The Taliban's Virtual Emirate

The Afghanistan Taliban currently controls or contests large swaths of northern, central, and southeastern parts of the country while the percentage controlled by the internationally-backed federal government fell from an estimated 72% in 2015 to 57% in November 2016. In addition to running shadow provincial administrations in many of the country’s provinces and maintaining a robust military fighting force and civil administration complete with tax and zakat collection, road and infrastructure maintenance, and judicial bodies, the Afghan Taliban also continues to maintain a significant digital presence online as part of its ongoing insurgency and contest for control of the country. The movement’s cultural and media affairs branch runs multiple websites in Pashto, Dari, Urdu, Arabic, and English that are generally stable, though some do occasionally go offline temporarily. They have also branched out onto social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram where they also run multiple accounts as supplements to their full websites. These websites are also not simply copies of one another. Rather, each includes unique content as well as translations of major statements that are posted on all of the websites, for example the annual [Id al-Fitr and [Id al-Adha messages from the group’s....