Since the 1990s, the Taliban have constructed and disseminated certain narratives within Afghan society, which have gained varying degrees of acceptance among the general populace. This relative acceptance was largely due to dissemination filtered information to the public. During the initial years of Taliban rule, there were no free media outlets, and people’s access to information was limited to what the Taliban themselves propagated, thus allowing only a superficial understanding of the situation. The Taliban’s propaganda machinery deliberately injected these narratives into society. To deceive the public, Taliban officials staged events that reinforced the group’s constructed narratives. Over the twenty years of the Republic, much of which was marked by armed conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan government, some of these sacred narratives have been shattered, while others persist. However, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan indirectly contributed to reinforcing Taliban narratives. The continuation of insecurity and the government’s failure to provide security, especially on highways, led some people to believe that the Taliban could be providers of security in a society like Afghanistan. However, the second iteration of Taliban rule has also shattered the remaining narratives of this group. Free media, the internet, and citizen journalism have played a significant and serious role in dismantling these narratives.
- Security Provision
The emergence of the Taliban after a period of turmoil and civil war in Afghanistan occurred. Before the Taliban emerged in the 1990s with support from Pakistan, the people had endured a long period of insecurity and war, from which they were exhausted. Part of the population welcomed the Taliban at that time as a result of the dire and widespread insecurity. As the Taliban gained power and marginalized other parties and movements, there was no resistance against the group in major cities and most parts of the country. Therefore, there was no war that the Taliban propaganda apparatus could frame as security. Although people witnessed the Taliban’s violent behavior and crimes, because their homes were not official battlegrounds, they felt a false sense of security. The Taliban’s propaganda machine, utilizing mosques and media platforms, portrayed security as a Taliban gift. People, tired of war, found this illusory security somewhat tolerable. While there were skirmishes and resistance in some parts of the country, notably in the north and northeast, the Taliban prohibited the activities of independent media, and the few media outlets in operation highlighted the Taliban’s version of security.
The absence of free media allowed the Taliban’s media and propaganda apparatus to craft narratives and disseminate them to the public. These narratives, through extensive propaganda, transformed into clichés with a sanctimonious aspect. In the final years of the Republic, if people were less inclined to stand against the Taliban or support the government, it was because the government failed to provide security, which was seen as a fundamental human and societal need. People had become disillusioned with that government and, once again, due to propaganda efforts by Taliban sympathizers and even some countries advocating for a Taliban change, they believed that with the return of the Taliban, they might lose some freedoms and rights but would gain life and financial security in return. This is why there was no popular resistance against the Taliban.
However, in the past two and a half years, nothing of these clichés remains. Due to the activity of free media, albeit with many challenges and restrictions, and the ease of access to the internet, people are not solely reliant on Taliban propaganda for information. They are aware of ISIS attacks, the presence of terrorist groups in the country, and the expanding fronts of resistance and freedom. On the other hand, they know that the Taliban have dragged Pakistan’s TTIP war into Afghan soil. The widespread insecurity created by terrorist groups in the country is no longer hidden. The Taliban’s continuous denial of ISIS presence in the country is not effective, and people believe the crow’s caw more than the Taliban’s oaths and pledges.
On the other hand, rampant poverty in the country has led to a surge in theft incidents. Towards the end of the Republic, the activities of pickpockets had increased significantly, which somewhat decreased with the arrival of the Taliban under the influence of the aforementioned narrative; however, it has gradually resurfaced. Pickpockets are active again, and armed robbers, disguised in Taliban attire, are entering homes in various parts of the country, looting people’s properties. The Taliban also extort money from the people under various guises. All of this has completely shattered and broken the narrative of life and financial security under Taliban rule.
- Fight Against Corruption
Financial and administrative corruption is considered one of the reasons for the collapse of the Republic. Corruption and nepotism had created a gap between the government and the people in the Islamic Republic’s bureaucracy. The Taliban also took advantage of this situation and resorted to propagating their old and outdated narrative of fighting corruption. In this case, too, the aforementioned reason is evident; people in the first Taliban emirate were faced with limited information, which was filtered through the Taliban’s propaganda machinery. This information was engineered in a way that led people to believe in the Taliban’s fight against corruption or their members’ abstention from various forms of corruption.
However, the situation is different this time. Free media and oversight institutions continuously report on embezzlement and financial and administrative corruption within the Taliban. Alongside this, people are practically confronted with widespread bribery and corruption in their daily lives, from queuing for identity cards, passports, birth certificates, marriage licenses, and driver’s licenses to seeking medical treatment in government hospitals, where they encounter extensive bribery and favoritism. People who used to get a passport for only 5,700 Afghanis during the Republic, now buy the same passport after one or two years of waiting for $2,000 from the black market, directly paying it to the Taliban. Financial corruption is not limited to these institutions; rather, all mechanisms of the Taliban and the apparatus of their second emirate have been tainted. Recently, a teacher mentioned that the education director of a district had set a specific rate for each document that a teacher took, and if someone did not pay that amount of bribe, their document would not be processed. He said that the rate for changing a teacher’s appointment from one school to another was set at 10,000 Afghanis, and for appointment confirmation, it was 30,000 Afghanis. Numerous reports of prisoners being released after paying money are also published, showing how the Taliban are exploiting the people and then freeing them for a price. These incidents are not isolated cases that some people may be unaware of. Therefore, even if a media outlet does not prepare and publish a report on the Taliban’s administrative and financial corruption, the everyday behavior of this group speaks louder to the society, which has led to the breakdown of the narrative of fighting corruption by this group. Corruption is no longer just a label for the Taliban; it shadows them everywhere, and the stature of this group’s emirate has been tarnished by it.
The conflicts that occasionally arise between various factions of the Taliban over revenue sources also indicate that the Taliban are not indifferent to worldly possessions, contrary to what they preach. The Hanafi network, which played a central role in the fall of many provinces, considered itself deserving of controlling revenue streams and, for this reason, took control of mines, customs, and some income-generating institutions like the passport office. Later, the Taliban leader, in an order, ousted the customs from Hanafi’s control and took control himself. Mines were gradually taken out of Hanafi’s control as well. There was also a months-long struggle between two factions, Sarajuddin Haqqani and Mullah Baradar, over the control of the passport office, which, after the office remained closed for several months, Mullah Baradar eventually managed to sideline Haqqani and appoint his pawn to be the black-market director of passport trade.
Another form of Taliban corruption is their entanglement in moral corruption. Just as the phenomenon of “bacha bazi” was widespread among leaders and commanders of this group during their first reign, the situation remains the same this time as well. In the past two and a half years, shocking reports and narratives of moral corruption within this group have been published in the media. According to these reports, the Taliban have abducted some women and turned them into their sex slaves. The stories of sexual assault by this group and their extramarital relationships, which are occasionally reported from various corners of the country, are the tip of the iceberg in the vast sea of this moral corruption. Due to the Taliban’s extensive control over the circulation of information and the caution of Taliban leaders, only a small portion of the extensive moral corruption of the Taliban sees the light of day. However, even these visible cases have made it extremely difficult to maintain the narrative of this group’s fight against corruption, which cannot be quickly repaired by any propaganda machinery in the short term.