This video surfaced online months before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on August 19, 2021 at 11:08
- Updated on August 26, 2021 at 08:47
- 2 min read
- By Qadaruddin SHISHIR, AFP Bangladesh
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"Taliban militants' DJ dance while Afghan people were rushing to save their lives after the capture of Kabul," reads a Bengali-language Facebook post from August 17.
The video shows a group of men dancing while wielding weapons.
The video was shared around the world alongside a similar claim, including in the Netherlands, Nigeria, the Philippines and the United States.
Some of the videos purported to show the men dancing to "In My Feelings" by Canadian rapper Drake. One such video was viewed more than 3.5 million times on Facebook in Kenya.
The video, however, has been shared in a false context.
A reverse image search of a keyframe extracted from the footage using the InVID-WeVerify tool found the same video posted online months before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
The oldest video AFP found was posted to YouTube on March 25, 2021 in a video called "DJ Bannu Dance".
The video's description reads: "#DJBannu #Dance #Funny #Music #Culture #Pakistan".
Bannu is a district in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Below is a comparison of the video in misleading social media posts (L) and the YouTube video (R):
Several other versions of the video were posted in March alongside the claim it was filmed at a wedding party.
August 26, 2021 This article was updated on August 26, 2021 to change the link to a YouTube video in the final line.
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