August 31, 2021 marked the end of a two-decade-old war by the US in Afghanistan. The US went to war in Afghanistan seeking to go after the Taliban for giving refuge to Al Qaeda, the mastermind terrorist organization responsible for the dastardly 9/11 attacks. The attacks on the iconic World Trade Center claimed close to 3,000 lives. For the West, in particular the US, even after two decades, the objective of going to war in Afghanistan is still uncertain: Was it to fight terrorism? Was it for nation building?
But as questions persist, it is important to focus on the new leadership in Afghanistan: the Taliban, their government and how effectively or not they have managed to communicate and thereby hone their public diplomacy orientations. The Taliban seek legitimacy. This is aimed at establishing diplomatic relations, communications strategy, investment and trade. These are key for the regime to stay in power.
Can bad actors like the Taliban use strategic communication skills as a subset of public diplomacy? This question came to fore when a Taliban leader wrote an Op-ed in The New York Times in 2020. Prior to this, in early 2000s, Voice of America ran an interview with Taliban’s leader Mullah Omar, which was subsequently pulled down after objections from then US administration. The interview was conducted in Pashtu, this was Taliban’s foremost media engagement in which he explained that America has taken the entire Islamic world ‘hostage’.
The Taliban and Social Media
The Taliban have been proactive on social media, aiming to enhance and broaden their image. The Taliban have used the technology of the West to communicate its message—of the West being ‘intolerant, vicious and bent on revenge’.
Be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or group chats on WhatsApp and Telegram, the Taliban and their supporters have been successful in tapping into these networks to communicate their message. The Taliban’s objective has been to use these international platforms, especially of the US, against the US and to build international following.
Clearly, their messaging and push on social media was and is international. The targeted strategy on social media is aimed at reaching Afghans living abroad and potential supporters, especially those sceptical of Western powers.
By 2011, according to Brookings Institution, the Taliban were on Twitter, and by 2014 on Telegram. By 2019, the Taliban had learned to trend hashtags on Twitter.
Like most other radical Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State and the Al Qaeda, the Taliban too seek to overturn the West and in particular the US, using western communication technologies, such as Twitter.
In his 2016 book, ‘The Taliban’s Virtual Emirate: The Culture and Psychology of an Online Militant Community’, Neil Krishan Aggarwal argued that the Taliban used the internet to great advantage ‘in transforming individual and community identities through deliberate ways of self-presentation, social positioning, and relating to others that realize and reflect cultural change’.
In any disinformation campaign, a credible strategy is to to be part of the communication platforms of the enemy and use it to communicate what one is known for. Clearly, the Taliban seem to have understood that in order to defeat the US in its information strategy, it has to know the platform, especially when it comes to communication strategies.
It is pertinent to also note that it incumbent on the US’ communication and technology platforms whether they would allow such organizations to thrive on their space, especially when the Taliban have denied basic human rights and women-led education in the past.
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Taliban and Mainstream Media
In public diplomacy, mainstream media plays a pivotal role in communication. On February 20, 2020, readers globally were in for a shock when Sirajuddin Haqqani’s piece appeared in The New York Times, headlined ‘What We, The Taliban, Want’. Haqqani is the current interior minister in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime and is also on the most wanted list of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He is wanted in connection with the January 2008 attack on a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed six people, including an American.
The article was published at a time when the peace agreement with the US was at a threshold of being signed. The reason why The New York Times gave space to the deputy leader of the Taliban is not known. One thing was for certain, the Taliban sought to communicate internationally, seek support and give a sneak peek into what was expected under their rule.
Widespread criticism ensued and answers were sought regarding why The New York Times went ahead with publishing Haqqani’s piece despite him being on the FBI’s most wanted list and knowing the Taliban’s antecedents. On the other hand, for the Taliban, the piece presented an opportunity.
Two things made the article particularly striking. One was its language, which seemed far more like that of a western think-tanker than a Talib—even though the author was identified as the deputy leader of the Taliban. The other was the specific background of the author. Haqqani, at the time the article appeared, was also identified on the website of the FBI as a ‘specially designated global terrorist’, with a US $10 million reward on offer for information leading directly to his arrest. That the Taliban movement succeeded in placing a propaganda article by a wanted terrorist on the opinion page of one of the most reputable news publications in the US pointed to an approach to public diplomacy that, in its sophistication and guile, far exceeded anything that the movement had been capable of achieving when it occupied Kabul from 1996-2001.
In his piece, Haqqani came out with a detailed roadmap for the future of Afghanistan. “It is important that no one front-loads this process with predetermined outcomes and preconditions. We are committed to working with other parties in a consultative manner of genuine respect to agree on a new, inclusive political system in which the voice of every Afghan is reflected and where no Afghan feels excluded,” he wrote in the piece.
Haqqani also used this opportunity to assure the international audience that Afghanistan will not be used as a battleground anymore and that the country will be known as a ‘bastion of stability’, signaling an agreement with the United States.
John Allen, the President of Brookings Institution, was scathing in his criticism to publish Haqqani’s piece. In his words, ‘This individual is a cold-blooded killer and terrorist, with the deaths of thousands of Afghans and the blood of hundreds of American and Coalition servicemen and women on his hands. His purported desire for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan does not signal some peacemaking epiphany or political rehabilitation on his part, nor for the terrorists that he leads. He does not deserve a platform, especially one as legitimizing as The New York Times, and the decision to feature him should be roundly condemned.’
Thomas H. Johnson in his 2017 book ‘Taliban Narratives: The Use and Power of Stories in the Afghanistan Conflict’ writes that the Taliban’s communications strategy has had religious, political and cultural dimensions, and these were aimed to target audiences in Afghanistan that were broadly categorized as sympathetic, unaligned or unsympathetic. As time went by, the Taliban also sought increasingly to pitch their messages to the wider world, although their ability to do so was significantly constrained by ongoing sanctions regimes. This, however, changed from 2018 when the US moved to engage with the Taliban, and from that point, Western elite audiences figured much more prominently on the list of those targeted by Taliban propaganda.
The Taliban’s communications strategy has evolved over time. After occupying Kabul in 1996, the Taliban took some steps to expand their media footprint, their ‘Voice of Sharia Radio’ being one such outlet. While they secured international recognition through United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, this particular initiative did not yield them the results that they wanted.
It was only after 2001 that they began to take concrete initiatives, and their methods were more diverse. These included magazines and hardcopy publications; ‘night letters’ (texts posted or circulated surreptitiously, often containing warnings or threats); and even a propagandistic ‘code of conduct’ that allegedly asked Taliban combatants to follow a set of rules in the context of armed conflict. Beyond these, the Taliban ventured actively into the evolving world of electronic communications post-2001. The Taliban also broadcasted in Pashto and Dari. In addition, they also put to use videos where ‘multimodal and cinematographic techniques and use of sounds and visual modes vary depending on the strategic theme’. This enabled them to expand their presence domestically, regionally and globally.
The Future
Even in diplomacy, after coming to power, the Taliban have sought engagement with countries that have not left Afghanistan in the turmoil that ensued with the US exit. Take the case of China; they hosted the Taliban’s Qatar negotiating delegation and also sent teams to understand more about the economic situation in the country. China could exploit Afghanistan’s mineral deposits while promising to build factories, power plants and roads.
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Pakistan too seeks to bat with the current Taliban regime. In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said, “There is only one way to go. We must strengthen and stabilize the current government, for the sake of the people of Afghanistan.” He struck a similar note in a Washington Post op-ed. No other country has made such an outward pitch for Afghanistan, especially for engagement with the Taliban. Russia has come forward to seize the moment and praise the Taliban despite its past.
India, which has made investments in Afghanistan to the tune of US $3 billion, faces a number of challenges, logistical and geopolitical. In the short run, it has to ensure the safety of its assets, and has managed to evacuate all embassy staff and nationals who were present there. New Delhi has clearly stated that it has opened a back channel and would safeguard its interests.
India recently hosted a Moscow format of dialogue called the ‘Delhi Regional Security Dialogue’ where it had invited relevant stakeholder countries such as those in Central Asia and Russia and Iran to participate in discussions on the future of Afghanistan.
Iran remains another strategically important country in the scheme of things and has hosted two rounds of the same format of dialogue in 2018 and 2019 right since the time the US announced that it would be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan.
The Taliban have used propaganda through social media and mainstream media and advanced their diplomatic outreach to countries resonating with their cause. To counter this, effective public diplomacy strategy must be deployed by the US. Tara Sonenshine, who headed public diplomacy affairs in the US, has detailed several suggestions to this effect. She reiterates the need for the US administration to communicate exactly what went wrong in Afghanistan and that it will be there to fight terrorism in the days to come.
The US has its task cut out to enable and enhance its good public diplomacy in the country. It is also incumbent on other countries in the region to be aware of how bad actors like the Taliban have used public diplomacy to advance their goals. To counter this, countries will have to come up with their own public diplomacy strategy to counter Taliban’s misinformation campaign.
There are no signs or messages from the Taliban to suggest any change in their ideology. The hardline interim government illustrates this.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said, “The military mission is over. A new diplomatic mission has begun.” President Joe Biden took the idea even further in his remarks, laying out an expansive set of economic, security and human rights goals for US diplomacy in Afghanistan. He said the way to achieve them “is not through endless military deployments, but through diplomacy, economic tools and rallying the rest of the world”.
The world is now on a wait-and-watch mode—as bad actors such as the Taliban hone their public diplomacy skills—to see how leading democratic powers will respond to the challenge.
Sudarshan Ramabadran is author, researcher and currently studying at University of Southern California, Los Angeles. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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