Taliban spokesmen use Twitter to broadcast updates on Afghanistan as Donald Trump remains banned

Twitter has allowed the Taliban to spread news of their takeover of Afghanistan even as former President Donald Trump is being kept off the platform.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, whose Twitter account has amassed some 287,000 followers, regularly provides updates on the Taliban’s seizure of the country. He uses social media to assert that the overthrow has been largely peaceful despite reports to the contrary.

One Monday tweet from Mujahid, which might be an alias, showed a video of Afghanis in Kabul and was accompanied by the caption noting that Taliban militants have been deployed to various parts of the city.

“The general public is happy with the arrival of the Mujahideen and satisfied with the security,” Mujahid claimed.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump was permanently suspended from the platform after the Jan. 6 riot and has not been allowed to tweet for months.

The ban prevents Trump from interacting with his followers during the botched U.S. withdrawal, even as some figures have used the platform to engage the situation. For example, GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas posted an email and phone number urging Americans stuck in Kabul to call his office to assist with their escape.

Mujahid is not the sole militant on the site either. Qari Yousef Ahmadi is another Taliban spokesman who regularly tweets updates in Pashto to his 60,000 followers. His most recent post claimed that Kandahar’s airport, which “housed thousands of [Afghan] soldiers,” came under complete Taliban control on Monday.

Suhail Shaheen, the spokesman of the Taliban’s Qatar office, has repeatedly claimed in English on Twitter that foreign diplomats and embassy workers in Kabul will remain safe as the Taliban invade, even as countries work to rush their citizens from the crumbling country.

When contacted, a spokesperson for Twitter said the company is “proactively removing content that violates our policies” but did not specifically address the Taliban spokesmen or former president.

The Washington Examiner reached out to Trump for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Source: Yahoo News