Afghans Beyond Taliban

Ahamad Omid Khpalwak, a reporter for the BBC and the Afghan news agency Pajhwok, was killed July 28 during Taliban attacks on several buildings in Tarin Kot, the capital of the southern province of Oruzgan. Khpalwak was in one of the targeted buildings, the provincial headquarters of the national radio and TV station. “We offer our condolences to Khpalwak’s family and friends,” Paris-based press...

French journalists Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier and their Afghan interpreter Reza, who were abducted by a Taliban group on December 29, 2009 in the northeastern province of Kapisa while doing a report for the French TV station France 3, were released June 29. Kapisa governor Abdol Hakim Akhonzadeh, who was reached in the town of Tagab, told Reporters Without Borders that the journalists...

Kabul Weekly claims it has been put out of business after daring to criticise President Hamid Karzai. On Wednesday staff met with their editor, Mohammad Faheem Dashty, for the final time after producing the last edition of a newspaper that has been a regular sight on the streets of the capital since 2002, according to a report in the Guardian. Dashty said he had no choice but to shut down after...

A leading journalist and writer in Afghanistan was the victim of an acid attack Tuesday as he left his home in the Afghan capital Kabul. Razaq Mamoon, who works for several media outlets and presents a programme on the independent station Tolo TV, was taken to the military hospital in the capital. Doctors say though he is suffering from first-degree burns his injuries are not life-threatening and...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has described as baseless and unacceptable a claim by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid that Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, two French TV journalists who have been held hostage for the past year in northwestern Afghanistan, were “engaged in gathering information that has the nature of intelligence gathering.” “These grave...

Radio Kapisa director Hojatullah Mujadadi is being subjected to prolonged detention by the Afghan intelligence agency known as the National Directorate of Security (NDS). Saturday, Mujadadi completed his third month of being held at NDS headquarters in Kabul, where he has not been allowed to see a lawyer, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The NDS and...

NATO forces have freed one of three detained Afghan Al-Jazeera journalists, AP and other media outlets announced on Friday. The three had been detained on suspicion of spreading Taliban propaganda, by among other things filming insurgent attacks. Two still remain in custody. Al-Jazeera cameraman Mohammad Nadir was released early on Friday, AP reported. IPI and other press freedom organisations had...

A prominent Afghan television news journalist and political activist has been murdered near his Kabul home. Sayed Hamid Noori, who was also deputy head of Afghanistan's National Journalists' Association, was found dead of knife wounds late Sunday. "Someone called him and asked him to come down from his apartment last night. His body was found later by police in a tree-covered area near his home,"...

A Japanese journalist who was abducted by militants in Afghanistan five months ago has been freed by his captors and left the country, Japan's Foreign Ministry said. Kosuke Tsuneoka, a freelance journalist and veteran of war zones, was abducted on April 1. He was released Saturday night to a Japanese embassy and appeared tired but otherwise unharmed, the ministry said in a statement. "Thank you to...

The Afghanistan government has decided to close down the privately-owned TV station Emroz for allegedly endangering national unity and to ban two programmes on two other TV stations on the ground that they were contrary to Islamic values. When it met on 27 July, the cabinet ordered the ministry of culture and information and the attorney-general to shut down Emroz, a station launched in August...