In September last year, militants attacked a police station in Swat district, martyring one policeman and injuring two others. The attack itself wasn’t out of the ordinary — after all, Swat is no stranger to terrorist attacks. What was different about this attack was the modus operandi adopted by the militants.
Over the course of the next several days, investigators pieced together clues on the attack, which they later confirmed was carried out using an improvised explosive device (IED). “They had used an improvised explosive device, made of a power bank, which is mostly used for charging mobile phones,” District Police Officer Dr Zahidullah later told Dawn.
The investigators, said Dr Zahidullah, pored over hours of CCTV footage to identify one of the militants, who in turn gave up the names of two other suspects. But the biggest breakthrough came during the course of the investigation when the militants admitted that they never used common means of communication to contact each other. Rather, they would communicate via the chat room of a popular video game, ‘Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds’, popularly known as PUBG, both to motivate new members and plan attacks. “The militants would play PUBG to practice and motivate their group members for battle against the state and would use the chat room for communication,” the DPO explained.
The revelation should have raised alarm bells in the power corridors: that a local affiliate of a terror outfit was using a gaming platform not only to recruit, but also to plan attacks is rather concerning, given there isn’t much law enforcers can do to access or monitor these chatrooms. However, this cat-and-mouse chase with terror outfits when it comes to the use of digital technologies has become a norm now — not just in Pakistan, but across the world.
Propaganda tool
There was a time when militants published newspapers, periodicals, posters, magazines, and distributed CDs to fuel their propaganda machinery. In recent years, however, they have become as equipped in the use of digital media as state actors, if not more.
Moreover, militants’ transnational outreach with like-minded jihadists has helped them formulate advanced propaganda techniques to counter the state narrative. This digital battle is waging at the same time as the conflict on the ground, highlighting the complexities of modern warfare, where state and non-state actors find themselves at the same level.
Of late, an interesting yet concerning trend has come to light, where Pakistani state-run social media accounts, established over the last few years, are actively engaged in posting content related to militancy, countering militant propaganda, and building a state narrative. At the same time, the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) appears to have launched just as many social media accounts to counter the state’s messaging.
Many of the accounts run by the terror outfit pose as news and research platforms, particularly on X (formerly Twitter). They often appear with a blue tick, which lends them more legitimacy and makes viewers more likely to follow them, who in turn believe accounts genuinely represent news and research organisations.
Recently, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, as well as several state-linked accounts on X, posted links to militants’ WhatsApp accounts, urging the platform to take down these accounts for disseminating terrorist propaganda.
In many cases, militant propaganda is as lethal as their actual acts of violence. With the advent of social media, where respective platforms struggle to distinguish between state and non-state actors, terrorists gain an advantage in exploiting local social grievances against the state, which in turn helps them with both recruitment and fund generation.
Offline vs online
Currently, every militant group, whether jihadist outfits or separatist groups like the Baloch insurgents, has dedicated propaganda teams. The TTP’s propaganda team, for example, is almost entirely focused on running the organisation’s propaganda efforts without participating in ground operations.
Following the TTP, the Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan (IMP), an emergent alliance of three Pakistani Jihadist factions, has made significant strides in its propaganda efforts. The latter produces high-quality, multilingual content, including infographics, videos featuring trainings and attacks, posters tailored to specific contexts and events to influence target audiences, and statements providing daily updates on attacks carried out by the alliance.
Jihadists worldwide have amply developed the ability to globalise their agenda, opening a door for anyone to be part of a “digital” jihad as volunteers. These volunteers, unable to interact physically, play key roles in propagating jihadist propaganda, viewing it as a religious duty, and do so without expecting monetary returns, instead utilising their own resources to further the jihadist cause.
In this context, the Islamic State and its regional affiliate, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), have conducted or attempted to carry out attacks globally, from Russia to the US, by leveraging the power of digital propaganda to inspire others. Utilising sophisticated and hard-to-trace encrypted communications, they have expanded their reach worldwide, leaving state authorities struggling to keep pace.
This is why security analysts worldwide emphasise that winning the war of narratives is just as crucial as winning the war on the ground.
The extensive advent of social media and AI has enabled militant groups to disseminate their ideologies swiftly and widely, transcending linguistic and geographical barriers, with reduced costs and threats of being traced. This allows militant organisations to maintain a presence on the propaganda front, even if severely compromised operationally. In such situations, militant outfits’ core objective remains to inspire others through propaganda and ultimately regain lost strength.
From gaming apps to secret chat rooms
Pakistani security officials maintain that transnational jihadists have increasingly turned to online gaming applications as a means of secure communication, aiming to evade detection.
“After PUBG, there are indications that they are now using Ludo Star for communication to evade possible detection. Militants, particularly the transnational ones, are more tech-savvy than domestic ones. However, these transnational groups often act as trainers, sharing their technical expertise with local groups. We are faced with multi-domain threat scenarios and are battling it on a daily basis. You have to fight it both in the real world and the virtual one,” said a senior Pakistani security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to talk to the media.
The ISKP is a prime example, which, despite suffering significant setbacks in recent years, has persisted with an intense propaganda campaign to attract fresh recruits and thereby maintain its standing as the most dreaded militant outfit globally.
The latest report by the UN sanctions monitoring team, based on intelligence inputs from member states, has raised serious concerns about the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and various communication platforms for propaganda and recruitment purposes, allowing terrorist groups to evade detection by state authorities.
“Both Al-Qaeda and ISIL (the militant Islamic State in Levant) continued to experiment with different communication platforms to glorify violence and promote an idealised life under their rule. ISIL tried to exploit TikTok’s reach and algorithmic power for recruitment. Al-Qaeda continued to try to exploit gaming platforms for recruitment. Once an initial contact has been made, potential recruits were directed to encrypted apps (such as Telegram, Element, Discord, Threema, or Zangi), for tasking. (These) groups also continued to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI), mostly for recruitment, and to enhance propaganda,” the report says.
Al-Qaeda’s propaganda tactics, utilising modern tools, then trickle down to its like-minded jihadists, such as the TTP. Al-Qaeda has long been regarded as the architect of propaganda tactics for both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. Both ISKP and Al-Qaeda, along with the latter’s local jihadist allies, consider propaganda an integral part of their existence, just like their operational part.
A war Pakistan cannot fight alone
Militant groups have consistently outmanoeuvred law enforcement authorities on multiple fronts in recent months, employing sophisticated propaganda strategies, adapting revenue generation methods and frequently changing operational tactics in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, while the state remains entrenched in traditional approaches.
Beyond the digital outreach of militants, including the TTP and Baloch armed separatists, to their target audience in the cyber realm, a growingly alarming trend that has emerged in recent months is the increased physical accessibility of militants to locals in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, compared to state officials.
In areas with high militant concentrations, state authorities often find themselves confined to government compounds, while locals’ interactions with militants are becoming routine occurrences, causing a significant disconnect between state representatives and locals. This distance substantially benefits militants in bolstering both their physical presence and ideological outreach through preaching.
The threat posed by militancy cannot be defeated by a single country; its multidimensional nature demands a collaborative approach involving multiple nations. Even the world’s most advanced countries struggle to combat terrorism alone, so it’s unrealistic to expect Pakistan, with its meagre resources, to tackle it solo.
Furthermore, the increasing use of proxy wars, which has become a norm in the region, where militants are employed by rival states to weaken adversaries without going into direct confrontation, creates a perilous cycle. This trend prompts retaliatory measures in kind from the target state, fuelling further instability and inadvertently strengthening the militants’ threat.
If Pakistan is to effectively combat militancy, it must effectively work on building alliances with other countries in the region as well as incorporate a more transnational approach aimed at countering militants’ propaganda and digital warfare. Militants are now more adept than ever at leveraging digital technologies. It’s time the state caught up too.
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