By News18,Shujaat Ali Quadri

Copyright news18

Nepal has recently witnessed a wave of violent protests, initially triggered by the government’s controversial decision to ban social media platforms. While these demonstrations reflect domestic frustrations ranging from nepotism and corruption to high unemployment, they have simultaneously become fertile ground for disinformation campaigns. A closer examination reveals that Pakistan-based social media accounts have actively sought to hijack the narrative, shifting blame towards India and framing it as the primary destabilising force in South Asia.
This phenomenon demonstrates how modern digital propaganda transcends national borders, turning real grievances into geopolitical instruments. By analysing the patterns, players, and methods involved, we can better understand how this campaign was designed, why Nepal was chosen as the latest battleground, and what its broader implications are for regional politics.
The Pakistani Disinformation Playbook
The first wave of misleading posts emerged not from Nepal, but from Pakistani social media circles. Accounts began alleging that India was operating fake Nepali bot accounts to engineer unrest, punishing Nepal for engaging diplomatically with China’s President Xi Jinping. They claimed India had adopted a systematic strategy to destabilise its neighbours, citing Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Bangladesh as “previous victims”.
Crucially, these narratives were not spontaneous. They followed a tested playbook:

Initial Trigger Posts: The first notable push came from Ahmad Hassan Al-Arbi, a self-styled “defence analyst”. He had previously accused India of staging false flag operations, including the Pahalgam terror attack. His thread blaming India for Nepal’s protests became the seed for a larger campaign.

Amplification: What began as scattered posts by cyborg-like accounts quickly gained traction through amplifier larger accounts with audiences between 3,000 and 3,00,000 followers. Their role was to provide visibility and legitimacy to otherwise fringe claims.
Media Recycling: Outlets like the Kashmir Media Service picked up these threads and published them as news, quoting the same Pakistani social media users as “commentators”. These circular references created an illusion of expert validation.

Repetition by Repeat Offenders: Prominent disinformation spreaders such as https://x.com/iMustansarPK and https://x.com/Fizz_Urooj, previously involved in pushing fabricated stories like “Kashmir shutdown” or “Operation Sindoor”, reappeared to recycle and reinforce the new claims.

Hashtag Narratives: Phrases like “India = Net Destabiliser” gained traction between September 4–9. Tweets in English targeted global audiences, while Urdu language posts catered to regional and domestic Pakistani users.
The Players Behind the Campaign
Several recurring actors surfaced in this disinformation drive:
Cyborg Accounts: Semi-automated accounts that rapidly produced and retweeted content to create artificial trends.
Amplifiers: Medium-to-large accounts like @IntelPk and @faizannriaz, which carried the narrative to wider audiences.
Legacy Disinformation Accounts: Profiles such as @HelloPKofficial and @mohsin_o2, known for praising Pakistan’s “cyber warriors” during past India-Pakistan tensions, returned to recycle the “India destabiliser” trope.

Thematic Hashtags and Frames: By positioning India as a “net destabiliser” instead of a “net security provider,” these accounts sought to undercut India’s diplomatic positioning in South Asia.
The interplay of these actors ensured that what started as isolated claims rapidly evolved into a widely circulated narrative. Within just eight days, a freshly minted storyline had been established and accepted by segments of online discourse.

The choice of Nepal as the newest stage for this campaign is not coincidental. Several factors make it an attractive target for disinformation:
Strategic Geography: Sandwiched between India and China, Nepal is particularly vulnerable to narratives that highlight “great power meddling.”
Historical Sensitivities: Anti-India sentiment has historically flared in Nepal, particularly around border disputes and trade dependencies. Propagandists exploit these pre-existing tensions to lend credibility to fabricated stories.
Domestic Instability: With Nepal’s youth disillusioned by unemployment and corruption, foreign narratives blaming external interference resonate more easily.
Regional Projection: By portraying India as interfering in Nepal, Pakistan attempts to universalise its anti-India messaging across South Asia, tying together disparate events in Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Bangladesh under one conspiratorial frame.
Implications for South Asia
This disinformation drive is not merely about Nepal—it reflects a broader contest over narrative dominance in South Asia. By projecting India as the destabiliser, Pakistan aims to achieve several goals:
Diplomatic Isolation: Undermine India’s image as a regional stabiliser and counterweight to China.
Information Warfare: Distract from Pakistan’s own domestic crises by shifting attention to Indian actions.
Psychological Impact: Erode trust between India and its neighbours by sowing doubt and suspicion.
For Nepal, however, this campaign is doubly harmful. It distorts legitimate grievances, weakening the credibility of protesters’ demands, and risks polarising society along manufactured foreign-policy lines.
Nepal’s protests are a reflection of frustration with governance failures, not the product of Indian interference. Yet, Pakistan’s disinformation machinery has opportunistically hijacked the narrative, reframing a domestic movement as a geopolitical conspiracy. This campaign, spearheaded by a familiar ecosystem of Pakistani accounts and digital outlets, once again illustrates how online propaganda can reshape perceptions of unfolding events in real time.
The challenge for policymakers, media platforms, and civil society lies in exposing and countering these narratives before they calcify into “common knowledge.” For Nepal, the greater danger is that its citizens’ real grievances risk being overshadowed by a synthetic blame game manufactured far beyond its borders. And for South Asia, the episode underscores the urgent need for a collective response to the rising weaponisation of information in the digital age.
The author is the National Chairman of Muslim Students Organisation of India MSO, he writes on a wide range of issues, including Sufism, Public Policy, Geopolitics and Information Warfare. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.