Introduction: The Genesis of Pak Disinformation

In the age of the narrative where strategic defeat can be painted as a military victory, the Paper by the Pakistan China Institute [PCI] titled, “16 Hours that Reshaped South Asia: How Modi's Miscalculation Led to Pakistan's Primacy”, May 24, 2025, [hereinafter referred to as PCI Disinfo Paper] is a new low in disinformation by a research institute. This was expected given the firm dictate from Pakistan General HQ in Islamabad to all institutions in the country to churn out favourable accounts of Pakistan’s Operation Marka-e-Haq the broader conflict with India from April 22 to May 10 and Op 'Bunyan um Marsoos’ short operation on May 10 while describing Indian Operation Sindoor, the retributive terror focussed cross border strikes.

For PCI this directive was possibly not necessary as the think tank is headed by Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed a known acolyte of the Pakistan military. In fact, Hussain has mastered the art of survival in a strategic landscape of a country where feathering the military’s nest is essential. Starting as a member of the current ruling party the Pakistan Muslim League (N), Mushahid Hussain switched loyalties to the then King’s Party, the PML Qaid, which supported the Chief of the Army Staff, later General Pervez Musharraf, who also usurped the Presidency.

Heading a think tank promoting China-Pakistan strategic relations, fake disinformation campaigns are par for the course for the former journalist Hussain. For Pakistan, a cover up of the inhuman terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22 and the strategic defeat imposed by India’s Operation Sindoor was important. Thus, the office of Director General Inter Services Public Relations [DGISPR]^[1] which controls Pakistan information and media space is known to have issued specific directions towards this effect. Senator Hussain and the PCI were implementing these directives without imagination.

The Backdrop

The origin of Pakistan’s Operation Marka-e-Haq was India’s targeted attacks on 9 terrorist hubs inside Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. These strikes by the Indian Air Force [IAF] caused extensive damage to home base of three anti India terrorist groups involved in attacks in Mumbai 26/11 and in New Delhi on the Indian Parliament in 2001 – Jaish e Mohammad, Lashkar e Taiyyab whose nom de guerre The Resistance Front [TRF] claimed the Pahalgam strike and Hizb ul Mujahideen. Surprisingly, there was no reference to Indian strikes in the PCI Disinfo paper, so well publicised in international as well as Pakistani media, with photographs of Pakistan Army officers attending the cremation of terrorist leaders killed in strikes on May 06/07 night.

The May 7 punitive precision IAF strikes eliminated over 170 terrorists, with the heaviest damage inflicted in Muridke and Bahawalpur, the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Forty buildings were targeted with visible and lethal damage. Ten members of the family of Masood Azhar, head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, reportedly died in the attack, with Masood barely escaping an Indian missile. This had no mention in the PCI Disinfo paper.

What was tom-tommed was a blatantly false claim of downing of six IAF fighters. The position was very amply clarified by India’s Chief of Defence Staff in an interview to Bloomberg at the end of May. CDS General Anil Chauhan emphasised that the losses were tactical, and strategic objectives set for the Indian Armed Forces, i.e. destruction of the terror hubs, were achieved.

While India’s highest defence commander, the Chief of Defence Staff, accepted tactical losses, Pakistan Air Force as well as the hastily self-elevated Field Marshal Asim Munir, the Army Chief acknowledged none and continues to maintain their silence despite evidence to the contrary.^[2]

The logic of PCI Disinfo Paper is thus essentially to defuse Pakistan’s strategic defeat by projecting a completely garbled narrative of events from 22 April to 10 May, squeezing these in mere 16 hours – ostensibly the time during which Pakistan forces launched two offensive operations separated in time.

The PCI Disinfo Paper’s only significance, therefore, lies in studying how disinformation has been used to project a false narrative of strategic success for Pakistan and the techniques employed.

Some of these are classic disinformation narratives – hyperbole and exaggeration of effects of operations, unrelated comparison, projection of personalities, selective quotes from international observers, discolouration, projecting media controls as a unified narrative and selective sequencing of events. All this with a view to project not just a minor tactical success of Pakistan but also a strategic victory and projecting a nation which is a nuclear weapons state with a begging bowl as a “middle power,” in the Islamic World.

Let us examine how the narratives have been employed, which are punctuated by known facts, thus in times to come, even the lay reader is unlikely to be enamoured by the PCI Disinfo Paper.

Hyperbole and Exaggeration of Effects of the Operations

Using hyperbole to exaggerate tactical success as a strategic victory is perhaps the biggest slight by the PCI. The success in May is compared with Pakistan having “settled the score of 1971, paid back the debt with interest”, and underlines that Pakistan analysts continue to hold illusions of the comprehensive defeat in 1971 with thousands of prisoners of war and division of the country. Comparing this to the tactical effects of the twin operations, capped by the PCI in 16 hours, which has had no impact on India, much less in Jammu and Kashmir, could be incredulous.

Days after, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a direct train link to the Kashmir Valley connecting Jammu and Kashmir with Kanyakumari, the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, uniting rather than dividing the country as the PCI Disinfo Paper may like to project.

Another exaggeration is the restoration of conventional deterrence between India and Pakistan and the prevalence of nuclear deterrence. Indeed, if this was the case Op 'Bunyan um Marsoos' should have led to immediate call for cease fire by the Indian side, which in turn launched decisive air strikes on Pak airfields on May 10 causing substantive damage as proved by satellite images verified by no less a source than the internationally credible U.S. broadsheet New York Times.

Another perfidy is equating the loss of fighter aircraft by the IAF to the 1962 Indo-China War, where India had a setback in the Eastern theatre. The irony would be evident even to the layperson, yet it seems that this is the narrative that drafters of the PCI Disinfo Paper thought their audience would believe.

Projecting China as a new player in Jammu and Kashmir and promoting Chinese technology vis-à-vis the West was another slant of the Paper. China was irked by the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and the creation of Ladakh as a Union Territory. However, Beijing has shown scant official interest in indulging in the Indo-Pak political fracas on Jammu and Kashmir, which is an issue of interest now only for Pakistan.

As for Chinese technology, the jury is still out, and there will be greater analysis needed for comparing the same with Western or Indian technology based on a careful evaluation of critical evidence from the operations.

Another duplicity is the linking of the effect, so-called Pakistan’s Operation ‘Bunyanun Marsoos’, on the polity in India. “Like Prime Minister Nehru in 1962 after the debacle in the war with China, Prime Minister Modi has also been cut down to size,” claimed the Disinfo Paper. There was political unity in India with all parties supporting the Indian government on cross-border attacks on terrorist camps in Pakistan. The all-party meeting held was in unison to support the Government.

What is more, internationally, the invitation to attend the G7 Outreach meet by Canada to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is another indicator of India’s sustained acceptance at the global high table.

Military Commander’s Image Projection

The front page of the PCI Disinfo Paper is a precursor of what to expect from the disinformation sheet. The photographs of Field Marshal Asim Munir and Pakistan Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Babar are accompanied by Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump. The omission of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif or President Asif Ali Zardari is an indicator of attempts to undermine the political government in Pakistan which is not surprising. The intent seems obvious in equating these military commanders with the top Chinese and Pakistani leadership. Chinese President Xi Jinping is not known to have made any public statement on the Indo-Pak operations while President Trump has built up his own narrative of having prevented a major outbreak as a success of his personal negotiating skills.

Media Controls in Pakistan

Concord of the narrative in Pakistan was claimed as a symbol of national unity. The complete control of Pakistan’s information space by the Director General Inter Services Public Relations, or DGISPR, the military’s media arm, is well known. The structured briefings and handouts were dutifully carried by every tabloid in Pakistan with highbrow strategic analysts who appeared on TV shows or podcasts parroting the narrative dished out to them by the military as also highlighted above

Selective Sequence of Events

The PCI sequence of events is highly selective. This is clear from the sequencing from May 7 to May 10. On the night of May 06/07, India launched "Operation Sindoor," conducting precision air missile strikes on nine sites in Pakistan (Bahawalpur, Muridke, Gulpur, Bhimber, Chak Amru, Bagh, Kotli, Sialkot, Muzaffarabad). On May 07, Pakistan launched Operation Marka-e-Haq drone and missile attacks on Indian military sites. Covering these, the narrative jumps straight to May 10, skipping activities in the interim. The objective appears to be to only project Pakistan’s offensive operations, even though these had only a marginal impact.

The events of May 8 – 9, 2025, when Pakistan attempted to attack Indian military bases employing drones and missiles, apart from heavy artillery fire on the LOC, have not been covered. On May 8, 2025, the Indian Air Force destroyed a Chinese-made LY-80 air defence system in Lahore with a HARPY kamikaze drone and took out the HQ-9 system (China’s S-300 equivalent) in Karachi using a missile strike, which finds no mention.

The narrative jumps straight to May 10, 2025, when Pakistan launched Operation Bunyan al-Marsoos and claimed destruction of BrahMos missile storage sites in Beas and India’s S-400 air defence system in Adampur and airfields in Udhampur and Pathankot. Indeed, there is no evidence of any losses at either of these sites. The S-400 at Adampur was secure with Prime Minister Narendra Modi posing with the system during his visit to the air base. The IAF counter offensive on May 10 crippling Pakistan’s airbases also received no mention. These strikes were the precursors to Pak seeking a ceasefire over the hotline between Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs), which was implemented at 1700 hours the same day. By giving a selective and incomplete sequence of events, the PCI Disinfo Paper has exposed the inherent bias.

Selective Quotes from International Observers

In the section on “International Views,” on India-Pakistan Conflict, several international experts on the region and media have been covered, including only their selective comments in favour of Pakistan, which were mostly out of context. These quotes clearly not only promote the Pak narrative but also do injustice to the renowned experts on South Asia and international media from C Christine Fair to Michael Kugelman, the New York Times and CNN.

Conclusion

For the record PCI launched on 1st October 2009, claims to be the first of its kind non-governmental, non-partisan and non-political think-tank. As the principal non-governmental platform to promote Pakistan and China relations, it claims to aspire for “rigorous discussions and in-depth analysis…”. The PCI Disinfo paper denotes that the objective is to project narratives favourable to the Pakistan Establishment lacking any factual backing. India needs to expose more such fake narratives from Pak sources at the same time there is a necessity for developing capability of critical analysis of information amongst not only analysts and academic but the media and polity so that these are nipped in the bud and not given undue importance by commenting and circulating in mainstream and social media.

Endnotes

^[1] “Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the propaganda arm Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) receive almost the same budget as the Pakistan Air Force,” See, Sushant Sareen, “Pakistan’s Defence Budget: Not Much of an Outlier”, ORF, Expert Speak, June 20, 2025, https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/pakistan-s-defence-budget-not-too-much-of-an-outlier. Accessed on June 22, 2025.
^[2] As verified reports of PAF losses are not available, these have not been covered here.

(The paper is the author’s individual scholastic articulation. The author certifies that the article/paper is original in content, unpublished and it has not been submitted for publication/web upload elsewhere, and that the facts and figures quoted are duly referenced, as needed, and are believed to be correct). (The paper does not necessarily represent the organisational stance... More >>