Thousands of Anonymous Tweets Call for US Troop Pullout

A hashtag has turned up on social media calling for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan: #get_out_of_Afghanistan. There have been several thousand tweets and retweets with this hashtag over the past few days.

The question of who is behind this high-volume messaging campaign cannot be definitely answered, but I took a closer look at the tweets to see what could be learned.

I collected over 17,000 tweets from Twitter’s API with a #get_out_of_Afghanistan, #افغانستانرارهانماید or #افغانستانپریږدئ hashtag.

My starting assumption was that these tweets were not real, and that this was obviously an influence campaign and not a trending, organic expression of “the voice of Afghans.”

I hypothesized that a specific cluster of Twitter users that might be bots—computer-operated accounts–or “fake users”—users with a specific agenda to spread these hashtags–were promoting this thread as part of an “information operation” in the social media space.

There are obvious indicators suggesting that these tweets are serving the agenda of the Taliban and its allies, such as frequent citing of the Doha agreement. The Taliban use social media extensively to support their activity in Afghanistan.

Below are the main takeaways suggesting that these tweets are organized and managed by a specific group:

• The vast majority of these tweets are from accounts that have not mentioned their location, which could be a sign of bots or fake accounts; moreover, the majority of those that did mention their location were tweeted from outside of Afghanistan.

• Only 9 out of 17,364 tweets/retweets are from verified accounts.

• The group behind this seeks to deliver its message to a larger audience by mentioning top US actors, ones who can directly influence the date of withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. They used the Twitter account of the president of the United States – @POTUS and @JoeBiden – the account of the US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation — @US4AfghanPeace — and the official account of the US Embassy in Afghanistan — @USAmbKabul. Further, most of these tweets are in English language rather than in Pashto or Persian languages.

Interestingly, the Twitter account from which this hashtag is retweeted most frequently was created less than a month ago (1-23-2021) indicating that this account was created only for promoting such propaganda.

• An analysis of the contents of these tweets reveals that they are centered on calling for the commitment of the Doha agreement and therefore the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Furthermore, the videos featured in the tweets show Taliban attacks on US troops.

• Some of the tweets are presumably intended to show to Afghan citizens and the international community that the poverty continues as long as the international community is in Afghanistan by showing pictures of people who have sold their kidneys, for example.

• Additionally, these accounts are increasingly using pictures of children with flyers in their hands with a #get_out_of_Afghanistan hashtag to promote their message.