Committee to Protect Journalists

CPJ promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.

#afghanistan

Afghan Photo Exhibit Seeks to Redefine Peace

It’s been said that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice. That spirit underpinned the Peace Campaign 2015 photo exhibition that ran from November 25 to 27 in the historical Bagh-e Babur Park in Kabul.

Organized by Watch on Basic Rights Afghanistan (WBRAO) with the support of Open Society Afghanistan, the exhibit defines peace in a multitude of ways that go well beyond security and politics. In these photos, peace is coexistence, freedom of speech, political and social liberties, lack of violence against women, opportunity for all, and the beauty of nature.

Taken by Afghan photographers, the photos—over a hundred in all—are meant to provoke thought among viewers, and make them consider what peace means to them. Moreover, the exhibit aims to send a message to the government of Afghanistan that ending war in the country cannot come at any price. We do not see peace as only a lack of war—it must come with social and political rights for everyone.

Read more from Open Society Foundations.

Impunity Spotlight: Afghanistan Ajmal Naqshbandi, freelance April 8, 2007, in Helmand province, Afghanistan Taliban fighters beheaded reporter Ajmal Naqshbandi in the Garmsir district of Helmand province after the Afghan government refused demands to...

Impunity Spotlight: Afghanistan

Ajmal Naqshbandi, freelance

April 8, 2007, in Helmand province, Afghanistan

Taliban fighters beheaded reporter Ajmal Naqshbandi in the Garmsir district of Helmand province after the Afghan government refused demands to free jailed Taliban leaders in exchange for the journalist’s release.

Naqshbandi was abducted on March 4 with La Repubblica reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo and the group’s driver, Sayed Agha, in Helmand province. Agha was slain a few days after the abduction, while the Italian Mastrogiacomo was released March 19 in exchange for five Taliban prisoners.

Read more about Ajmal Naqshbandi.

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Afghanistan is #7 on CPJ’s 2015 Impunity Index, which calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. This month CPJ is highlighting cases from each of the 14 countries on the list ahead of the International Day to End Impunity on November 2.

Afghanistan

No perpetrators have been held responsible in any of the five targeted killings that took place in Afghanistan in the decade covered by this year’s index. Cases include Zakia Zaki, shot seven times in 2007 by gunmen who stormed her home. Zaki had received warnings she should shut down the independent radio station she directed, which covered human rights and local politics. Foreign journalists have also been frequent targets in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, following elections last year that brought in the administration of President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, Afghanistan’s first vice-president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, marked the first International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists by meeting with journalists and promising support for the media, according to news reports. He also included a warning, however, for journalists who desecrate religion: “I will strangle such a person myself.”

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.158 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 6th with a rating of 0.168

How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield by Sebastian Junger for vanityfair The first time I experienced what I now understand to be post-traumatic stress disorder, I was in a subway station in New York City, where I live. It was almost a...

How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield

by Sebastian Junger for vanityfair

The first time I experienced what I now understand to be post-traumatic stress disorder, I was in a subway station in New York City, where I live. It was almost a year before the attacks of 9/11, and I’d just come back from two months in Afghanistan with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance. I was on assignment to write a profile of Massoud, who fought a desperate resistance against the Taliban until they assassinated him two days before 9/11. At one point during my trip we were on a frontline position that his forces had just taken over from the Taliban, and the inevitable counterattack started with an hour-long rocket barrage. All we could do was curl up in the trenches and hope. I felt deranged for days afterward, as if I’d lived through the end of the world.By the time I got home, though, I wasn’t thinking about that or any of the other horrific things we’d seen; I mentally buried all of it until one day, a few months later, when I went into the subway at rush hour to catch the C train downtown. Suddenly I found myself backed up against a metal support column, absolutely convinced I was going to die. There were too many people on the platform, the trains were coming into the station too fast, the lights were too bright, the world was too loud. I couldn’t quite explain what was wrong, but I was far more scared than I’d ever been in Afghanistan.

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Image:  Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos.

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Around the World from Australia to Afghanistan with @andrewquilty

To see more of Andrew’s images from Afghanistan and beyond, follow @andrewquilty on Instagram.

“I try to articulate the simple, yet harsh everyday lives of Afghans. I suppose I’m fascinated to observe a young population that has known no reality but war in forty years,” says Australian photojournalist Andrew Quilty (@andrewquilty). Currently based in Kabul, he covers news events around the region, including the unfolding crises spilling across the borders of northern Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. His own life journey began very differently, on beaches in the South Pacific. “I grew up in Sydney and spent my post-high school years surfing there and all over Australia and Indonesia,” he explains. “My interest in photography came a couple of years into that, and I began to combine the two obsessions when I got myself an underwater camera housing. Over time my passion for photography—as it became my career—began to override surfing. So much so that I now find myself living in a landlocked desert of a country, Afghanistan.”

Some Female Afghan Journalists Slip Back Behind Burqa Negeena Anwari works for Hewad Television, a private channel in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, the birthplace and spiritual home of the Taliban where every woman is a potential...

Some Female Afghan Journalists Slip Back Behind Burqa


Negeena Anwari works for Hewad Television, a private channel in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, the birthplace and spiritual home of the Taliban where every woman is a potential target.

But for Anwari, Taliban guns are a less vexing problem than the daily harassment she endures as a publicly recognizable broadcast anchor in Afghanistan’s second-most populous city.

“Our traditional problems and harassments are bigger than our security problems,” says the young journalist, explaining that concerns about national security, while legitimate, don’t discriminate between gender or profession.

“The moment I walk out of my home, I am bombarded by verbal intimidations and abuse by almost every man I face,“ she says. "They insult me for appearing on TV and some even call for my death.”

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via Akmal Dawi for VOA Afghan Service. 

Photo credit: File Photo