Tufail Ahmad - Afghan Taliban's Internet Media Empire Hosted In Malaysia, Singapore, America

By Dilip -
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban's shadow government in the country, operates a network of websites and social media accounts to connect with potential jihadists, report the Taliban activities in Afghanistan, and advance the cause of global jihad by means of audio, video text and PDF documents. Most of these websites and social media accounts are hosted in foreign countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, and the U.S. In recent years, various Taliban websites have been hacked by foreign intelligence agencies, but they invariably reappear after a few days.

The Islamic Emirate is a formidable jihadist organization led by Mullah Mohammad Omar, who is believed to be in hiding in Pakistan. Mullah Omar is regarded as Emir-ul-Momineen, or the leader of the faithful, by almost all jihadi groups worldwide. The Islamic Emirate is the largest terrorist organization in Afghanistan, followed by Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan led by fugitive terror mastermind and former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Some of the key languages in which the Taliban media outlets disseminate the message of jihad are Pashtu, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and English, attracting global audiences. On a day-to-day basis, these web-based media outlets report the activities of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. These jihadi publications also source their content frequently to Zabihullah Mujahid and Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, the two main spokesmen of the Islamic Emirate.
This paper reviews details of the major Afghan Taliban websites and their hosting and domain registration details, as well as their accounts on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google, among others.[1] It should be borne in mind that the Taliban's latest video and audio publications are released generally first by Arabic-language jihadi forums such as Al-Fida' and Ansar al-Mujahideen Arabic Forum (AMAF).

The Taliban's Jihadi Websites And Their Audiences
Six leading websites that propagate the Afghan Taliban's jihadi activities are: shahamat-urdu.com, shahamat-english.com, shahamat-arabic.com, shahamat-farsi.com, shahamat.info, alsomod-iea.info, shahamat-movie.com, among others. These websites are at the forefront of reporting the Taliban attacks on U.S. and NATO forces as well as jihadi propaganda material.  

All the Taliban websites' logos include the title "Voice of Jihad," and all of them cross-promote each other and classify their content in the following categories: news, commentaries, interviews, poems, audios, videos and the like. Although the Islamic Emirate says that the Taliban's focus is limited to Afghanistan geographically, its operation of these websites in a number of languages indicates that it is courting supporters and likely jihadists from across the world.

The Urdu-language website shahmat-urdu.com also publishes Shariat, a monthly magazine produced in PDF form, and also recently published on the Internet, to reach audiences in Pakistan and northern India.. read more:
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/840/7102.htm

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