FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Afghanistan: the new battleground for freedom of speech

Don North discovered that media outlets in Afghanistan are battling terrorists, bandits,warlords and an age-old, universal foe — government censorship

The morning of November 13th,2001,as Taliban and Al-Queda forces fled Kabul, Radio Afghanistan resumed broadcasting. It began with a reading from the Koran followed by the first song to be broadcast after six years of draconian
Taliban rule.The song,“My Sweetheart Kabul,”was once a popular hit by exiled singer Farhad Darya.The following day Afghan TV returned to the air with
news reports read by female announcers.

One year after the fall of the Taliban in Kabul,over 150 newspapers and magazines have also begun publication. But with over 70 percent of the
population illiterate, the real battleground for freedom of speech in Afghanistan is taking place in the nation’s television and radio stations.Although
a new media law, passed last January, encouraged the creation of independent electronic media, the law failed to set up protocols to ensure the independence
of existing channels, particularly the State TV and Radio Afghanistan in Kabul. With the central government’s clumsy attempts to control and censor
TV and radio in Kabul, and regional warlords virtually controlling electronic media in the countryside, the rebirth of a free media in Afghanistan is suffering agonizing labour pains.

Few societies in history have had their national institutions of communication destroyed so completely as the Afghans. Today the media and journalism must be rebuilt from the ashes. “Our media suffered badly under the Taliban,” recalls
Afghan TV Director Mohammad Zahir Siddiq.” Television was shut down, radio broadcast only religion and decrees of the regime.Printing presses were smashed,newspapers stopped and music was banned. People buried their TV sets. Journalists who wrote anything the Taliban didn’t like were flogged in public.”

The past 23 years of war have taken a heavy toll on the development of journalism and the media in the country.Few Afghans can’t remember anything but propaganda. Journalists, who were not flogged or killed, fled. The few who remained became simple conduits for the ruling factions or local warlords.

The restoration of the media in an oppressed country is always an exciting and hopeful process. In Kabul,Afghans are cueing up at newsstands that have appeared since the government passed a law authorizing the creation of independent publications.People are snapping up small-screen, Chinese black-and-white TV sets for as little as $25 (U.S).However, even in areas of the city where the TV signal can be received, when electricity is working, viewers have found little of interest to watch.At the government-controlled radio and TV,
broadcasters are depending on ancient equipment held together with makeshift parts to produce new programs.

Afghan-TV
A visit to Afghan-TV in Kabul is like stepping into a CBC studio in the 1950’s. The Japanese manufacturers say replacement parts are no longer made. Afghan-TV director Dr. Zahir Siddiq says, “We desperately need everything: new transmitters, new programs and even new tape stock and especially training for our staff of 13-hundred.” Director Siddiq is starting to produce new programs
in their studios, but is hopeful programs from the West on Pal tape will be donated to satisfy the tremendous demand for information and entertainment.

The evening newscast is broadcast from a small studio where a set designer has just painted a new backdrop of the Kabul skyline. Royal Megabit, a
studious-looking woman of 22 and her male counterpart Safi Danshyar, 25,are preparing to read the news. They share one microphone. In a city where most men wear baggy “Kameez Shalwaz” and beards,Safi is clean-shaven.He wears a doublebreasted blue blazer.Royal wears a black shawl over her hair and sweater. Neither is a journalist. For instance, by day Safi is a medical student at Kabul
University. The news is written and prepared by reporters and producers who have had brief training from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Most nights the news seems to be little more than a list of press conferences and reports on visits by foreign aid organizations. There is always tape of whatever activity President Hamid Karzai and Defense Minister Fahim were involved in that day.

Western journalists I talked to pointed out that when controversial news is breaking,Afghan-TV is not aggressive in coverage but awaits direction from
the Ministry of Information and dispatches from Bakhtar, the official government news agency.Most of the older and experienced journalists working at TV/Radio Afghanistan learned their trade under the dictatorial regimes of Mohammed Daoud in the 1970’s and during the Soviet occupation in the 1980’s. Newscasts look like old Soviet television where the activities of the president and key ministers are broadcast each evening in painstaking detail.

“In March, an earthquake in Nahreen was relegated to the second story on the newscast after President Karzai’s appointments of the day,”recalls BBC Correspondent Seema Zand. Some Ministers send through their speeches and announcements with orders to “broadcast without changes.”

TV in the provinces
In the provinces outside Kabul,the few television stations, as well as most radio stations, are tightly controlled by regional warlords.

Kandahar Television: Frequency 0.864 broadcasting in Pashtu,has a nightly program of two hours. According to local journalists, it is totally dominated by the activities of governor Ghul Ahmed Sherzai,the local warlord.The finances of the station are run through an account controlled by Sherzai.

Balkh-TV: in Mazar-e-Sharif broadcasting in Dari, subjects viewers to the daily activities of not one, but three competing warlords: Gen Abdel Rashid: Dostum,Ustad Atta and Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq.Each of these local warlords
videotapes his own meetings with international organizations and central government officials, then sends the tapes to Balkh-TV, which duly broadcasts
them, unedited. The main source of tension in Mazar-e-Sharif is the personal rivalry between General Dostum,assistant defense minister and Uzbek leader, and rival warlord Atta Mohammad, the military commander of the Tajik Jamiat Islamic party that forms the backbone of the Northern Alliance. There have been two outbreaks of serious fighting this year, once in January and again in May when dozens of men were killed in fighting around the city. Mazar is seen as a key test of whether the Kabul government can impose law and order throughout the country.

TV-Badakhshan: located in Faizabad and controlled by the Northern Alliance,it uses a 10-watt transmitter to broadcast in Dari and Pashtu. On the air since 1987, it was the only television operating in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime.

In November 2001, I watched the station’s two-hour broadcast each evening between 6-8 p.m. The programs were mostly religious, old science documentaries from the BBC and a brief daily newscast by a male announcer highlighting news from the Northern Alliance command.At that time an estimated 500 TV sets were within reception range in Faizabad.

TV-Herat
Nowhere in Afghanistan is the desire for quality TV stronger than in the old city of Herat in the west, just fifty miles from the border with Iran.Its 300,000 inhabitants consider it Afghanistan’s cultural capital. From the 15th century through two centuries of Moghul rule, the city became famous for literature, philosophy and the arts.That legacy continues today with a respected university and a high standard of literacy and education among residents.But nowhere in Afghanistan is the iron grip of a warlord felt more strongly than in the city’s main daily newspaper
”Ittefaq-e-Islam”and TV-Herat.The newspaper and TV station are owned and financed by warlord Ismail Khan,the provincial governor and self-styled “Emir.”

Each edition and every newscast reflects Ismail Khan’s position on all issues.“After the defeat of the Taliban,” said city journalist Hasan Zada, “we
expected the rise of new and independent publications and broadcasts which could express the views and problems of the people. This hasn’t happened yet.”When the central government sent officials to take up posts in Herat and Ismail,Khan refused to accept them.Neither the newspaper nor the TV station reported the conflict.Now 57 years old and with a 30,000-man private army,his annual income from Iran customs duties alone is estimated at $40- million (U.S.). A Human Rights Watch report published November 5th confirmed my research:”under Ismail Khan, Herat has remained much as it was under the Taliban: a closed society in which there is no dissent, no criticism of the
government, no independent newspapers, no freedom to hold open meetings, nor respect for the rule of law.”

In Bosnia,while training Sarajevo TV journalists, I found that well-produced, objective, local journalism gets higher ratings than government-controlled news
or slick programs from distant satellite broadcasters. Many Kabul residents are now bypassing local TV and turning to satellite dishes made out of discarded
coke cans,or for those who can afford them,expensive dishes imported from Pakistan.

Radio Afghanistan
“We are a radio culture,”says Deputy Minister of Information Abdul Hamid Mubarez. “Of all media genres, including TV, radio is once again poised to
play the greatest role,for good or ill,in Afghanistan’s immediate future.” As he stressed the importance of radio,the congenial Mubarez was carefully reading
the morning’s Kabul newspapers piled high on his desk. The Ministry Of Information is carefully nurturing Radio Afghanistan back to life. At Radio Afghanistan amidst the crumbling old studios with reel-to-reel tape and ancient
microphones there are two newly built state-of-theart studios based on computers, digital discs and cassettes. It was recently built and donated by the
BBC along with staff training. Young Afghan producers and engineers struggle to grasp the new technology with instruction books in hand.

But their product is already creating a stir wherever it is heard. “Good Morning Afghanistan” is a western-style morning talk show produced by Afghan journalists with direction and training from the Danish-based Balkan Media Center. Since it
went on the air it has proved enormously popular in both Afghan languages Dari and Pushto. It features health news, advice on where to find aid, music and even accurate weather reports, which foreign stations do not provide.“Good Morning
Afghanistan”is perhaps the most independent voice in Afghan broadcasting and the country’s hottest media effort.A recent survey found that 60 percent of Kabul residents listen to the show at least four times a week.A team of 20 young Afghan men and women, many returning from exile in Pakistan, struggle against high odds to produce the one-hour show every morning.As almost no one in Kabul has a telephone, booking guests is frustrating. They frequently fail to arrive at the studio because their bicycle has broken down. The government also
insists “Good Morning Afghanistan” begin each broadcast with the Islamic incantation Allahu Akbar (God is great). 23 year-old Barry Salaam from
Peshawar is the executive producer and freely admits “Good Morning Afghanistan”is not likely to severely criticize President Karzai or his cabinet “We’re only in the initial stages of being a free press,”he admits, “it can’t happen overnight.We’re trying to have some fun, because people need to have fun.We
want people to understand there is someone out there who cares about them, what they think, what they feel.”

Bakhtar news agency
A key office in the Ministry of Information and the main source for Radio Afghanistan and Afghan TV is the 40-year-old Bakhtar News Agency (BNA) which gathers and edits news from foreign broadcasts,Embassy press attachés,press releases from all government ministries, President Hamid Karzai’s office and dispatches from its own regional reporters.The congenial Deputy Director of Bakhtar is Sediqulla Sidiqi. I interviewed him in his office. “We have about 100 reporters now and one in each of the 28 provinces of Afghanistan,” he explains.
“We have a hard time keeping in touch because there are few telephones out there. Our journalists write their stories and send them by road. That
takes a long time these days. Bakhtar sends our reports free in Dari, Pashto and English to all government and Afghan news outlets,but we charge foreign agencies and Embassies for our service.”

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Don North's journalism career has included stints with CBC, ABC and NBC.He's now an independent television producer and director of Northstar Productions in Washington, D.C. North wrote this article while researching a documentary on the
re-birth of journalism in Afghanistan.