UK’s Daily Mirror publishes fake news about Taliban smuggling Humvees into Pakistan

Islamabad: UK’s Daily Mirror has falsely claimed that the Afghan Taliban are smuggling US Humvees into Pakistan to sell them to terrorists.

The article headlined “EXCLUSIVE: Taliban smuggle US Humvees and fighting vehicles into Pakistan to sell to terrorists” is based on pictures of trucks carrying Humvees and other military vehicles.

The report authored by Chris Hughes for mirror.co.uk was shared on the publication’s social media accounts drew strong criticism from social media users in Pakistan . The pictures used by Daily Mirror to corroborate its claim that the military equipment was being ferried into Pakistan after Kabul’s fall to the Taliban were originally shared by a popular Facebook page in Pakistan in October 2020.

The Urdu language caption accompanying the post on Pakistani Facebook page read, “US forces had to return after being defeated in a decades long war. A war between Taliban and US was ongoing in Afghanistan for years which is now coming to an end after an agreement between Taliban and US.”

Naimat Khan, a Pakistani journalist associated with Arab News, also confirmed that Daily Mirror published a fake news by claiming that the trucks are smuggling the military vehicles into Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a landlocked country and Pakistani ports were used by the US and Nato forces to import their military and other equipment before moving them to their bases in Afghanistan. The same routes were used to send back the equipment after the drawdown of foreign forces.