Security agencies operating on the ground in Jammu and Kashmir want a long-term ban on the use of social networks like Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube, rather than intermittent snapping of Internet services in the state. This is because, according to military and strategic experts, leaders and sympathisers of the separatist movement in the state are using social media platforms from outside the state to fuel unrest in the valley. The separatists’ design has changed and they are using a social media based radicalisation campaign to influence the minds of the youth in the state, experts say.
“Witnessing the gross failure to revive armed militancy in the valley, the separatists have been under pressure to orchestrate protests and agitations. Thus, they have planned to adopt a Palestinian style of attack and started spreading propaganda on social media aided and encouraged by Pakistan,” Major General (Retd) G.D. Bakshi told The Sunday Guardian.
“India had reduced the number of terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir from around 3,500 in 2002 to just around 200 in 2008. This has prompted Pakistan to change tactics, and it is now engaged in trying to give shape to a Palestinian style of mass uprising in the state, for which they have adopted a two-fold strategy—incitement of propaganda from across the Line of Control through social media and creating a flash mob to manage the stone pelting. The shifting tactics of using flash mobs and using children and women as human shields have proved that the separatists have lost the gunbattle with Indian security forces,” Bakshi said.
“The government must take stern action against social media campaigns to fuel the separatist movement, which is being run from inside and outside the valley. Also, in order to stop the propaganda, the security agencies should catch those behind running such social media campaigns and put them behind bars,” he added.
A senior military official told The Sunday Guardian on the condition of anonymity that the security forces have had an “upper hand over the militants” in the state for the past two years. The separatists, however, view the current summer as a major test for themselves and in such a scenario, a social media campaign is the lone tool for them.
Security agencies on the ground have suggested a long term ban on the use of online networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Youtube, rather than the snapping of the Internet intermittently in the state.
Mobile Internet services have been suspended in Kashmir several times in the past. This year, the ban on mobile networks was invoked almost four times.