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No Taliban ringtone? You are a target in Afghanistan

December 31, 2011 15:34 IST

Travellers in Afghanistan will face death if they do not have mobile phones playing Taliban ringtones and messages.

Taliban ringtones include the titles 'Teenager', 'Doomsday' and 'Suicide Bomber'.

Lyrics for Doomsday include, 'Its Judgment Day for the Satan of the West ... the evening is blazing, blazing ...'

For Suicide Bomber, the song includes the words, 'You went up into flames... You burned like a moth, young hero, martyrdom seeker... You are the Muslims'' atomic bomb.'

Taliban are killing people at clandestine checkpoints if they don't hear their messages on someone's phone, The Daily Mail reports.

The prevalence of checkpoints just an hour from the capital of Kabul, has forced many Afghans to cleanse their mobiles of all apparent Western songs and ringtones.

According to the paper, some offenders have been forced to eat SIM cards and have had phones broken on their heads.

Travellers often pop out their real SIM cards and replace them with ones containing insurgent-produced jingles.

Shopkeepers are doing roaring trade in rebel ringtones at $2 an upload for 'emotional' songs sung by children with 'beautiful voices' the most popular, the paper said.

A spokesperson for the group told the Wall Street Journal, that the Taliban have 40 singers that produce on average of one 12-song album every month

Source: ANI