Afghanistan is a nation long etched with the scars of war—not only on its mountains, villages, and broken cities but deep within the emotional terrain of its people. For more than forty years, the country has staggered under the weight of foreign invasions, civil unrest, and political betrayal. Its landscapes have been charred, but perhaps even more grievously, its public voice has been stifled, buried beneath rubble and rhetoric. Amid this silencing, a strange paradox has emerged: the rise of livestreaming—on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok—as a new kind of agora, messy and unfiltered, yet seductively alive.
At first glance, livestreaming offers a kind of redemption. In a land where physical gathering is often fraught with danger, the smartphone becomes both shield and stage. A citizen presses “Go Live,” and suddenly, the borders of geography and time dissolve. Exiles become present. The private becomes public. The monologue becomes dialogue—at least in theory. But the reality is far more complex.
Livestreaming has not opened a single, coherent public sphere but rather a mosaic of competing micro-worlds—fragile, often volatile—shaped by the logic of attention rather than the pursuit of understanding. The platforms themselves are engineered not for dialogue, but for reaction. Algorithms do not reward nuance; they reward velocity, emotion, and virality. In this environment, Afghanistan’s yearning for a collective voice is not healed but fractured further.
In a society already divided by decades of political, ethnic, and ideological tensions, livestreaming has become both mirror and amplifier. It reflects these divisions and then exaggerates them. This phenomenon is particularly visible within a corner of the livestreaming world that has given rise to divisive figures such as Abdul Ali Fayeq, Ahmad Farid Froutan, Samim Yawar, Kawoosh Azadandesh, Showwalye Syah, Eisa Mohammadi, Hatef Mokhtar, Jamil Qaderi, Shahzad Poya, Shafi Ayar, General Mobin and many others. These are not merely internet personalities—they are avatars of deeper cultural conflicts. They provoke because provocation sells. They perform because performance means survival in the digital bazaar of likes, shares, and fleeting fame.
Yet their rise is not without significance. Their popularity—whether embraced or reviled—reveals a hunger: a desire to be seen, heard, and to inhabit a space from which generations have been excluded. In a nation where traditional media remains the guarded preserve of political elites, and where public assembly is often met with violence and restrictions, livestreaming has stepped into the breach. However, rather than fostering civic engagement, it often fosters spectacle. And in that spectacle, something vital is lost.
Behind the flood of livestreams lies an eerie loneliness: individuals speaking into screens, often shouting into the void, watched by strangers and judged in real-time. It is intimacy without closeness, visibility without solidarity. The virtual space promises community but delivers fragmentation. For every moment of connection, there is a parallel current of ridicule, harassment, or distortion. Verbal violence replaces physical threats, but the harm is no less real.
This is not to dismiss livestreaming outright. It holds undeniable potential—especially within a media landscape historically monopolized and censored. Yet it is not the solution; rather, it is a symptom. It reveals the absence of true public space, the erosion of trust, and the fragility of our discourse. When the town square is closed, people shout from windows. But windows cannot replace meeting places. They frame, they filter, and they separate.
Afghanistan’s digital lives are surging, messy, and vibrant—but also painfully fragmented. In the echo of every livestreamed voice, one hears not just expression but desperation: to matter, to connect, to belong. If we mistake that for progress without examining the terms under which these platforms operate, we risk substituting one form of exclusion for another—this time cloaked in the illusion of freedom.