How the Taliban turned social media into a tool for control

The images of peace and stability projected by the Taliban contrast sharply with the scenes broadcast around the world of the chaotic US evacuation from the Kabul airport or footage of protesters being beaten and shot at. They demonstrate the digital powers the militants have honed over years of insurgency, offering a glimpse of how the Taliban could use those tools to rule Afghanistan, even as they cling to their fundamentalist religious tenets and violent proclivities.

Afghan social media may be a poor indicator of public sentiment. Many of the Taliban’s critics and supporters of the US-backed government have gone underground. But already, with a social media campaign in recent weeks that may have helped encourage Afghan security forces to put down their weapons, the Taliban have shown that they can effectively sell their message.

Zabihullah Mujahid, center, the Taliban’s spokesperson, in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 at their first news conference after they took control of Kabul. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)

“They recognized that to win the war, it had to be done through narratives and stories,” said Thomas Johnson, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. “In urban areas, all Afghans have smartphones, and I think it’s going to be very useful. They’re going to use social media to tell the Afghan people what they need to do.”

Online, the Taliban will now be targeted by some of the same tactics they used to cement their power, just as movements like the Arab Spring and others used social media to organize and rally. Afghanistan’s new communications tethers with the rest of the world will help the Taliban’s opponents expose any atrocities and drum up support for the resistance. Already, hashtags like #DonotChangeNationalFlag are spreading, with some combination of internal and external support.

The Taliban have responded to such calls — and to reports of crackdowns and reprisal killings by the victorious militants — with messages stressing a desire for peace and unity. The Taliban portray Americans and other foreigners as the primary cause of years of conflict — an idea that they have emphasized by using the startling images this week from the Kabul airport.

As shots of desperate refugees clinging to planes circulated, one of the best-known pro-Taliban influencers, Qari Saeed Khosty, struck a tone of doleful sympathy.

“I cried hard to see your situation. You, the friends of the occupation, we have similarly cried for you for 20 years. We told you that Tommy Ghani will never be loyal to you,” he wrote in a Twitter post, using slang for a person who adopts Western styles and customs to refer to Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president who fled this week. “We have forgiven you, I swear to Allah. We are not for this situation. Please come back to your homes.”

Still, the Taliban — a group known during its 1996-2001 rule for public executions, sometimes by stoning — have largely kept their messages upbeat. Taliban citizen journalists ply the streets of newly captured cities with blue-capped microphones, offering videos of bland endorsement from residents.

“The Taliban don’t need to post content to remind the population they are brutal,” said Benjamin Jensen, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. “The population knows that. What they needed were images that showed they could govern and integrate the country.”

The Taliban have been able to post much of what they want online. Even as blocks on major social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube persist, dozens of new accounts have sprung up. The militants’ efforts have focused on Twitter, where the Taliban are not directly banned.

Some Taliban opponents have issued rallying cries. By contrast, others have fallen silent and scrubbed their accounts of material that could put them in danger. A female soccer player this week warned her former teammates to take photos down. Facebook and Twitter have said they would take steps to shield accounts.

A teacher at Nangarhar University in Jalalabad who requested anonymity said that a large number of his students who had taken part in anti-Taliban campaigns had deactivated their social media accounts. The generation born after the Taliban’s first regime toppled had a lifetime of digital evidence to conceal, he said.

The Afghanistan of today is a far cry from the place where the internet was banned in 2001. Under the US-backed government, cell towers went up across the country. Mobile phone users jumped to more than 22 million in 2019 from just 1 million in 2005, according to Statista, a market research firm. Experts estimate around 70% of the population has access to a mobile phone.

Today, the Taliban would struggle to block messages from the outside, like China and Russia do, without time and outside help. In place of deletions and bans, they have flooded social media with their own messages.

The Taliban were quick to view the internet as a new tool of propaganda, an extension of written messages and guerrilla radio stations. They grew accustomed to restoring websites after hosting services dropped them, and they often experimented, using techniques like text-message blasts. One report showed how they used trending hashtags to intimidate voters during a 2019 election.

To gain foreign acceptance in recent weeks, Taliban leaders put out messages in English and livestreamed press events. Their official website, Al-Emarah, publishes in English, Pashto, Dari, Urdu and Arabic.

The Taliban are building on lessons learned during the summer offensive that swept the group into power, said one member of the Taliban social media committee, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak.

Fast and clever messaging was a key part of the offensive, he said, pointing out that the Taliban trained and equipped soldiers with microphones and smartphones to report from the front lines as their forces swept into new territory. The messaging, a mix of amnesty offers and intimidation that was designed to create the sense of an inevitable victory, may have helped hasten a process of coercion and persuasion that led to many of the best-defended cities falling without fighting.

“Smartphones have been a very successful Taliban weapon,” said Abdul Sayed, an independent researcher who focuses on the group’s social media tactics. “They all have a special love for smartphones now.”

Last Friday, when Taliban forces took the key city of Herat, they distributed images and videos of militia leaders posing with Ismail Khan, a well-known local commander and Taliban opponent, showing him unrestrained and appearing at ease.

The message was clear, said Sayed: “If we can treat Ismail Khan, a top enemy, with such respect, there will not be danger for anyone.”

In Kabul, many Taliban-trained journalists have been busy on the streets, often holding a microphone with the logo of the group’s propaganda site. In one video posted to the Twitter account of Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid, a reporter interviews residents in Kabul’s Shahr-e Naw area. When he asks a young boy about the takeover of the capital, the boy responds, “We are happy and have been living in peace.”

While some have responded positively to the messaging, the digital transfer of power has sent a shock across Afghanistan’s best-connected cities. Many of the voices that would once argue back against Taliban posts have gone silent for fear of retribution. Digital rights groups have said that many people with ties to the former government or the United States have closed social media profiles, left chat groups and deleted old messages.

Earlier this week, when Mujahid announced a news conference in a widely used WhatsApp journalist group, some members dropped out of the chat. One, who worked for foreign media and who asked for anonymity, fearing retaliation, said that journalists who had written critically about the Taliban were worried about a backlash.

Even so, social media carried some signs of resistance. On Tuesday, a video of a small group of women protesting in Kabul in the presence of Taliban fighters was shared widely. The next day, videos of an incident in Jalalabad in which the Taliban opened fire on a group of youth, who had removed the militants’ flag and replaced it with that of the fallen Afghan government, went viral.

The Nangarhar University teacher said he did not believe the new generation that grew up in Kabul under the ousted government would easily accept the Taliban’s rule, and he expected new waves of online resistance before long.

“I fear that the Taliban will restrict social media soon because of it,” he said.