Pakistan has established a sophisticated disinformation ecosystem that employs fabricated narratives, manipulated media, and official endorsements to advance its geopolitical interests on the international stage, particularly at the United Nations. According to reports from The Economic Times and Sunday Guardian, Pakistani officials regularly use platforms like the UN to spread false claims about India while simultaneously attempting to divert attention from their own support of terrorist networks.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistan's military, serves as the central orchestrator of a sophisticated disinformation campaign, particularly evident during India's Operation Sindoor. Led by DG ISPR Lt. Gen. Chaudhry, this organization has been directly implicated in commissioning fake surrender videos, generating AI content, and disseminating doctored images designed to deceive international audiences.1 Their tactics include releasing contradictory statements, manipulating media clips, and even passing off video game footage as real military operations.2
The ISPR's digital deception operates through a multi-layered ecosystem involving mainstream Pakistani journalists who parrot military talking points without verification, international amplifiers like Turkey's TRT World, and collaborations with proxy terror outfits such as The Resistance Front (TRF).12 During Operation Sindoor, ISPR deployed numerous deceptive tactics including: sharing two-year-old images to falsely depict naval preparedness, editing news clips from Indian channels to show fictional destruction of Indian airbases, fabricating claims about captured Indian pilots, and coordinating bot networks to spread these narratives across social media platforms.23 This calculated campaign represents one of the largest digital misinformation operations against a sovereign democracy in recent times, designed to manipulate global perception and undermine India's credibility internationally.2
In the wake of India's Operation Sindoor, Pakistan unleashed a coordinated disinformation campaign across multiple fronts. Pakistani media outlets systematically twisted facts, claiming their air force had shot down Indian drones (with numbers ranging from 25 to 29 according to Geo News)1, while simultaneously denying any Pakistani military activity in Jammu and Kashmir—both claims fact-checked as false.1 The campaign included fabricated allegations of Indian missile strikes on Karachi Port and Srinagar Airbase, with Pakistan's government-affiliated accounts aggressively pushing these narratives despite lacking visual or satellite evidence.2
The disinformation strategy employed several key tactics: denying cross-border terror links, falsely claiming civilian deaths in Pakistan while ignoring the 16 Indian civilians killed by Pakistani attacks along the LoC, and portraying Pakistan as a "wounded but heroic victim."1 Pakistan's ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) played a central role, operating specialized units for media campaigns, cyberattacks, and bot-driven misinformation with an annual budget of approximately 600 crore Pakistani rupees and training around 4,000 information warfare specialists yearly.34 Despite India's clear communication that Operation Sindoor targeted only terrorist infrastructure with "focused, measured and non-escalatory" actions that avoided Pakistani military facilities5, the Pakistani establishment continued spreading outrageous falsehoods, including claims that India had fired missiles on Amritsar and attacked the Nankana Sahib Gurdwara.6
Pakistan's information warfare strategy has evolved to include sophisticated AI-generated content, particularly fake surrender videos during Operation Sindoor. Business Today revealed how Pakistan leveraged artificial intelligence to create convincing but entirely fabricated videos showing Indian military personnel in captivity, including a viral deepfake depicting an Indian female fighter pilot in chains12. These AI renditions were designed to humiliate India's armed forces and undermine morale through emotional manipulation.
The technological sophistication of these operations reveals a disturbing evolution in Pakistan's digital jihad playbook. ISPR coordinates these efforts through a three-phase approach: flooding platforms with false narratives via bot networks, amplification through verified handles to create artificial credibility, and leveraging international allies to disseminate the content globally2. Indian intelligence agencies have identified this as part of a larger pattern where Pakistan recycles protest footage, creates fake images of unrest, and even attempts to recruit Indian digital influencers to spread their narrative domestically34. The manipulation extends to religious sensitivities, with one particularly offensive example involving the splicing of footage showing a grieving Hindu widow into a celebratory dance sequence—deliberately mocking Hindu mourning rituals2.
