While Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) is continuing anti-India, anti-Modi and anti-BJP propaganda on various newspapers and news portals in the world through a large number of fake writers or ghostwrites, a number of outlets are publishing such propaganda contents without verifying identity of the writer.
Recently, few of such ISI ghostwriters came under the scrutiny of the factcheckers of Blitz. One such writer is named ‘Sarah Saeed’, and on author’s bio it says: “Author is currently working with a Islamabad based think tank. She writes on South Asia Security Dynamics”.
Ghostwriter Sara Saeed’s articles began appearing on Eurasia Review since April 2023. Other than this portal, no other newspaper or portal has published anything from Sara Saeed.
On September 13, 2023, the same ghostwriter sent an email to Blitz stating:
Respected sir
I have attached an article with the title ‘Propaganda vs Sovereignty- Is Indian Navy Exporting Spies?’ in which I have mentioned the continuous failure of the Indian Navy and some of the cases where Indian navy officers found guilty for illegal activities and spying of foreign land.
Please let me know once it gets approved. Thank you
Regards
Sarah Saeed
In the above email was, a word file was sent as attachment, which we did not open as it contained virus. We grew suspicious as such viruses are sent by cybercriminals with the notorious goal of infecting the virus to the computers of the targeted media outlet. As we notified the sender that we do not open attachment files sent by any unknown sender, also asked to send us author’s bio, headshot photo, address and contact number, the ghostwriter sent us the “article” by embedding it on email body. The titles of the article were “Propaganda vs Sovereignty- Is Indian Navy Exporting Spies”.
In the first paragraph ISI ghostwriter wrote: “Last year, eight Indian nationals were detained in Qatar for spying on an Israeli submarine program. According to news reports, the eight individuals are former Indian Navy officers who were detained in late August.
They have been named as Captain Navtej Singh Gill, Captain Birendra Kumar Verma, Captain Saurabh Vasisht, Commander Amit Nagpal, Commander Purnendu Tiwari, Commander Sugunakar Pakala, Commander Sanjeev Gupta, and Sailor Rajesh. They are charged with gathering intelligence on Qatar’s secret plan to purchase advanced submarines made in Italy that are hard for enemies to locate. Although no formal charges were filed at the time of their arrest in August 2022, it was widely believed that they were spying for Israel. Indian Navy officers have been exposed as spies for different countries in a number of instances in the past…”.
Earlier it was reported in the media that a blog operating from Pakistan runs smear campaigns against various journalists and activists based in Kashmir. After investigations, it is clear that terrorist Mukhtar Baba runs the blog. A former resident of Srinagar, Mukhtar Baba has never been an active journalist but was a receptionist. Later, he started a public relations (PR) agency ‘Kashmir Media PR and Kashmir Events’, but it flopped. Then, he started a news portal with another journalist. Under the garb of this news portal, Mukhtar Baba, who joined Hezbollah in 1990s was selling weapons to various terrorist entities.
According to media reports, apart from carrying out a low intensity, “non-state” executed war against India, Pakistan has lately started focusing significantly on developing softer methods to counter India, which is not just limited to paying millions of dollars every year to US, UK and Europe-based lobbying and PR organizations, significant amount of cash is being spent in getting anti-India propaganda materials published in South Asian newspapers.
In May 2011, BBC in a report said, in documents leaked in April 2011 on the Wikileaks website, US authorities described the ISI as a “terrorist” organization on a par with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
In the same month the US military’s top officer, Adm Mike Mullen, also accused the ISI of having links with the Taliban.
He said it had a “long-standing relationship” with a militant group run by Afghan insurgent Jalaluddin Haqqani, which targets US troops in Afghanistan.
The list does not end there.
In June 2010 the ISI was accused of giving funding, training and sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban on a scale much larger than previously thought.
The paper published by the London School of Economics said that Taliban field commanders suggested that ISI intelligence agents even attend Taliban supreme council meetings – and that support for the militants was “official ISI policy”.
Much of the high level of concern among some Western countries over the role of the ISI was expressed by British PM David Cameron in 2010.
The Pakistani government has consistently rejected all the allegations against the ISI as “negative propaganda” by the US and its allies.
It has also dismissed suggestions that the ISI is run as “a state within a state”, subverts elected governments and is involved in drug smuggling.
