One year after the flight of the Taliban from Kabul, 150 publications are being sold on the streets of the city. Electronic media projects are springing up and dozens of journalists are taking advantage of the various forms of training established by international organisations according to an article written by Vincent Brossel of Reporters Sans Frontières.
After five years of Taliban domination, which had turned Afghanistan into “a country without news or pictures” (according to a Reporters Without Borders report in September 2000), the Afghan press today enjoys “unprecedented freedom,” says editor Fahim Dashty of Kabul Weekly, the first privately-owned newspaper to reappear after the Taliban departure.
But this freedom has been achieved in the face of attempts to impose control on the part of the new government, which for the most part has its origins in the Northern Alliance.
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) sent a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan (Kabul and Jalalabad) from 24 to 29 October to look into the situation of press freedom there.
“There is no independent radio station or newspaper that dares tackle or investigate the actions of certain of the regime’s strongmen. Journalists are afraid of being accused of supporting the Taliban or Al Qaida,” according to one source quoted in the report.
Journalists are facing stiff penalties if they deviate too much form the governmentn propoganda line. “You just have to read the style of dispatches put out by the Bakhtar news agency, which are repeated word for word by the television and radio, to realise that these media continue to be propaganda tools for the government,” said a journalist with an international radio station’s Pashto service. Television, radio and news agency certainly continue to be very dependent on the government, but the authorities have agreed to begin liberalising the electronic media. “We are not afraid of competition and it will help us to be more independent,” state-owned television director Azizullah Aryafar told Reporters Without Borders.
Despite certain initial reticence, radio and television are open to programs produced by NGOs or foreign stations. Thus, the news and entertainment programme Good Morning Afghanistan has been broadcast daily by the national radio station. “In eight months, we have never been censored,” said Bent Norby of the Baltic Media Centre, which is responsible for this project.
At the same time, he acknowledges being at the mercy of a government decision. “Our program could be eliminated from one day to the next if it displeases the information ministry.”
Deputy information minister Moubarez, for his part, said he no intention of intervening in the content of programs. “We are in the process of establishing a commission that will enable Afghan television and radio to become public media and not government media,” he told Reporters Without Borders.
The deputy information minister nonetheless maintains direct control over many decisions concerning the state-owned media. Journalists who work for these media said he intervenes in the choice of reports carried by the Bakhtar news agency.
“It is necessary to build real public service media,” UN spokesperson de Almeida e Silva said. Because of the mediocre quality of the public radio programming, many Afghans listen to the dozen international stations that broadcast in Dari or Pashto. The BBC continues to be the radio station with the most listeners in Afghanistan. The BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Afghanistan are all available on FM in Kabul.