Under the Taliban, it’s harder than ever to be an Afghan journalist

ISLAMABAD — The agonies come easy and frequently for Afghan intelligencer Taqi Daryabi.

When they do, the 22- time-old journalist for the Afghan review Etilaatroz is incontinently transported back to a moist room in a Taliban- run police station, where a group of former fighters severely beat him and his coworker Nematullah Naqdi last month for covering a women’s kick in Kabul.
“All of them started beating me with whatever they had in their hands — with lashes, bludgeons, with rubber, with wood,”says Daryabi, who’s still in and out of the sanitarium for treatment of his incisions.”With whatever torturing tool they had, they beat me until I passed out.”

Naqdi, his coworker, has incompletely lost his vision from the beating he endured that day.
About 500 country miles down, in the western megacity of Herat, it’s not the history that haunts 26- time-old intelligencer Atefa. It’s the fear of the future.

Atefa, who wants to use only her first name to cover her safety, used to write critically about the Taliban’s stations and treatment of women for colorful Afghan news outlets. Now she’s in caching.
Ever since the group reacquired Herat inmid-August, her neighbors have been telling her the Taliban have been looking for her. In recent weeks, she’s entered textbook dispatches from unknown figures, containing ghastly videotape clips. She presumes they are from the Taliban, advising her of what is to come.

“One recent videotape I got shows the Taliban torturing a man to death,”she says.”I’m ready to be killed by a pellet, but I don’t want to fall into the hands of the Taliban. I do not want to be cut up into pieces.”

There is a dissociate between what Taliban officers say and what their bottom dogfaces do
Reporting has long been a dangerous and indeed deadly business for Afghan intelligencers. They’ve been targeted with attacks and hijackings, some of which have been claimed by the Taliban. Now, with the Taliban in power, the blend of pitfalls, detentions and vague media rules, plus a shattered frugality, have set the timepiece back on Afghan media progress.

Further than 150 media companies and radio stations across the country have shut down, according to TOLO News, Afghanistan’s most prominent broadcast news outlet. Hundreds of Afghan intelligencers have fled the country since Taliban forces took control of Kabul in August.
Those who have stayed, like Daryabi and Atefa, say they do not know where the Taliban’s red lines are. Numerous have stopped working for fear of retaliation, violent assaults and inexplainable detentions.

“The Taliban does not have full control over the way its people operate,”says Steven Butler, the Asia program fellow at the Committee to Cover Intelligencers.
He has been following the cases of Afghan intelligencers and says there appears to be a dissociate between Taliban leaders, who contend intimately that they support press freedoms, and its bottom dogfaces who prorate out harsh corrections.

Taliban leaders argue that those now patrolling the thoroughfares have spent the last 20 times fighting, not policing or engaging with communal society. Some lower- position Taliban admit they are floundering to acclimate to their new lives and miss the battle.

Taliban officers use this as defense for media restrictions.

“We’ve constantly said that we believe in the freedom of speech in the media,”Taliban spokesperson Inamullah Samangani tells NPR.”Of course, because the situation isn’t normal yet and isn’t completely under control, we want to help some irregular and unruly scripts and assure the security and safety of intelligencers. to prepare the ground for them to report. Right now, in places like military centers or places that are still queried and argumentative and not yet completely in our control — we advise intelligencers not to report from there.”

Adding to the confusion, Samangani denies the actuality of 11 harsh rules for the press that were blazoned by Qari Muhammad Yousuf Ahmadi, the Taliban’s interim director of the Government Media and Information Center, at aSept. 19 press conference.

For now, Samangani specifies two general proscriptions”There are two issues we will not tolerate — when our religious rights are attacked, and second, when there is an egregious docket against our public interest,”he says.” Piecemeal from these two particulars, I told you we’re open to accepting review and we can be held responsible. But the problem is that the governance isn’t formed well yet. It’s in the process of forming and it’s our view that all institutions should start their affairs first, and that will allow for better cooperation and dispersion of information. That is when we will be ready to have long investigative stories and we will cooperate with them.”

When asked about the violent detention of Daryabi and his coworker, Samangani expresses remorse but deflects blame.

“We believe that the intelligencers turned into the victims of an illegal kick. The kick wasn’t run in cooperation with the government and legal systems,”he says.”Unfortunately, the mujahideen who were there for security weren’t apprehensive and weren’t prepared to deal with that.”

The Taliban are doubtful to promote press freedom

Indeed the most hot critics ofU.S. military involvement in Afghanistan regard the flowering of Afghan media as one of the country’s topmost success stories of the last 20 times. Many could have imagined that TVs — largely banned during Taliban rule in the 1990s — or radios, which only carried propaganda and Islamic programming back also, would ultimately offer a vibrant array of news, programming and entertainment. By this time, the country had roughly 70 TV stations, further than 170 FM radio stations and 175 journals.

Butler fears Afghanistan is likely headed toward a system in which the Taliban control what intelligencers write.” Intelligencers who step over a line will get into trouble one way or another,”he warns.

As foreign reporters are called to cover other heads and conflicts, the world’s attention will inescapably turn down from Afghanistan. It’s at that moment that the story of Afghanistan will fall exactly on the shoulders of Afghan intelligencers — and that, Butler says, is when the Taliban’s true positions on a free press will come into focus.

“You have to ask yourself, is this a government that’s willing to accept review, you know, sharp review that a free press typically would deliver?”says Butler.”I suppose it’s doubtful.”