Taliban set Afghan woman on fire for poor cooking: Report



Members of the Taliban reportedly set an Afghan woman on fire for what they said were her poor cooking skills, according to reports.

What are the details?

Former judge and women's rights advocate Najla Ayoubi said that members of the Taliban set a local woman on fire on Thursday after they deemed her cooking unacceptable.

"They are forcing people to give them food and cook them food," Ayoubi revealed. "A woman was put on fire because she was accused of bad cooking for Taliban fighters."

Calling the conditions across the country a "nightmare," Ayoubi added, "There are so many young women ... in the past few weeks being shipped into neighboring countries in coffins to be used as sex slaves."

Ayoubi said that she fled the country as soon as it became apparent that the Taliban would rise to power through force.

“They also force families to marry their young daughters to Taliban fighters," she added. "I don't see where is the promise that they think women should be going to work, when we are seeing all of these atrocities."

What else?

Last week, an unnamed Kabul-based female lecturer told the Associated Press that the Taliban has been visiting local homes to check its residents.

"They have been starting to go door to door, checking people's houses, sometimes forcing in," the woman recalled. "They are saying they are leaving the population alone, but that's an indication that this is not true."

Women's rights activist Fawzia Koofi — a member of the Afghan delegation working to negotiate peace during the U.S. withdrawal — insisted that Afghan women will greatly suffer under the new brutal regime and that chaos could have been avoided if the U.S. had delayed its exit for just four more weeks.

Koofi said that while she realized it was not "sustainable or logical" for the U.S. to remain in Afghanistan, the abrupt withdrawal was "so untimely."

"President [Joe] Biden could have delayed this to wait for a political settlement," she said. "For even just another month, just get the political settlement first. They could have come to a deal. ... Afghanistan is the victim of back-to-back mistakes."

She continued, "We all want international forces to leave. It's not sustainable or logical from any point of view to have a foreign force protecting your country, but this is so untimely for the U.S. to have chosen now, in the middle of negotiations and before we get a settlement."

Why is Trump banned on Twitter, but the Taliban isn't? Experts say the terror group simply follows the rules of the far-left social media platform.



Twitter is well-known for its bent to ban any user — even former President Donald Trump — for not adhering to rules interpreted by gatekeepers at the decidedly left-wing social media platform.

So why does the un-woke Taliban — with its bloodthirsty reputation and unapologetic, misogynistic codes — manage to survive on Twitter?

Simply put, according to the Washington Post, the Taliban and its numerous agents have become adept at following the rules of Twitter.

Why Trump’s banned and the Taliban aren’t: they play by the rules. https://t.co/5y5no9ZnmN

— mark seibel (@markseibel) 1629296914.0

What are the details?

"The Taliban of today is immensely savvy with technology and social media — nothing like the group it was 20 years ago," Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online extremism, told the Post.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, for example, sports over 350,000 Twitter followers, the paper said.

"The Islamic Emirate has ordered its Mujahideen and once again instructs them that no one is allowed to enter anyone's house without permission," Shaheen tweeted Sunday as the Taliban rolled through Afghanistan and took over Kabul. "Life, property and honor of none shall be harmed but must be protected by the Mujahedeen."

Trump — the former leader of the free world who still enjoys an immense following — couldn't tweet about his latest round of golf at Mar-a-Lago if he got down on his knees and begged Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

The Post noted that "Trump's posts for years challenged platform rules against hate speech and inciting violence" while the Taliban does not. Katz added to the paper that the Taliban "is clearly threading the needle regarding social media content policies and is not yet crossing the very distinct policy-violating lines that Trump crossed."

However, Katz added to the Post that what's happening at present "doesn't mean at all that the Taliban shouldn't be removed from social media, because the waves of propaganda and messaging it is spreading — permissible as it may seem by some content policy standards — is fueling a newly emboldened and extremely dangerous global Islamist militant movement."

More from the Post:

The tactics overall show such a high degree of skill that analysts believe at least one public relations firm is advising the Taliban on how to push key themes, amplify messages across platforms, and create potentially viral images and video snippets — much like corporate and political campaigns do across the world.

One image from a video circulated online in Afghanistan shows Taliban fighters dressed in camouflage and brandishing machines guns while posing unmolested in an eastern province, not far from Kabul, under a gorgeous pink and blue sky. The text below, in Pashto and English, reads, "IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF FREEDOM."

Wide distribution of such propaganda imagery would have been almost impossible for an insurgent movement there a generation ago, before the arrival of smartphones, Internet connections, and free social media services brought unprecedented online reach to Afghanistan. The nation lags the world in Internet connectivity but it has grown sharply over the past decade amid a gush of international investment.

What does Twitter have to say?

While the likes of Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are resolute in their determination to shut down Taliban-related posts and videos, the paper said Twitter is not removing accounts purporting to speak for the Taliban.

Mediaite reported that when a Twitter spokesman was asked if the social media giant would join other tech companies in banning the terror group, he "sidestepped the question" and said in a statement that Twitter would "continue to proactively enforce" its rules on the "glorification of violence, platform manipulation and spam."

Anything else?

The Post also reported that the Taliban and its supporters "have large numbers of accounts linked across numerous platforms to keep its messaging machinery from being easily squelched by the actions of one or two tech companies."

"Based on the sheer volume of output, several of the accounts are run by individuals whose primary job may well be social media," Darren Linvill, lead researcher for the Clemson University Media Forensics Hub, told the paper. "These accounts aren't run by Taliban leaders or fighters; they are run by individuals with uninterrupted Internet access on both a desktop and handheld device, as well as decent English language skills."

More from the Post:

As it became clear in recent months that the Americans were going to finally leave, the Taliban's tactics grew still more sophisticated, with messages heralding each advance on the battlefield and promising that a better Afghanistan lay ahead.

One message on the Taliban's English-language website in April attacked feminism as "a colonial tool" and claimed that it "attacks the institution of family in a family-centric Muslim society." Another the following month espoused the importance of freedom of the press, calling it "essential for every society and country."

The Taliban's social media tactics in recent months can be seen as fitting a broader charm offensive — including recent conciliatory public remarks about pardoning those who worked with Americans and urging skilled people not to flee the country. At a news conference Tuesday, spokesman Shaheen made a point of calling on a female journalist and foreign reporters.

But Emerson Brooking — a resident senior fellow for the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, which is a Washington-based think tank — told the paper that skepticism may not be bad idea when it comes to the Taliban's social media machinations.

"We should be deeply distrustful of it," Brooking told the Post. "Recriminations will come later."

Stephen Colbert likens Taliban militants who took over Kabul to Jan. 6 Capitol rioters — and critics eat him alive



Late-night TV host Stephen Colbert on Monday noted the disastrous Taliban takeover of Kabul and all other major Afghanistan cities following the rapid exit of U.S. troops from the Middle Eastern nation under the leadership of President Joe Biden.

But one part of Colbert's monologue, not surprisingly, took the focus off the horrific practices of radical Islam and ridiculed his political enemies here in the U.S.

What did he say?

"We've had troops there for 20 years. They fought. They sacrificed. Their families sacrificed, so we wouldn't have a terrorist attack in America planned in a foreign country," he said before turning the observation to a perverted perspective.

"Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a civil war in Afghanistan? We've got our own on Capitol Hill." And as Colbert recited his lines, an image of the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters flashed on the screen to enthusiastic applause.

Check it out:

Stephen Colbert likens Trump voters to the Taliban: "Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a Civil War in… https://t.co/RsgTjHQqxH

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) 1629190124.0

How did folks react?

One might go so far as to say Colbert suggested that U.S. soldiers ought to be fighting the likes of the Jan. 6 rioters — but for a number of Twitter users, his comparison of the Capitol rioters to the Taliban was bad enough:

  • "Hilarious. Everyone who thinks they were in a war [on Jan. 6] should give up their health insurance and get on the VA plan and see how it goes from there," one commenter wrote. "If we are making comparisons, what about BLM & Antifa? They don't count though do they?"
  • "He's comparing a one-time act of 1,000 people doing less property damage than the tens of thousands in BLM riots to the Islamic extremists who stone gay people & women who have sex before marriage who just stormed back into power," another user said.
  • "He just called for our troops to fight U.S. citizens," another commenter noted.
  • "Here we go! Libs can't talk about Afghanistan b/c it's so damning against Dementia Joe. Instead they change the subject to Jan 6th," another user observed. "Reminds me of Chris Rock circa 2002: 'I ain't afraid of al-Qaeda, I'm afraid of Al Crack[a],' minimizing Islamic terror & stressing white supremacy."
  • "Y'all agreeing with Colbert, call me when viking hat man stones women to death for the 'crime of being raped' like the Taliban does," another commenter said. "F*** all of you; you are completely deranged."
  • "Lefties can't [see] anything that doesn't confirm their biases," another user wrote. "This propagandist wants to compare unarmed Trump supporters protesting @ the [Capitol] to an actual armed overthrow of a government. Mental gymnastics champion. Love how the 2020 riots are just ignored like [they] never happened."

Mike Pompeo savages Biden after Biden administration tries to blame Trump for Afghanistan failure



Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and Trump secretary of state, blasted President Joe Biden on Sunday after the Biden administration attempted to blame former President Donald Trump's administration for the melee unfolding in Afghanistan.

What are the details?

During a "Fox News Sunday" interview with Chris Wallace, Pompeo said that Biden had no other move but to blame the former administration for its mistakes.

Wallace asked, "How dire is the situation in Afghanistan as we talk today? Is a full Taliban takeover of the country now inevitable?"

Pompeo responded, "Well, Chris, it certainly looks like it. It looks like the Biden administration has just failed in its execution of its own plan. This reminds me of when we have seen previous administrations allow embassies to be overrun. It's starting to feel that way. It also looks like there's a bit of panic having to reinsert soldiers to get them out. The plan should have been, much like we had, was that we would have an orderly conditions-based way to think about how to draw down our forces there.

“Were I still the secretary of state with a commander in chief like President Trump, the Taliban would have understood that there were real costs to pay if there were plots against the United States of America from that place," Pompeo added. “Qassem Soleimani learned that lesson, and the Taliban would have learned it as well."

Pompeo added that Biden was only trying to deflect blame onto Trump.

“If the risks weren't so serious, Chris, it would be pathetic," Pompeo added. “I wouldn't have let my 10-year old son get away from this kind of pathetic blame-shifting. He should be less focused on trying to blame this on someone else than to solving the problem of making sure that we protect and defend American security. Chris, it's worth noting this did not happen on our watch. We reduced our forces significantly and the Taliban didn't advance on capitals all across Afghanistan. So it's just a plain old fact that this is happening under the Biden administration's leadership now almost a quarter of our way into his first term, this is not the way leaders lead, by pointing backwards."

He continued, "We had a bad deal we inherited — the JCPOA [Iran nuclear deal]; we got out of it. We secured America from the risk from Iran. We inherited a horrible deal in Syria where ISIS controlled real estate the size of Great Britain. We crushed them. Every president confronts challenges. This president confronted a challenge in Afghanistan. He has utterly failed to protect the American people from this challenge."

Mike Pompeo calls out Biden's 'pathetic blame shifting' on Afghanistanwww.youtube.com