Explainer: India's smear campaign against Pakistan

A dead professor and numerous defunct organisations were resurrected and used alongside at least 750 fake media outlets in a vast 15-year global disinformation campaign to serve Indian interests, a new investigation has revealed.

The man whose identity was stolen was regarded as one of the founding fathers of international human rights law, who died aged 92 in 2006.

"It is the largest network we have exposed," said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, which undertook the investigation and published an extensive report on Wednesday.

The network was designed primarily to "discredit Pakistan internationally" and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and European Parliament, EU DisinfoLab said.

EU DisinfoLab partially exposed the network last year but now says the operation is much larger and more resilient than it first suspected.

There is no evidence the network is linked to India's government, but it relies heavily on amplifying content produced on fake media outlets with the help of Asian News International (ANI) - India's largest wire service and a key focus of the investigation.

The EU DisinfoLab researchers, who are based in Brussels, believe the network's purpose is to disseminate propaganda against India's neighbour and rival Pakistan. Both countries have long sought to control the narrative against the other.

Last year, the researchers uncovered 265 pro-Indian sites operating across 65 countries, and traced them back to a Delhi-based Indian holding company, the Srivastava Group (SG).

Wednesday's report, titled Indian Chronicles, reveals that the operation, run by SG, is spread over at least 116 countries and has targeted members of the European Parliament and the United Nations - raising questions about how much EU and UN staff knew about SG's activities, and whether they could have done more to counter those activities, especially after last year's report.

Alaphilippe said the EU DisinfoLab researchers had never encountered such co-ordination between different stakeholders to spread disinformation.

"During the last 15 years, and even after being exposed last year, the fact that this network managed to operate so effectively shows the sop

"You need more than a few computers to plan and sustain such an action," he said.

The researchers cautioned against "definitively attributing Indian Chronicles to some specific actors such as Indian intelligence services" without further investigation.

Ben Nimmo, a disinformation network expert, said the uncovered network was "one of the most persistent and complex operations" he had seen, but he too was wary of attributing it to a specific actor.

Nimmo, who is director of investigations at digital monitoring firm Graphika, cited previous examples of privately-run large-scale troll operations. "Just because they're big, it doesn't necessarily mean they're directly run by the state," he said.

The Indian government was approached for comment but had received no response by the time of publication.

Of ghosts and defunct NGOs

One of the most important findings of the open-source investigation was establishing direct links between the Srivastava Group (SG) and at least 10 UN-accredited NGOs, along with several others, which were used to promote Indian interests and criticise Pakistan internationally.

"In Geneva, these think tanks and NGOs are in charge of lobbying, of organising demonstrations, speaking during press conferences and UN side-events, and they were often given the floor at the UN on behalf of the accredited organisations," the report says.

The investigation shows that the operation led by SG began in late 2005, a few months after the UNHRC was founded in its current form.

One particular NGO which caught the eye of the researchers was the Commission to Study the Organisation of Peace (CSOP). The CSOP was founded in the 1930s and won UN-accreditation in 1975 but became inactive later in the 1970s.

The investigation found that a former chairman of the CSOP - Prof Louis B Sohn, one of the 20th Century's leading international law scholars and a Harvard Law faculty member for 39 years - was listed under the name Louis Shon as a CSOP participant at the UNHRC session in 2007 and at a separate event in Washington DC in 2011.

 

Demonstrations in Europe conducted by organisations linked to the Srivastava Group have also been covered by ANI, as well as by fake media websites linked to SG.

Focus on the EU and UN

According to the findings of the investigation, the disinformation network had a two-pronged strategy to spread influence.

In Geneva, the think-tanks and NGOs were in charge of lobbying and protesting, and taking the floor at the UNHRC on behalf of accredited organisations.

In Brussels, the focus was on the MEPs, who were taken on international trips and solicited to write "exclusive" op-eds for fake outlets like EU Chronicle, which would then be amplified using ANI, the researchers found.

A group of MEPs appear regularly in the investigation. One of them, French MEP Thierry Mariani, has written two op-eds for EU Chronicle and was also part of a controversial visit to Indian occupied Kashmir last year.

 

Gary Machado, managing director of EU DisinfoLab, said he thought the muted reaction to the revelation of the disinformation network was partly because it was "clearly managed by Indian stakeholders".

"Imagine if the same operation was run by China or Russia. How do you think the world would have reacted? Probably with international outrage, leading to public inquiries and probably sanctions," he told.

But the activities of MEPs named in the report prompted criticism from some of their colleagues.

MEP Daniel Freund from the Greens said fellow members needed to declare their activities.

"There have been at least 24 breaches of rules in the past years. Not a single violation has been sanctioned. So there is little incentive to respect the rules when the worst that can happen is to file a declaration after you have been caught," he said.

Another member, who did not want to be named, said MEPs contributing to sites like EU Chronicles had been identified as "election tourists".

"A ragtag group of MEPs from the bottom of the parliamentary barrel who prefer to travel on sponsored trips by unsavoury governments rather than invest in their mandate," the MEP told. "How PR stunts with such individuals could be even conceived as helpful is baffling."

The questions were put to ANI and to nine other MEPs who have written op-eds for the EU Chronicle and made visits to India, Bangladesh and the Maldives, but received no response.

Who are the Srivastavas - and what next?

 

Then, there's a case of the mysterious SG-owned tech firm Aglaya. Its website has been inaccessible since at least February this year but in the past the company has advertised products for "hacking/spy tools" and "information warfare services".

Aglaya's marketing brochure mentioned the ability to "hamper country level reputations" and described some of its services as "Cyber Nukes". In a 2017 interview with Forbes magazine, a man called Ankur Srivastava claimed he "only sold to Indian intelligence agencies".

It's unclear what relation, if any, he has to Ankit Srivastava.

A third Srivastava appears to be Dr Pramila Srivastava, chairperson of the group and mother of Ankit Srivastava.

Dr Harshindar Kaur, a paediatrician from the Indian state of Punjab, told the EU DisinfoLab researchers that in 2009 she had been invited to the UNHRC in Geneva to give a lecture on female foeticide when she was threatened by a woman called Dr P Srivastava, who claimed to be a "very senior government official from India".

Dr Kaur said it was Pramila Srivastava who had threatened her.

Ankit Srivastava was emailed asking him to respond to this and the other allegations in the report, but received no reply. When the firm's offices in Delhi's Safdarjung Enclave was visited, staff there would not answer questions.

What might happen to the network, or how it might evolve, in the light of the latest investigation is unclear.

The authors of Indian Chronicles say their findings "should serve as a call to action for decision-makers to put in place a relevant framework to sanction actors abusing international institutions".

Alaphilippe said following the 2019 investigation there had been "no official communication, no sanction, nothing. This passivity gave a message to Indian Chronicles: you've been exposed, but no consequences".

"We think there should be consequences to disinformation and we expect actions to be taken. The biggest failure from institutions would be if another report is released next year on the same actors with the same techniques," he told.

"This would mean that EU institutions are ok with foreign interference."

The article originally appeared for The BBC