Taliban capture TV and radio station in Afghanistan

 

(photo via Hindustan Times)

Taliban captures TV and radio stations in Afghanistan to broadcast threats and warnings and to also propagate the ‘Voice of Shariah’

According to Nabbharat Times, the Taliban have taken over the TV station to broadcast threats and warnings and to also propagate the Taliban’s Voice of Shariah.

Taliban has upped its ground offensive ever since the US has started withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. For the last five days, fierce fighting has broken out in three major cities in the south and west Afghanistan, namely Herat, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, as Taliban militants seek to seize them from government forces. According to Hindi daily Navbharat Times, the Taliban, on August 2 (Monday) captured a radio station in Lashkar Gah.

Additional story at: www.tinyurl.com/4avb7mtz

Afghanistan monitoring observations

Kabul transmitter is still present tonight on 1107kHz with announcements and Quran reading (via SDR Haparanda Sweden)

(Franck Baste (BDXC 1467)

621 kHz 0100 - 1900 UT

1107 kHz 0030 - 1930 UT

1296 kHz 0030 - 1730 UT

(W. Bueschel/HCDX)

At 1825 UTC on 1107 kHz just after reading from Quran, there was announcement "Emarat Islami Afghanistan" by male announcer, instead of 'Islami Republic of Afghanistan', station taken over ?

(Alokesh Gupta, India/HCDX)

Also, 1107 kHz still IDed as Radyoe Afghanistan and on 621 kHz Deewa Radio in normal operation; 1296 kHz carries VOA Ashna Radio // 7495 kHz at 1555 UTC.

(Mauno Mauno Ritola/HCDX) 

Taliban takeover: What we know so far

President Ashraf Ghani left Afghanistan on Sunday following hours of negotiations for a peaceful transition of power, as the Taliban amassed its fighters around the capital Kabul.

The development comes in the wake of the Taliban’s stunning victory on the battlefield, capturing more than a dozen provincial capitals in less than two weeks.

Additional story at: www.tinyurl.com/ydj3k84h 

(photo via Navbharat Times)

Taliban take over radio station after capturing Kandahar

Here in India we try to catch the 6100 kHz. But it is in-active. But news sources said, they are broadcasting only on FM. They stopped to play the film songs. In the meantime Radio Afghanistan's official website were also under construction. More details awaiting from the monitoring people.(Jaisakthivel, Ardic DX Club, Chennai, India/HCDX 16 Aug 2021)

11 Taliban Members Killed in US Airstrike as Fighters Sweep Afghan Provinces, Thousands Flee

Taliban now have their eyes on Mazar-i-Sharif, the biggest city in the north, whose fall would signal the total collapse of government control. At least 11 Taliban members were killed in a B-52 airstrike by US forces in Kapisa province’s Nijrab district on Tuesday morning, TOLO News quoted a provincial police spokesman as saying.

Additional story at: www.tinyurl.com/7ntf4c 

Who is Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar? The Taliban leader who is rumoured to become the next president of Afghanistan

www.tinyurl.com/aesjd6dy

Additional News Sources with text and video

Sky News 

www.skynews.com

Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/

Bongino Report

https://bonginoreport.com/

Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/

Taliban on Twitter, as Afghan rebels enter Internet age

The Taliban once banned all television, music and cinema in Afghanistan, but now they are fighting their war via Twitter, the online messaging network that revolutionised global communication. The Islamist extremists sent out their first tweet in English on 12 May claiming ‘enemy attacked in Khak-e-Safid’, with a link to their website for more details about rebel fighters killing “at least 6 puppet police”.

The move into the English language on Twitter is the latest sign that the Taliban are embracing modern technology in the propaganda battle that runs alongside the guerrilla war of ambushes, suicide bombings and mine explosions. When they ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, almost all electronic products were outlawed as un-Islamic. Photographs of living things were illegal, and ownership of a video player could lead to a public lashing.

Today, they send out text messages and emails, release videos of attacks on US-led international troops, and run a website that evades repeated efforts to close it down. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan joined Twitter about six months ago,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told the media, using the group’s name from its time in power. “We did it because we know Twitter is a popular social network in the West, and we want to make our voice heard. They used to hear only one-sided news about us from the invaders, but now they can know the reality.”

Mujahid said that an official Taliban page on Facebook had been shut down by the company earlier this year, but supporters still host personal pages passing on news and information. “We regard modern technology including the Internet as a blessing of God,” he said, declining to explain the Taliban’s change of attitude since they were toppled for sheltering Al-Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks.

The Taliban’s Twitter feed @alemarahweb, a reference to Islamic statehood, sends out several messages every day, mostly in the Pashto language, and is followed by 4,200 people with the number growing rapidly since English was introduced.

The NATO-led coalition force in Afghanistan on Saturday used its own Twitter feed to post a response saying: “What’s that? Taliban’s tweeting in English? Lies are lies no matter the language.” Bizarrely, the Taliban’s Twitter account follows tweets sent out by a British soldiers’ charity, as well as a carpet-weaving development programme and a site linked to Islamist militants in the Caucasus.

“The Taliban have now discovered the magical power of media technology and are widely using it in their favour and to attract new recruits,” said Mohammad Zia Bomia, director of the Kabul-based Mahal News agency. Its sophisticated website, currently at http://alemarah-iea.net, has for years been posting information in Pashto, Dari, Arabic, Urdu and English - though many of the claimed attacks and death tolls are exaggerated or untrue.

Videos on the site show alleged coalition atrocities and footage of Taliban attacks accompanied by background music and gunfire. The Taliban also say they broadcast Internet radio programmes for two hours a day in some regions, despite low web access in the country.

The Afghan intelligence agency (NDS) concedes it has struggled to act against the Taliban’s Internet presence, saying that the insurgents’ technology experts are based outside the country. “We have been trying to track them and prevent their propaganda activities as they are against our national interest and constitution,” NDS spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said. “Unfortunately they are almost all based outside Afghanistan soil,” he said, in a veiled reference to neighbouring Pakistan.
(Source: AFP/R Netherlands media Network Weblog)

Taliban propaganda employs leaflets, sermons and clandestine radio

Ernesto Londono: "The Taliban continues to rely heavily on decentralized, conventional propaganda efforts, which U.S. military officials say is the crucial battleground. These include the distribution of leaflets with threats or pleas, sermons in mosques and clandestine radio stations. 'They've co-opted the religious narrative for the last several years,' Rear Adm. Greg Smith, NATO's communications chief in Afghanistan, said in an interview. 'They've used that narrative locally very effectively.' Foreign troops, meanwhile, are ill-equipped to offer counterarguments in mosques and other gatherings, forcing them to rely on Afghan officials to do so, Smith said. So far, that effort has been slow in the Taliban's southern strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, even as Taliban influence has spread in the east and the north, Afghans say." -- Nevertheless, the propaganda war, as with the military war, must ultimately be fought by Afghans who are opposed to the resumption of Taliban rule. The best the United States can do is to fight propaganda with non-propaganda, i.e. the credible information that causes propaganda to wither.
Washington Post, 02 Oct 2010/Kim Elliott blogspot)
photo: UN/unhcr.org

U S fights Taliban on airwaves

GOLESTAN: "You're listening to W.IED 102.5 FM 'the bomb'," joked Staff Sergeant Todd Bowers as he slotted another cassette of religious chants into his portable radio station.

While most of the battles fought by US Marines in restive Farah province are against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and guns, Bowers, 30, is fighting a war of words to win the hearts and minds of people in rural western Afghanistan.

The radio station - a portable deck and 45-foot antennae at the military base in Golestan - began as a chance to give local villagers a taste of the music they were banned from hearing under the hardline Taliban rule.

Continued story at Channel News Asia
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1009564/1/.html
(Alokesh Gupta, India)

Taliban winning the new media war 2.0 ?
The skilful use of old and new media technologies by terrorist organisations threaten to undermine the efforts of Coalition armed forces in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to an Australian National University (ANU) researcher.

Speaking to Computerworld ahead of the War 2.0: Political Violence and New Media conference being held at the ANU, Prakash Mirchandai, a visiting fellow at the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, said terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda had successfully harnessed technologies such as video and mobile phones to bypass Coalition messages conveyed by mainstream media.

“If you look at where the Taliban is getting its message across to the non-committed Afghanis it is through video,” he said. “They’re shooting Jihadist videos which are very sophistically edited and put on DVDs and the Internet.”

Full story at Compuetworld
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/321114/taliban_winning_new_media_war_2_0
(R Netherlands Media Network weblog)

U.S. troops in Afghanistan use radio to help tune out Taliban

By JIM LANDERS / The Dallas Morning News
jlanders@dallasnews.com

COMBAT OUTPOST ZORMAT, Afghanistan – In this badly understaffed post, one of the more successful battle strategies for isolating the Taliban has been what the U.S. Army calls RIAB – Radio in a Box.

Radio Zormat started as a 50-watt FM transmitter – in a box – set up in 2007 inside this base. The station reached people living within a six-mile radius of the town of Zormat.

Now it's a 250-watt transmitter that the Army hopes will reach clear across the Zormat area of operations for the 70 soldiers at this base, a high plains region between two mountain ranges.

Continue story at: Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-radio_06int.ART.State.Edition1.4c909a7.html

Taliban target NATO-backed radio transmitter

Text of report in English by Afghan independent Pajhwok news agency website
Faizabad, 9 August: A transmitter of the ISAF-run radio was attacked in the northeastern Badakhshan Province, wounding a guard and damaging a guard room. Sayed Abrar, a police official of the counter-terrorism department in the province, told Pajhwok Afghan News five rockets were fired at the Radio Saday-e Azadi [Radio Voice of Freedom] of NATO forces in outskirts of the provincial capital Faizabad last midnight.
Only one rocket hit the target, wounding a local guard of the transmitter and damaging the guardroom, said Abrar. Other rockets missed the target and did not cause any damages.
Abrar said the attack was the act of the Taliban who sporadically launch rocket attacks at night-time mostly targeting local military bases of foreign forces. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihollah Mojahid, said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) radio based in Kabul with local offices in northern provinces was stopped after the rocket attack destroyed its transmitter in Badakhshan.
Radio Saday-e Azadi mainly airing music and news with publicity against militants has local transmissions in northern provinces in addition to its main transmissions in Kabul.
(Source: Pajhwok Afghan News website, Kabul, in English 1548 gmt 9 Aug 08 via BBC Monitoring/R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)