Deception as a strategy: Taliban exploit Western media for themselves


Deception as a strategy
The Taliban take advantage of the Western media

While the world is looking at the airport in Kabul and people are being brought to safety, the Taliban are pulling the strings in the background. At least that is how the Afghan journalist Hossaini sees it. The militia know how to deal with Western media and use social media for propaganda.

All just a distraction: The Taliban should use their attention in the western media in Afghanistan to distract from their actions in the country. This is what the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Massoud Hossaini explained in the “DeutschlandfunkIf he compares the reports of his contacts in the country with those in the international media, he noticed how few stories from Afghanistan were actually told. That was because the radical Islamic militia would prevent the publication of certain videos and photos.

The West “unfortunately let itself be deceived,” emphasized the 39-year-old. As an example, he cited a press conference in Kabul last week. In the government’s press center, the Taliban had declared that they were in agreement with the freedom of the press and the work of women journalists and the media. According to Hossaini, they were said to have murdered the previous head of the press center a week earlier – “very few western media reported about that”.

According to Hossaini, whom the Taliban threatened to revenge after a report on forced marriages, the situation at the airport was “orchestrated” and would attract the media focus. “You are distracting yourself from a reality outside of the airport, outside of Kabul – a reality that the international community should definitely learn more about,” says the long-time AFP journalist.

Social media, which is an important propaganda tool for the Taliban, should also play an important role. “The Taliban are very active on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram. They set up fake pages that even someone like the resistance fighter Ahmad Massoud, the son of the Afghan resistance hero Ahmad Massoud, was caught in. They spread false reports on these pages, and that People take it at face value, “explained Hossaini. The fall of certain cities had already been announced on Twitter and Co. even before they actually fell. That was the case in Herat and also in Kabul. With this, too, they would have deceived the Western media.

The Taliban have known how to deal with Western media for years. In 2013, Qatar allowed the militia to open an office in Doha. “In the years of the Trump administration, the peace talks with the Taliban prevailed and many actually perceived that as a positive development. That was the first time we Taliban were exposed to a mass of western journalists and had to answer questions,” the author explained Emran Feroz in Podcast with Micky Beisenherz.

Evacuation with the US was also negotiated in the political office. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Deputy Chief of the Taliban, is the head of the office. Various speakers for foreign news channels are also switched from there.

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