Afghanistan – Impact Lab

Taliban public relations rep accidentally leaks email list

November 20, 2012

Taliban accidentally CC-d all email addresses on their mailing list to subscribers.

This may be good to know if you’re a terrorist organization, BCC is your friend. A Taliban spokesperson’s misstep resulted in all addresses on the Afghanistani militant movement’s email list being disclosed to the public. ABC News’ Muhammad Lila reports that Qari Yousuf Ahmedi, an official representative for the movement, accidentally used CC: instead of BCC: on a mass Taliban communication. Ahmedi forwarded a press release he received from another Taliban spokesperson in a mass email; instead of moving the CCs from the previous email to BCC, they stayed intact.

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U.S. Air Force Giant Spy Blimp Could be Afghanistan’s Biggest Brain

January 19, 2011

“Blue Devil”

Come this fall, there will be a new and extremely powerful supercomputer in Afghanistan. But it won’t be in Dave Petraeus’ headquarters in Kabul or at some three-letter agency’s operations center in Kandahar. It’ll be floating 20,000 feet above the warzone, aboard a giant spy blimp that watches and listens to everything for miles around.

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The Plight of Female Drug Addicts in Afghanistan

January 17, 2011

Addiction strikes many women in Afghanistan.

Photographer Rafaela Persson has lived in Afghanistan since 2008, and spends time getting to know her subjects.

I had an idea to photograph female drug addicts. Afghanistan is the world’s biggest producer of opium, from which heroin is derived. According to a study made by U.N. Drugs and Crimes Office in 2010, the rate of drug addiction in Afghanistan is twice the global average; Afghans have become the leading consumers of their own opium. Approximately one million Afghans, or eight percent of the war-shattered country’s total population is suffering from drug addiction, a 75 percent increase since 2005. What is even more alarming is that studies show that 50 percent of Afghanistan’s opium-using parents give the drug to their own children…

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