Official Taliban Websites Go Offline, Though Reasons Unknown

Taliban terrorists stand guard along a road near the site of an Ashura procession which is held to mark the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad, along a road in Herat, on Aug. 19, 2021. Aref Karimi/AFP via Getty Images

BOSTON—Taliban websites that delivered the extremist group’s official messages to Afghans and the world at large in five languages went offline abruptly Friday, indicating an effort to try to squelch them.

It is not immediately clear, though, why the sites in the Pashto, Urdu, Arabic, English, and Dari languages went offline Friday. They had been shielded by Cloudflare, a San Francisco-based content delivery network and denial-of-service protection provider.