Taliban’s PSYOP – strategic enabler for the 2021 offensive

ABSTRACT

The paper focuses primarily on the Taliban’s psychological operations (PSYOP) during their offensive in 2021. The unexpected rapidity of the Taliban’s advance led to a question about the role of the Taliban’s PSYOP during the offensive, which is the primary research problem. The paper is not only an intrinsic case study, but also an instrumental part of a broader research of PSYOP of non-state armed actors. The analysis showed that PSYOP played a key role primarily before and after the offensive, while during the Taliban’s advance, their role was secondary to the use of conventional warfare.

KEYWORDS:

• Taliban
• PSYOP
• offensive
• Twitter

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Atiq, ‘The Taliban Embrace Social Media’.

2. An intrinsic case study focuses on a specific case that is interesting for a researcher as such. The goal is a deep understanding of a specific case without necessarily aiming to generalize the findings. On the other hand, an instrumental case study is conducted to reach a general understanding of a problem – in the case of this paper psychological operations – where the chosen case is a mere instrument used to solve a larger puzzle. See Stake, The Art of Case Study Research, 3.

3. Atiq, ‘The Taliban Embrace Social Media’.; Taneja, ‘From “Night Letters” to the Internet’.

4. General inductive approach describes a way of analyzing raw data by creating a set of codes, which are gradually reduced to a small set of themes describing the analyzed phenomenon. See Thomas, ‘A General Inductive Approach’, 238–240.

5. Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Software.

6. See Thomas, ‘A General Inductive Approach’, 241–242.

7. Keilar and Stracqualursi, ‘Taliban Issue Death Sentence’.; Night letters are usually handwritten notes commonly put in some place (such as the doors of madrassa) during the night to convey a message to a whole village or individual. The content is typically a choice to either comply with what the Taliban wants, or be punished. See Johnson, Taliban Narratives, 15, 54.

8. Taliban’s social media director, Qari Saeed Khosty, explicitly stated in an interview with BBC News that the group focused mainly on Twitter. See Atiq, ‘The Taliban Embrace Social Media’.; Amore, “Twitter Refuses to Ban Taliban.“.

9. Davis, ‘How the Taliban Became a Military Force’, as cited in Rashid, Militant Islam, chapter 3.

10. It seems that the first occurrence of this term was in the headline of an article by Dov S. Zakheim, ex-Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller). See Zakheim, ‘Taliban 2.0’. Nowadays, the term Taliban 2.0 is commonly used by newspapers and media to describe the group in their second period of rule over Afghanistan.

11. Maley, ‘Introduction: Interpreting the Taliban’, 14.

12. Neo-fundamentalism advocates for the return to the fundamental form of Islam based on strictly Quran and Hadith, often calls for establishing an Islamic caliphate, and rejects traditional Islamic authorities like imams and jurists. Islamism seeks to promote Islam in the day-to-day life, but in less literal sense than the strict adherence to the holy texts. See Brahimi, ‘The Taliban’s Evolving Ideology’.; Roy, Islamic Radicalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

13. Ibid.

14. CNN News, ‘Taliban Blackbans the Internet’.

15. Atiq, ‘The Taliban Embrace Social Media’.

16. Bernartis, ‘The Taliban and Twitter’.

17. Singh, ‘Explaining Varieties of Corruption’.; Singh, ‘Corruption and Clientelism’.

18. Sapko, ‘The State of Corruption’, 1–2.

19. The White House, ‘Continued U.S. Support’.

20. Ibid.; Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), ‘Quarterly Report’.; U.S. Department of Defense, ‘Enhancing Security’.; Schroden, ‘Afghanistan’s Security Forces’.

21. Biden, ‘Remarks by President’.

22. Schroden, ‘Afghanistan’s Security Forces’, 27.

23. Sadat, ‘I Commanded Afghan Troops’.

24. Macias, Turak and Nq, ‘Intelligence Failure’.

25. Biden, ‘Remarks by President’.

26. Sadat, ‘I Commanded Afghan Troops’.

27. BBC News, ‘US Has Conceded Too Much’.

28. Johnson, Taliban Narratives, 16.

29. Schleifer, ‘Psychological Warfare’, 4–5.

30. The Art of War was published many times. I worked with the following version: Tzu, Sun. The Art of War: Classic Collector’s Edition. Annotated. El Paso Norte Press, 2009.

31. US Army, PSYOP Book 2, 1–1.

32. Based on the data from DataReportal, the number of internet users in Afghanistan increased almost by one million between 2020 and 2021, see DataReportal, ‘Digital 2021: Afghanistan’.

33. ADM Mullen, ‘Strategic Communication’, as cited in Munoz, Military Information Operations, 4.

34. Rashid, Militant Islam, chapter 1.

35. Huntington, ‘Preface’, xvi.

36. Shoemaker, ‘If Terrorism’, 59.

37. Johnson, ‘Taliban Adaptations’, 12.

38. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, as cited in Johnson, Taliban Narratives, 278.

39. International Crisis Group, ‘Taliban Propaganda’, 1.

40. Taranas – simply meaning ‘songs’ – are chants commonly used by the Taliban. They often play on historical narratives, on Afghan pride, culture and traditions. See Johnson and Waheed, ‘Analyzing Taliban Taranas’.

41. Chibelushi, ‘The Taliban Has’.

42. Reuters, ‘U.S Offers’.

43. Schleifer, ‘Psychological Operations’, 13.

44. Thorbecke, ‘How the Taliban Uses Social Media’.

45. Galula, Counterinsurgency, 16.

46. Bahar, ‘Social Media and Disinformation’, 40.

47. Johnson, Taliban Narratives, 30.

48. AFP, ‘Taliban Shows off’.

49. Giustozzi, ‘Afghanistan: Taliban’s Organization and Structure’, 22.

50. Schroden, ‘Afghanistan’s Security Forces’, 23–24.

51. Johnson, Taliban Narratives, 174.

52. Thorbecke, ‘How the Taliban Uses Social Media’.

53. Johnson, Taliban Narratives, xxxiii.

54. The extent of the external support for the Taliban is not known, but it is possible that it was underestimated throughout the years – see Giustozzi, The Taliban at War, 13–14.

55. Compare Schroden, ‘Afghanistan’s Security Forces’, 27 and Giustozzi. ‘Afghanistan: Taliban’s Organization and Structure’, 22.

56. Graham-Harrison and Beaumont, ‘Afghan Anger’.

57. Ibid.

58. Jensen, ‘How the Taliban Did It’.

59. Ibid.

60. Keilar and Stracqualursi, ‘Taliban Issue Death Sentence’.

61. Johnson, Taliban Narratives, 54.

62. Giustozzi, ‘Afghanistan: Taliban’s Organization and Structure’, 18.

63. Johnson, ‘The Taliban Insurgency’, 339–341.

64. Price-performance ratio is a metric explaining how worth certain product or action is based on its effectiveness and costs. PSYOP in cyberspace can greatly affect target audiences with very low operational costs.

65. See Berger, ‘Taliban’s Strategic Communications’.; Johnson, ‘The Taliban Insurgency’, 339–341.

66. Also considering the fact that based on some testimonies, the shabnamah was for example put in the shoe of an individual during his prayers in a mosque. However, it is worth noting that based on the time of publishing, the night letters in question were possibly written after Kabul already fell in hands of the Taliban – see Williams, ‘Taliban Pins Terrifying “night Letters”’.

67. Macias, Turak and Nq, ‘Intelligence Failure’.

68. UNAMA, ‘Afghanistan: Protection of Civilians’, 5–11.

69. Ibid.

70. Brader, ‘Timeline of Taliban Offensive’.

71. Giustozzi, ‘Afghanistan: Taliban’s Intelligence’, 19–20.

72. DataReportal, ‘Digital 2021: Afghanistan’; The range is based on several sources used by DataReportal, including the company’s own estimation. It is hard to assess the accuracy of any of those numbers, yet it is clear that the internet penetration is low in Afghanistan.

73. Ibid.

74. Statcounter, ‘Social Media Stats Afghanistan’.

75. Ibid.

76. Thorbecke, ‘How the Taliban Uses Social Media’.

77. Dari is Afghan version of Farsi.

78. @IeaOffice, @QyAhmadi21, @suhailshaheen1, @Zabehulah_M33.

79. Twitter’s language identification algorithm labels the tweets as Farsi, as it is virtually unrecognizable in its written form from Dari.

80. For further information on the channels the Taliban uses for their PSYOP see Johnson, Taliban Narratives.

81. Lamensch, ‘The Fall of Kabul’.

82. Ibid.

83. Giustozzi, ‘Afghanistan: Taliban’s Organization and Structure’, 22.

84. Atiq, ‘The Taliban Embrace Social Media’.

85. Ibid.

86. Compare the debate in Smith, ‘The Taliban Want the World’ and Amnesty International, ‘The Fate of Thousands’.

87. Amnesty International, ‘The Fate of Thousands’, 25–26.

88. George and Hassan, ‘Taliban Warns of Counterattacks’.

89. Macias, Turak and Nq, ‘Intelligence Failure’.

90. In this case, ‘internal‘ factors primarily refer to affair inside Afghanistan, not in the Taliban itself.

91. Schroden, ‘Afghanistan’s Security Forces’, 27.

92. Al-Jazeera News, ‘Taliban Captures’.

93. Macias, Turak and Nq, ‘Intelligence Failure’.

94. Jensen, ‘How the Taliban Did It’.; Schroden, ‘Lessons from the Collapse’.

95. Strand and Suhrke, ‘Quiet Engagement with the Taliban’, 44–45

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under Specific University Research Grant.

Notes on contributors

Robin Burda

Robin Burda is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic. He focuses on hybrid threats, psychological operations, and Cognitive Warfare. He is a project team lead in NATO Science and Technology Organization.