Survey: Journalism Is ‘Decimated’ in Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan

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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
August 12, 2022

ISLAMABAD — A survey finds that Afghanistan has lost nearly 60 percent of its journalists, especially women reporters, and 40 percent of its national media outlets since the Taliban regained control of the country a year ago.

“All this has happened amid a deep economic crisis and crackdown on press freedom,” according to the survey published by Reporters Without Borders, a global media monitor group known by its French acronym RSF.

The findings have been released in connection with the radical Islamic group’s first year in power in Kabul.

The impoverished, war-torn South Asian nation has lost 219 of the 547 media outlets it used to have prior to August 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized the Afghan capital and subsequently installed an all-male interim government, RSF said. However, it noted that four new media outlets have since been created.

Of the 11,857 journalists tallied prior to the Taliban takeover, a total of 7,098 of them, 55 percent of whom were males, are no longer working in Afghanistan.

The survey noted that women have suffered most in “the carnage inflicted on Afghan journalism.” More than 76 percent of them have lost their jobs and disappeared completely from the media landscape in 11 of the country’s 34 provinces.

“Accusations of ‘immorality or conduct contrary to society’s values’ are widely used as pretexts for harassing women journalists and sending them home,” the report stated. Women TV presenters have been made to cover their faces while on camera.

“Journalism has been decimated during the past year in Afghanistan,” said RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire.

“Media and journalists are being subjected to iniquitous regulations that restrict media freedom and open the way to repression and persecution,” he lamented.

Deloire urged the Taliban to end the violence and harassment inflicted on media workers, and he said they must allow them to do their job unmolested.

Allegations denied

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the Taliban foreign ministry spokesman, refuted allegations his government is cracking down on dissent or suppressing media freedom in the country.

“In line with international practices, all reporters and networks operating inside a country have to respect and follow the media laws of that country,” Balkhi told VOA.

“The new government of Afghanistan has not requested anything extra nor has it used heavy-handedness in dealing with the media,” he argued.

Last month, the Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, issued a new decree warning that “defaming and criticizing government officials without proof” and “spreading false news and rumors” are forbidden under Islam. It promised unspecified punishment for those who “slander” government employees.

The announcement by the highest Taliban official “is indicative of the determination to suppress press” Afghan media freedom, RSF said.

The survey also cited new economic constraints, such as the termination of international or national funding and the decline in advertising revenue as a result of the economic crisis, for some Afghan media to cease operating.

Of the 2,756 women journalists and media workers employed in Afghanistan prior to August 15, only 656 are still working, with 84.6 percent of them based in the Kabul region.

A large number of Afghan male and female journalists fled the country after the Taliban takeover and as the United States and NATO allies withdrew their troops in mid-August of last year.

Some women journalists, however, decided against leaving the country, RSF said. They include Mean Habib, the director of RouidadNews, a news agency based in the Afghan capital that she created after the August 15 leadership change in Kabul.

“I preferred to stay in my country to report the news and to defend what women had achieved during the past 20 years,” Habib told RSF.

She said living and working conditions for women journalists in Afghanistan had always been difficult, but they are experiencing an “unprecedented situation” under Taliban rule. Female media workers who have the opportunity to work are doing so for a “wretched salary,” Habib lamented.

“They do their duty to report the news on an empty stomach. They work in conditions that are physically and mentally violent and tiring, without any protection. Today, all the associations defending journalists’ rights are made up entirely of men, and work for men!”

Hafizullah Barakzai, who heads the Council of Journalists in Afghanistan, told RSF that the economy was the most important problem facing media outlets and workers. He noted that “the number of cases of violence has decreased compared with recent years, despite the increase in threats during the first months after August 15.”

In 2012, Afghanistan was ranked 150th out of 179 countries in RSF’s Press Freedom Index.

The global monitor group said that the country had risen to 122nd out of 180 countries by 2021, citing a dynamic media landscape and the adoption of legislation protecting journalists. “And in 2022, after losing nearly 40% of its media and more than half of its journalists, it has fallen to 156th.”

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Brain Drained: Exodus Of Professionals Since Taliban Takeover Leaves Afghanistan Starting From Scratch Again

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By Michael Scollon
RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
August 12, 2022

Ahmad Ghani Khosrawi dedicated two decades of his life to restoring Afghanistan’s education system, only to find himself rebuilding his career abroad following the country’s return to Taliban rule.

In leaving for Germany, Khosrawi, who headed the Faculty of Literature and Humanities at Herat University, joined the exodus of professionals that has left Afghanistan depleted of some of its best and brightest minds as the country once again adjusts to new rulers in Kabul.

Many left ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. and foreign forces a year ago, anticipating that an era of democratic and social reform was coming to an end. Others, like Khosrawi, joined the exodus only after the Taliban seized power in August 2021 and filled the professional ranks with often unqualified loyalists.

“They came and appointed their own people,” Khosrawi said of the situation in the education sector. “Naturally, this was a fatal blow to the universities and caused a large number of professors to leave the country.”

A year on, the Taliban government is reeling from the brain drain that has hampered its ability to provide basic services and deal with a devastating economic and humanitarian crisis.

The loss of skilled workers has particularly affected the health, education, security, and judicial sectors, according to Weeda Mehran, co-director of the Center for Advanced International Studies (CAIS) at the University of Exeter in Britain.

“While hard data about the exact numbers is not available, it is safe to say that thousands of highly skilled and educated Afghans have left the country,” the professor said.

Many who left had pursued an education abroad or trained at elite foreign military academies under the previous, Western-backed government that took power following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

“Doctors, engineers, judges, and lawyers were among those who had the financial means, education, and skills that could facilitate emigration,” Mehran said. “Losing such human capital, simply put, is disastrous for Afghanistan.”

The Taliban is already dealing with formidable obstacles that would test any government. Its rule remains officially unrecognized by any country, and the delivery of promised international aid intended to help the country deal with a humanitarian crisis brought on by famine, drought, and insecurity has been complicated in part by international sanctions imposed on the militant group.

In turn, the Taliban’s return to its notorious restrictions on women and ban on girls’ education, combined with its failure to live up to its own promises to uphold free media and share power, have contributed to its international isolation.

‘Starting From Scratch’

Sima Stanekzai was appointed a deputy governor of Jowzjan Province in 2021 after working as a reporter and activist for 15 years. Hers was the highest-ranking position ever held by a woman in the northern province under the previous government. But the Taliban’s return to power led her to flee with her family to Germany out of fear of retaliation.

Now, she feels that 20 years of effort and service in Afghanistan were wasted overnight.

“We always have to start from scratch in Afghanistan to make some progress, if at all,” Stanekzai told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “And then everything gets messed up again.”

Women had virtually no rights during the Taliban’s first stint in power from 1996 to 2001. During the 20 years of foreign military presence that followed the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, women still faced major obstacles in exercising their newfound rights.

The latest report by the U.S. Special Inspector-General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, issued on July 30, noted that “while the opportunities available to Afghan women slowly increased under the Islamic Republic as compared to the preceding years of Taliban rule, women’s rights and gender-mainstreaming efforts in Afghanistan failed to achieve the structural change the U.S. and international partners had envisioned.”

Behnaz Rasuli was among the women who bought into the post-Taliban system that had allowed women to work and take part in public life. She opened a sewing business in the city of Herat, running two stores that employed only women, before her hopes were dashed.

“Unfortunately, with the arrival of the Taliban, I had to close the shops in a hurry because I was afraid the saleswomen might be harmed,” Rasuli told Radio Azadi. “Little by little, the women’s motivation dropped, some of them moved away, and luck was not on our side, and I closed the shop.”

After collecting what was left of her meager savings, Rasuli, too, left for abroad.

Observers believe the departure of qualified female educators in Afghanistan will significantly hinder the future of girls’ education — a prospect that was discussed at a major sit-down of religious scholars organized by the Taliban in Kabul in June.

“Should the Taliban allow secondary and high school girls to return to classes, there will be a shortage of female teachers,” the CAIS’s Mehran told RFE/RL in written comments. “This might be compounded by the fact that male teachers will not be allowed to teach girls. Likewise, many universities are already facing a shortage of female staff, particularly female professors, as the Taliban’s policy has been complete gender segregation in higher-education institutions.”

Not The First Time

Afghanistan has been through this before, having suffered major departures of skilled workers after the Soviet invasion in 1979, as well as during the 1992-96 civil war that resulted in the Taliban first taking power.

Each time, the exodus left a vacuum of talent that set the country back years or decades and required its leaders to start anew in training new people to fill the void.

Even as more than 1 million Afghans have left the country — some by crossing into neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran, and others seeking official refugee status in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere in the West — some have come back.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 1,430 Afghan refugees have voluntarily returned to Afghanistan since the beginning of this year, of whom nearly 300 have settled in Kabul.

UNHCR senior communications officer Peter Kessler told RFE/RL in written comments that those numbers are slightly more than the figures for the same time last year and more than double those of two years ago.

Ever since the Taliban overran Kabul on August 15, 2021, its leadership has tried to encourage civil servants, military and security personnel, educators, and others to remain or return to the country of around 40 million people.

The Taliban promised an amnesty for security forces and others who had worked for the previous government and claimed that for those who had already left “all would be forgiven” and professionals would be treated as “heroes” upon their return to the country.

In May, the Taliban put those promises in writing when it announced the objectives and duties of its new Commission for Contact With Afghan Personalities that aimed to recruit prominent professionals to return to Afghanistan.

The Taliban offered assurances to former politicians and soldiers who feared for their security, saying they would be given temporary shelter and protection. Regarding the private sector, the Taliban promised that “if someone creates a problem for returnees, they will be dealt with.”

On its Twitter feed, the commission has openly extended an olive branch to those who emigrated, inviting “academic, political and intellectual figures, experts, intellectuals, and all Afghans who live outside the country” to return.

But few politicians, security personnel, and officials who served the former government have taken up the Taliban’s offer. The militant group has been accused by international rights groups of carrying out hundreds of human rights violations since seizing power, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and torture of those associated with the ousted government along with human rights defenders and journalists.

Irreparable Damage?

Serious doubts remain about the Taliban’s commitment to living up to its promises and ability to compensate for the brain drain on its own.

Faisal Karimi, a former journalism professor at Herat University and former head of the Afghanistan Media Studies Center who now lives in the United States, said that the loss of skilled workers “is irreparable, at least in the next century.”

To retrain and form such a workforce, Karimi told Radio Azadi, would require the establishment of facilities and the investment of “millions and billions of dollars.”

Hameed Hakimi, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, noted that even before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan was already one of the worst performing countries in terms of human development and other measures.

The loss of professionals, he said, would “certainly impact the country’s long-term difficult journey to socioeconomic and societal prosperity.” Compensating for the departures, he told RFE/RL in written comments, would require not only money but confidence-building, both of which he said “are absent at present.”

“If families and new generations feel the only way they can become successful in life is to leave the country, building a talented workforce and an educated class of men and women will become impossible,” Hakimi said.

Copyright (c) 2022. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

A Year After US Withdrawal From Afghanistan, Some Frustrated at Lack of Lessons Learned

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A file photo of American soldiers at an unknown location in Afghanistan.

Patsy Widakuswara
VOA News
August 12, 2022

WHITE HOUSE — On July 21st, 41 consular and diplomatic security officers of the U.S. State Department were given the agency’s prestigious Award for Heroism for assisting in the relocation of 124,000 people from Kabul in August 2021, including American citizens, legal permanent residents and tens of thousands of Afghan allies.

“They worked closely with the Department of Defense, and other key agencies, and provided the leadership structure that underpinned and facilitated the department’s operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport between August 15-30,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA.

One of the recipients, who is no longer with the department and spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity, likened the award ceremony to “group therapy” that helped put in context his feeling of helplessness during the grueling and dangerous two weeks of airlifting Americans and Afghans as Kabul swiftly fell to the Taliban.

“We really beat ourselves up,” he said. “You disproportionally look at what you couldn’t do, the lives you couldn’t save.”

The former officer said that after the operation ended, he worked through post-traumatic stress disorder therapy and spent much of the past year processing the sequence of events that capped the 20-year war with a chaotic withdrawal — bloodied by a suicide attack that killed 180 people, including 13 American troops — and left tens of thousands of Afghan allies behind.

He and others involved in the massive airlift expressed frustration at what they see as the administration’s lack of transparency on the lessons learned from the U.S. military pullout after the country fell so swiftly into the hands of the Taliban.

“I’m really angry that we did that. We put so many people in harm’s way,” he said. “How did that happen? There are so many things that failed leading up to it.”

After-action reports

The State and Defense departments are still conducting internal after-action reports on the withdrawal, according to U.S. officials.

“Once they’re done, we will give you the full — have the full picture in a way that will help inform future operations,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday. “It’s just still underway. Once we have that, we will — we will share our lessons.”

It’s unclear how much of the reports will be unclassified.

“We expect that the agencies will be able to share lessons learned, in a manner consistent with operational classification and security,” John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, told VOA during an August 5 briefing with reporters.

Ahead of the upcoming November midterm elections, the Biden administration appears reluctant to delve into details of what went wrong in the last phase of America’s longest war. The administration has largely stonewalled calls for more transparency, including from congressional Republicans who are demanding a full committee, unclassified hearing open to the public.

“We strongly believe the American people deserve to hear the significant amount of unclassified information about the relevant and important events before and after the disastrous withdrawal,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans said in a June statement.

Republicans have also accused the administration of not cooperating with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), an agency that provides oversight on the $150 billion Afghanistan reconstruction funds and produces congressionally mandated quarterly audits.

“The Biden administration’s decision to withhold critical information from SIGAR based on shaky legal interpretations is just another transparent attempt to sweep President Biden’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan under the rug,” House Foreign Affairs Committee lead Republican Michael McCaul said in a June statement.

In response, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said SIGAR’s latest report on the collapse of the Afghan forces “does not reflect the consensus view” of the administration.

“Many parts of the U.S. government, including the State Department, have unique insights into developments in Afghanistan last year that were not captured in the report. And we don’t concur with many aspects of the report,” Price said.

Lessons from Afghan war

More broadly, there is a general disappointment from the rank-and-file members of the military that “there hasn’t been a more dedicated and resourced effort” to learn from the Afghan war, said Jonathan Schroden, director of the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, a nonprofit military research group.

“It’s more important for long-term systemic learning and organizational learning. Revisiting in detail how did we end up in a situation where we had to do that withdrawal, to do an evacuation, is critically important,” he told VOA. “Right now, beyond what SIGAR is doing, there is no effort inside the U.S. government to do that systematically.”

The war in Afghanistan killed more than 2,400 U.S. troops and cost taxpayers $300 million every day for 20 years. A holistic, interagency study that identifies best practices and challenges at various U.S. government entities as well as across the entire operation is crucial, said Mark Jacobson, who helped organize evacuees during the withdrawal and served as a deputy NATO representative in Afghanistan.

Jacobson told VOA there is no interagency lessons-learned process from current and previous administrations, and when individual agencies conduct internal reviews, they are reluctant to share the findings. Often, he said, “avoiding embarrassment is more important than learning the right lessons.”

With the Afghan war spanning Democratic and Republican administrations, the U.S. loss there is “a bipartisan failure,” Schroden said, which means there may not be much appetite for either side to drive review efforts.

“This is a war we lost,” he said. “And it stings both sides of the political aisle pretty badly. And so, some amount of time is likely required to pass before people who were directly involved in the war are no longer in positions of power and it becomes less sensitive to actually look back at what happened and examine it critically.”

In December 2021, Congress established the Afghanistan War Commission, a nonpartisan, independent body tasked with examining all military, intelligence, diplomatic and development activities of the U.S., its allies and partners, from June 2001 to August 2021.

The commission’s 16 members, appointed in April, must submit their final report to appropriate congressional committees within three years of their first meeting and must make public an unclassified version of the undertaking.

Over-the-horizon capability

Administration officials said they will mark the anniversary by honoring “the service and sacrifice of those we lost as well as recognize the many people we saved” and focusing on how the “U.S. is on a stronger strategic footing” by ending the war. They highlighted the recent operation that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as proof of Washington’s over-the-horizon capabilities.

The strike gave the administration a powerful counterterrorism-focused talking point, said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the South Asia Program at the Wilson Center. It enables them to say that “we’ve left, we’ve brought our troops home, we’ve removed them from harm’s way, but we continue to do everything we can to protect Americans the world over from the threat of terrorism,” he told VOA.

Kugelman said with no known U.S. counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan before the strike that killed al-Zawahiri, the perception was that Washington did not yet have over-the-horizon capacity.

“But we know that it is there now because of what happened with Zawahiri,” he said.

Another factor the White House can leverage to mitigate the political impact of the withdrawal anniversary is President Joe Biden’s “real leadership and deft alliance management” against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, said Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“That would lay to rest growing doubts about Biden’s judgment and competence in foreign policy and restored allies’ faith in U.S. leadership,” he told VOA. “Had Ukraine not occurred, it would have been a very difficult, a much more difficult anniversary.”

For their part, humanitarian groups are using the anniversary of the withdrawal to draw attention to the plight of the Afghan people facing staggering levels of poverty and desperation.

“Afghanistan stands at a precipice, with its people being punished for the Taliban’s takeover of the country,” Neil Turner, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s country director, said in a statement. “Despite repeated calls from humanitarian actors, nothing seems to have changed. Afghanistan’s foreign reserves remain frozen, the Afghan Central Bank is still not functional, and development assistance remains withdrawn.”

Refugee groups are also pushing the administration to speed up the relocation of Afghan allies still left in the country. Biden officials said in July there were 74,274 applicants in the Special Immigrant Visa pipeline, excluding their spouses and children.

VOA’s Cindy Saine and Aline Barros contributed to this report.

Mysterious fires destroy dozens of homes in Jowzjan

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Ariana: More than 50 homes have been destroyed by mysterious fires in a village in Afghanistan’s northern Jowzjan province, officials said this week. The fires have happened in Bala Mardian village of Faizabad district. Sirajuddin Ahmadi, police chief of Jowzjan, said that the fires are increasing day by day. There are no reports of deaths caused by the fires. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Arrest Six Residents of Panjshir Province in House-to-House Search Operations in Kabul

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Taliban militant (file photo)

8am: Sources in Kabul report the start of house-to-house search operations by the Taliban for the second time. The Taliban started a house-to-house raid on Thursday (August 11th) in the Gozargah and Dehmzang neighborhoods of ​​Kabul and continued until the evening of the same day. Sources add that the Taliban have arrested six residents of Dara Abdullahkhel and Pojawa of Dara district of Panjshir province during a house-to-house search operation in Kabul. Sources add that the detained people are civilians and do not have an affiliation with any group. Click here to read more (external link).

‘The Catastrophe They Have Created’: HRW Urges Afghan Taliban To Reverse Course On Human Rights

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Taliban militants (file photo)

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 11, 2022

The unrecognized Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have imposed severe restrictions on human and civil rights in the year since they took over de facto control of the country and must reverse course to avert a humanitarian disaster, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) monitoring group has asserted.

“The Afghan people are living a human rights nightmare, victims of both Taliban cruelty and international apathy,” said Fereshta Abbasi, an HRW Afghanistan researcher. “Afghanistan’s future will remain bleak unless foreign governments engage more actively with Taliban authorities while pressuring them vigorously on their rights record.”

The HRW statement cited Taliban restrictions on the rights of women and girls, suppression of the media, arbitrary detentions and torture, and summary executions.

The Taliban returned to power in August 2021 after the U.S.-led international coalition withdrew from the country and the previous government quickly collapsed. The international community has not recognized its government and has limited engagement with the group.

Since taking over, despite pledges to the contrary, the Taliban has largely blocked girls from attending secondary schools and barred women from traveling without an accompanying male family member. That travel ban has forced many women to give up outside employment.

HRW noted that “Taliban human rights abuses have brought widespread condemnation and imperiled international efforts to address the country’s dire humanitarian situation.”

The group cited Afghanistan’s “economic collapse” following the cutoff of international aid.

“After a year in power, Taliban leaders should recognize the catastrophe they have created and reverse course on rights before more Afghans suffer and more lives are lost,” Abbasi said.

A report issued on August 10 by the NGO Save the Children said that one-quarter of Afghan girls show signs of depression and 97 percent of families are struggling to provide food for their children.

In May, the UN Security Council issued a statement expressing “deep concern” about the erosion of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

The statement called on the Taliban to “swiftly reverse” its policies and “to adhere to their commitments to reopen schools for all female students without further delay.”

Copyright (c) 2022. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

A Q&A with General Frank McKenzie

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McKenzie (file photo)

Politico:

Seligman: Why did they collapse? We spent so long training the Afghans and then as soon as we were gone, they fell. How did that happen?

McKenzie: I believe the proximate defeat mechanism was the Doha negotiations [on a peace deal]. I believe that the Afghan government began to believe we were getting ready to leave. As a result, I think it took a lot of the will to fight out them.

Seligman: Do you blame the Trump administration for what happened?

McKenzie: It goes even back beyond that. You can go back to the very beginning of the campaign, when we had an opportunity to get Osama bin Laden in 2001, 2002 and we didn’t do that. The fact that we never satisfactorily solved the problem of safe havens in Pakistan for the Taliban. There are so many things over the 20-year period that contributed to it.

But yes, I believe that the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought it to the conclusion that we saw was the Doha process and the agreements that were reached there.

Click here to read more (external link).

Afghanistan’s Bare Dastarkhaans Reveal Rising Poverty, Hunger Under The Taliban

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The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 triggered the collapse of Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy, leading to rising food prices and soaring unemployment. The economic crunch has fueled a hunger crisis in the country of some 40 million people. According to the United Nations, a staggering 95 percent of Afghans are not getting enough to eat. That is reflected in the dastarkhaans — or dining rugs — in Afghan households. Families from across the country, some of whom were unwilling to reveal their names due to safety concerns, sent photos of their bare dastarkhaans to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. Click here to view (external link).

25 Taliban Fighters Killed in Panjshir Clashes

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8am: Local sources in Panjshir report the cessation of clashes between the Taliban and the National Resistance Front (NRF) in this province. According to sources, the fights between the two sides kicked off on Wednesday before noon and carried on until around 7:30pm. As a result of these clashes, nearly 25 Taliban fighters have been killed and some others injured, sources said. So far, there is no report on the casualties of the NRF following the clashes. Click here to read more (external link).

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