Morphed Image Shared to Claim Men Attended Pro-Taliban Gathering in Burqas

A photograph purpotedly showing a man sitting, wearing a burqa in a hall full of burqa-clad women has been shared by several social media users with a claim that it shows men attending a gathering in a Kabul university that was organised to show support to the Taliban.

As per news reports, several hundred women came out in support of Taliban by carrying out rallies on the streets of Kabul, following strong criticism for not having women in the Taliban government.

We found that the face of the man was morphed on to the photograph of women in burqa to create a false narrative.

CLAIM

Hadeia Amiry, an Afghan diplomat, posted the viral photograph on Twitter and said, "Can someone explain this to me? Why #Taliban women have beard? Or they are undercover men, costumed as #women? Even in this platform, #Talibans are using women to show the world otherwise."

Several other users shared the image on Twitter with similar claims, archives of which can be found here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We conducted a reverse image search and found that the image of burqa-clad women sitting in a hall was shared by Afghan journalists and news agencies.

The head of TOLO News, Lotfullah Najafizada, shared the photograph on 11 September.

Pro-Taliban women gathering in Kabul. pic.twitter.com/G9GYNpzjNl

— Lotfullah Najafizada (@LNajafizada) September 11, 2021

The photograph was also published by The Khama Press Agency, an Afghan news agency. The headline of the story said, "Tens of university students protest in support to Taliban in Kabul".

We found similar news reports national and international press that talked about similar pro-Taliban protest rallies.

We compared the viral image with the image shared by Afghan journalists.

While comparing the two, we found that the several other parts of the photographs were the same while the photograph of a man was superimposed on that of woman wearing a burqa.

Evidently, a photograph of a woman wearing a burqa was morphed to create a false narrative and claim that men attended a pro-Taliban gathering.

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