Taliban websites operating in five languages go offline

Five Taliban websites, which delivered the official victorious messages to Afghans after the militant group took over Afghanistan, abruptly went offline on Friday. The sudden move will limit the Taliban’s online reach, which was gaining traction, and their ability to rework their public image.  

It is not immediately clear why the sites in the Pashto, Urdu, Arabic, English and Dari languages went offline Friday. They had been shielded by Cloudflare, a San Francisco-based content delivery network and denial-of-service protection provider, according to Associated Press inputs.

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All the versions of the website were offline Friday afternoon.

According to Rita Katz, head of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism, a number of Taliban organisations were banned from the popular encrypted messaging app WhatsApp on Friday.

The Taliban may be able to get the websites running after securing fresh hosting agreements. However, the alleged suspension of WhatsApp groups came after Facebook, the service’s parent firm, banned Taliban accounts on Tuesday, when the US-backed Afghan government succumbed to the Taliban.

Meanwhile, Twitter has not followed any policy of shutting down Taliban accounts on its platform, reflecting both its different corporate judgments and the murkiness of US policy and law.

The State Department has designated the Pakistani Taliban a foreign terrorist organization but has not applied the same label to the Afghan Taliban. The Afghan Taliban, however, is listed as a sanctioned entity under rulings from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

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Twitter has allowed several official Taliban accounts, including some used by spokesmen for the group, to continue operating so long as they obey rules against objectionable content, such as inciting violence through tweets.

For years, the Taliban has effectively utilised social media and the Internet to promote its beliefs, portraying itself as a liberation force dedicated to liberating Afghanistan from foreign occupation and restoring a traditional version of Islamic rule.

With inputs from The Associated Press