Claim: A video shows Pakistan Army outposts captured by Afghan troops along the border of the Kunar and Helmand provinces of Afghanistan during the recent conflict between the two countries.
Fact: The video in the claim was posted on YouTube as early as April 2020. Some users say it is from Libya.
On 11 October an X user posted a video, stating in the caption that Afghanistan’s Taliban government says it has seized multiple Pakistani Army outposts along the Durand Line in Kunar and Helmand provinces. The user also wrote Helmand, a province in Afghanistan, in the location tag and cited India Today as the source of this news.
It was also posted on 12 October by the verified YouTube channel of an apparent publication called Indiatimes with the caption: Violent Clashes At The Pakistan-Afghanistan Border As Both Exchange Fires. This video did not include the location tag of Helmand.
The claim surfaced amid the recent military conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistan, Afghanistan clashes
Afghan and Pakistani military forces exchanged heavy fire along the border on 11 October, marking a significant escalation between the neighbours.
The clashes reportedly erupted when Afghan troops attacked several Pakistani military posts along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in retaliation for the alleged airstrikes by Pakistan inside its territory on 9 October. Afghanistan accused Pakistan of violating its sovereign territory by carrying out airstrikes in Kabul, a charge that the latter has neither denied nor confirmed.
Soon after, social media users speculated that the airstrike was meant to target Noor Wali Mehsud, the leader of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. It has not been independently verified if he was killed in the attack.
Pakistani forces retaliated against these attacks on 11 October.
Both sides made conflicting claims about the inflicted losses and casualties. Afghan authorities claimed that they had killed 58 Pakistani soldiers whereas Pakistan stated that 23 soldiers had been killed. Pakistan claimed that it had killed more than 200 “Taliban and affiliated terrorists”. But Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson for the Taliban-led government, said that nine Afghan soldiers were killed in the overnight clashes with Pakistan. Soch Fact Check has not independently verified the casualties on both sides.
Pakistani authorities have long accused the Afghan Taliban government of harbouring the TTP that carries out attacks on Pakistani territory with impunity, a charge denied by Kabul.
Moreover, both countries also claimed to have destroyed each other’s border posts, Reuters reported.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the video posted in the claim and found that it is not related to the recent clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The video was found posted on YouTube in April 2020. The caption says:
#الجیش_العربي_اللیبي#بنغازي#لیبیا
[Translation: Army_Arab_Libya#Benghazi #Libya]
We further looked into the claim and found the same video posted on 22 April 2020 on another YouTube channel called ‘‘ابن البادية.” The caption of this video says:
الامارات#مصر#السعودية#لیبیا#بنغازي#طرابلس#معارك_الجیش_اللیبي_في_طرابلس_ضد_الغزو_الترکي#
[Translation: #UAE#Egypt#SaudiArabia#Libya#Benghazi#Tripoli#Libyan_Army_Battles_in_Tripoli_Against_the_Turkish_Invasion]
There is another caption with the video that says:
معارك الجيش الليبي وصده للغزو التركي العثماني على ليبيا
[Translation: Battles of the Libyan army and its repelling of the Turkish Ottoman invasion of Libya.]
Since the aforementioned caption has a mention of “Turkish invasion”, we investigated further.
It was found that Libya was under civil war between 2014 and 2020. According to an article by a UK-based news organisation, The Guardian, during 2014 and 2020, some countries intervened in the civil war in Libya for their own strategic and economic interests, Turkey being one of them.
The Turkish military was pushing back Libyan National Army (LNA) head Khalifa Haftar, according to an article by Al Jazeera that was published on 27 April 2020. Turkey was a supporter of the Government of National Accord (GNA) that was fighting the LNA in Libya.
It was also reported that Haftar wanted to seize control of Tripoli, the capital city of Libya.
Since Libya is also mentioned in the caption of one of the videos posted on Youtube in April 2020, we researched further.
A report by ReliefWeb, a humanitarian service provided by the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, titled “WHO Libya Bi-weekly Operational Update (1-15 April 2020)” states that armed conflict in Libya continued to affect several areas in Tripoli.
On 13 April 2020, heavy clashes were reported in the west of Tripoli, due to which services of public health facilities were suspended. The videos found during our fact-check were posted on YouTube on 22 and 29 April 2020 by users who linked them to an alleged Turkish invasion in Tripoli, Libya.
While it has still not been confirmed whether this particular video is from Libya or not. Some users on X cited it, claiming that it is a five-year-old video from Libya. The latter post was in the comment section of the claim being fact-checked.
While Soch Fact Check could not confirm whether this particular video is from Libya or not, we conclude that it is entirely unrelated to the recent conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan as it was shared online as early as April 2020.
Virality
The video was shared with the same claim on X here, here, here, here, here, and here by verified accounts.
It was posted here, here, here and here by other X users. On YouTube, the claim was shared here and here.
On Instagram, it was posted here by a page called Dari News 1. The description on the page says they provide “reliable news from Afghanistan and around the world”. But we did not find any official website with the same logo and name. A screenshot from the video was also posted here. The video with the location tag of Helmand was also posted here. This one appears to be a compilation of different clips in which the video with the Helmand location tag is used.
On Facebook, NRT News, which claims it posts news from Iran and Kur, posted this video on their verified page. An Azerbaijani news service GunazTV has also posted the video here on their verified page as a clip (1:46-1:53) combined with others.
It was also posted here, here, here, here, and here. The video with the location tag of Helmand was also posted here.
An apparent Urdu news website called BBC News HD has also used what looks like a screenshot from the footage, for a news article, stating that the Pakistan Army has given a befitting response to firing from Afghanistan.
Conclusion: The video being fact-checked is not related to the recent conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan as it was found posted on YouTube as early as April 2020.
Background image in cover photo: Reuters
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