If we look at the past instances of AI Qaeda, ISIS and direct or indirect presence of militant organizations on the social media, it is clearly evident that the convenience, affordability, and broad reach of social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have been exploited by terrorist groups and individuals to further their goals, recruit members, and spread their inflammatory messages.
Terrorist outfits are gaining fame and recruits by influencing the youth through projection of fake videos of the Indian army committing atrocities against the general public. Their social media channels regularly portray any militant led activity with pride and a sentiment of victory. Often, these groups claim higher casualties of security personnel than actual figures to highlight their potential for causing terror and damage. Along with militant activity, the groups also post regular messages for recruitment.
In addition, the internet and social media have evolved with new vigor to train fighters, as India’s increased security deployment, alerted security grid, and COVID restrictions have reduced infiltration from 130 in 2019 to only 45 by October 2021. Thus, videos providing instructions and introduction of weapons are being dubbed in Kashmiri, and are circulated on social media. Supplementing it, social media is also being used by individuals to direct the supply of weapons to insurgent organizations. Militants have also used social media to threaten individuals vital to Indian security operations/ governance/ administration by releasing “target/hit lists”. Previously, when the identity of the new leader/recruit was released, often informers or the local network used to inform the security personnel. Learning from the losses caused by this, some of the militant outfits have now chosen anonymity of their operatives.
Over the past few months, there has been a marked increase in the number of terror outfits launching themselves on social media. Most of these are rebranded old organizations and rely heavily on social media propaganda for operations and recruitment. If we take the example of a new militant group called the “United Liberation Front” which came up around May 2021, there was a mention of this group on Facebook, but not on any social media channels or mainstream militant narratives earlier.
United Liberation Front (ULF) and Kashmir Freedom Fighters (KFF) took responsibility for the recent attack on three non-local workers in Kulgam in South Kashmir on 10 Oct 2021 over social media. The ULF claimed that its members attacked three non- local Hindus in the region and alleged that over 200 Muslims were lynched in Bihar by 'Hindutva extremists' in the last year. It further alleged that the four terrorists killed by CRPF recently, were civilians. It issued a warning for "non-local stooges" asking them to leave Kashmir or face the consequences.
On 27 Oct 2021, terror outfit ULF threatened those who lodged a complaint against medical students for celebrating Pakistan's win against India. Recently the Pro-Pakistan ULF has stated that they were aware of the persons who filed the police complaint and told them to apologise within 48 hours or face consequences. The organisation also warned the students to not indulge in such activities in one of their releases.
In the month of October, a telegram channel was created by the group along with a poster proclaiming the channel to be the “United Media Front” for all the organisations fighting against “the Indian occupational regime” for the liberation of Kashmir.
Soon after its creation, the channel began sharing information about attacks, threats and related pictures, claiming the above statements in photographs with telegram link to join the channel. In addition, the channel also started sharing recruitment details conducted by other agencies such as The Resistance Front (TRF), Peoples‟ Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF), and so on. The main outlier here was that the legacy militant groups were not covered as much, but the alternatives were. The name of this group and its abbreviation had a resonance of Kashmir‟s first militant outfit, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).
These kinds of posters are common propaganda on social media platforms. Many of the channels where such content is shared are run by the militant outfits themselves. A marked difference in the new groups is observed by the lack of religious iconography in their messages. These new groups, most likely have their origins borrowed from their counterparts like Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). However, their lack of religious content signifies a shift in the branding. Rather than holy war or Jihad, most of these groups justify their actions under the garb of "resistance‟ or "freedom fighters‟.
Keeping up with the sentiment, the security forces are referred to as “occupational forces” and the Indian government is called the “occupational regime”. The recruiters of these outfits operate from various conflict prone zones under false identity. They partake in continuous psychological propaganda and sharing of inflammatory material. Sustained repetitions are able to convince the youth and once the vulnerability in any person is identified, the recruiters move in to trap them. Many young boys are given false promises of better employment and a regular pay. Many poor and middle class families thus send their children to such outfits. Youth indulged in drugs also form a large segment of the vulnerable diversity. These new recruits are severely demotivated, and often lack support in terms of weapons, funds and training. Being extremely ill trained, their chances of survival during a confrontation are severely decreased.
Attempts have been made by government and agencies to thwart the use of social media by terrorist organisations, but to no avail. It cannot be denied that although terrorism has proved remarkably ineffective as a major weapon for taking down governments and 3 capturing political power, it has been a remarkably successful means of publicising a political cause, attracting youth and relaying the terrorist threat to a wider audience.
In order to stop the indoctrination of vulnerable youth and elders in the community (including mothers, teachers, political leaders, etc.) the security agencies should come together and teach the younger generation about such militant outfits who train them for their own gain and also about the negative implications of social media usage.
The Indian government should also come up with a concrete plan for youth engagement to ensure that they do not fall prey to the false propaganda.
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