Photo of man with leashed woman does not show Taliban - AFP Factcheck

Copyright AFP 2017-2021. All rights reserved.

Facebook posts about the impact of Taliban rule in Afghanistan feature an image of a man holding a leash connected to a woman's hands. But while the Taliban has carried out abuses against women, the photo is from a protest in London against the Islamic State group.

"If you need one photo to demonstrate what it is to be a woman under Taliban rule, this is it!" says text accompanying the photo in an August 24, 2021 Facebook post. The man holding the leash is pointing upward with one of his index fingers -- a hand gesture used by Islamic State jihadists.

Screenshot of a Facebook post taken on August 26, 2021

The claim -- which also appeared on Facebook here -- circulated online after Taliban insurgents seized control of Afghanistan earlier this month.

A reverse image search on the Yandex website for the photo in the posts led to a 2014 Turkish news article that included the photo and referred to a protest by Kurds in London.

A Google search for these words confirmed that it pictures an event in 2014 -- the year that the Islamic State group overran swathes of territory in Iraq. The BBC reported at the time that a Kurdish activist group called Compassion 4 Kurdistan set up a fake Islamic State group slave market in central London in October of that year.

The activists hoped to raise awareness about the jihadist group's abuses in Iraq. Footage of the same event was also misrepresented online as images of the Taliban.

While the image in the posts does not picture the Taliban, there are fears that progress made on women's rights in Afghanistan over the last 20 years will be lost with the group's return to power.

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