Afghanistan Taliban long have used Twitter, WhatsApp as propaganda, governance tools
Daniel Knowles, a foreign correspondent for the Economist magazine, noted on Twitter that such WhatsApp setups were common even before the Taliban took power. “I am slightly annoyed I didn’t write about these WhatsApp helplines ages ago,” he said after news of the hotline shutdown was reported. “But when I heard about them, they weren’t ‘helplines’. It was more just, your local Taliban were reachable by WhatsApp, and if you called, they would resolve disputes. It’s just how they govern.”
Gloss