After Indian strikes, Pak terror groups ramp up outreach, propaganda and hiring
Terrorist groups based in Pakistan have ramped up anti-India rhetoric and activities to mobilise wider public support & funding, and attract fresh blood after the four-day India-Pakistan conflict, publicly available footage and propaganda material show.Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) – both United Nations (UN)-designated terrorist outfits – have stepped up their public outreach campaigns on the back of Pakistan's falsely claimed success in the conflict. While JeM's activities are confined to digital space, LeT, through its political front, has held rallies.advertisementThe headquarters of both outfits were hit in Indian airstrikes on May 7, almost 15 days after the Pahalgam terror attack.
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)JeM has deployed a web of social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), WhatsApp groups and channels and Blogspot to propagate its jihadi ideology, seek donation, call for jihad against India, and lure young Pakistanis into its ranks.
Markaz Sayyedna Tamim Dari (MSTD), a prominent Facebook page in the JeM digital propaganda network, features fiery speeches of JeM chief Masood Azhar and is filled with calls for jihad against India.Posts in the JeM's social network often glorify slain terrorists as 'martyrs'. An audio clip in the group features a JeM member criticising the Pakistan government for closing madrasas and mosques in the aftermath of Indian military action.
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To reach a wider audience, operators of the JeM online network drop links to WhatsApp groups and channels in comment sections of Facebook and Instagram posts.India Today's Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) team has identified more than 30 Facebook pages, channels, and groups on WhatsApp and Telegram that are engaged in spreading JeM ideology, anti-India rhetoric, and calls for Ghazwa-e-Hind or a pledge to implement Islamic rule in India.These platforms are not merely spreading hate but strategically mobilising digital audiences, calling on Pakistani and Kashmiri youth to "rise for jihad".
A WhatsApp channel being promoted on Facebook calls for Pakistani youth to pledge allegiance to JeM chief Masood Azhar and join his cause of jihad against India. A WhatsApp number and a Telegram channel, along with instructions, have been provided in this group for prospective recruits.The JeM also calls on people of Pakistan to send their message of support to Azhar. Instructions detail how, where and when to send the messages to JeM leadership.Jaish has also put up hoardings in public places urging people to attend a major upcoming congregation in Bahawalpur in August. The hoardings feature the damaged photos of Markaz Subhan Allah, which was hit in Indian strikes on May 7. It asks people to donate to the construction of the mosque and invite them to listen to jihadi poetry on August 25, 2025.
A JeM hoarding in Bahawalpur calling on people to attend an upcoming remembrance programme for terrorists killed in India's May 7 airstrikes. JeM's black and white flag can also be seen in this photo.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)Founded by Hafiz Saeed, LeT has a competitive edge over JeM because it has a political front named Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML), which enables it to organise mass public events openly.
On May 28, UN-designated terrorist Saifulla Kasuri-headed PMML organised public rallies at more than two dozen locations across Pakistan to celebrate Youm-e-Takbir, a day which commemorates Pakistan testing nuclear weapons in 1998. In these rallies, posters of Pakistan Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Hafiz Saeed were displayed alongside and inflammatory slogans were raised against India.advertisementSaifullah is believed to be behind the terror attack in Pahalgam on April 22 that triggered Indian strikes at nine terror camps in Pakistan on May 7.Addressing the 'Takbir Conference' on May 28, Saifullah appeared to acknowledge his role in the Pahalgam attack. 'I was roaming in Kasur when I got to know that India had blamed me for the Pahalgam incident on me People of Kasur! I congratulate you. Before this incident, Kasur was just a district in Pakistan. Now Kasur is famous across the world,' he told a huge gathering at Ellahabad Chowk in Punjab's Kasur district.At the same rally, US-designated global terrorist and LeT co-founder Amir Hamza raised slogans like 'Kashmir banega Pakistan' (Kashmir will be merged with Pakistan), Jammu banega Pakistan (Jammu will be merged with Pakistan), and Punjab banega Pakistan (Punjab will be merged with Pakistan).Also present on the stage were Hafiz Saeed's son Talha, who is also designated as a terrorist by the US and India, and Pakistan's Punjab Assembly Speaker Malik Mohammad Ahmed Khan.advertisementBefore PMML, the Milli Muslim League served as the LeT's political party. But its leaders were designated as specially designated global terrorists in 2018, which led to the formation of the PMML later. PMML fought last year's general elections in Pakistan but drew a blank.
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At Yale itself, I had long conversations with the environmental sociologist, William Burch, the environmental historian, William Cronon, and the ecological anthropologist, Timothy Weiskel. A senior Yale scholar whom I spoke with regularly was James Scott, who had just published what in my view remains the best of his many books, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Outside Yale, I made contact with the comparativist, Michael Adas, at Rutgers, the sociologist, Louise Fortmann, at Berkeley, and the doyen of American environmental history, Donald Worster, then teaching at Brandeis. These scholars had worked on Africa, Southeast Asia and North America, using techniques and disciplines different from the ones to which I was accustomed. And, unlike established academics in Calcutta or Delhi, these American professors were refreshingly free of hierarchy. 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Because we had no such anxieties, we could take full advantage of all that this great university had to offer. And we made some close American friends, with whom we are still in touch. TRUMP: 'Harvard wants to fight. They want to show how smart they are and they're getting their a** kicked.' — Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 28, 2025 In the four decades since we returned from New Haven, I have been back to the US many times. Most trips have been short – a week or two – but occasionally I have spent longer spells at universities on the East and West Coasts. I have the happiest memories of a semester spent at the University of California at Berkeley, where – at this great public university – the students were as intellectually sharp yet of far more diverse backgrounds than at Yale or Stanford. I was teaching a course on Mahatma Gandhi, and the interest shown in the man and his legacy by my Burmese, Jewish and African-American students convinced me that it would be worth my while to spend the next decade (and more) researching and writing about Gandhi. I was myself entirely educated in India, and have spent the vast bulk of my life living and working in India. Yet, I owe an enormous debt to the scholars and students I have spent time with in America. And to the libraries and archives in that country too, which often contain priceless documents on the history of India unavailable in my homeland. I therefore feel a deep sense of anguish and anger at what Donald Trump is doing to wreck the American university system. Whether conducted out of ideology or personal spite, Trump's campaign is causing enormous damage to a country he leads and claims to love. It is true that in recent decades, the American higher education system has committed some self-goals. Of these, two stand out – the capitulation to identity politics, which has greatly inhibited free discussion and constructive debate on campuses; and the decision to do away with the retirement age, so that scholars in their eighties and nineties are still there to teach (smaller and smaller) classes, maintain large offices, and retain voting rights over future appointments. That said, most of the best universities in the world are still in the US. By educating and influencing scholars from all over the world, they have enormously enhanced the country's soft power. And, perhaps more pertinently, they have nourished an apparently unending stream of scientific creativity, which has played an incalculable role in making America the most economically and technologically advanced country in the world. Before I went to Yale in 1986, I had been for some time a critic of American foreign policy. In the years since, I have retained my strong scepticism of its government's intentions abroad. All through my life, the foreign policy of the US has been characterised by a mixture of arrogance and hypocrisy. Yet its universities are another matter altogether. They are an adornment to humanity, and motivated or ignorant attacks on them should be mourned by thinking people of all nationalities.
