Abstract
One of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in threats to foreign and domestic reporters.
A man holds a picture of Afghan journalist Sardar Ahmad of Agence France-Presse, during his funeral ceremony in Kabul on 23 March, 2014. Ahmad, his wife and two children were killed during an attack at Serena Hotel by Taliban gunmen in Kabul
CREDIT: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail
Journalists in Kabul viewed the statement, tweeted by the Taliban in April, as a credible threat, one the Taliban will not hesitate to act upon. Late last year the group issued an explicit warning to two Afghan television stations, Tolo TV and 1TV, over their reporting. Weeks later, in January 2016, a suicide bomber killed seven Tolo TV staff as they left their Kabul office in a minibus.
Afghanistan is one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Figures from the Afghanistan Journalists Centre (AFJC) reveal the risks are increasing. Between March 2015 and March 2016 there were 191 incidents of “violence, threats, intimidation and insults” against journalists, compared to 103 incidents in the previous year. Ten journalists were killed, 22 injured and 24 were assaulted. No one has yet been convicted for these attacks.
It wasn’t always like this. As south Asia correspondent for The Sunday Times, based in Delhi, I regularly reported from Afghanistan between the mid-1990s and early 2000s. At that time journalists could freely move around the city, even on foot. There was a nightly curfew but it wasn’t strictly enforced.
I was first there when the Taliban were outside Kabul. They were fighting Burhanuddin Rabbani’s government forces who held the city. The war had a slightly desultory feel. There were no suicide bombings in Afghanistan until 2004 and weapons were less so-phisticated. One night a plane flew low over the city, dropping a single bomb. It missed its target but totally flattened Kabul’s only public lavatory. Others would often miss the city altogether, landing in farmland.
Caroline Lees in Kabul in 1996 when she was a reporter for The Sunday Times
Caroline Lees meets up with a leader of the Taliban while working as a reporter in the mid-1990s
During my time as a reporter there, even operating under the Taliban, I never felt I was in danger. Risks revolved mostly around the occasional earthquake and helicopter travel.
I was always careful, but was rarely afraid, even when I was illegally smuggled across the border from Pakistan wearing a burqa. Nor was I worried when I stayed with the Taliban for two nights near Khost, in the east of the country (they were very hospitable, although my bed was in a makeshift ammunition store). As a journalist, I felt like an observer, rather than a participant in the war.
Now journalists, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, are considered high-profile targets. One of the earliest signs of this change was the 2002 kidnapping and subsequent killing of Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, by Pakistani militants linked to al-Qaeda.
Kabul-based reporters agree that deteriorating security means there are many places too dangerous to visit, and stories too risky to chase. One, Danielle Moylan, an Australian journalist who has contributed to the New York Times and Newsweek, said: “You pass up an endless number of stories in Afghanistan because of risks. Many, many areas are essentially no-go zones for foreign reporters and within that there are doubtless a huge number of possible stories that we miss out on telling for security reasons.”
Moylan recalled that on a recent reporting trip to Helmand, in the south of the country, she was only able to go as far as a frontline, 10 miles from the capital. “I would, of course, have loved to have gone further – Musa Qala, Sangin etc – to get a more complete picture of the province, but the security risks were too high, or at least would require precautions outside the budget of a freelancer.”
“It is important to note that local Afghan journalists have even more restrictions and threats against them than foreigners,” Moylan said. Following Taliban threats and the attack on Tolo TV staff, dozens of Afghan journalists have fled Afghanistan in the last few months.
There are only around 10 international staff correspondents based in Kabul, plus a small number of freelancers. Matthieu Aikins, a Canadian journalist, has been reporting from south Asia since 2008. He is based between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“There’s no question that, compared to the pre-Surge period, Afghanistan is a much more difficult and dangerous place to report from,” he said. According to Aikins, threats come not just from the Taliban and other armed opposition groups, but also from criminal gangs, who target foreigners for kidnapping. Improvised explosive devices are also a danger.
Christina Lamb, a journalist with The Sunday Times, has reported from Afghanistan for more than 20 years. She believes a recent turning point was a 2014 attack on a popular Kabul restaurant, in which 21 people died, including 13 foreigners.
“About that time the National Defence Force went around to all the places journalists used to stay and told them they had to move to safer areas. People became very nervous. You would go to restaurants and there would be nobody else eating. I recently went to a coffee bar in Kabul to meet some people. After a while the manager asked me to leave because I was attracting too much attention. It was the first time this has ever happened to me,” Lamb said.
“We never felt we were targets before. I used to wander around Kabul on foot, but I cannot imagine doing that now… it’s all very sad,” Lamb said. “But it’s not specific to Afghanistan. It has become more dangerous for journalists everywhere,” she added.
Back in the pre-internet, pre-satellite television days of 1990s Afghanistan, international journalists were usually free to report whatever they wanted, safe in the knowledge the Taliban, local warlords or government forces were unlikely to see or read their work. Now, every word they produce is available to be scrutinised and assessed for its “neutrality” by any side. The Taliban’s latest message to journalists is clearly trying to intimidate, and there are already signs they are succeeding.