The websites‘ disappearance may just be temporary as the Taliban secures new hosting arrangements. But the reported removal of the WhatsApp groups followed the banning of Taliban accounts by Facebook, the service’s parent company, on Tuesday after the US-backed Afghan government fell to the Taliban.
Like Facebook, Google’s YouTube considers the Taliban a terrorist organisation and prohibits it from operating accounts. that delivered the victorious insurgents‘ official messages to Afghans and the world at large in five languages went offline abruptly Friday, indicating an effort to try to squelch them. It is not immediately clear, though, why the sites in the Pashto, Urdu, Arabic, English and Dari languages went offline Friday. They had been shielded by, a San Francisco-based content delivery network and denial-of-service protection provider. Cloudflare has not responded to emails and phone calls seeking comment on the development, which was first reported by The Washington Post.
