New Delhi: An investigative report published Friday claims the Pakistani Army’s involvement in ‘rhetorical battles’ on social media against its own citizenry, including judges, activists, and journalists.
The report, written by journalist Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim of DropSite News, uncovers how the Pakistan Army runs a covert online campaign called the “Army Agahi Network,” or Army Awareness Network (AAN), to target different people and entities.
The report claims that the Pakistani Army has enlisted thousands of field officers to create fake social media handles to ‘proliferate pro-military messages and level defamatory accusations and threats against critics of the army, members of Pakistan’s civil society and judiciary, and supporters of “deposed former prime minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI)”.
According to the report, the programme was launched after massive protests against PTI leader Imran Khan’s arrest. Early last year, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) initiated the AAN programme in response to criticism, as per the report.
‘False propaganda’
Officers in the AAN receive approved messages from superiors and disseminate them on social media under various pseudonyms. Many AAN accounts describe themselves as “freelance writers,” “social media bloggers,” or “investigative researchers,” while others claim to offer open-source military analysis. These accounts not only post but also amplify and engage with messages from peers and attack perceived adversaries online. Although most posts are in Urdu, many are also in English.
In recent months, as per the report, AAN targeted Judge Babar Sattar of the Islamabad High Court, who was one of the signatories of a letter in May this year, alleging that Pakistan’s military intelligence agencies were interfering in judicial cases involving Khan and intimidating and coercing judges to sway the ongoing legal proceedings against the former prime minister. Pakistan’s military intelligence agencies of interfering in judicial matters related to Imran Khan. In April, the AAN-affiliated account @PakLawMovement posted personal information and false allegations about Sattar on X, the report claims.
Additionally, the investigation published by the US-based site alleges that AAN has increasingly targeted Khan’s party, accusing it of having ties with Indian intelligence agencies and disseminating antisemitic messages. The army’s alleged campaign has reportedly also been shifting blame for Pakistan’s economic issues onto Khan and the PTI. The recent posts by AAN members have criticised the former PTI government for exacerbating economic problems and praised the current government’s crackdown on “digital terrorists”.
After the ban on X, which the officers were told is permanent, the programme’s focus was shifted to Facebook. The recent posts by them claim that critics of the Pakistan military are “working on behalf of the ‘Illuminati’”, an 18th-century secret society group founded in Germany.
The fake accounts have reportedly labelled journalists like Hamid Mir as “loyal to every enemy of the country,” and have also attacked the newspaper Dawn for appointing LGBTQ supporters to senior positions.
Many Pakistanis resorted to memes to laugh off the report. Others who refused to believe the army’s involvement labelled the article “a blatant means to spread misinformation”.
People have called it ‘false propaganda’ and a PTI move to defame the government.
Pakistan Muslim League (PMLN) supporters didn’t let the opportunity pass. An X user posted screenshots of two of the alleged AAN accounts and claimed they were made during Khan’s PM tenure.
Another account said AAN “…isn’t just a troll farm. It’s like a propaganda machine, an inward focused DisInfoLab, paid for by Pakistani taxpayers.”