether in Asia, Africa or Latin America that call for high interest rates, currency devaluation, an increase in energy tariffs, and slowing down economic activity. The same conditions were also imposed on Pakistan yet again. The one difference was that in the past, Pakistan’s economic teams had the ability to resist the IMF conditions and get them diluted to get slightly favourable terms. But this time around with a committed IMF representative, Dr. Baqir, on the Pakistani side of the table, the Fund got a walkover.

Pakistani decision-makers, indeed, made a mega-mistake by appointing an imported man whose loyalties with the country remain in question. The sooner this mistake is corrected, the better. And for the future, the lesson is that the government should refrain from giving sensitive responsibilities to individuals, who would pack their suitcases and go back to where they came from once they complete assignments in Pakistan as per the wishes of their masters.

The writer is Editor-in-Chief, Bol Media Group