A Taliban fighter threatens a woman who was waiting to get access to the international airport with her family and others in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. Afghan women who worked with the U.S. or international groups are frantically erasing any trace of those links for fear they will be targeted by the Taliban.
JIM HUYLEBROEK/The New York Times News Service
Facebook may not lift its ban on the Taliban even if the United States stops imposing sanctions on the group, which has rapidly taken control of Afghanistan, the social media company’s policy chief said on Wednesday.
“They will not be allowed while they are prescribed by the U.S. law and even if they were not prescribed by U.S. law, we would have to do a policy analysis on whether or not they nevertheless violate our dangerous organizations policy,” Facebook’s vice president of content policy Monika Bickert said on a call with reporters about the company’s latest community standards enforcement report.
YouTube bans accounts believed to be owned by the Taliban
The U.S. State Department does not list the Afghan Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization like it does the Pakistani Taliban. But Washington does sanction the group as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” which freezes the U.S. assets of those blacklisted and bars Americans from working with them.
Story continues below advertisement
Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.