Three hostages kneel in front of a camera, their hands tied behind their backs and their heads covered with black plastic bags that obscure their faces. Behind them looms a group of menacing, bearded militants dressed in tunics and turbans, some holding assault rifles.
“We have a message for America,” says the man standing in the middle, one hand on the shoulder of the kneeling figure before him, the other hand raising the air for emphasis. For people of a certain age, this scene is immediately recognizable. The intense stares, the controversial storyline, the stillness of the kneeling bodies – all of it was eerily reminiscent of the videos of Daniel Pearl and James Foley being beheaded by Islamic figures.
Luckily, this video took a different turn. The speaker removes the bag from the face of the man kneeling in front of him, who then flashes a Hollywood smile and gives an emphatic thumbs-up. “Welcome to Afghanistan!” he says directly into the camera, after which a montage of Westerners posing for photos in mountain glens and doing pull-ups on the barrels of tank guns begins to play.
Yosaf Aryubi, an American of Afghan origin in his twenties, made this video as an advertisement for his travel agency, Raza Afghanistan, which organizes tours across the country. Aryubi, who divides his time between Afghanistan and California, plays the role of executor, while Jake Youngblood Dobbs, an American travel influencer who was then on tour with Raza, is the ersatz victim that Aryubi reveals. The video is both a provocative advertisement for Aryubi’s company and an encouragement for tourists to visit Afghanistan. The pro-Taliban social media account @afghanarabc shared the post, indicating at least some sort of official imprimatur for Aryubi’s stunt. (The account also shared other English-language videos, including a clip from Tucker Carlson’s show, in which he positively compared Afghanistan’s punitive drug treatment programs to those in the United States.)
I hate to admit it, but when I first saw this video a few months ago, it made me laugh. The tonal whiplash gave it a dark, absurd irony, like something a particularly cynical Tim Robinson would create. Youngblood and others even have an affectionate nickname for their hosts: Talibros. The guys-rock montage that followed the performance sketch contained some really funny elements. Some guys are playing around with an assault rifle that has “U.S. Government Property” emblazoned on the side. “It’s an American souvenir,” someone jokes. “Oh, it’s not even about safety right now,” the white tourist holding the gun says before the whole group erupts into the familiar laughter of a group of guys doing something stupid and dangerous and therefore hilarious.
Still, the opening scene stuck with me, and in the weeks that followed, I began to interpret it as something less funny and more sinister. The filmed beheadings were indelible images of the wars of my childhood and adolescence in the two thousand pieces of graphic contraband we searched for on smuggling sites. I felt uncomfortable thinking about these videos, a vivid response that I suppose was the goal of this generation of young influencers. Aryubi’s irreverent references to years of violence in Afghanistan are part of a growing library of irony-infused travel content that simultaneously asks viewers to stop believing everything mainstream media tells them about the country while asking them not to take what influencers say too seriously. Call it Frommer’s for Edgelords. Several other content creators spent time traveling across Afghanistan, enthusiastically sharing stories about how men can still be men, given the Taliban’s preservation of traditional values. Some mock Western assumptions about how women are treated in the country. The very popular American YouTuber Addison Pierre Maalouf, better known as Arab to his nearly two million subscribers, toured Afghanistan last winter. In one video, he and his companions visit a women’s market.
