Fact Check: Did an anti-Taliban group vow to seek revenge for the Pahalgam terrorist attack?

India Today

2 days ago

A video going viral on social media claims to show an anti-Taliban group called the Liberation Front of Afghanistan vowing to avenge India for the Pahalgam terror attack. The video shows four armed men in military gear and balaclavas delivering a statement, threatening vengeance against Pakistan-backed terror groups.The video begins with audio in a foreign language, followed by English. A portion of the English audio says: 'We are the Liberation Front of Afghanistan. And today, we speak not in whispers but in war cries. Pahalgam bleeds in our memory. We remember the laughter of children silenced by foreign hands. ISI's puppets dared to spill innocent blood. They lit a fire they cannot control. You ask why we now walk with a foreign intelligence agency. Because vengeance has no borders.'advertisement
In the latter part of the video, the front members allegedly vowed to take revenge for the Pahalgam terror attack.A Facebook user shared this video with the caption: 'The Liberation Front of Afghanistan has officially warned: 'Pahalgam has not yet been avenged. We will not stop until every ISI-sponsored resistance fighter in Pakistan or elsewhere is hunted and eliminated.'' Its archive can be viewed here.The news outlet NewsX also presented this video as recent news.India Today Fact Check found that this video is old and edited. The original dates back to 2022, when an anti-Taliban military front issued a statement highlighting the wrongdoings of the Taliban regime. It has nothing to do with India, and predates the Pahalgam attack by years.OUR PROBEA quick reverse search of the video's keyframes led us to multiple Persian-language social media posts from 2022. This version of the video did not have English audio or subtitles, unlike the viral video.These Persian-language posts said, 'Another military front against the Taliban, named the 'Afghanistan Liberation Front', announced its existence. In a video recording, this front stated that the women of this land do not enjoy any Islamic or human rights. They speak of standing firm against the Taliban.'Many news outlets had reported on this video at the time as well. According to the Arabic outlet Al Ain News, the Taliban's actions, like arresting journalists and oppressing women, led to the formation of the Afghanistan Liberation Front. The report also stated this group had no connection to the National Resistance Front led by Ahmad Massoud.We generated English subtitles of the original Persian-language video using the translation bot Translate Mom on X. It can be seen below. According to these subtitles, the speech mentioned the Taliban and its atrocities. It did not refer to India at all. We shared the subtitles we generated with Mujahid Andarabi, the editor of Radio Afghanistan International. He confirmed that the translation was mostly accurate.He also said that to his knowledge, neither the Afghanistan Liberation Front nor any other anti-Taliban group had recently issued any statement referring to the Pahalgam terror attack.Thus, it's clear that an old video issued by an anti-Taliban front is being shared with fake English audio that links it to the Pahalgam terror attack.- Ends
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