This documentary was produced by the Pakistani government

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 15, 2020 at 07:30
2 min read
By AFP Pakistan

A video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook alongside a claim it shows a short documentary produced by US media company National Geographic about border clashes between India and Pakistan in 2019. The claim is false; the documentary was produced by Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting; it was released by state broadcaster Pakistan Television in 2020, on the anniversary of the India-Pakistan border skirmishes.

The video was published in this Facebook post on April 12, 2020. It has been viewed more than 542,000 times and shared more than 17,000 times.

The 11-minute 59-second video is titled “Invincible Resolve”. It starts with an address by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who vows to cooperate with India in an investigation into a February 2019 bombing in the Indian-administered Kashmir. The footage then includes various clips that purportedly show the standoff between the two countries, along with comments on the border situation from analysts.

A purported logo for National Geographic can be seen in the top left-hand corner of the video.

The post's Urdu-language caption translates to English as: “A documentary made by National Geographic on February 27 (2019) incident, when Pakistan shot down two Indian jets.”

“February 27 incident” refers to the shooting down of two Indian jets by Pakistan over Kashmir in February 2019. Here is an AFP report about the events.

A screenshot taken on June 8, 2020, of the misleading post by Facebook user Pakistani پاکستانی

The same video was also shared here and here on Facebook with a similar claim.

The claim is false; the documentary was produced by the Pakistani government.

A keyword search on Google found a longer version of the video published here on YouTube by state-run Pakistan Television (PTV) on February 27, 2020. The various clips used to create the video in the misleading posts also appear in the PTV video.

The 37-minute 42-second video, titled “INVINCIBLE RESOLVE PAF DOCUMENTARY 27 02 2020”, was released one year after the February 2019 border clashes between India and Pakistan.

A reference to Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has been included in the closing credits of the documentary, as seen at the 37-minute 25-second mark of the PTV video.

Below is a screenshot comparison of a keyframe of the video in the misleading posts (L) and the corresponding scene in the PTV video (R):

A screenshot comparison of a keyframe of the video in the misleading posts (L) and the corresponding scene in the PTV video (R)

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