Forget Osama?s Diary: Taliban Now Tweeting In English

Social media clearly played a role in the Arab Spring movement. Now let?s see if it advances the agenda of ? the Taliban?

Yes, the Taliban ? which, The Guardian notes with proper British deadpan irony, tried to return Afghanistan to the stone age ? is now using the very 21st century invention Twitter to share its message in English, the language of the infidels it hopes to vanquish.

The account in question, @alemarahweb ? whose bio is in English, sort of (?The official website of islamic emirat of afghanistan? ? has been active for five months. It exists mainly to share links to full stories on its web sites.

By the way, nice touch, Taliban: Stories are accompanied by Facebook? ?share? button.

But in recent days the Taliban has begun salting its feed with English updates to its (now) 2,900+ followers, the Guardian noticed Thursday:

Their Twitter feed, @alemarahweb, pumps out several messages a day, keeping 993 followers up to date with often highly exaggerated reports of strikes against the ?infidel forces? and the ?Karzai puppet regime?. Most messages are in Pashtu, with links to news stories on the elaborate and multilingual website of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the Taliban?s shadow government likes to style itself.

Today, the feed broke into English for the first time, with a tweet about an attack on police in Farah province: ?Enemy attacked in Khak-e-Safid, 6 dead.

We are not expecting any @plusk RTs, and not just because Ashton Kutcher isn?t one of the 12 accounts @alemarahweb is following.

All kidding aside stories like this will probably elicit shrugs pretty soon (if not right now). Twitter has become a universal communications grid and you simply can?t be heard properly if you don?t use it to spread your word. Even using the language of the enemy. Even if that word is the not terribly upbeat ?US invaders spy plane shot down in Wardag.?

I just hope we don?t learn that Fred Armisen is behind it.

Source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/taliban-tweeting-in-english/

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