Monitoring Desk: Conflicts, wars, and narrative buildings have a history as old as the Greek and Roman eras. There is no need to detail what the history is and how they can correlate because readers who are interested in the narrative building may already know or can find sizeable material on this correlation.
There is an interesting case that indicates that sometimes narrative building (such as ISIS in the past) can be more successfully offered by groups than by the states. The recent research on Taliban narrative building through documentation of their ‘struggle’ is an interesting and useful research for the students of narrative building.
The most important factor to be noted is busting the cliché that Audio-visual impact is stronger than content. Taliban’s major work is in the field of producing content and documentation—the two tools used since the Greek period to build narratives. There is no doubt that the Afghan Taliban also produced documentaries and short films but their major work is in producing books, flyers, and handy leaflets with shorter versions of ‘their side of the stories’.
A document published by Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) titled “Taliban Narratives (1) Books: “Who we are and why we fought” provides academic but interesting insight into the mechanism of Afghan Taliban propaganda that looks better than modern nation-states. The document is written by Sharif Akram and edited by Jelena Bjelica, Letty Phillips and Kate Clark.
The ‘Introduction’ of the research is reproduced hereunder for the ready reference of the readers witha direct link to the research work.
Introduction:
When we first came to Kabul in August 2021, people were terrified of us. They viewed us as strange creatures. I remember one man asking me if I was Afghan or Pakistani. Why? Because for twenty years, the media had been propagating lies about us. They portrayed us as Punjabis [Pakistanis], as brutal men with no respect for rules. We’d had no chance to speak for ourselves. People had been completely brainwashed. Now it’s necessary for people to know who we are and why we fought. These are the essential questions that the Emirate must answer.
These were the words of a Taliban official working in Kabul who spoke to the author in April 2023. He was expressing a common sentiment, that the movement had been, as another official, a member of the Islamic Emirate’s Cultural Commission explained to the author, “introduced to our people and the world by our enemies.” After two decades of ultimately successful insurgency, the Taliban have embarked on a different endeavor – creating narratives about themselves. This is an important milestone because, in terms of books and other publications, the Taliban have, until now, been viewed pretty solely from the perspectives of outside observers. Since coming to power again, they have felt the need to explain themselves to other Afghans, who are either unfamiliar with or hostile towards them. Hence, a cascade of books in Pashto, Dari, and occasionally English have been published since August 2021 about the movement, its leaders, and the war, all sponsored and promoted by the state.
That such writing was not done earlier is a function of what had to be prioritized, either running the country while continuing to fight the Northern Alliance, pre-2001, or organizing rebellion and insurgency, thereafter. The world knew little about the movement on the eve of the United States invasion in 2001[1] and it maintained its reclusive nature after it launched its first attacks against the US in the early 2000s. Being secretive helped avoid enemies tracking them down, while enigma remained part of the Taliban ‘brand’. However, as the insurgency expanded and grew in strength and power, the Taliban did make sporadic attempts to record and archive their wartime experiences, detailing the lives of their fighters and the suffering of their families in the conflict, showing that they understood early on the importance of narratives in winning the war[2]While they remained focused on military warfare, the increasing effort they devoted to psychological warfare during the last decade of the insurgency represented a huge shift, perhaps inspired partly by similar efforts from jihadist groups elsewhere.
In countering the narratives of the Islamic Republic and US and NATO, and spreading their own propaganda in turn on social media, the Taliban had some successes (see for example this Empirical Studies of Conflict paper on the Taliban’s use of social media). Their emphasis was, by necessity, very much on addressing immediate practical needs to do with the war effort, such as promoting their cause and focusing on the military aspect of the conflict, rather than on systematically documenting the history of the movement and the war it was fighting. In terms of documenting the insurgency at this time, their efforts were patchy and random and had limited influence on their intended audience. They were mainly led by a small group within the movement’s cultural commission (coupled with a separate and more resourceful media wing under the auspices of the Haqqanis). They had limited resources at their disposal and lived in constant fear of being targeted by US or NATO forces.
Since the re-capture of power in August 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has seized the opportunity to define itself by documenting its perspectives on the movement and the war and is putting resources into this effort. On 24 October 2024, the Ministry of Information and Culture announced that it had established a major new directorate under the name of the General Directorate for the Protection of Jihadi Values, which was tasked with documenting and safeguarding the history of the war. It will presumably have access to considerable state resources and build on the fragmented data previously collected by members of the Cultural Commission.
There have also been a number of books published by prominent Taliban members and supporters since August 2021 and these are the subject of this paper. The author has analyzed the content of nine books that recount the history of the Taliban movement written by Talibs or their supporters, including its origins, the ideological and historical factors that led to its emergence, the fall of the Taliban’s first emirate in 2001 and what they see as their jihad against US and NATO forces.
This report opens with a summary of the books, before analyzing their narratives. The author then discusses IEA’s attempts to construct an identity for their movement and how writers have documented the war they fought. The report also explores what lies behind these efforts to create the movement’s narrative and how these narratives have been received and viewed by other Afghans.
The original research paper can be read by clicking this link
