Pakistan hired US-based lobbying firms to paint India as a terror exporting country.
New Delhi: In what is being described as a change in the overall strategy of Pakistan when it comes to dealing with India, multiple US-based lobbying firms hired by the Pakistan government in the last couple of years, have started working to paint India as a terror exporting country, something which India has been doing with Pakistan so far, US-based official sources watching the region have said.
According to these officials, the new long-term plan that the present political and military dispensation of Pakistan is working on is to present itself as a “victim” country that is facing internal issues that are being sponsored by India.
As per official documents accessed by The Sunday Guardian, Pakistan, as of today, was using the services of at least two “big” lobbying firms, BLJ Worldwide and Linden Government Solutions, apart from a couple of other small firms, to reach out to influencers in Western countries in the field of media, activists, celebrities and politicians and share with them “proofs” of terror networks in India which are run by India’s intelligence agencies.
It is pertinent to mention that till now, it was India which had been sharing dossiers with multiple governments detailing how Pakistan was supporting terror groups to foment terrorism in India.
This “soft approach”, sources said, was the brainchild of the strategists in the lobbying firms being used by Pakistan.
It is pertinent to mention that in November last year, Pakistan foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and military spokesman Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar had conducted a joint press conference in Islamabad during which they had presented to media “dossiers” that contained “audio-video” and documentary to prove that India was supporting terror networks in Pakistan. The said dossier was circulated on a massive scale to various embassies in Pakistan and to “influencers” in the US and UK.
In October last year, Moeed Yusuf, special assistant to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on national security, in a televised interview to an Indian media outlet (The Wire), too, had focused on projecting India as a country which was exporting terror into Pakistan.
Officials said that another such “concocted’ dossier, detailing India’s role in “spreading terror in Pakistan” and “generating fake news against Pakistan”, has already been prepared by the Pakistani officials and it was likely to be shared among the foreign diplomats and journalists in the coming days.
The lobbying firms have also suggested to the Pakistan government to mount an offensive against The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and pressurize them to put India on the grey list. To achieve this, media reports and op-ed pieces questioning the working of FATF and its “biased” approach for India, are being published in various media outlets and news sites, many of which have recently come up.