The return of the Taliban has upended Afghanistan’s social media.
Prominent influencers have gone dark or fled, while residents and activists are scrambling to scrub their digital lives.
Sadiqa Madadgar, a contestant on the reality singing competition “Afghan Star”, had amassed a huge following with her stunning vocals and down to earth, girl next door persona. Madadgar had 21,200 subscribers on YouTube and 182,000 on Instagram.
On Saturday 15 August, Madadgar posted an political post on Instagram. “I don’t like to express my pain online but I’m sick of this,” she wrote. “My heart is in pieces when I look at the soil, my homeland which is being destroyed slowly before my eyes.”
The following day, Taliban militants seized Kabul, and Madadgar stopped posting.
Millions of Afghan youngsters — particularly women and religious minorities — fear that what they once put online could now put their lives in danger.
Ayeda Shadab was a fashion icon for many young women with 290,000 followers on Instagram and 400,000 on TikTok. Each day she would model the latest outfits that were stocked in her upscale Kabul boutique.
“If the Taliban take Kabul, people like me will no longer be safe,” she told German broadcaster ZDF. “Women like me who don’t wear a veil, who work, they can’t accept them.” She fled to Turkey.
Aryana Sayeed, one of Afghanistan’s most prominent pop stars, posted a selfie on Wednesday taken on a US military evacuation flight headed to Doha.
Facebook announced new security measures allowing users in Afghanistan to quickly lock their accounts. These also apply to WhatsApp and Instagram, owned by Facebook. US advocacy group Human Rights First has published advice in Pashto and Dari on how Afghans can delete their digital histories; it was advice they gave to activists in Hong Kong and Myanmar.
[Photo: Shah Marai/AFP]