How the Taliban Turned Social Media Into a Tool for Control

It is possible to describe the threat to the National Security of the state in a three-dimensional space with a physical domain, cyber domain and natural domain. In a similar fashion, when speaking of conflicts or wars, it is possible to distinguish multiple tools relevant to war capabilities like economic, military, cyber, informational etc. The informational tool is a euphemism for propaganda. Before internet, it would be found in newspapers, posters, journals etc. Today it can be found mostly in cyber domain. Thus besides the obvious need of resilience to cyber-attacks in governmental institutions, there is also a need for resilience to informational attacks, aka disinformation. When fighting a war in particular, it is important for each party to position itself as a virtuous player. The paper discusses how Taliban has used social media to influence the public perception of the Afghanis, but also of international community. A policy conclusion would be that it does not matter how many battles US wins, it will lose the war if it loses in the informational domain.