Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Taliban and ISAF battle it out, in 140 characters or less

Published: Decem****PESHAWAR:

**War is horrific and impersonal; unless it’s being waged on a website that features blue birds.
**
The Taliban and Isaf take on each other not just in the forbidding, treacherous terrain of eastern and southern Afghanistan, they attack, taunt and take jibes at each other, in 140 characters or less, on popular microblogging site, Twitter.

A series of exchanges between @ISAFmedia, the force’s official account, and @ABalkhi, the account for a user named Abdulqahar Balkhi purportedly associated with the Taliban, reveals another face of the war in Afghanistan.

November 21
ABalkhi: Nooristan: ISAF raid homes in at 01:00 am in Kamdish district’s Kamo village, search homes, martyr 6 innocent civilians (shot dead) b4 leaving.
ISAFmedia: Another false report.

November 17
ISAFmedia: In the Game of Tweets, you win or you … become @ABalkhi I guess
ABalkhi: Thats why they picked you for this job. If I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t have a job.

November 17
ABalkhi: Article CSM [Christian Science Monitor]: 1000s Afghan mercenaries hired by CIA in Afghanistan. Commit outright human rights abuses (rape, robery, extra judicial killing etc).
ISAFmedia: We don’t hire mercs to commit murder/rape/torture. OTOH … that seems to be a core competency among Taliban
ABalkhi: Your officials admitted to it dumb dumb. And how can you talk about Taliban when u cut fingers etc and use them as trophies
ISAFmedia: Dumb dumb? How the dialogue elevates. Look: Nobody takes you seriously. Everything you type is wrong. Just. Stop.

November 16
ABalkhi: Breaking: ISAF helicopter shot down in Ghazni’s Qarabagh district last night during raid. 13 killed according to witnesses. Area cordoned off
ISAFmedia: Nope again. No ISAF helo shot down last night. Nice try.

November 14
ABalkhi: Why are you capturing civilians? Afghan Officials Say They Captured Taliban Spokesman [LINK]
ISAFmedia: Story you linked states he was official Taliban spokesman. Taliban = hardly a civilian.

October 14
ISAFmedia: IJC: Taliban has not been successful. Badr offensive failed. Not taken single objective they said they would
ABalkhi: OK so takng out of key puppt leaders, kndhar prsn break, expndng reach to nrth, trgetng enmy bses n centrs n Kabul no achievmnts?
ISAFmedia: IJC: Over winter, we’ll remain on offensive and drive home our initiative. ANA will lead even more as they develop capabilities
ABalkhi: Why not over summer???

September 20
ISAFmedia: GEN Allen 2 insurgents: now is time, join AFG future … otherwise we will fight you. We’re looking at you @abalkhi
ABalkhi: We have joined Afghan future but unfortunately you do not fit in that picture

September 14
ISAFmedia: Re: Taliban spox on kabul attack: the outcome is inevitable. Question is how much longer will terrorist put innocent Afghans in harm’s way?
ABalkhi: I dnt knw.u hve bn pttng thm n ‘harm’s way’ fr da pst 10 yrs.Razd whole vllgs n mrkts.n stil hv da nrve to tlk bout ‘harm’s way.

July 20
ISAFmedia: 400+ Afghan National Security Forces patrol Lashkar Gah with no assistance from coalition forces to eliminate insurgents
ABalkhi: If 4000+ ‘coalition’ forces could not stop Mujahideen in Lashakrgah, 400+ of their puppets wont last for long…

edited by gulraiz khan
*Published in The Express Tribune, December 5[SUP]th[/SUP], 2011.*ber 5, 2011

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

interesting... the set of tweets on Oct 14 was funny, ISAFmedia must be pissed on this guy

but looks somewhat fake, why would ISAF do this? and if this guy has easy access to internet, that he can tweet on almost daily basis why cannot they track him down?

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

[QUOTE]
September 20
ISAFmedia: GEN Allen 2 insurgents: now is time, join AFG future … otherwise we will fight you. We’re looking at you @abalkhi
ABalkhi: We have joined Afghan future but unfortunately you do not fit in that picture
[/QUOTE]

good one

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

@abalkhi<<<Sounds like abal khi is posting from Karachi

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

Maybe you are right, but it could be a balkhi (from balkh)..

None the less funny encounters between the two!

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

even the original post mentions his name, Abdulqahar Balkhi hence abalkhi...

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

classy .. :k:

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

haha, i think both accounts are used by isaf.

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

A news regarding this published in Washpost..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/us-military-taliban-use-twitter-to-wage-war/2011/12/16/gIQAKnJ32O_story.html?hpid=z3U.S. military, Taliban use Twitter to wage war

KABUL —**The Twitter war began in earnest Sept. 14, in the midst of a sustained attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the adjacent headquarters of the U.S.-led international military force.

Until then, NATO officials had kept close tabs on the messages posted on two accounts linked to the Taliban’s media arm — but had refrained from engaging or acknowledging them.**

U.S. military officials assigned to the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, as the coalition is known, took the first shot in what has become a near-daily battle waged with broadsides that must be kept to 140 characters.

“How much longer will terrorists put innocent Afghans in harm’s way,”@isafmedia demanded of the Taliban spokesman on the second day of theembassy attack, in which militants lobbed rockets and sprayed gunfire from a building under construction.

“I dnt knw. U hve bn pttng thm n ‘harm’s way’ fr da pst 10 yrs. Razd whole vilgs n mrkts. n stil hv da nrve to tlk bout ‘harm’s way,’ ” responded Abdulqahar Balkhi, one of the Taliban’s Twitter warriors, who uses the handle *@ABalkhi.

The running spat appears to be the sole open line of communication between Americans and the Taliban after exploratory peace talks collapsed this year. U.S. military officials say the dramatic assault on the diplomatic compound convinced them that they needed to seize the propaganda initiative — and that in Twitter, they had a tool at hand that could shape the narrative much more quickly than news releases or responses to individual queries.

“That was the day ISAF turned the page from being passive,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Badura, a military spokesman, explaining how @isafmedia evolved after the attack. “It used to be a tool to regurgitate the company line. We’ve turned it into what it can be.”

**Spreading the message
**
It’s hard to say who is winning the war of words. If the number of followers is the benchmark, @isafmedia is far ahead. Over the past year, the number of users following the coalition has swelled from 736 to nearly 18,000. The two Taliban accounts —@alemarahweb, which mainly links to news releases and official statements, and the more pugnacious @ABalkhi — have just over 9,000 combined.

Many terrorist organizations maintain sophisticated Web sites and aggressive social media operations, despite widely suspected efforts by Western intelligence agencies to hack into and deactivate their online sites.

U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned about extremists’ stepped-up activity on social media sites, citing cases in which Americans have been recruited online by terrorists overseas. The House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence convened a hearing this month on how jihadists were using social media.

“Terrorist networks are spreading their message, recruiting sympathizers and are connecting operationally online,” subcommittee chairman Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) said in opening remarks, according to a transcript.

Although the Taliban is not the only extremist group on Twitter, it appears to be the only one exchanging regular tweets with the U.S. military.

Just who is tweeting on behalf of the Taliban is a mystery, U.S. military officials say, speculating that their interlocutors could be waging cyberwar from Afghanistan, Pakistan or a cozy apartment somewhere in Europe. Their messages indicate that whoever is at the keyboard gets quick, if sometimes inaccurate, reports from the field, the military’s cyberwarriors say.

**“They have a good tie to operational intelligence,” said Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a Twitter novice who has become one of the brains behind the @isafmedia account.
**
In tweets, the Taliban calls foreign troops “invaders” and Afghan security forces “puppets” or “cowards.” Most coalition vehicles that are reportedly blown up are referred to as “tanks,” even though there are relatively few tanks in the fight. Reports of battlefield victories are grossly exaggerated, U.S. military officials say.

“Most of the stuff we see is propaganda,” Cummings said. “One of the reasons we started putting emphasis on this is that every once in a while, the average follower might think this is sort of true.”

**‘An awakening’
**
ISAF’s public affairs staff members, who work out of a crammed, second-story office with fluorescent lights, do not respond to every Taliban tweet. The primary account user for @isafmedia, whom Cummings and Badura declined to identify, usually flags something the Taliban has posted. Those present discuss whether to go on the offensive or just lay low.

“We pick and choose,” Cummings said.

That way, he and Badura said, they feel they have elevated the level of discourse — at least as much as enemies fighting deadly battles can.

“If you look at the chronology over the past six months, it does look like there have been some changes in their content and claims,” Badura said. “They realize that we pay closer attention and are going to call them on it when we realize there is something completely sensational or inaccurate.”

But the sharp swipes continue. On Dec. 9, @ABalkhi tweeted that “@isafmedia continue genocide of Afghans: ISAF terrorists beat defenseless man to death.”

@isafmedia shot back: “Sorry @ABalkhi: looting and beating innocents NOT part of ISAF practices during routine searches”

@ABalkhi had the last word in that exchange, linking to a video depicting abuse by a rogue platoon of soldiers who were accused of killing Afghan civilians for sport in Kandahar province during the summer of 2010. “@isafmedia too true. You only shoot and loot for fun!!!” the Taliban operative wrote.

Badura and Cummings said they don’t have a strong opinion about whether groups such as the Taliban should be given a platform on mainstream social media sites. The Taliban accounts do not appear to violate Twitter’s guidelines. As long as their enemy continues tweeting, they said, the U.S. military will keep hitting reply.

“One might argue that those platforms should remain as open as possible,” Badura said. “What we’re seeing is that just as we’ve recognized the value, so have they. We’ve had an awakening, and we’re not leaving that battle space unchallenged.”

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

^ it was delightful to read this, thank you for sharing.

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Re: Taliban and ISAF battle it out in TWITTER

Yes its interesting, a latest tweet encounter between the two:

http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/1634778016/isaf_logo_normal.jpg

ISAFmedia ISAF @

@alemarahweb](http://twitter.com/#!/alemarahweb)** You sure about that? No ISAF reporting matches your claim-again.**

**11 minutes agoFavorite](http://twitter.com/#)***Retweet](http://twitter.com/#)******Reply

](http://twitter.com/#)*****

http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/1359633060/70445_100001708911882_6320569_n_normal.jpg

alemarahweb mostafa ahmedi

3 invaders killed as their tank blown up: KUNAR, Dec. 19 – A roadside bomb tore through one of the invaders’ arm…[bit.ly/uRWCmT

[URL=“http://twitter.com/#!/alemarahweb/status/148703514154106881”]1 hour ago](http://t.co/kBYu0dKK)Favorite](http://twitter.com/#)Retweet](http://twitter.com/#)Reply](http://twitter.com/#)