by PATRICK LEJTENYI

There’s nothing easy about Afghanistan. From the terrain and the weather to the shattered infrastructure and roaming gangs of bandits and Taliban, the mountainous south-central Asian country of 30 million faces daunting challenges on the road to recovery following three decades of war, and the legacy of the brutal hard-line Taliban regime that ruled from 1996 until its ouster in the fall of 2001. But one tool that is showing some signs of vitality is the budding Afghan press.

Shortly after the U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban, hundreds of fiesty, independent papers sprouted up to fill the information vacuum. Most folded, but among the biggest to emerge was The Killid Group (TKG), established in 2002 through a combination of funding from a humanitarian group in Afghanistan and from the European Union. Besides the jewels in the TKG crown—Killid Weekly, a general news magazine, Mursal, a women’s magazine, and Radio Killid Kabul, the country’s first 24-hour talk radio station—the group also publishes dozens of smaller trade magazines and public service bulletins. Radio Killid Herat, in the country’s west, also just got off the ground.

Thanks to press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Canada, Najiba Ayubi, TKG’s radio director, and Mehria Azizi, a camerawoman for AINA, a non-governmental organization in Afghanistan, were in Canada this week to talk about press freedom (Thursday, Nov. 23 is the 17th annual Jailed Journalists Support Day) and the role of women in their country. They spoke in Montreal last Monday, Nov. 20, and will be in Calgary by the end of the week. The two women met the Mirror in the lobby of a downtown hotel.

New restrictions

Ayubi does most of the talking, although Azizi occasionally interjects to add clarification or to translate a question. Struggling at times in English, the women often take time in answering.

“Work for the media is not easy, because we have some very difficult problems,” says Ayubi. “Economic problems, the commanders [warlords] who have the power now—it is not easy. The last four or five months have been a challenge.”

She’s referring to new restrictions imposed on the Afghan media by the government of Hamid Karzai, the Western-backed president with a wobbly grip on the country. In June, the Afghan National Security Directorate issued a list of banned topics “which deteriorate the morale of the public, cause security problems and which are against the national interest,” according to the translation by Human Rights Watch. Far from the “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” formula practised here, terrorism and attacks on foreign troops are not to be reported, nor are reports of statements or interviews with known “armed organizations or terrorist groups.” Islam and religion are of course off-limits, “depending on the questions we ask,” says Azizi. Reports “against the government’s foreign policy in regard to neighbouring countries”—Afghan code for Pakistan—are silenced. Criticism of the national armed forces and anything that whiffs of endangering national unity are strictly prohibited. These restrictions, says Human Rights Watch, are “a blatant intrusion on the freedom of Afghanistan’s fledgling media.”

Ayubi, however, says the TKG doesn’t always comply with the government’s regulations. Indeed, on the TKG’s Web site (www.thekillidgroup.com), an editorial criticizes the conduct of the ongoing war against the resurgent Taliban and the fact that “military spending in the hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban forces out-spent reconstruction more than 10 to one” and the U.S.’s “high degree of influence over Afghanistan.” (For the record, Ayubi supports the continued presence of international troops, including Canadians, in the country.)

Back to work

But, comparatively speaking, Afghan journalists have never had it so good. “Under the Taliban, there was only Sharia newspaper and Sharia radio,” says Azizi, referring to the propaganda outlets named after Islamic religious law.

“The government often wants to shut us down, but they can’t because the media have more power now,” says Ayubi.

According to Ayubi and Azizi, just about everyone in Afghanistan was happy to see the Taliban go. “People, young guys, were dancing in the street,” says Azizi, who, at 23, is just at the start of her career. She has already had at least one death threat against her.

Ayubi, who has been a journalist for much longer, says the change in regime allowed her to go back to work. “I stayed at home under the Taliban,” she says. “I wasn’t allowed to have a job.”