The fall of Afghanistan played out on social media and changed the world

The Gulf war was the first conflict that played out on 24-hour rolling news. It feels like the fall of Afghanistan is the first conflict that was shaped by how it played on social media.

Unlike flare-ups with China in distant seas, or domestic terror in the closed world of North Korea, there are smartphones aplenty in Afghanistan. Those devices have provided a window on the situation and transformed how it played out in the US and beyond.

Without all of the vivid user-generated content, the situation would have been dry bulletin for Reuters: “Unrest as Taliban advances – busy scenes at airport as people try to flee”. Another colourless update to add to the pile in the American mind from a seemingly endless military quagmire.

Instead, videos pinged around TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, bringing the jaw-dropping scenes of people clinging to, and falling from, departing planes.

With better, more reliable data networks, it could have been even more arresting, providing platforms for live-streamed videos that would have been picked up by TV networks worldwide and avidly watched on social media. But even without live streams, the emerging video appeared to force Joe Biden back from Camp David, where he’d bizarrely planned to hole up for days, and release $500m to help with the evacuation effort.

It also provided a slightly more nuanced image of a conflict zone – with videos emerging of Taliban fighters grinning from ear to ear as they took over a gym and struggled to use the machines, hoisting up barbells with form that’d make a gym regular wince. Later, another clip of Taliban fighters emerged showing them happily bumping around on dodgem cars, a bizarre contrast to the hardline rule that their ascension will likely usher in.

While regional experts are still imperative for the coverage of complex foreign news stories, the ever-refreshing Tweetdeck columns now provide an instant, searing view of conflict that we could barely imagine just 20 years ago.

Yours,

Dave Maclean

Indy100 editor (US)