Latest news with #Kashmir
South China Morning Post
2 hours ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
China extends strike range of Type 055 destroyer with airborne early warning system: CCTV
China's most powerful destroyer can now strike beyond visual-range targets with pinpoint precision by linking to an airborne early warning system – the same technology used by the Pakistan Air Force in the recent Kashmir conflict – according to state broadcaster CCTV. On Sunday, CCTV confirmed for the first time that the Type 055 stealth guided-missile destroyer Lhasa could use data links to synchronise with People's Liberation Army's airborne early warning platforms, enabling it to conduct long-range anti-ship and air-defence strikes without relying solely on the ship's radars. Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor and military commentator, said this represented a major advance in operational coordination. 02:29 Chinese nationalism surges across social media as viral video mocks downed Indian jets Chinese nationalism surges across social media as viral video mocks downed Indian jets 'Battlefield data fusion – what we call 'situation connectivity' – means complete interoperability and seamless information sharing across domains,' he said. CCTV footage showed the Lhasa taking part in a live-fire exercise involving multi-service coordination under the PLA's Northern Theatre Command, firing missiles guided by airborne targeting cues. Shipborne helicopters and sensors fed data into the combat centre for simultaneous sea‑and‑air engagements, the report said. 'We used data links to share battlefield awareness in real time with the early warning aircraft, significantly expanding our detection range,' Wang Mingwei, a senior sergeant on the Lhasa, told CCTV. 'It allows us to identify both air and sea threats far beyond visual range.' Song said the networked capability mirrored Pakistan's use of the same Chinese technology to shoot down Indian fighters near the disputed Kashmir region.
Washington Post
11 hours ago
- General
- Washington Post
India-Pakistan clashes renew fears over nuclear risk
The tenuous ceasefire that brought India and Pakistan back from the brink of war this month was hailed on both sides as a victory. But experts warn that the disruption to the regional equilibrium renews concern over the risks posed by armed conflict between nuclear powers. Following an attack by militants in India-administered Kashmir that left more than 20 people dead, India accused Pakistan of involvement in the attack — a claim Pakistani officials denied. India responded with strikes in Pakistan, which rapidly escalated into an exchange of attacks that included an Indian strike near Pakistan's army headquarters, after which U.S. officials stepped in to help broker a ceasefire deal.
The Guardian
13 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
How social media lies fuelled a rush to war between India and Pakistan
As missiles and drones crisscrossed the night skies above India and Pakistan earlier this month, another invisible war was taking place. Not long after the Indian government announced Operation Sindoor, the military offensive against Pakistan triggered by a militant attack in Kashmir that Delhi blamed on Islamabad, reports of major Pakistani defeats began to circulate online. What began as disparate claims on social media platforms such as X soon became a cacophony of declarations of India's military might, broadcast as 'breaking news' and 'exclusives' on the country's biggest news programmes. According to these posts and reports, India had variously shot down multiple Pakistani jets, captured a Pakistani pilot as well as Karachi port and taken over the Pakistani city of Lahore. Another false claim was that Pakistan's powerful military chief had been arrested and a coup had taken place. 'We'll be having breakfast in Rawalpindi tomorrow,' was a widely reshared post in the midst of hostilities, referring to the Pakistani city where its military is headquartered. Many of these claims were accompanied by footage of explosions, crumbling structures and missiles being shot from the sky. The problem was, none of them were true. A ceasefire on 10 May brought the two countries back from the brink of all-out war after the latest conflict, which marked the biggest crisis in decades between the nuclear-armed rivals, and was ignited after militants opened fire at a beauty spot in Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing 26 people, mainly Indian tourists. India blamed Pakistan for the attack – a charge that Islamabad has denied. Yet even as military hostilities have ceased, analysts, factcheckers and activists have documented how a fully-fledged war of disinformation took place online. Misinformation and disinformation was also being circulated widely in Pakistan. The Pakistan government removed a ban on X just before the conflict broke out, and researchers found it immediately became a source of misinformation, though not on the same scale as in India. Recycled and AI-generated footage purportedly showing Pakistani military victories was widely shared on social media and then amplified by both its mainstream media, respected journalists and government ministers to make fake claims such as the capture of an Indian pilot, a coup in the Indian army and Pakistani strikes wiping out India's defences. There were also widely circulated fake reports that a Pakistani cyber-attack had wiped out most of the Indian power grid and that Indian soldiers had raised a white flag to surrender. In particular, video game simulations proved to be a popular tool in spreading disinformation about Pakistan 'delivering justice' against India. A report into the social media war that surrounded the India-Pakistan conflict, released last week by civil society organisation The London Story, how X and Facebook owner Meta 'became fertile ground for the spread of war narratives, hate speech, and emotionally manipulative disinformation' and 'became drivers of nationalist incitement' in both countries. In a written statement, a Meta spokesperson said, it took 'significant steps to fight the spread of misinformation', including removing content and labelling and reducing the reach of stories marked as false by their factcheckers. While disinformation and misinformation were rampant on both sides, in India 'the scale went beyond what we have seen before,' said Joyojeet Pal, associate professor at the school of information, University of Michigan. Pal is among those arguing that the misinformation campaign went beyond the usual nationalist propaganda often seen in both India and Pakistan: 'This had the power to push two nuclear armed countries closer to war.' Analysts say that it is evidence of a new digital frontier in warfare, where an onslaught of tactical misinformation is used to manipulate the narrative and escalate tensions. Factcheckers say misinformation including the repurposing of old footage and widespread fake claims of military victories mirrored much of what had come out of Russia in the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war. The Washington DC-based Centre for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), which tracked and documented the misinformation coming from both sides, warned that the weaponisation of misinformation and disinformation in the the most recent India-Pakistan conflict was 'not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a broader global trend in hybrid warfare'. Raqib Hameed Naik, the executive director of CSOH, said there had been 'a pretty catastrophic failure' on the part of social media platforms to moderate and control the scale of disinformation that was being generated from both India and Pakistan. Of the 427 most concerning posts CSOH examined on X, some of which had almost 10 million views, only 73 had been flagged with a warning. X did not respond to request for comment. Fabricated reports from India largely first emerged on social media platforms X and Facebook, Naik said, often shared or reposted by verified right-wing accounts. Many accounts were open supporters of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, which has a long history of using social media to push its agenda. BJP politicians also reposted some of this material. Among the examples circulating were a 2023 video of an Israeli airstrike on Gaza that was falsely claimed as an Indian strike on Pakistan, as well as an image of an Indian naval drill from the same year presented as evidence that the Indian navy had attacked and taken over Karachi port. Video game imagery was passed off as real-life footage of India's air force downing one of Pakistan's JF-17 fighter jets, while footage from the Russian-Ukraine war was claimed to be scenes of 'massive airstrikes on Pakistan'. Doctored AI visuals were widely circulated to show Pakistan's defeat and visuals of a Turkish pilot was used in fabricated reports of a captured Pakistani pilot. Doctored images were used to fabricate reports of the murder of Pakistan's popular former prime minister Imran Khan. Many of these posts first generated by Indian social media accounts gained millions of views and the misinformation spread to some of India's most widely watched TV news. India's mainstream media, which has already suffered a major loss of credibility owing to its heavy pro-government stance under Modi, is now facing difficult questions. Some prominent anchors have already issued apologies. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), an Indian human rights organisation, has filed formal complaints to the broadcasting watchdog for 'serious ethical breaches' of six of the country's most prominent television news channels in their reporting of Operation Sindoor. Teesta Setalvad, secretary of CJP, said channels had completely abandoned their responsibilities as neutral news broadcasters. 'Instead, they became propaganda collaborators,' she said. Kanchan Gupta, a senior adviser to the Indian ministry of information and broadcasting, denied any government role in the misinformation campaign. He said the government had been 'very alert' to the issue of misinformation and has issued explicit advice to mainstream media reporting on the conflict. 'We set up a monitoring centre which operated 24-7 and scrutinised every bit of disinformation that could have a cascading impact, and a fact check was put out immediately. Social media platforms also cooperated with us to take down vast numbers of accounts spreading this disinformation. Whatever was in the ambit of the law to stop this was done.' Gupta said that 'strong' notices had since been issued to several news channels for a violation of broadcasting rules. Nonetheless, he emphasised that the 'fog of war is universally accepted as a reality. It is a fact that in any conflict situation, whether overt or covert conflict, the nature of reportage tends to go high-pitch'.
Asharq Al-Awsat
16 hours ago
- Climate
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Violent Pakistan Storms Trigger Floods, Landslides Killing 10
At least 10 people were killed and 43 injured as strong winds and thunderstorms triggered flash floods and destroyed homes in central and northern parts of Pakistan, officials said Wednesday. Four women and a man died in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and three in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the State Disaster Management Authority said, while other officials said two died in Punjab. "One person is still missing," Haroon Rasheed, a senior government official in Pakistan administered Kashmir told AFP, adding that 12 houses and a mosque were destroyed in one village. Storms on Saturday killed at least 14 people and injured over 100 more across the country, which is grappling with increasingly frequent extreme weather events blamed on climate change. Stormy weather is expected to continue in northern and central parts of the country until Saturday, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. Soaring temperatures in April and May are becoming more common in Pakistan, which usually sees summer begin in early June. Temperatures reached near-record levels in April -- as high as 46.5 Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) in parts of Punjab. Schools in Punjab and southwestern Balochistan provinces have closed early for summer vacations because of the heat.
Arab News
17 hours ago
- Business
- Arab News
Pakistan says Modi's ‘weaponizing' of water against international norms, its own global ambitions
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Foreign Office said on Thursday Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's most recent remarks 'weaponizing' the waters of the Indus river were against international norms and exposed the 'stark contrast' between India's conduct in the region and its declared global ambitions. Modi on Tuesday upped the rhetoric in a standoff over water access triggered by a deadly attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in April in which 26 tourists were killed. New Delhi said Islamabad was behind the attack — a charge it denies — and announced a raft of punitive measures including unilaterally suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. Any move to stop Pakistan accessing the water would have a devastating impact. The Indus treaty, negotiated by the World Bank in 1960, guarantees water for 80 percent of Pakistan's farms from three rivers that flow from India. The nuclear-armed neighbors have already clashed in their worst military fighting in nearly three decades before agreeing to a ceasefire on May 10. 'His [Modi] references to weaponizing water, a shared, treaty-bound resource, reflect a troubling departure from international norms and a stark contrast between India's conduct in the region and its declared global ambitions,' the foreign office said in a statement. 'Pakistan urges India to return to the core principles of international order including respect for sovereign rights of others and its treaty obligations, as well as restraint in both language and action.' The foreign office said such 'jingoism' by Modi would undermine long-term peace and stability. 'India's youth, often the first casualty of chauvinistic nationalism, would do well to reject the politics of fear and instead work toward a future defined by dignity, reason, and regional cooperation.' Modi on Tuesday amplified the resolve to use water from the Indus river system for India, saying provisions of the 'badly negotiated' Indus Waters Treaty were prejudicial to the interests of the country and did not even let it use the waters earmarked for it. Calling out 'decades of silence' over the treaty, he said it had left Indian-administered Kashmir's dams clogged and crippled. Pakistan's Attorney General, Mansoor Usman Awan, said earlier this month India had written to Pakistan in recent weeks citing population growth and clean energy needs as reasons to modify the treaty. But he said any discussions would have to take place under the terms of the treaty. Islamabad maintains the treaty is legally binding and no party can unilaterally suspend it, Awan said. 'As far as Pakistan is concerned, the treaty is very much operational, functional, and anything which India does, it does at its own cost and peril as far as the building of any hydroelectric power projects are concerned,' Awan told Reuters. India and Pakistan have shared a troubled relationship since they were carved out of British India in 1947, and have fought three wars, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part. India accuses Islamabad of backing separatists in Kashmir, a claim it denies, in turn accusing New Delhi of backing separatist and other insurgents in Pakistan.
