Former Taliban Official 'Addicted' to His iPhone

Former Taliban Official 'Addicted' to His iPhone
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The Taliban are well known for banning music, movies and all sorts of modern conveniences — but that may not to apply to iPhones.

Al Jazeera English reporter Hamish Macdonald was astonished earlier this month when he sat down for an interview with a former Taliban official — who promptly whipped out his iPhone.

"I'm addicted," reportedly said Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan until late 2001. "The Internet is great on this — very fast."

Macdonald says on his official blog that Zaeef then showed him and his film crew his favorite Web sites.

"I half expected him to log on and show us 'Taliban Twitter,'" writes Macdonald.

Zaeef became well known on Western television during the interim period between the Sept. 11 attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

He held multiple news conferences in which he both condemned the terrorist attacks and insisted that Usama bin Laden, then a guest of the Taliban, was not responsible.

He then spent more than three years in U.S. custody, including significant time at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, before being freed in 2005.

Zaeef now serves as a go-between between the more moderate elements of the Taliban and the Afghan government and its allies.

Macdonald says he lives in comfortable house arrest outside Kabul.

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I could not believe my eyes. We had arrived to interview Mullah Zaif, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan who is now under virtual house-arrest on the outskirts of Kabul, when he walked into the room, sat down on the couch and pulled out an iPhone.

A former member of the Taliban! An iPhone! How times have changed.

During Taliban rule, which ended when the US and its allies rolled in and took control of Kabul in 2001, the leadership had banned just about anything associated with modern technology.

There were no televisions, no computers, no radios, no music and though iPhones were not around back then, they most certainly would not have been allowed.

I asked Zaif about his gadget. His response was pretty much the same as everyone who owns an iPhone.

"I'm addicted," he said, "the internet is great on this, very fast."

He proceeded to show myself and our film crew his favourite websites. I half expected him to log on and show us 'Taliban Twitter'.

But there is a very serious side to all of this of course.

The Taliban and other groups opposed to US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have been incredibly quick to latch on to new technology and methods of communication.

It has enabled them to wage their war in a sophisticated fashion, using not just guns and bombs, but messages and propaganda too.

When reporting from Afghanistan I am always amazed at how quickly we get information from all sides of the conflict with vastly different accounts of what happened.

It is fair to say that no single version is the truth, and that is why we always try to report what every side is saying.

Al Jazeera English - Focus - One month in Kabul

 

Not to make light of it......but....

Yeah....."there's an app for that". Que catchy iphone music and the guitar strum...

 

Yeah it is a little worry some. Oh and don't worry what it translates to it's benign. I didn't want it to be too un-politically correct :O