Taliban Threats to Afghan Journalists Show Shift in Tactics
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Version 0 of 1. KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan journalists covering the fall of Kunduz this month had a litany of complaints: The military often blocked their access to the battle; top officials tried to get them to change reports that disputed official accounts; some, like staffers for Al Jazeera, were even expelled from the area. All of that quickly faded, however, when the Taliban made the ultimate complaint about negative coverage: On Oct. 12, the insurgents not only threatened to kill anyone working for two of the country’s leading television channels, but also made it highly personal. Using social media sites, the insurgents posted slickly produced videos that scrolled menacingly through archive pictures of about 30 of the networks’ staff members. Lotfullah Najafizada, the director of ToloNews, the country’s most watched news program, was one of those whose pictures were posted with the Taliban’s death-threat voice-overs. “This statement was the first of its kind in the past 14 or 15 years, and it took us by surprise,” Mr. Najafizada said. Previously, he added, “The Taliban knew it was important for them to have some press coverage and I think in most cases they’ve tried to dissociate themselves from attacks on journalists.” The insurgents issued the death threats ostensibly in response to claims broadcast by both networks that the Taliban in Kunduz had raped women after their takeover. Tolo’s report described rapes at a university hostel. But the details remained hazy: The head of the Kunduz University, Abdul Qadoos Zarifi, disputed the report, saying the hostel was empty when the Taliban took over Kunduz because the students had gone home for the four-day Eid holiday. Mr. Najafizada said Tolo’s report was balanced, noting the denial by the university authorities, and the government military sources insisting the rapes had been of some girls who had not gone home. The niceties of journalistic balance were lost on the insurgents, whose statement on one of their websites was worded in unusually harsh terms. The Taliban also condemned the networks as being American-funded; many Afghan news organizations are, at least in part, and many Afghan journalists have received training from American-financed aid projects. The rape story, the Taliban statement said, was a “clear shameless example of propaganda by these satanic networks.” “Hereafter all the reporters and associates of these channels will be deemed enemy personnel, all of their centers, offices and dispatched teams will be considered military objectives, which will be directly eliminated,” it added. Afghan journalists responded to the threats, with many of them expressing support for the television stations. “The Afghan media really came together and said, this is a threat against all of us,” Mr. Najafizada said. Nai, the leading group representing Afghan journalists, issued a statement condemning the threats, vowing that if any journalists were harmed by the Taliban, all Afghan news media would boycott coverage of them. There have been threats against individual journalists before, particularly at the local level, said the head of Nai, Sediqullah Tawhidi. “This time, we take their statement very seriously because it came from their military commission, which means their commanders and leaders on the ground planned to target these two TV channels,” he said. Attacks on journalists in Afghanistan are hardly new; last year, nine were killed, according to Nai. Most of them, however, were killed by government forces or in government territory, as the Taliban held to a policy that they would not harm anyone they considered a legitimate journalist. After a suicide bomber attack on an upscale hotel in Kabul last year, killing nine, including the Agence France-Presse journalist Sardar Ahmad and his wife and two of their children, the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid apologized for the attack. The statement called the killing a mistake. Afghan journalists had responded to that attack by boycotting news coverage of the Taliban for two weeks. In the case of the other journalist killed by insurgents last year, the Swedish radio journalist Nils Horner, the Taliban disavowed the attack, which was claimed by a breakaway Taliban group. For the most part, Afghan journalists in the past have had much more to worry about from government officials and their allies. Nai’s “Media Watch” reports are full of cases where Afghan journalists were beaten by police officers, forced to leave their homes by officials, and threatened with death over reports critical of the government. On Oct. 7, in the midst of the fight to retake Kunduz from the insurgents, Afghan generals at the Kunduz Airport quarantined several Afghan journalists who had reported that the government’s claims of success were exaggerated or false. “We were reporting 10 days after Kunduz was supposedly recaptured by the Afghan government that there was fighting 200 meters from the provincial center,” Mr. Najafizada said. |