Now On Twitter: The Taliban

The Taliban are notorious for their shunning of most modern, non-military technologies, including satellite dishes, televisions and computers, and even anything that simply produces the joy of music.

Now, in what is perhaps one of the biggest examples yet of Twitter’s mounting global importance, the Taliban have taken to the micro-blogging platform to continue their ongoing battle against the “infidel forces”.

Writes Jon Boone in The Guardian:

Their Twitter feed, @alemarahweb, pumps out several messages a day, keeping 993 followers up to date with often highly exaggerated reports of strikes against the “infidel forces” and the “Karzai puppet regime”. Most messages are in Pashtu, with links to news stories on the elaborate and multilingual website of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the Taliban’s shadow government likes to style itself.

Possibly due to the exposure of The Guardian’s piece, followers are now up to over two thousand.

The account was registered in December last year, and has issued some 768 tweets at the time of writing. Most of the submissions are in the Iranian language Pashtu, but the occasional English tweet is also released. Links typically point to the Islamic Emirate Of Afghanistan website.

Twitter is very big on freedom of speech and whilst many will inevitably react unfavourably with the Taliban using the network as an outpost for their message, there’s very little chance anything will be done about it.

Moreover, as the platform grows it will inevitably begin to reflect all sides of ‘real life’, much as the greater internet has done for many years. And while it’s always somebody’s point of view, it can’t be too long before Twitter is privy to the arrival of all manner of society’s ne’er do wells and monsters, and the pockets of depravity therein.

(Some might argue that they are already amongst us.)

Still, let’s look on the bright side: it’s a very public network. Better the enemy, and all that.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.