Over the past few years, Pakistan has repeatedly warned that it is facing a new frontier of hostility – one that does not rely on conventional weapons but thrives on distortion, manipulation and psychological disruption.
That warning, long dismissed by some as paranoia, has now acquired undeniable credibility. The recent location feature introduced by X has unmasked an ecosystem of foreign-driven anti-Pakistan propaganda operating with remarkable precision and alarming coordination.
What this digital development has revealed is a systematic infrastructure positioned far beyond Pakistan’s borders. The data clearly demonstrates that an organised and persistent anti-Pakistan and anti-army campaign is being run from abroad, reinforcing Islamabad’s long-held position that the majority of online hostility is neither organic nor domestic. Instead, it is foreign-based, foreign-funded, foreign-fed and foreign-planned.
The fact that a significant proportion of these accounts are physically located in India, Europe and the US exposes a troubling paradox: these are jurisdictions with stringent media and cybercrime regulations, yet they host thousands of accounts routinely disseminating hate speech, disinformation and incitement against Pakistan. This contradiction raises a fundamental question: how does such content flourish in tightly regulated environments unless it enjoys patronage, protection or deliberately crafted blind spots created by foreign agencies?
The consistency, frequency and sophistication of the material being disseminated make it impossible to attribute this phenomenon to personal opinion or diaspora activism alone. The narratives are coordinated, the timing is strategic and the objectives are unmistakable. They mirror the classic architecture of hybrid warfare, where information operations serve as the primary battleground.
Pakistan has endured this foreign-driven hybrid war, particularly from its neighbour, for years; the EU DisinfoLab investigation had already exposed an extensive Indian network dedicated to maligning Pakistan across Europe. The newly exposed social media ecosystem builds on this legacy, serving as Phase Two of the same strategy – this time leveraging anonymous accounts, exile communities and proxy influencers to create socially disruptive pressure points within Pakistan.
In return for playing this role, many of these individuals reap incentives such as long-term visas, asylum, funding channels and digital protection, revealing a symbiotic relationship between the propagandists and the foreign entities that back them.
Within this digital battlefield, three primary clusters of actors have emerged, each playing its part in a carefully sequenced campaign. The first is a political party’s social media machinery, entirely operated from abroad, using both official handles and layers of pseudo accounts to craft narratives designed to delegitimise state institutions. Regardless of internal political divides, relocating an entire political communications ecosystem outside national jurisdiction creates vulnerabilities that foreign actors can easily exploit.
The second group comprises individuals posing as provincial nationalists, who the new location data has alarmingly revealed to be based not in Pakistan but in India – an exposure that dismantles years of fabricated digital activism. The third cluster is associated with an ethnic movement already flagged for its disruptive tendencies and now undeniably operating from external locations.
For years, Pakistan has been told to view online dissent as a harmless expression of democratic spirit. Yet democracy cannot be a pretext for foreign-engineered destabilisation, nor can states remain indifferent while faceless actors manipulate domestic fault lines from thousands of miles away.
The revelations offered by X’s location feature show what Pakistan has always asserted: information warfare has become the most lethal weapon in the modern strategic landscape. This is a calibrated, well-financed campaign designed to weaken national institutions, erode public trust and create fractures within the national psyche.
As Pakistan confronts this digital onslaught, the challenge is not only to expose the architecture but to evolve robust countermeasures – legal, technological and diplomatic – to safeguard national stability. The hybrid battlefield is expanding, and ignoring its realities is no longer an option.
The writer is a freelance contributor and writes on issues concerning national and regional security. She can be reached at: [email protected]
