Pakistan's Terror Pride Becomes Meme: Most Frightened Masood Azhar Reduced To AI Photoshop Terrorist After Operation Sindoor Hammer

Islamabad: It seems the mighty hammering by the Indian Armed Forces during 'Operation Sindoor' has left a deep, festering wound that appears just won't heal. The Pakistan Army is still shivering in their boots, Shehbaz Sharif's puppet government is still stammering out bounties to fool the world, and their home-grown, Army-fed terror shops, which once fantasised about being a nightmare for India, are now so terrified and leaderless that they can't even show the face of their own chief without making a fake AI dummy.

So the Jaish-e-Mohammed, the pride of Pakistan's terror nursery that once boasted of their headquarters (HQ) in Bahawalpur, is now running a ChatGPT jihad. After Operation Sindoor turned the so-called impregnable HQ into rubble and sent terrorist Masood Azhar's near and dear ones on a one-way trip to hell, the world's most frightened terror factory has discovered Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the terror agenda, since the natural intelligence was anyway never there.

The reality is too embarrassing even for Pakistan to hide, as Masood Azhar, the so-called chief and Pakistan's hero, has not been seen in public for months. The Pakistan Army, which feeds and protects these assets, is busy hiding and protecting the rest of the terror operatives, while the Shehbaz Sharif government in Islamabad is busy increasing the bounty on Masood Azhar like it is a seasonal sale offer to fool the world. 

Now, amid a fearful atmosphere in Pakistan and Pakistan-nurtured terror outfits, with no chief, no HQ, no recruits willing to die for free, what does an unemployed terror organisation do?

Deepfake Masood Azhar On Work

It opens an AI studio, makes a deepfake Masood Azhar look active, healthy, and shouting 'join jihad' in different languages, because real Azhar is reportedly too unwell and too frightened to even lead from the front. So, this is the new Pakistan model, which is when your terrorists are scared, your army is exposed and your Prime Minister has no answers, just put a fake video on screen and hope some uneducated kid in a village believes it.

In such a classic case of a terrorist organisation running out of men, money and credibility, Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed has now taken refuge behind AI. According to Indian intelligence agencies, the group has started producing fake audio and video clips of the absconding terror outfit chief Maulana Masood Azhar using AI, in an attempt to prove that he is still alive and kicking.

The reason behind the sudden digital transformation is not innovation but humiliation. After Operation Sindoor, which was launched by the Indian Armed Forces following the Pahalgam attack in which innocent tourists were killed, Jaish suffered massive losses. Its headquarters in Bahawalpur was shattered to the ground and a large number of the terrorists, including several close relatives of Masood Azhar, were eliminated in one go. Since then, the top leadership has gone underground and not dared to show their faces in public, which has badly shaken the confidence of the existing cadres and possible recruits.

After the terror outfit's chief has been missing for months, questions about his whereabouts and whether he is even functional have started doing the rounds among those who were once eager to join. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials have noted that the prolonged disappearance has made many youngsters hesitant to associate themselves with an outfit whose self-proclaimed hero has vanished.

ISIS Did It First, Jaish Is Late To The AI Party

The intelligence agencies point out that when it comes to using AI for propaganda, Jaish is actually a latecomer trying to copy the toppers of the terror class. The Islamic State (IS) was among the first to exploit AI technology for the operations, with Al-Qaeda quickly following suit and adapting to the new tools at a rapid pace. On the other hand, Pakistan-based groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) were still stuck to their outdated methods of recruitment and brainwashing.

The old model collapsed after Operation Sindoor and with recruitment taking a severe hit, the earlier clips of Azhar that were circulated to boost morale were called out as old, recycled footage that many had already seen. Left with no fresh material and no real chief to show, Jaish has decided to massively scale up the use of AI-generated audio and video to repair the tattered image.

Now the organisation is creating clips in which Masood Azhar appears to be actively leading the group, appealing to new recruits to join the outfit and calling for jihad against India. As one intelligence officer explained, while it was easy to identify the old videos because people had seen them before, generative AI is evolving so fast that for an ordinary foot soldier or a possible new recruit, it has become extremely difficult to differentiate between what is real and what is fake.

Target Is The Uneducated In Rural India

The bigger question is, who is this fake content meant for? Not the educated or the sceptical. According to intelligence officials, this propaganda campaign is specifically designed for less-educated cadres and possibly young recruits who will not be able to verify the authenticity of the videos or fact-check the claims. In recent months, many of those contacted for recruitment have either flatly refused or expressed reluctance, with some even demanding proof that Masood Azhar is still active, a question that recruiters have been unable to answer satisfactorily.

Among the old terrorists associated with the JeM, Masood Azhar is still seen as a hero-like figure, and news of his inactivity has dented their morale and derailed the recruitment drive. The officials claimed that through AI-generated videos, Jaish has, for the time being, managed to control the damage to a large extent. However, the organisation continues to face a serious leadership crisis after Azhar. His health is reportedly not as good as it used to be and he is no longer in a position to lead the organisation from the front.

In addition to this, the more alarming is the next phase of the plan for the outfit. The intelligence officials have revealed that Jaish is not only planning this in Pakistan but is also preparing to run an AI-based propaganda campaign in rural areas of India. The videos of Masood Azhar are proposed to be prepared according to different regions and in local languages. The outfit has specifically planned to target rural and economically weaker sections, believing that awareness about technologies like generative AI is relatively low in these areas and that people there can be easily influenced through fake videos.

Overall, the intelligence agencies assess that through the AI push, Jaish wants to achieve 3 objectives at once, which include keeping the organisation looking active, boosting the morale of old workers and recruiting new ones. At the same time, the organisation wants to buy time until the search for new leadership after Masood Azhar is complete. It is worth noting that recently, in an attempt to show the world that it is acting, Pakistan had increased the bounty on terrorist Maulana Masood Azhar to Rs 70 lakh.