Is “Talibanism” taking over the Afghan media?
The war in Afghanistan is drawing to its formal close with the withdrawal of troops in 2014, but the future of civil society and the media looks bleak. Our Afghanistan expert analyses the situation
By Susanna Inkinen, IMS media advisor on Afghanistan
With the international community focusing on the end date of the more than decade-long war, the tragedy that the war has become is far from over, and it appears likely that troops will leave Afghanistan’s media in a highly unstable condition.
Increased government control
The most recent indicator of worsening conditions of the media is a proposed revision to the media law that seeks to tighten the government’s control over the fragile but lively Afghan media, limiting broadcasting and foreign programming in a move likely to please the Taliban, with whom President Hamid Karzai is seeking peace negotiations.
A key difference between the existing and the proposed revision is a restriction on foreign programming on radio and television, like Turkish soap operas and Bollywood films displaying liberal views of women and love. The proposed revisions also weaken the role of female media workers. Female TV-reporters will forced to wear a veil and there will most likely be fewer female reporters in general if their role as media workers are not be supported by law.
The media sector itself, has rejected the revised law, calling instead for amendments to the original law including better legal protection, improved libel laws and increased transparency. The IMS-supported Afghanistan Journalist Safety Committee, several local journalists, media lawyers and unions are presenting their recommendations to the proposed revisions on July 15 at the Ministry of Information and Culture, but remain skeptical it will have much impact.
– We all remember the working conditions of the Afghan media during the Taleban time, and we do not want to lose the media freedom we have now, said Najib Sharifi, IMS local coordinator.
Freedom of expression in danger
Afghanistan ranks seventh on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) so-called impunity index, a list of countries where killings of journalists remain unsolved. Described as one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists, Afghanistan has seen at least 22 journalists killed since the war started in 2001.
It is in this discouraging environment and with a brutal insurgency, a corrupt government, armed ethnic factions, criminal networks, warlords, drug dealers and foreign intelligence services, that the Afghan media is expected to act its role of watchdog from 2014 onwards.
Alongside the withdrawal of Western troops, the Western media’s interest in Afghanistan seems also to be diminishing. Since 2008, IMS has been working to give the war the civilian attention and angle it demands by supporting local media and civil society to cover the fallout of the conflict that will continue to affect the Afghan society for many years.
At the same time, IMS and its partners have been setting up a so-called safety mechanism, including safety training and legal protection for media workers to assist them in carrying out their crucial task of performing professional journalism.
As 2014 nears and new legal drafts are proposed to limit the media’s possibilities to do so, there is reason to remain skeptical of the future of media and freedom of expression:
– One starts to wonder if the media’s explosive growth in post-Taliban Afghanistan is merely attributable to Western pressure and to pleasing donors, or whether the Afghan government indeed has a genuine interest in supporting freedom of expression and free media, said one member of the Afghan Journalists’ Safety Committee recently as he planned upcoming activities on safety and protection for Afghan journalists.
