The ultra-conservative Taliban are no big fans of the West and they banned all gizmos and other forms of entertainment in Afghanistan but these rules are slightly relaxed for the top leadership of Taliban.
Former Taliban ambassador Mullah Zaeef, who is currently in Kabul after spending years at the Guantanamo bay in Cuba, is a huge fan of his "Made in America" iPhone and uses it for Internet as well as GPS.
You can buy an unlocked iPhone in some Kabul shop for around $800 which I won’t classify as ‘very expensive’ because the device, if purchased legally, would cost almost the same in India.
Given their love for the iPhone, don’t be surprised if the CIA gets Apple to manufacture some special iPhone models (with tracking) especially for Afghanistan hoping that some Al Qaeda operatives would buy them.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/gadgets/taliban-love-apple-iphone/7753/
Reader Comments
The Americans helped the Afghanistan mujahadeen to fight the Russians with their own AK-47s. Now the Taliban and the Al quaeda are using American inventions in their war against America. What an irony!!
Keeping a tracking device into iphones shipped into Afghanistan? Well, they may have enough people inside the Apple factory itself to ship them bug-free iphones.. who knows..just a possibility!
Written by Naren Ubi on 03.05.09
good pic you got there! :-)
i believe, CIA may not require cupertino’s help in something they are very good at doing already! but the problem always has been that taliban is smart enough to avoid all these electronics when they convey sensitive info. any ideas to solve that?
CIA have better things to do like, torture & destroying their own evidence!
Written by Raj on 03.05.09
His full name is Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef
Written by SD on 03.05.09
Who cares what his full name is. Do make the same comment when you read other articles without a full name. I didn’t think so.
Written by Brian on 03.05.09
nobody is even bothered which phone he is using..nobody even has a time to bother either..it is just that you and me are killing time here.
Written by SD on 03.06.09
Maybe he’s never tried another all-in-one phone. It’s sad how Apple has pretty much cornered everyone’s minds into think there’s only one good all-in-one phone out there.
Written by Michael on 03.06.09
The man in the photo is holding a first generation iPhone which does not have GPS capability.
Written by Armand Cerna on 03.11.09