Their network has sectarian mix: Dawn

At least 41 of the 64 outfits banned by Pakistan, including the Pakistani Taliban and the sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, are active on Facebook and just a click away from the country’s 25 million users of the social media platform, a media report said on Tuesday.

The outfits’ network, both interconnected and public, is a mix of Sunni and Shia sectarian groups, global terror organisations operating in Pakistan, and separatists in Balochistan and Sindh provinces, Dawn news reported.

The names of all banned outfits, including acronyms and small variations in spelling, were searched on Facebook to find pages, groups, and user profiles that publicly “liked” a banned outfit, the report said. “Forty one of Pakistan’s 64 banned outfits are present on Facebook in the form of hundreds of pages, groups and individual user profiles,” it said.

Largest groups

The biggest outfits on the social network, in order of size, are Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat with 200 pages and groups, Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz with 160, Sipah-i-Sahaba with 148 and Balochistan Students Organisation Azad with 54.

Other banned outfits that exist on Facebook at a smaller scale include Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Taliban Swat, Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, Jamat-ul-Ahrar, 313 Brigadeand a host of Baloch separatist organisations.