By Archit
After taking over Afghanistan in 2021, one of the Taliban’s first tasks was a door-to-door search for individuals with ties to the republic, journalists, and “Western forces.” In September 2022, the Taliban ordered female TV presenters and guests to cover their faces. The next month, the Taliban removed women’s seats from the Commission of Media Violations.
Since then, hundreds of media outlets have shut down. Still, the Taliban are determined to stifle the media further. An anonymous Twitter account, Newsf2197Fake, which claims to be “The Institution of [debunking] Fake or False News,” is being promoted by Taliban leaders. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who has close to a million followers on Twitter, has amplified the account’s tweets. (Though Twitter has officially been rebranded as X, we will continue to use its old terminology and name in this story.)
On July 10, Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban leader and scion of Afghanistan’s feared Haqqani network, endorsed Twitter in a tweet shortly after the launch of Threads — a Twitter alternative from Meta. In this report, Zan Times will demonstrate why this endorsement isn’t a surprise to those keeping a close watch on politics in Afghanistan.
Newsf2197Fake’s selling point is that it adds a red cross to screenshots of media reports that show the Taliban’s governance in poor light and, without explanation, labels them as fakes. The below screenshot shows Hedayatullah, the deputy director-general of RTA, amplifying a tweet from the account on March 30.
A review of the Newsf2197Fake account shows that it targets Afghan media in exile that are critical of the Taliban. We noticed that Newsf2197Fake has targeted two prominent Afghan media sources: Hasht-e-Subh and Etilaatroz. Zan Times found that 20 reports by Hasht-e Subh were marked as fake by Newsf2197Fake and, for Etilaatroz, it was nine reports.
Zan Times spoke with Canada-based Sanjar Sohail, the founder and publisher of Hasht-e Subh, regarding Newsf2197Fake using the “fake news” label on its reports. “The fact that the Taliban are reacting to our reports is an indication that Taliban feels our reportage can have a negative impact on their image,” Sohail says. “However, this also means that there is an increased risk for our journalists who are on the ground in Afghanistan.”
In September 2021, Taliban Ministry of Information and Culture introduced “11 rules of journalism.” While these rules were loosely based on laws of the former government, its implementation by the Taliban has been credited with creating an environment of repression, censorship, and fear for Afghan media and journalists.
The first three rules state that journalists are forbidden to broadcast or publish stories “contrary to Islam” and anything that the Taliban consider an “insult” to “national figures.” However, the rules do not define what constitutes as “contrary to Islam” or the characteristics in being disrespectful to national figures. Those last two rules effectively give the Taliban’s Government Media and Information Center complete control over what is reported by the media. As well, media outlets must “prepare detailed reports in coordination with the GMIC.” The nature of these “detailed reports” has not been revealed.
In the autumn of 2021, a month after the rules were passed, the U.S.-based NGO Human Rights Watch reported that Taliban’s media regulations “are so broad and vague as to prohibit any critical reporting about the Taliban.”
In September 2022, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said, “These new rules are spine chilling because of the coercive use that can be made of them, and they bode ill for the future of journalistic independence and pluralism in Afghanistan.”
In this context, the amplification of tweets by Newsf2197Fake by the Taliban is a concern. As of late July, it has posted fewer than 75 tweets, yet it has more than 7,000 followers, helped by the online engagement by Taliban officials. The chart below lists prominent Taliban officials who follow Newsf2197Fake.
“It is clear that @Newsf2197Fake’s aim is to undermine journalists, outlets, or stories that are uncomfortable for the Taliban,” Anouk Theunissen tells Zan Times, She is a researcher at Afghan Witness, a project of the Centre for Information Resilience, uses open-source investigations to report on human rights violations in Afghanistan.
Institution to promote fake news or debunk it?
Zan Times verified one of the stories that was marked as “fake news” by Newsf2197Fake. It was a report published by Hasht-e-Subh on February 3, 2023, which states that the Taliban banned interfaith marriage between Shia and Sunni communities in the Nusay district of Badakhshan. The Hasht-e-Subh report did not mention the date of the announcement by the Taliban.
To verify the information in the Hasht-e-Subh report, Zan Times spoke with multiple sources in Nusay who confirmed that such a ban had been issued by local Taliban officials in the district. “A fatwa was put up on the Nusay Jame Mosque and the religious head of the mosque, Maulvi Sharif, also communicated that this decree has been passed during the prayers,” a resident of Nusay district who asked not to be identified tells Zan Times.
“The statement regarding the ban on interfaith marriage in Nusay was communicated by the governor of the district, Juma Khan Fateh” confirms a local Taliban official in the district, who also asked not to be named. “But he withdrew the order after the media reported the announcement in the first week of February.”
One of our sources also shared an image of the fatwa with Zan Times. The date in the document is in the Hijri calendar and dates from January 2023. It says, “All ethnic groups under the territory of this district are guided that no one from the Sunni community Jamaat has the right to give a daughter to a family belonging to the Shia community and vice-versa.”
The last two sentences in document states, “And if there is any aspect or condition in accepting the opinion of the opposite party between the suitor and the desired, i.e., the boy who takes a wife and the girl who gets married, the issue should be discussed with the district administration and the court.” This detail was also mentioned in the report by Hasht-e-Subh, which Newsf2197Fake incorrectly branded as “fake news.”
Kreshma Fakhri contributed to this report.
