Ten years after the start of the US war in Afghanistan, some battles have taken an odd turn in a country where only 3.4% of the population has internet access. In the latest twist in the war for hearts and minds, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force and his Taliban counterpart have been dueling in 140-character spurts on Twitter over what who's to blame for civilian deaths, which side will most likely win the war, and competing for best use of shorthand. I'm kind of surprised at the level of the Taliban spokesman ability to truncate English while retaining readability!
It all started last month following the Taliban's 20-hour attach on the Green Zone in Kabul that left 9 dead, 23 injured, and millions of dollars of damages:
The Twitter account for the ISAF spokesman, @ISAFmedia, unwittingly triggered the Twitter throw-down by posing this rhetorical question in response to a defiant statement from a Taliban spokesman issued via traditional channels: "Re: Taliban spox on #Kabul attack: the outcome is inevitable. Question is how much longer will terrorist put innocent Afghans in harm's way?"
To ISAF's surprise, a Taliban spokesman identifying himself as Abdulqahar Balk, Twitter handle @Abalkhi, responded in good text-ese: "@ISAFmedia i dnt knw.u hve bn pttng thm n ‘harm's way' fr da pst 10 yrs.Razd whole vllgs n mrkts.n stil hv da nrve to tlk bout ‘harm's way'."You can read a fuller account of the exchange here. Looks like Abalkhi is relatively new to Twitter, he only has about 500 tweets, but a lot more followers (perhaps he got a bump as a result of the media attention over the dueling tweets?). His profile description includes a link to a news site Voice of Jihad and his tweets are mainly news links with anti-American rhetoric interwoven throughout.
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