TIM CULPAN: The Taliban’s digital revolution

Members of Taliban forces at a checkpoint in Kabul, Afghanistan. Picture: REUTERS/STRINGER

“They moved into much greater technology sophistication by about 2007. It's a sign of the group’s capacity to adapt and learn and that's one of the reasons why they won,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution. “One of the things that they learnt was to focus on communications, and away from the model of the 1990s, which was to move the country away from any kind of modernity.

One irony is that this broad rollout of telecommunications was enabled by US and international companies, with Nato forces building the pylons that would hold cellphone antennas. Before long, Taliban spokespersons fluent in English were regularly updating Western media directly over text and voice, answering questions, and claiming victory in battles that journalists didn’t even know had happened.

These groups followed the arc of technology in the wider world. Early on, they engaged in a cat-and-mouse game of using websites to claim responsibility for attacks and to distribute messages and videos before foreign governments knocked them offline. That gave way to more sophisticated hand-held devices and faster networks that meant a video could be shot on a cellphone and emailed directly to supporters or international media.

By the time they took Kabul, the Taliban had upped their presence on Twitter and taken to Whatsapp and text messages to engage with the local populace and outsiders. Spokespeople have used Twitter in recent weeks in an attempt to ease concerns about human-rights violations, forcing US tech giants to reiterate their policies.

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