Thread by @Ex_Trac

1. Last week, #Biden said #US troops would withdraw from #Afghanistan by 11 Sep. Critics say setting the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks as a deadline is a big propaganda win for the #Taliban.

Here's a thread exploring what the #Taliban has made of the announcement to date.

2. To do this, we tracked the impact of the (so far) one and only statement the #Taliban has made on the matter, in which it welcomes #Biden’s confirmation that the #US will pull out but condemns the fact that it is happening 6 months later than was agreed under #Trump.

3. True to form, the #Taliban published its response in five languages—Arabic, Dari, English, Pashto, and Urdu—with all versions emerging on 15 Apr. We plugged each of them into ExTrac’s social listening system to see how much of a splash they made in the subsequent seven days.

4. The answer is: not much (at least, not yet). The Pashto statement, which was shared the most of all five, was only tweeted 60 times with 99 retweets in total. Moreover, the network within which it was shared was insular and generally didn’t pass it on beyond day one.

5. The same can be said for the English version, which was shared 84 times with 70 retweets in total. Again, the network within which it was shared was insular and largely uninterested after day one.

6. The statement made even less of a splash on Dari and Urdu Twitter, with Arabic-speakers barely registering it at all.

7. To sum up, then, the #Taliban's leadership published a major statement responding to #Biden's announcement, but it didn’t seem to gain much traction among its supporters online. Plus, the statement itself was fairly ambivalent in tone—certainly not triumphalist.

8. The reality is that a delayed withdrawal is bad optics for both parties: the #Taliban looks bad because the #US didn’t leave when it said it would, and the #US looks bad because it’s leaving by such a symbolic date.

9. To be sure, none of the above precludes a more provocative take from #Taliban in the future, but for the time being it doesn't seem too preoccupied with the new timeline.

If you’d like to know more about our reporting, visit extrac.io or email [e-mail].