November 14, 2002	Thursday	Ramazan 8, 1423

PARIS: In the first ever report on the Afghan press one year after the fall of the Taliban, the Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) has said that although the Afghan press is much freer than it was under the Taliban, that nevertheless “this freedom has been achieved in the face of attempts by the new government to impose control,” with one commentator noting that “most journalists practice journalism in a very Soviet fashion”

True, admits the study’s principal author Vincent Brossel, “the change is radical” and “the Afghan capital is enjoying a ‘media springtime,’” with “one year after the flight of the Taliban from Kabul, 150 publications being sold on the streets of the city and electronic media projects springing up as dozens of journalists take advantage of the various forms of training established by international organizations.”

But, the “unprecedented freedom” has been “achieved in the face of attempts to impose control on the part of the new government, which for the most part has its origins in the Northern Alliance.”

Furthermore, the situation of press freedom is still fraught in certain provinces such as Herat, where governors and warlords control almost all the news media and sometimes use force to muzzle journalists who criticize their power. The central government seems for the most part unable to stop these abuses, which have rarely been denounced by the United Nations.

“Appearances are deceptive,” notes Brossel, who headed a fact- finding mission sent to Kabul and Jalalabad from October 24-29 “to look into the situation of press freedom there.” Although Kabul, for example, now has 150 publications to itself, “almost all of these publications are weeklies in the Dari language (the form of Persian spoken by Afghanistan’s second-largest ethnic group, the Tajiks).

Kabul has only one privately-owned publication exclusively in Pushto, the language of the largest ethnic group. This is the magazine Kegdai, which focuses on Pushto culture.

“Obviously, there is discrimination against the Pukhtoons,” says Mohamad Ajmal, who works with IWPR, an NGO that trains journalists. “No one dares to start an exclusively Pushto-language newspaper giving a Pushto view of the situation.” Furthermore, according to the RSF report, “the state owns at least 35 of these publication and almost the entire electronic media. The central government maintains a predominant role in the Afghan news media and criticism of the authorities is rare.”

“All this is a hangover from the communist era,” a UN diplomat said. “Most journalists practice journalism in a very Soviet fashion.”

“This is the time for rebuilding the country and turning it into a democracy,” said radio reporter and ACPC member Ekram Shinwari, adding that “the press does not level any severe criticism against the government or the warlords.”