MEDIA-AFGHANISTAN: More Than Bombs and Burkhas

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Dhondt

BRUSSELS, Nov 11 2005 (IPS) - The world will soon hear more about Afghanistan. An alliance of four Afghan media organisations and the international news agency IPS has launched a project to improve coverage of key development issues in Afghanistan, and distribute that news worldwide.

The initiative introduced Thursday (Nov. 10) in Brussels also puts an end to the isolation of Afghan media. An international media conference will be organised in Kabul in September next year. “We will select 200 journalists and give them specific training on issues like gender, health or the economic development process in depth,” project coordinator Ricardo Grassi told reporters.

News about Afghanistan at present mostly deals with armed confrontations between the international troops and the Afghan rebels they are fighting, or with reconstruction efforts financed by big donors. The media in Afghanistan too follow that pattern. The new project will enable Afghan journalists to cover other issues that matter for the country, said Grassi.

The project, funded by the European Commission, is led by The Killid Group (TKG), the main independent Afghan media group. It involves the Afghan news agency Pajhwok, and the training organisations Centre for International Journalism (CIJ) and Sayara. The latter will provide training for journalism students and journalism professors at five of the six universities in Afghanistan.

Another target group is independent media managers. “Hundreds will benefit from the project,” said Grassi. “And our regional focus is a huge boost for media organisations and journalism training outside of Kabul.”

“This cooperation is extremely important for the future of Afghan media,” said Farida Nekzad, managing editor of the Afghan news agency Pajhwok (‘Echo’). Over the last three years, there has been an “extraordinary development” of independent Afghan media, but the sector is still fragile with too few qualified journalists, a weak management and financial instability.

Supporting Afghan media is vital for the development of a country that is slowly recovering from years of civil strife and the regime of the Taliban. “How is the world going to see Afghanistan?” asked IPS Director General Mario Lubetkin at the press conference in Brussels. “Solely as a country where a war is going on, or also as a place where people have dreams and realise them? That is the challenge which IPS confronts participating in this project.”

“Good media are essential for furthering the democratic process,” said Grassi. “Afghanistan has not yet got rid of its Soviet style media system. There are plans to reorganise the government controlled TV and news agency, but that is a very slow process.” Afghanistan also has five government dailies, and only one that is privately controlled.

But independent media are emerging. Two of the major players among them, the news agency Pajhwok and the Killid Group with its two weekly magazines, several regional radio stations and a media distribution agency, are involved in the training project.

“All of these media depend on funding from one or another development agency,” said Grassi. Because there is no advertising market yet, that might ensure self-sufficiency.

The project backed by IPS will mainly provide on-the-job training. Radio programmes and articles will be used in Afghanistan, whereas some of the articles will be distributed internationally by the news agency IPS.

Intimidation and violence are two serious problems reporters in Afghanistan are confronted with, said Grassi. Female journalists find it particularly hard to work. “In the (southern) province of Kandahar or in the east of the country, it is very difficult for women to travel around and investigate a story.”

But things are changing. “At the Pajhwok headquarters in Kabul, almost half of the journalists are women.”

Another problem Afghan media workers have to cope with is illiteracy. “Eighty percent of the men and 92 percent of the women in Afghanistan cannot read or write,” says Grassi. The saving grace is that reading is now turning to a collective event in Afghanistan. “One person buys a magazine and then reads it aloud to 15 others. And then everybody starts to react.”

The project will be making use of this reading habit. Articles will be sent to reading groups in the countryside. And the radio programmes that trainees produce will be used to support community events.