Taliban’s Defense & Interior Ministers' Visit to Paktia Raises Eyebrows

He asked the Taliban to defy “sinister intentions of foreigners” by reponing the schools for girls.

Karzai in a tweet said that the development of a society is dependent on girls’ and boys’ education.

He pointed to the gathering of the Ulema and elders in Kunar province and asked the Taliban to respect people’s demands and reopen the doors of schools for girls.

Hamid Karzai advised the Taliban, “With the reopening of schools for girls, the evil intentions of outsiders will be defeated and the country will have a bright future.”

It has been more than 300 days since girls above grade 6 have been deprived of education.

Life under the Taliban’s rule has become hard for Afghan women as they lost their right to work, education and social life in the society.

Two days ago, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) published its first report on human rights in Afghanistan since Taliban took over the country.

UNAMA acting SRSG, Markus Potzel, said that deprivation of girls and women of their basic rights is one of the most prominent violations of human rights by the Taliban. This report highlighted specific concerns in relation to the actions of the Taliban’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and the group’s intelligence agency.

Based on this report, most of the group’s departments restricted human rights and basic freedoms of Afghans, especially, the rights of women and girls.

Some of the Twitter users called the Taliban a “terrorist” group and said that this group deprived Afghans of their freedom, so the group's accounts should be banned.

Chris Blackburn, a British political analyst joined this campaign, and on his twitter handle, wrote, “I'm not from #Afghanistan, but I know that the majority of us don't want to live life under the #Taliban or anything similar."

He added that under the Taliban’s regime, Afghans are not allowed to listen to music, girls aren’t allowed to go to school and women can’t work. Blackburn called on everyone to join this campaign and called on twitter to ban this group’s accounts.

Habib Khan, an Afghan activist, said that the Taliban uses Twitter to show international community that this group has changed. He called the Taliban a terrorist group and added that this group uses Twitter for their propaganda.

Heela Najib, daughter of the former president of Afghanistan who had been executed by the Taliban during their first reign of power, wrote, “I believe in #FreedomOfSpeech, but those who suffocate expression of thought, speech, take away freedom of choice and use violence to silence conscious of human beings should not be given access to social media."

A wide range of people, foreign countries’ citizens, some of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement members and a number of people who survived Taliban’s attacks, participated in this campaign.

Omar Farooq, a survivor of the Taliban’s attack on their university, as he claims, said, “I demand Twitter to ban Taliban affiliated accounts."

Zala Zazai, a woman police officer in the former Afghan government, said, “I ask Twitter to shut down the voice of the Taliban terrorist group. The activity of the Taliban on Twitter means supporting terrorism. Please do not support terrorist networks."

This campaign had started on Wednesday, July 20, when Meta Inc. banned all the pages of Taliban’s affiliated media, RTA and Bakhtar News agency on Facebook and Instagram.

Ahmadullah Wasqi, Taliban’s head of Radio Television of Afghanistan (RTA), described RTA as the voice of the nation and media of people and said that suspending this media organisation's page is against all media principles and freedom of speech.

However, Meta Inc. told Afghanistan International that closing pages affiliated to the Taliban on Facebook and Instagram was because the Taliban is a sanctioned terrorist group according to the law of the United States.

This firm said that based on their policy about dangerous organizations, they will ban all pages affiliated with Taliban.

During the meeting of the heads of Central Asian states in Kyrgyzstan, Rahmon added that the Taliban implements an aggressive discriminatory policy against various ethnic groups in Afghanistan.

The Kyrgyzstan meeting is the fourth in a series of consultative meetings of the leaders of Central Asian countries. The first such summit was held in March 2018 in Kazakhstan. The second summit was held in November 2019 in Uzbekistan, and the third round of this summit was held in August 2021 in Turkmenistan.

Before the meeting was initiated, the five countries’ foreign ministries prepared the draft roadmap for the development of regional cooperation from 2022-2024.

The leaders of the Central Asian countries outlined that in 2022, cooperation and stability in the region is high on their agenda.

Most Central Asian countries are worried about the influence of extremists in the region considering the latest developments in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Sources said that after this incident, local residents brought the corpse to the capital of the district and sought explanation from Taliban on Thursday, July 21.

According to sources, Taliban forced a resident of Andarab in Kasa Tarash area to come out of his house and then, killed him, on July 20.

Local residents said that the Taliban dispersed people who had gathered in front of the district building through aerial firing.

This killing happened a day after UNAMA’s report regarding arbitrary killings of Taliban had been published.

UNAMA reported that the Taliban is not committed to their amnesty decree and killed tens of former security forces and employees during the past 10 months.

The company said that it will continue to block all pages affiliated to the Taliban.

On Wednesday, July 20th, all the pages of Bakhtar News Agency and Afghan National Television, the two media organisations controlled by the Taliban, were removed from Facebook and Instagram, the two joint social media networks of Meta Platforms Inc.

In response to Afghanistan International's questions about the crackdown on the Taliban’s pages, Meta Platforms quoted the company's spokesperson as saying, “The Taliban is a sanctioned terrorist organisation based on the laws of the United States of America. This group has been banned from using Meta's services based on our policies on dangerous organizations.”

Meta's email to Afghanistan International also states that accounts created by or on behalf of the Taliban will be closed to prevent them from representing this group and praising and supporting them.

Encouraging violence and beheading opponents

Informed sources told Afghanistan International that one of the reasons behind the Meta move is the coverage of an extremist Afghan cleric who supports the group and has demanded the beheading of the opponents of the Taliban government.

Mullah Mujib-ul-Rahman Ansari, who participated from Herat in Taliban’s meeting of nationwide clerics in Kabul in late July 2022, said that the opponents of the Taliban government should be beheaded. The Taliban-controlled media Bakhtar News Agency and Radio Television Afghanistan – RTA broadcast his speech for the first time.

Since taking over Afghanistan in August 15, 2021, the Taliban have imposed severe restrictions on media and controls the sector’s operation inside Afghanistan.

While independent media and news agencies in Afghanistan are prohibited from free reporting, the Facebook pages of the media groups of the former government of Afghanistan, which are now under the control of the Taliban, acted as sources of propaganda for the Taliban.

These Taliban-controlled media groups appreciate and encourage violence, including the group’s suicide bombers and use of terrorism.

Despite Meta Platform’s latest crackdown on Taliban-affiliated media operations on Facebook and Instagram, the media, spokespersons, and supporters of the group are still widely active on Twitter and conduct wide range of information operations in support of the group.

A welcomed move

The Meta Platform Inc.’s act against the Taliban-controlled media presence on the company’s social media arms has been widely welcomed by Afghan social media users.

While the Taliban officials considered the move as a violation of freedom of speech, the Afghan social media users stress that the Taliban do not believe in the principle of democratic values, including freedom of press.

Elyas Nawandish, an Afghan journalist, said that the Taliban have been engaged in arrest and torture of local journalists and recently threatened a foreign journalist to apologize for critical reporting about the group. According to Nawandish, the Taliban has never been tolerant of critics but, "when their propaganda tool has been closed, they complain that Facebook has violated their freedom of expression”.

Amrullah Saleh, the former vice-president of Afghanistan, has welcomed the closure of the media pages of the Taliban. Saleh said that some of the pages run by the Taliban "spread discrimination”. He expressed hope that "the banning of oppressive Taliban terrorist group will continue in the virtual world”.

Demands from Twitter

A day after the Taliban media pages were blocked by Facebook, Afghan Twitter users also started a campaign asking Twitter Inc. to block accounts affiliated with the Taliban.
These users argue that the Taliban is "a terrorist group" and should not be allowed to use Twitter.

Habib Khan, an Afghan Twitter user and former Wall Street Journal reporter in Afghanistan wrote on his Twitter: "My name is Habib and I am from Afghanistan. I request Twitter to prevent the Taliban from using this network."

Many of these users have asked Twitter to block Taliban accounts by mentioning their names and countries.

This campaign has been welcomed by citizens of other countries too.