Policy Paper on: Political Cyber bullying in Afghanistan

OSCE Academy - Bishkek

International Cyber Security

Zarlasht Sarmast

July 28, 2021

Policy Paper on: Political Cyber bullying in Afghanistan

The term cyber bullying has always been famous for targeting vulnerable teenagers, women and other groups across the world. Cyber bullying also happens to be against ethnic minorities and religious minorities, for example how the Myanmar PM started a very violent movement towards the minority Muslim Community living in Myanmar through the use of social media, this particular act can be considered also as cyber violence as well as cyber bullying. This policy paper’s attention is focusing on a substantially new type of cyber bullying which targets the politicians of Afghanistan and demoralizes both the government and the Afghan People.

What is political cyber bullying exactly? Political cyber bullying is a type of bullying that mainly takes place in the digital devices like phones, computers and so on. It can happen via messages, emails, applications or publically publishing a humiliating or disrespectful image, article or note about a topic that concerns a particular group of people or a person. This type of bullying also includes negative, harmful wrong assumptions or rude content. In addition to that, if private information of a person or information about a topic is publically published without rights or permission, this can also be considered as cyber bullying and sometimes even unlawful or criminal behavior.

Afghanistan is one of the very few countries that have been suffering from different types of wars over the past more than 40 years. Without a doubt there are many different aspects and reasons for war this bloody war have been going on for such a long period of time. Some of those very obvious reasons are mainly the interferences of the neighboring countries like Iran, Pakistan and now China in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, the existence of different extremist groups like Al-Qaeda, Taliban, ISIS and many more and on top of all this corruption and lack of good governance which does not necessarily include all political leaders in Afghanistan, but it might be right to say that majority of the political leaders have practiced some type of corruption when they had a chance.

How is all of this related to Political Cyber Bullying and who is politically cyber bullying the Afghan government and main political leaders?

When it comes to the case of Afghanistan, it might be fair to say that brining the country on the right track might require a lot of time, brain, resources and efforts from both Afghans and the international community. It is not a one night job and the political cyber bullying towards the people of Afghanistan, the Afghan Government and the main political leaders is not going to make that any easier. It is widely reported that Afghanistan is once again experiencing a lot of difficulties and hardships not only because of the full withdrawal of the US military forces but withdrawal of different other supports that the country had from other allies like Germany, Australia and many others. This is a very important time for the country to unite and overcome the struggles as a whole. However, even that seems to become impossible and this is where the political cyber bullying comes in. Managing a country like Afghanistan is not an easy job to do. Based on a lot of reports the current government has been trying their bests to develop the economy of the country and bring in development if a lot of other different sectors like education, politics, and life standards of people and so on. But, what we have been mainly seeing in the local and international media focuses only on how the government has been failing. As an Afghan, I think if we are talking about the downfalls of our government, we should as community come together and see how we can help, yet instead there are very insulting images of the president, and other main political leaders in the country that are going viral on social media insulting both the government and national army of Afghanistan. More importantly this kind of cyber bullying demoralizes the people and makes them hopeless. Media and Social media are very strong tools and can impact the citizens’ psychology tremendously.

The political cyber bullying against the afghan political leaders is less by the Afghans themselves but more by countries like Pakistan. A great and recent example of this can be seen in a video from the first day of Eid. While the Eid-ul Adha prayers were taking place in the presidential palace, 4 rockets were fired very close to the palace and it happened while the president and other political leaders were praying and it is very normal for a human to be shocked, shake from fear and panic. This was a very sad moment for Afghanistan. Yet the news on Pakistani media was focusing on how funny it was that “Afghan Politicians got scared of rockets while they were praying”. This is not okay.

Political cyber bullying, especially the kind currently going on towards the Afghan government should be controlled in order to keep the hope among the Afghan people and keep them united. Some of the papers recommendations include: raising awareness about political cyber bullying for the Afghans, so that when they see content, they can identify if it is cyber bullying and not like, share or comment on it. In addition to that, learn about reporting posts that can be considered as cyber bullying, some control by the ministry of culture and information on media and digital media in order to stop panic and hopelessness among people, especially when the content is very negative and can create chaos in the society.