A photograph appeared on social networks showing a smiling man with two cups of ice cream in his hands. Internet users claim that it was made in Afghanistan, and that it depicts one of the Taliban militants, who rejoices at the group’s coming to power. We checked whether the photo is really a militant of a terrorist organization.
The photo began to circulate after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan. Social networks have apparently already banned some of the content, but the photo was circulating with these captions a couple of weeks ago:
“Ha-ha, one of the Taliban militants serves ice cream to his friends in honor of the capture of Afghanistan,” ― wrote one of the Twitter users.
“Peaceful Taliban are fighting for the ice cream revolution in Afghanistan,” - ironic responded another.
“The Taliban tastes ice cream with great joy,” ― signed photo third.
Now there are not many posts left on social networks with a photo of an Afghan holding cups of ice cream in his hands with a smile. This is likely due to the fact that social networks have begun to actively block content related to the Taliban: this policy has already adhere to, for example, Facebook and Instagram (Twitter has not yet taken such a position officially). However, some publications on social networks remained: users claimed that the photo was taken in Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power. Fact check of this story done even some Pikabu users.
In fact, we are talking about a photo that was taken in 2002 by the famous photojournalist Steve McCurry. His greatest popularity was brought to him by his work “Afghan Girl,” which was featured on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985.
June 28 Makkari published on Twitter a post with an old photograph of himself from 2002, also taken in Afghanistan. It showed the same man with two cups of ice cream. Makkari captioned the photo: “A man buys ice cream for his children in Puli Khumri, Afghanistan, 2002.” The photo was taken after the city was captured during the US and UK military Operation Enduring Freedom. released from the Taliban.
This was the same photo published in 2016 on the online image uploading and storage service Imgur. It was signed correctly. Later photograph appeared and on other sites on the Internet.
A day after the Taliban claimed full control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on August 16, along with compliments for the photographer among replays of the tweet appeared another: “mostly used in memes.”
Apparently, the photo got into the general stream of publications about the Taliban after they seized power: various English-language publications wrote about the militants’ ironic posts, and on social networks appeared videos where they ride rides in amusement parks.
A day later, on August 17, a new, this time real, photograph of Taliban militants holding ice cream appeared on Twitter. Her published journalist of the Afghan publication TOLO Abdul Omeri.
It is unknown whether this was a reference to an existing photograph of an Afghan man with ice cream taken by Steve McCurry. Some English-language media counted, that the photo was ironically taken in response to American President Joe Biden, who once asked about the seizure of the Capitol statedthat he came to eat ice cream. Reporters tried to ask him questions about the events at the Capitol, but Biden simply left from the answer, hiding behind ice cream, for which he received ridicule in the media.
One way or another, the photo that caught the attention of Internet users shows not a Taliban fighter, but an Afghan man buying ice cream for his children after the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban in 2002.
*Taliban is a terrorist organization banned in Russia
Fake
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- Old photo of an Afghan citizen falsely shared as recent visuals of a Taliban fighter enjoying ice cream
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