Risks for Afghan Journalists Grow

BY ANNA KORDUNSKY

Sangar Rahimi, an Afghan reporter who works for The New York Times in Kabul, likes to be the first to arrive on the scene. In early October 2001, long before he even became a journalist, he and a friend rode their bicycles across Kabul to a Taliban base that had just been destroyed by a US airstrike. Their eagerness to explore the site firsthand outweighed the risks of another round of bombing while they surveyed the destruction.

“Too bad we don’t know any media,” Sangar remembers telling his friend that day. “We could have made a good report.”

Now a New York Times staffer, Sangar, 33, has reported in almost every province of Afghanistan, from Taliban-riddled Helmand in the south to rugged and violent Kunar on the Pakistani border. There is just one place he cannot go: Mihtarlam, his own hometown in the eastern Afghan province of Laghman.

Sangar has not been home since 2009, when he came to Mihtarlam as a translator and assistant for The New York Times correspondent Stephen Farrell to cover a suicide attack that had left sixteen people dead, including the country’s second-ranking intelligence official, and many more wounded. During their visit to the hospital, a villager recognized Sangar and demanded to know what he was doing there. The villager had nearly lost his brother in the blast and Sangar knew that betraying his professional affiliation would put him in grave danger.

“I must admit, I had to lie to save my life,” he says. Because he had studied medicine before switching to journalism, he said that he came from Kabul on the request of medical officials to help treat the wounded.

“Then who is this infidel with you, and why does he have a camera?” the villager insisted.

The villager took the story to the local mosque, and the rumor quickly spread across town: Sangar was working for the Western infidels. He had betrayed his fellow Muslims and had to be punished.

Since leaving Mihtarlam that evening, Sangar has escaped retribution despite taking no additional precautions on his assignments. But he has not gone back for fear of triggering the anger of local residents, and he misses the town where much of his extended family still lives.

For Sangar and thousands of journalists working in Afghanistan today, the explosive recent growth of the media sector has not translated into true freedom of expression. While journalists are now formally free to research and report stories, the country lacks a democratic space guaranteeing that they can do so safely – a disconnect that makes reporters an easy target for pressure and threats. And so far, the international community’s response to the problem, safety training programs for journalists, has fallen short of addressing its root causes.

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The dangers faced by Afghan news workers are increasingly becoming news themselves. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based media advocacy organization, has ranked the country among the deadliest places in the world for journalists: seventh place in 2008 and tenth last year, with 22 journalists killed since 2002, a figure that includes both foreign and Afghan correspondents.

But the number of deaths alone fails to explain either the actual progress or the true challenges of media development in the country, says Bob Dietz, Asia Programs Coordinator at CPJ who oversees the group’s Afghanistan work.

“If you go by the number of deaths only, it just shows you it’s a dangerous situation,” Dietz says. “But there are other indicators that reflect the true state of affairs much more subtly.”

Much of the reason behind the sector’s vulnerability lies in its youth. Just a decade ago, there was no journalism in Afghanistan. A barren Taliban-era media landscape consisted of a single radio station that broadcasted religious programs, and a handful of picture-free newspapers devoted to Taliban announcements and propaganda.

The lifting of the Taliban’s brutal press controls sparked hope in the rebirth of the media industry. Across the country, students streamed into the reopened journalism training facilities, and many reporters returned from abroad where they had been living in exile. Scores of radio stations and newspapers and several TV channels sprouted in a matter of weeks.

“It was an exciting time,” says Mir Hussain Mahdavi, an Afghan journalist who now lives in Canada. Three months after the fall of the Taliban, Mahdavi, who was then 31 and living in Iran, was one of the first media workers to come back to Kabul. He soon started one of the country’s first independent weekly newspapers, calling it Aftab, which means “the Sun” in Dari, and appointed himself Editor-in-Chief.

The newspaper took off quickly. Mahdavi envisioned it being a secular publication that would inform readers of ongoing political developments, encourage dialogue, and “bring some real change into the political life.” Although he had no previous experience managing a publication, he soon saw Aftab’s sales growing.

“At the news kiosk, the government newspaper was free, and my newspaper was ten Afghani. And people lined up to buy my newspaper, while the government newspaper was sitting next to it, and no one was touching it,” he says.

Soon after its launch, Aftab got funding from the German international development agency, allowing its publishing team to move out of their living rooms to an office in the center of Kabul. By then, a number of other international donor organizations had begun funding many similar projects. Generous assistance programs started by American, European and Japanese aid agencies as well as by a range of private foundations were training throngs of aspiring media professionals and launching dozens of media outlets.

Most of these new media organizations continue to rely on donor support even today, with the notable exception of a handful of television channels that have attracted investments from political and business leaders and have been growing in popularity.

The problem, says Bob Dietz of the Committee to Protect Journalists, is that while these efforts have created a new generation of Afghan media workers, they have done little to ensure that journalists can safely operate in one of the world’s most complex and dangerous information environments. The fundamental democratic institutions have been much slower to take root than the new media industry, bringing into question the ability of fledging media outlets to operate safely.

“Covering Afghanistan for foreigners means covering war,” Dietz says. “But Afghan journalists cover Afghanistan, and war is only a small portion of the reality in this country.”

Mahdavi says today that he underestimated the possible consequences of his work. As the newspaper sales grew stronger, Aftab began to publish increasingly provocative content: articles that criticized senior political and religious leaders including the Ministers of Defense and Education and the Vice President; a piece linking Islamic fundamentalism and military power abuses; and an editorial calling for a secular Afghanistan.

By spring 2003, Mahdavi started to receive anonymous death threats for speaking out against Islam. Then came direct warnings from political figures in Kabul and the provinces. He kept on with his work and was arrested that June with the tacit approval of President Karzai. When Mahdavi was released to await trial – thanks to the pressure from the international community that heard about the case – he was able to flee to Pakistan and later to Canada, where he now lives with his family.

Such threats from powerful political players have become the accepted everyday reality for Afghan reporters, say those who have remained in the country. Coming simultaneously from local and central governments, warlords, insurgents and Western coalition forces, they add not only danger but also confusion to the media profession: give in to one interest and you risk infringing on another.

Nassim Fekrat, author of the well-known English-language blog Afghan Lord and a freelance journalist who currently studies at Dickinson College in the US but plans to return to Afghanistan, explains this complexity. “There are no truly independent media in Afghanistan,” he says. “There are always people who listen to what you’re writing.”

Some of the topics than an Afghan journalist, especially not one protected by a large international news organization, should avoid to remain safe are religious extremism, the Taliban, warlords, political parties, and anything that would implicate the local governors of corruption and inefficiency.

Fekrat describes the gruesome death of BBC correspondent Abdul Samad Rohani as evidence that the situation is getting worse. Head of the BBC World Service’s Pashto service, Rohani was abducted in Helmand province in June 2008 after ignoring repeated warnings to cease his coverage of possible drug trafficking between government officials and the Taliban. His body was found the following day with signs of torture and multiple bullet wounds.

Another well-known case is that of Sultan Munadi, a New York Times fixer who was captured with Stephen Farrell in September 2009 and was shot dead during a rescue mission that left Farrell unharmed.

However tragic, these are extreme examples. The working environment for most local journalists is not that of an imminent threat to life but rather one of persistent, grinding intimidation. It is commonplace for reporters to receive anonymous “night letters” warning them against pursuing a certain lead, to have their equipment confiscated, and to be detained for several days without a charge.

“The Afghan government likes to brag that there is now freedom of speech. That is a lie,” says Fekrat. “How can there be freedom of speech when there is no independent media in the country?”

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The international community has become acutely aware of the problem, as reports of intimidation and abuse of journalists grow increasingly frequent. Some international organizations working in Afghanistan have responded by adding an extra layer of training to the existing array of media assistance programs: safety techniques for students preparing to enter the media industry.

One such organization is Copenhagen-based International Media Systems (IMS), whose courses for Afghan reporters now incorporate techniques for working in dangerous situations. The new curriculum falls outside basic reporting skills and includes topics such as emergency first aid and methods for recognizing and avoiding a threatening environment, as well as procedures for checking a vehicle for hidden explosives. In parallel, in partnership with a consortium of other firms, IMS runs a countrywide support network for journalists when things do go wrong, offering 24-hour telephone hotlines, safety houses and legal help.

These safety training programs are not intended as stand-alone courses, explains Susanna Inkinen, IMS Afghanistan Specialist. Rather, they are an effort to incorporate training on situational awareness into overall coaching on reporting skills and journalism ethics.

“We try to help young Afghan reporters understand their role and limitations in relation to the ongoing conflict,” Inkinen says. “The question is: do you realize that there are words that can get you killed?”

The safety training initiatives are fraught with frustration for teacher and students alike. Inkinen describes a group of young men who came to the IMS workshop on election reporting in preparation for the 2009 presidential elections. Before the course even began, the reporters apologized for being confused. They had already attended five different courses organized by other organizations and received conflicting advice on how to cover the tense and competitive pre-election environment.

Donors were running these programs without coordinating their efforts, says Inkinen, simply because “everyone got money for election reporting.” Trainees, in turn, often get small allowances – an extra incentive to participate in the programs.  “But each of the training providers has their own style, and their own agenda. The Germans say one thing, the British say another, the Americans say the third. And then come the Swedes.”

This confusion creates additional risks for fledging reporters with little prior experience. “There are journalists who have PhDs in philosophy, and then there are young boys who just grab the microphone and start shouting,” says Inkinen. “Some of these guys have not yet forged their identity as reporters, so they would try to remember ‘what that guru from Australia said’ and it would just confuse them.”

Jean MacKenzie, who headed the Kabul branch of the Institute on War and Peace Reporting for the past five years and continues to work in Afghanistan as a reporter, agrees that more training does not necessarily equate with more safety.

“We certainly try to make the journalists aware of the danger, and encourage them to protect themselves as much as possible,” MacKenzie said. “But Afghanistan is, and has been for some time, a very dangerous environment and a very violent society. Once the reporters enter [this environment], there is little we can do to hold them back.”

Although safety training programs show rudimentary results, their future effectiveness in the evolving political situation in Afghanistan is uncertain. Some observers wonder if training programs focused on journalist safety should be initiated at all, since Afghan reporters are already much more attuned to the political realities and competing interests than the Western organizations coaching them.

“On their own, Afghan reporters know how to behave in the field,” says Bob Dietz of CPJ. “An American reporter knows exactly how to interview a victim of tonight’s house fire. In the same way, Afghan reporters know exactly what to do when they face a road block or speak with local governors.”

This may be the reason for a relative lack of interest in the safety training programs from some of the potential trainees.

“To be honest, I don’t even know what safety training means,” says Sangar Rahimi, the New York Times reporter who must avoid travelling to his hometown for fear of retaliation from local residents. “We have so often been caught in the crossfire, hiding behind a car or a wall. But that is not something you learn in a training.”

Ultimately, however, there is no avoiding the fundamental problem: no amount of safety training can bridge the disconnect between the growing media sector and the week democratic institutions that give rise to threats and dangers in the first place.

“Democracy and freedom of speech is not something you can export into a country,” says Mahdavi, the journalist living in exile in Canada. “You can’t expect that if you change the regime, elect a new government and call it a democracy, there will immediately be freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is part of cultural life and you have to create it.”

For now, he says, Afghan media workers will remain caught in the complexity of conflicting identities and pressures that has come to define today’s political situation. The fierce infighting among government factions only adds to the professional risks. At the same time, the influence of Western organizations over government officials has diminished, and with it decreased their ability to pressure the government on free speech violations and human rights abuses.

After living in Afghanistan for seven years, Jean MacKenzie is skeptical that the prospects for Afghan journalists will improve in the foreseeable future: “On the one hand, we are certainly seeing an increasing professionalization of the media, so in that sense things are getting better,” she says. “In that sense, the media scene is improving, and people have more information. On the other hand, things in general are deteriorating quite rapidly across the board, and we are not really sure how much freedom the journalists are going to have to cover that.”

Mahdavi is likewise not optimistic that he will be able to return to Kabul in the upcoming decade.

Today, he thinks, press freedom has grown even weaker since the time he published the last issue of his newspaper Aftab in 2003.

“I think it is more dangerous now than it was when I was doing it,” he says.  “If I was doing it today, by now, I would have probably been killed.”