Terror to tourism? Hostage-style video invites visitors to Taliban's Afghanistan

Darkly comic videos made by a tour agency and shared by Taliban-linked accounts on social media are encouraging people to travel to Afghanistan.

Two men kneel on the ground — hands seemingly bound behind their backs and heads covered with black plastic bags — as the armed men looming over them stare into the camera and issue a chilling demand."Ciao Italia. If you want your two citizens safely back in Italy, you must send us $5 billion via bitcoin," the men wielding a rifle say in a video widely shared on X, including by many Taliban-linked accounts.The supposed hostage video takes a twist when the captors remove the black bags to reveal two smiling young men, give a thumbs-up and say: "Welcome to Afghanistan!"The rest of the 30-second clip — which is in fact a promotional video made by a tour agency — shows the visitors visiting communities with their Afghan hosts, playing with children, photographing nature, eating local food and trying on clothes at a market.A previous video produced by Raza Afghanistan follows the same template, but with an ominous "Message for America" threatened before the purported victims are revealed to be US tourists, and an ensuing montage shows them enjoying a tour of the country.The video further shows the men examining a US-made assault rifle, laughing that the safety is not on, eating large watermelons and their Afghan hosts doing pullups on the barrel of a tank gun, among other scenes.The social media stunts are reminiscent of hostage execution videos such as the 2002 beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and the 2014 decapitation of James Foley, also a reporter from the US, by the so-called Islamic State group in Syria. Reactions to Raza Afghanistan's videos on X have ranged from praise for the "great promotion and unique concept" to criticism over a lack of women in the footage and an unwillingness to visit a country where women's and girls' rights are so severely curtailed.In a recent post on Instagram, the tour agency's founder Yosaf Aryubi explained how he wanted to challenge stereotypes — and said he had "no affiliation with any government"."You also understand that the media and Hollywood painted the mountains of Afghanistan and those who protect them, to be merciless and wicked," wrote Aryubi, 28, who grew up in the US and now splits his time between California and Kabul."Such a blessing to share experiences in the country I couldn’t travel much in due to the situation during the 20-year occupation."Taliban eye tourism boomNearly four years after seizing control of Afghanistan, the Taliban is increasingly eager to attract tourists to the country and boost revenue for the fledgling industry.Afghanistan's isolation on the global stage, largely because of the Taliban's restrictions on women and girls, has left much of its 41 million people mired in poverty. As it struggles to attract foreign investment, the potential of tourism is far from lost on the government."The Afghan people are warm and welcoming and wish to host tourists from other countries and engage with them," Deputy Minister of Tourism Qudratullah Jamal said in an interview last month."Tourism brings many benefits to a country. We have considered those benefits and aim for our nation to take full advantage of them," he added.Nearly 9,000 foreign tourists visited Afghanistan last year, while some 3,000 people arrived in the first three months of this year, according to the tourism ministry.Four decades of near-continuous conflict kept nearly all tourists away from the landlocked country of towering mountains, deep gorges and millennia of history.The Taliban's takeover from a US-backed government in August 2021 stunned the world and sent thousands of Afghans fleeing. While the previous bloodshed from frequent bombings and suicide attacks is largely over, sporadic attacks do still occur — as do kidnappings and detentions of foreigners.IS gunmen killed six people, including three Spanish tourists, in a May 2024 attack in Bamiyan, one of the country’s main tourist attractions where centuries-old giant Buddhas carved into the cliffs were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.In February this year, a British couple in their 70s who ran education programmes in Afghanistan were arrested by the Taliban. In April, a Taliban interior ministry spokesperson said Peter and Barbie Reynolds were being investigated over a "small matter" and that they would soon face a court's judgement based on Islamic law. Meanwhile, George Glezmann, a US tourist who had been detained by the Taliban while visiting Kabul in 2022, was freed in March after being held for more than two years.