Every August 5, Pakistan attempts to turn its Kashmir narrative into an international political event. Official statements are issued, diplomatic missions organise programmes, speeches are delivered and social media is flooded with hashtags portraying India’s constitutional changes in Jammu and Kashmir as an act of “exploitation”. What Pakistan calls Youm-e-Istehsal has therefore become less a day of reflection than an annual exercise in narrative projection. But this year, an important question deserves greater attention: is Pakistan’s Kashmir propaganda losing its audience? The evidence suggests that it may be.

A recent analysis of Pakistan’s digital campaign around August 5 shows a striking decline in its social-media footprint. Three principal hashtags #YoumeIstehsal, #یوم_سیاہ_5_اگست and #KashmirBanegaPakistan generated only 161 posts in the dataset analysed. Of these, 108 were under #YoumeIstehsal, 38 under the Urdu-language “Black Day” hashtag and just 15 under #KashmirBanegaPakistan. The latter is particularly revealing: a slogan that explicitly seeks to project Kashmir’s future as part of Pakistan attracted remarkably limited activity. The decline becomes even clearer when the current campaign is placed against previous years. Available data shows approximately 3,000 related posts in 2022, around 250 in 2023 and 173 in 2024. The 2026 figure of 161 posts represents a dramatic contraction from the levels seen in 2022. Numbers alone do not prove that Pakistan has abandoned its Kashmir policy. They do, however, suggest that the campaign is struggling to generate the digital momentum it once commanded.Pakistan’s embassies and consulates remain central to this annual exercise. The pattern is remarkably consistent: organise an event, deliver official speeches, produce photographs and videos, publish them on social media and amplify them through hashtags. Diplomatic missions thus........

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