Pro-Taliban accounts promote Afshar Genocide hashtag

Photo: © Afghan Witness, October 2024

On 10 February, official Taliban and pro-Taliban accounts started sharing posts with the hashtag #AfsharGenocide on X (formerly Twitter). When using the hashtag, users commemorated the anniversary of the Hazara massacre in Afshar – part of Kabul city’s Police District 5 (PD5) – and denounced those responsible for it. 

The Afshar massacre refers to an event that occurred around 10-11 February 1993, when Burhanuddin Rabbani (the President of Afghanistan from 1992-1996) and Ahmad Shah Massoud (anti-Soviet resistance leader and the Defence Minister under President Rabbani) launched a military operation to overthrow militias in the area of Afshar in West Kabul – an area that was predominantly populated by Hazaras. The military operation escalated into the systematic targeting and massacre of Hazaras, including women and children. Human Rights Watch considers the event to be one of the “worst mass atrocities of Afghanistan’s civil war of the early 1990s.”

Data on #AfsharGenocide  

Between 10-12 February 2024, users on X shared the hashtag #AfsharGenocide to remember the event that had occurred 30 years prior. According to Meltwater - a social media listening tool – the hashtag received over 5,000 total mentions in this period. As is seen from the graph below, a spike occurred on 10 February 2024, with the hashtag being mentioned more than 3,000 times. 

Figure: Graph generated from Meltwater, showing the use of the hashtag #AfsharGenocide from 1 February to 15 February 2024.

Accounts spreading the hashtag and related narratives 

The hashtag was used by both official Taliban and pro-Taliban accounts on X to commemorate the massacre and denounce Massoud’s military operation. 

The first user to share a post with the hashtag was a pro-Taliban account with over 60k followers on X, @BaryaalOmar. The post, which received over 5,000 views, stated: “two and a half decades ago (1371, 21st and 22nd of Dalwe month)[1] during internal wars, thousands of Hazara citizens were killed by Shura Nazar5 and their partners in [the] Afshar area of Kabul city, the majority of them were women and children.” A similar caption was used in a post by another pro-Taliban account, @talhahmubareez1, with 20k followers, alongside an image depicting one of the alleged victims of the massacre.  

The hashtag was also shared in several posts by Qari Saeed Khosty, a senior Taliban official and  former spokesperson for the Taliban’s Ministry of Interior. Most were “reposts” from other accounts, with Khosty copying and pasting each post’s caption. For example, the caption of one of the posts, which had originally been shared by pro-Taliban account @MominShahKakar3, denounced the massacre and called Massoud “a traitor of the nation and [one of] the murderers of the Afghan nation.” Khosty’s most viewed post using the hashtag, with over 46k views, was originally shared by Sonia Niazi, a TOLO news reporter and presenter. The post, which includes a video, called Massoud a “national traitor” and claimed he was responsible for the death of thousands of Hazaras. 

Khosty also reposted a documentary (screenshot below), which had been originally shared by @talhahmubareez1. Both accounts used the caption: “Short documentary about the Afshar Genocide in Kabul - massacre of oppressed Hazara people in Kabul.” On both accounts, the post received more than 15k views. The documentary was also reshared by a pro-Taliban account, @panjsher0021, with 37.8k followers, with the caption: “Afshar disaster A crime whose effects are still present and the perpetrators of this cruelty are currently demanding new power… In the video, the father of several martyrs says that the curse is on Rabbani and his entire cabinet.”

Figure: Screenshot of a post shared by Qari Saeed Khosty which translated reads: “Short documentary about the Afshar Genocide in Kabul - massacre of oppressed Hazara people in Kabul.” 

Another pro-Taliban account, @A_Yun_500, with 12k followers, shared a post with images depicting those involved in the massacre, including a picture of Massoud. The post was shared with the caption: “The great tragedy of the Afshars, in addition to the genocide, also caused the dissension of the Hazara people. Since then, the Hazara people have been divided into groups. Generations have been killed here but our memory is still weak.” The same image was also shared by @talhahmubareez1 with the caption: “The killers of our countrymen in [the] Afshar incident. What are you doing?”

Anti-Taliban reactions on social media

Anti-Taliban activists took to X to denounce the posts being shared with the hashtag by Taliban and pro-Taliban accounts. According to anti-Taliban activists, pro-Taliban and official Taliban accounts could be sharing posts with the hashtags with the aim of sowing distrust and exacerbating ethnic tensions and disunity between non-Pashto ethnic groups, especially between Tajiks and Hazaras. By sharing the hashtag, Taliban accounts sought to exploit the fact that Massoud, an ethnic Tajik, was responsible for the Hazara massacre in Afshar. 

A prominent anti-Taliban activist, @Mahsa056, with 37k followers, shared a post highlighting how “[...] the propaganda machine of the Taliban is working hard to [...] inflame the Afshar issue in order to create discord between Hazara[s] and Tajik[s].”

In a similar fashion, other anti-Taliban activists, such as @SameerBedrud (30k followers) and

@arifrahmanii (129k followers), shared posts warning against the Taliban’s real intentions for mentioning the Afshar massacre. A post shared by @arifrahmanii (screenshot below), translated literally, reads: “We are in the day and night of the unforgettable tragedy of Afshar. We honour the memory of its victims and demand the trial of its perpetrators […] but we will not be fooled by Talib, rioters and sick hearts. The Taliban, which has hundreds of thousands of horrific crimes in its records, is a huge disaster in our time. Be careful of devils and idiots.”

Figure: Screenshot of a post shared by an anti-Taliban activist on X (formerly Twitter). The post, translated literally, reads: “We are in the day and night of the unforgettable tragedy of Afshar. We honour the memory of its victims and demand the trial of its perpetrators without compromise and without delay, and we expect all those who seek justice and believe in human rights to join the citizens of Hazara as guardians and cooperate in suing for the victims of the Afshar disaster. But we will not be fooled by Talib, rioters and sick hearts. The Taliban, which has hundreds of thousands of horrific crimes in its records, is a huge disaster in our time. Be careful of devils and idiots.” 

To conclude, between 10 and 12 February 2024, the hashtag #AfsharGenocide was mentioned more than 5,000 times by Taliban accounts on X. Official Taliban and pro-Taliban accounts shared the hashtag to commemorate the anniversary of the Hazara massacre and denounce Massoud’s violent actions in Afshar, with some posts calling him a “national traitor.” 

By sharing the hashtag, Taliban accounts sought to call out and discredit all those who still support Massoud, namely the National Resistance Front (NRF). The NRF, founded and led by Ahmad

Massoud, Ahmad Shah Massoud’s son, has been mobilising resistance efforts against the Taliban since their takeover in 2021.  

Several anti-Taliban activists on X, however, reacted to the hashtag and proceeded to call out the

Taliban for trying to exacerbate ethnic tensions in society and sow distrust between Tajiks and

Hazaras.           

[1] The Afghan date “1371, 21st and 22nd of Dalwe month” is 10 and 11 February 1993, in the Gregorian calendar. 5 A resistance force created by Massoud in the 1980s.