The Panjshir province in Afghanistan has been the only province in the country that was not seized earlier by the Taliban. News reports state that the resistance force have inflicted heavy casualties on the Taliban.
Amidst this, a video showing heavy firing is circulating on social media claiming to show the Taliban facing heavy resistance from the Northern Alliance Resistance. Some users have also claimed this video to be dated on 1 September 2021. Panjshir is currently being called as the “Resistance Front” against the Taliban.
The caption of the post mentions, “So far the Taliban is facing massive resistance from the Northern Alliance Resistance in Panjshir!”
Another caption used to circulate this video is “Panjshir Resistance Ambush Taliban September 1, 2021”
Facebook Post | Archive Link | Facebook Post | Archive Link
Social media is flooded with misinformation related to the ongoing unrest in Afghanistan post the Taliban take over. You can read more fact checks related to this incident below-
Fact Check-
We started our investigation by breaking the video into small key frames using the InVid We Verify tool and ran a reverse image search on the frames, which led us to a website named “Aparat” which had posted the video 6 years ago stating that the ISIS convoy was ambushed by Hezbollah in Qalamoun area of Syria.
Archive Link
A YouTube channel also posted this video on 25 December 2014 whose headline states that Iran border guards can be seen ambushing PJAK terrorists. This makes it clear that the video circulating on social media is not recent.
Moving on we found this video being posted by Al Hadath on their verified YouTube channel on 8 May, 2019 stating that this video is from Yemen where a military commander targets militias in north of Al-Dhalea.
The story will be updated further as we could not verify the exact location of the video. However, the above evidence makes it very clear that since the video is present on the internet from 2014 and has been claimed from several places such as Syria, Iran and Yemen, the video is not an original footage of the shootout-taking place in the recent times in Panjshir. The video has no relation with the Taliban or the unrest in Afghanistan in the present time.
Conclusion-
Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the video to be False. The viral video dates back to 2014 and has no relation with the recent shootout in Panjshir, Afghanistan between the Taliban and NRF.
Title:Video from 2014 passed off as footage of the ambush between the Northern Alliance and Taliban in Panjshir
Fact Check By: Aavya RayResult: False
