The week began with a painful reminder of how casually Afghan Taliban act to jeopardise Pakistan’s interests only to become a mouthpiece and surrogate to their newly found Indian masters. An Afghan intelligence–linked account, Al Mirsad English, posted a photo of a known TTP terrorist and claimed he was an “ISKP commander” killed in Punjab. It took minutes for the truth to surface. But for Pakistanis who offered their home to the same Afghans, and have lived through bomb blasts, funerals, and long nights waiting for loved ones to return home, this was not just misinformation. It was a violation of memory, an insult to those whose lives have been reshaped by terror. The lie collapsed quickly. But the impact that it created did not and must not.
Why Kabul Is Telling New Stories Now
This sudden burst of propaganda is not random. Pakistan has applied unprecedented pressure on Kabul: diplomatic demands to close TTP and BLA sanctuaries, precise strikes on cross-border hideouts, and a stronger internal counterterror campaign. Pakistan’s intelligence assessments show a nearly 20% drop in ISKP-linked incidents due to these sustained operations. Every data point chips away at the narrative Kabul wants the world to believe.
The Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence is now trying to shift attention from a documented truth: ISKP’s command centres, logistics chains, and recruitment corridors remain inside Afghanistan. UN monitoring teams say it. EU threat briefs say it. US counterterror reports say it. Every credible assessment reaches the same conclusion. So Kabul reacts the only way it can, by fabricating Pakistan-based ISKP stories to dilute its own responsibility.
Where Delhi’s Echo Meets Kabul’s Voice
The speed with which Indian media amplifies Al-Mirsad’s “leaks” reveals something deeper than coincidence. The headlines, visuals, and tone are almost identical. Old clips resurface as breaking news. Doctored pictures become “exclusive intelligence.” Claims without context travel across borders within hours. It is a symbiosis: Kabul finds a convenient amplifier; Delhi finds a narrative that fits its long-standing goal of isolating Pakistan.
But this disinformation partnership cannot erase what ordinary Pakistanis know from lived experience. When a blast hits, it is not Delhi’s anchors or Kabul’s propaganda teams who arrive first. It is Pakistan’s own people, doctors who sprint into emergency wards, rescue workers who lift rubble with blistered hands, policemen who run toward the sound of gunfire. These realities carry a weight no headline can counterfeit.
The Human Cost That Statistics Can’t Soften
Behind every data point lies a home that changed forever. A mother in Quetta who still sets a place at the dinner table for a child who never came back. A shopkeeper in Orakzai who keeps the shutters half-closed because the sound of a motorcycle still makes him flinch. A student from Swat who cannot walk past a school gate without remembering the morning her classmate’s bag was found in the debris. These are the lives Kabul’s and Delhi’s propaganda tries to obscure, by pushing stories that drag Pakistan into the shadows instead of acknowledging the militants operating freely inside Afghanistan. But grief has a memory. A country that has buried more than 80,000 people in the fight against terrorism cannot be gaslit into forgetting where the danger originates.
What the World Already Knows, and Kabul Cannot Mask
The UK Parliament’s CBP-10215 briefing describes ISKP as the “primary destabilising force in Afghanistan”, with a stronghold in the country’s east. The report notes that ISKP has expanded its reach, even forming nodes across Central Asia and Europe. It questions the Taliban’s ability, and at times willingness, to sever ties with external militant networks.
International recognition of the Taliban, the report underscores, is tied directly to counterterror performance and human rights standards. Afghanistan is failing on both counts. This is why propaganda becomes a survival strategy: if your facts are weak, you strengthen your noise and Afghanistan must have learnt this.
Where the Pain Becomes a Responsibility
Pakistan has made mistakes, recalibrated strategies, and paid the price in blood. But its position today is clear: terrorism will be confronted regardless of which group claims responsibility or where its sanctuaries lie. Pakistan has acted against ISKP cells, arrested hundreds of operatives, and dismantled infiltration attempts even when these networks originated across the border.
Truth Outliving Propaganda
For Pakistan, this is not a battle for narrative dominance. It is a battle for safety. It is about ensuring that a child in Peshawar can walk to school without fear, that a police constable in Dera Ismail Khan does not have to say goodbye to his family wondering if it will be the last time, that a shopkeeper in Karachi can open his shutters in peace.
The Indo–Taliban disinformation nexus can manufacture images, recycle videos, and coordinate messaging. But it cannot rewrite the memory of those who lived through terror, nor erase the global data that identifies Afghanistan, not Pakistan, as ISKP’s epicentre.
Propaganda may trend for a day. Pain lasts a lifetime. And Pakistan, despite carrying the heaviest burden, continues to stand where truth stands, on the side of those who still believe in peace, justice, and a region free from the lies that try to bury its wounds.
A Disinformation Partnership: How Indo–Taliban Propaganda Tries to Rewrite Pakistan’s Pain
The week began with a painful reminder of how casually Afghan Taliban act to jeopardise Pakistan’s interests only to become a mouthpiece and surrogate to their newly found Indian masters. An Afghan intelligence–linked account, Al Mirsad English, posted a photo of a known TTP terrorist and claimed he was an “ISKP commander” killed in Punjab. It took minutes for the truth to surface. But for Pakistanis who offered their home to the same Afghans, and have lived through bomb blasts, funerals, and long nights waiting for loved ones to return home, this was not just misinformation. It was a violation of memory, an insult to those whose lives have been reshaped by terror. The lie collapsed quickly. But the impact that it created did not and must not.
Why Kabul Is Telling New Stories Now
This sudden burst of propaganda is not random. Pakistan has applied unprecedented pressure on Kabul: diplomatic demands to close TTP and BLA sanctuaries, precise strikes on cross-border hideouts, and a stronger internal counterterror campaign. Pakistan’s intelligence assessments show a nearly 20% drop in ISKP-linked incidents due to these sustained operations. Every data point chips away at the narrative Kabul wants the world to believe.
The Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence is now trying to shift attention from a documented truth: ISKP’s command centres, logistics chains, and recruitment corridors remain inside Afghanistan. UN monitoring teams say it. EU threat briefs say it. US counterterror reports say it. Every credible assessment reaches the same conclusion. So Kabul reacts the only way it can, by fabricating Pakistan-based ISKP stories to dilute its own responsibility.
Where Delhi’s Echo Meets Kabul’s Voice
The speed with which Indian media amplifies Al-Mirsad’s “leaks” reveals something deeper than coincidence. The headlines, visuals, and tone are almost identical. Old clips resurface as breaking news. Doctored pictures become “exclusive intelligence.” Claims without context travel across borders within hours. It is a symbiosis: Kabul finds a convenient amplifier; Delhi finds a narrative that fits its long-standing goal of isolating Pakistan.
But this disinformation partnership cannot erase what ordinary Pakistanis know from lived experience. When a blast hits, it is not Delhi’s anchors or Kabul’s propaganda teams who arrive first. It is Pakistan’s own people, doctors who sprint into emergency wards, rescue workers who lift rubble with blistered hands, policemen who run toward the sound of gunfire. These realities carry a weight no headline can counterfeit.
The Human Cost That Statistics Can’t Soften
Behind every data point lies a home that changed forever. A mother in Quetta who still sets a place at the dinner table for a child who never came back. A shopkeeper in Orakzai who keeps the shutters half-closed because the sound of a motorcycle still makes him flinch. A student from Swat who cannot walk past a school gate without remembering the morning her classmate’s bag was found in the debris. These are the lives Kabul’s and Delhi’s propaganda tries to obscure, by pushing stories that drag Pakistan into the shadows instead of acknowledging the militants operating freely inside Afghanistan. But grief has a memory. A country that has buried more than 80,000 people in the fight against terrorism cannot be gaslit into forgetting where the danger originates.
What the World Already Knows, and Kabul Cannot Mask
The UK Parliament’s CBP-10215 briefing describes ISKP as the “primary destabilising force in Afghanistan”, with a stronghold in the country’s east. The report notes that ISKP has expanded its reach, even forming nodes across Central Asia and Europe. It questions the Taliban’s ability, and at times willingness, to sever ties with external militant networks.
International recognition of the Taliban, the report underscores, is tied directly to counterterror performance and human rights standards. Afghanistan is failing on both counts. This is why propaganda becomes a survival strategy: if your facts are weak, you strengthen your noise and Afghanistan must have learnt this.
Where the Pain Becomes a Responsibility
Pakistan has made mistakes, recalibrated strategies, and paid the price in blood. But its position today is clear: terrorism will be confronted regardless of which group claims responsibility or where its sanctuaries lie. Pakistan has acted against ISKP cells, arrested hundreds of operatives, and dismantled infiltration attempts even when these networks originated across the border.
Truth Outliving Propaganda
For Pakistan, this is not a battle for narrative dominance. It is a battle for safety. It is about ensuring that a child in Peshawar can walk to school without fear, that a police constable in Dera Ismail Khan does not have to say goodbye to his family wondering if it will be the last time, that a shopkeeper in Karachi can open his shutters in peace.
The Indo–Taliban disinformation nexus can manufacture images, recycle videos, and coordinate messaging. But it cannot rewrite the memory of those who lived through terror, nor erase the global data that identifies Afghanistan, not Pakistan, as ISKP’s epicentre.
Propaganda may trend for a day. Pain lasts a lifetime. And Pakistan, despite carrying the heaviest burden, continues to stand where truth stands, on the side of those who still believe in peace, justice, and a region free from the lies that try to bury its wounds.
SAT Commentary
SAT Commentary
SAT Commentaries, a collection of insightful social media threads on current events and social issues, featuring diverse perspectives from various authors.
Recent
The New Bollywood
Bollywood, once India’s most effective soft-power tool, is undergoing a dramatic ideological overhaul. Films like Dhurandhar and The Taj Story reflect a new cinematic nationalism rooted in historical revisionism, internal othering, and aggressive anti-Pakistan narratives, reshaping both India’s identity and its global cultural reach.
Afghanistan’s Trade Boycott: Strategic Miscalculation With Fiscal Consequences
Afghanistan’s 2025 trade boycott of Pakistan exposes a strategic miscalculation. Despite efforts to shift toward Iran and Central Asia, Kabul remains structurally dependent on Pakistan’s mature trade corridors, customs revenue, labour mobility, and logistical efficiency. Alternative routes carry higher costs, sanctions risks, and operational delays, leaving the Taliban with mounting fiscal losses and regional constraints.
The Defund Taliban Campaign
The Defund Taliban Campaign examines how indirect US funding and a $7 billion abandoned arsenal have turned the Taliban into a regional force multiplier for militant groups.
Doctrine vs Reality: Can the Taliban Enforce Their Ban on Foreign Militants?
The Taliban’s new fatwa banning foreign militants has been hailed by officials in Kabul as a decisive theological shift. But rising attacks in the north, continued TTP operations, and mounting pressure from Washington expose a widening gap between doctrine and reality. As regional powers demand proof of enforcement, the decree risks becoming another symbolic gesture unless it translates into measurable action on the ground.
Deconstructing the Pakistan-Afghanistan Economic Crisis
The Pakistan-Afghanistan trade freeze is widely framed as a punitive economic move, yet its roots lie in a severe security breakdown emanating from Afghan territory. Pakistan’s transit closures are reactive, not aggressive, and Afghanistan’s deep logistical dependence on Pakistani routes exposes the crisis as geopolitical, not commercial.