INFORMATION WARFARE AND TWITTER: A NEXUS OF INDIAN SHADOW NETWORKS ON BALOCHISTAN ISSUE

Abstract

Owing to its several fault lines, Pakistan is one of the target countries of FifthGeneration Hybrid Warfare (5GHW) attacks. These attacks are conducted by adversaries, both external and internal, more readily targeting the Balochistan province of the country, which is inhabited by a plethora of non-state actors and violent non-state actors. External adversarial powers seek to create shadow organisations to subvert the state through information operations. The paper aims to study shadow organisations subverting the state through information operations. It seeks to identify the shadow organisations in the digital security environment of Pakistan, followed by the exploration of the tactics employed by these organisations to disseminate content effectively, identify the themes used by these organisations in their textual content, and check the level of bot activity in the digital presence of these shadow organisations. The paper's findings placed the shadow organisations in the hashtag Balochistan Is Not Pakistan dataset. It identified the employment of the tactics (hashtags, mentions, retweets, bot activity) connecting shadow organisations, state-recognized terrorist organisations, and external adversarial countries, i.e., India. Furthermore, the themes identified in the dataset identified the frequency of employment, solidifying the assumption that the end goal is state subversion.