Foreign Policy Reporter: Taliban Forced Her Apology After Calling Her Sex Slave Articles ‘An Affront to Afghan Culture’

Foreign Policy magazine columnist Lynne O’Donnell caused alarm with a pair of tweets she posted on Tuesday apologizing for articles she had written accusing the Taliban of forcing teenage girls into marriage and sexual slavery, with many Twitter users speculating she was being forced to write those tweets under duress. That speculation was confirmed on Wednesday, when O’Donnell tweeted that they had told her to “tweet an apology or go to jail.”

Australian journalist O’Donnell has spent years covering Afghanistan, serving as the Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press between 2009 and 2017, according to her bio on the Foreign Policy website.

A sampling of recent Foreign Policy headlines by O’Donnell shows a focus on the Taliban’s human rights abuses and the unrest in the country after the withdrawal of U.S. troops:

Millions of Afghans Want to Flee. LGBTQ Afghans Have To.The Taliban Have Made the Burqa Mandatory AgainThe Taliban Take Aim at Buddhist HeritageAfghanistan’s

Warlords Prepare Their ComebackThe U.N. Knows Afghanistan Is Messed Up. But It’s Keeping Mum.A Modest Proposal to Save Afghanistan—From Itself

On Tuesday, O’Donnell posted a pair of tweets that apologized for “3 or 4 reports” she had written “accusing the present
authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders.”

“This was a premeditated attempt at character assassination and an affront to Afghan culture,” O’Donnell’s apology continued. “These stories were written without any solid proof or basis, and without any effort to verify instances through on-site
investigation or face-to-face meetings with alleged victims.”

O’Donnell’s tweets were met with immediate concern, with other Twitter users worrying about her safety and hoping that her pinned tweet (“First they came for the #journalists. No one knows what happened after that.”) would not prove to be prophetic.

O’Donnell revealed the reason for her tweets on Wednesday with a new tweet about her ordeal. “Tweet an apology or go to jail,” she described the Taliban intelligence’s order to her.

“Whatever it takes: They dictated. I tweeted. They didn’t like it. Deleted, edited, re-tweeted. Made video of me saying I wasn’t coerced. Re-did that too,” she detailed their demands, adding a hashtag “#TwoTakesTaliban.”

“I’

m out now,” she added as the perhaps obvious conclusion.

So far, O’Donnell has not deleted her prior apology tweets that were apparently under duress, but here is a screenshot in the event she does take down the tweets: