Month: August 2024

washington — The suspension of broadcast licenses, arrests and closures of news outlets in Afghanistan show that the Taliban continue to exert pressure on media, watchdogs say.

In recent weeks, the Taliban-run Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority, or ATRA, suspended 17 broadcast licenses assigned to 14 media outlets in eastern Nangarhar province. The privately owned Kawoon Ghag radio station in Laghman province has also been shuttered, according to media watchdogs.

“Three years after the fall of Kabul, the Taliban continue to put pressure on journalists and media outlets that remain in Afghanistan,” Beh Lih Yi, the Asia Program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told VOA.

“In July alone, at least two journalists — Sayed Rahim Saeedi and Mohammad Ibrahim Mohtaj — have been arrested by Taliban intelligence agents and morality police, respectively,” she said via email.

Hamisha Bahar Radio and TV, Sharq TV and Arzasht are among the outlets to have their licenses suspended, according to Afghan media associations.

The media outlets were ordered to pay outstanding license fees, which cost around $1,500 a year.

But with the media industry under economic pressure since the Taliban takeover, costs can be hard to cover.

“As the country experiences an economic crisis, it is difficult for local media outlets to pay the license fees,” one freelance journalist told VOA. “Even if this was the case, they [the regulatory authority] should have approached the outlets and helped them,” the journalist, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, told VOA.

He described the action as a systematic repression of freedom of expression.

Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, Afghanistan has seen a stark decline in international aid and its economy, according to a 2024 report from the World Bank.

Neither the Taliban Ministry of Communications and Information Technology nor the ATRA regulator responded to VOA’s email requests for comment.

Shukrullah Pasoon, a former director at the now-shuttered broadcaster Enikass TV, said even if the Taliban allowed affected outlets to keep working, it wouldn’t be easy to return to programming and viewership.

“It is part of their crackdown on journalists. Journalists are not feeling safe to continue their work under the Taliban. In this way, they want to put pressure on journalists to influence the content of the media outlets,” Pasoon said.

The outlet he worked for closed after the Taliban’s takeover. Soon after the group regained control of Afghanistan, armed militants raided the home of Zalmai Lotfi, the head of Enikaas TV.

The unnamed freelance journalist who spoke with VOA said the suspension would have “a negative impact” on the province.

Local media outlets can no longer report independently and hold those in power accountable, as the free media landscape has shrunk under the Taliban, the local journalist said.

“Many journalists have already lost their jobs, and with the closure of these outlets, more journalists would lose their jobs,” the freelance journalist said.

The Taliban have previously said media outlets have unrestricted freedom and support from the government if they follow the country’s laws and Islamic values.

But watchdogs, including the Afghanistan Journalists Center, have recorded more than 450 media violation cases since the Taliban took power.

The country currently ranks as the third-worst country for media, coming in at 178th out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index, where 1 signals the best environment.

In 2021, just before the Taliban takeover, it ranked 122nd.

Waheed Faizi contributed to this report.
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Islamabad — The Islamist Taliban marked the third anniversary Wednesday of recapturing power in Afghanistan with a public holiday and a televised military parade at the former U.S.-run Bagram airbase, among other symbolic events.

The so-called “victory day” celebrations occurred amid ongoing global criticism of the Taliban government, known as the Islamic Emirate, for allegedly creating “the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis” and making impoverished Afghanistan the only country where girls are banned from education beyond sixth grade.

The ceremony at Bagram, around 40 kilometers north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, featured a 21-gun salute and speeches from top Taliban leaders, with thousands of people in the male-only audience, including foreign diplomats.

The then-insurgent Taliban swept back to power on August 15, 2021, as the U.S.-led international forces withdrew from the country after their involvement in the Afghan war for almost 20 years.

The Taliban’s prime minister, Hassan Akhund, stated in a message read by his chief of staff, “Allah granted the Mujahid nation of Afghanistan a decisive victory on this date over an international arrogant and occupying force.” Akhund, largely considered a figurehead, was absent from Wednesday’s event.

Akhund’s message said that the Taliban government “has the responsibility to maintain Islamic rule, protect property, people’s lives, and the honor of our nation.”

The de facto Taliban government, not formally recognized by any country, cited the national solar calendar for marking the anniversary of “Afghanistan’s victory and freedom” from the U.S.-led “occupation” a day early.

Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, wanted by the United States for terrorism with a $10 million bounty for his arrest, also addressed the Bagram event, urging global cooperation and engagement with the Taliban administration.

“My message to the international community is that there is no need for dismay over the fact that you took our independence, and we reclaimed it successfully,” Haqqani said, without naming any country.

“We do not want to hold anyone accountable. We have created favorable circumstances and have good intentions for them to cooperate with us in rebuilding Afghanistan, similar to how they helped during the occupation,” he said.

Haqqani ran his network of militants, staging high-profile suicide bombings and other deadly attacks in support of Taliban insurgents on American and NATO forces during their presence in the war-torn South Asian nation.

The Bagram parade was also an opportunity for the Taliban to showcase the military hardware, including tanks, helicopters, and Humvees, left behind by U.S. and NATO forces.

Taliban leaders boasted about their conquest and subsequent achievements, such as establishing “peace and security” and an Islamic system in line with their harsh interpretation of Islam, but none of them responded to allegations of human rights abuses, particularly their sweeping curbs on women’s rights. They did not discuss hardships facing millions of Afghans.

The United Nations and international aid agencies have ranked Afghanistan as one of the world’s “largest and most complex” humanitarian crises. They estimated that 23.7 million Afghans, more than half women and children, need humanitarian relief.

A group of 29 U.N. experts Wednesday jointly called for “stronger and more effective” international action to address the deteriorating human rights situation in Afghanistan.

“We stress that there should be no move to normalize the de facto authorities unless and until there are demonstrated, measurable, and independently verified improvements against human rights benchmarks, particularly for women and girls,” the Geneva-based experts said in a statement.

In a separate joint statement this week, international non-governmental organizations warned of a growing aid funding gap.

Speaking ahead of the three-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover, a top U.N. official on Tuesday urged the world to support Afghan women’s fight for freedom.

“Three years’ worth of countless decrees, directives, and statements targeting women and girls – stripping them of their fundamental rights, eviscerating their autonomy,” Alison Davidian, the U.N. Women’s country representative in Afghanistan, said while sharing details of the latest survey.

She referred to religious edicts the reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has issued over the past three years to govern the crisis-hit country, most of them leading to restrictions on the freedom of Afghan women and girls. Akhundzada rarely leaves the southern city of Kandahar, regarded as the country’s de facto capital.

“To date, no woman in Afghanistan is in a leadership position anywhere that has influence politically at the national or provincial level. When Afghan women are engaged in the Taliban’s structures, their roles are largely about monitoring the compliance of other women with their discriminatory decrees,” Davidian told reporters in New York.

“We must continue to invest in women. Nothing undermines the Taliban’s vision for society more than empowering the very part of the population they seek to oppress,” she stressed.

Human Rights Watch reiterated its call for the global community to press the Taliban to remove curbs on women.

“The third anniversary of the Taliban’s takeover is a grim reminder of Afghanistan’s human rights crisis, but it should also be a call for action,” said Fereshta Abbasi, the U.S.-based watchdog’s Afghanistan researcher.

The Taliban have dismissed criticism of their government as interference in internal matters of Afghanistan, saying their policies are aligned with local culture and Islam.

Terrorism-related international sanctions on many top Taliban leaders, isolation of their administration, and continued suspension of foreign development aid have made it difficult for Kabul to address deepening economic troubles.

The World Bank reported in April that the aftermath of the Taliban takeover had seen a stark decline in international aid, leaving Afghanistan without any internal growth engines and leading to “a staggering 26 percent contraction in real GDP.”
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Afghan refugee Gul Ali and his family were living in Pakistan in November when they were deported back home. Just two months later, they came back to Pakistan, saying that they could not find shelter and work in Afghanistan. Muska Safi reports from Peshawar, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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BENGALURU, India — The heavy rains that resulted in landslides killing hundreds in southern India last month were made worse by human-caused climate change, a rapid analysis by climate scientists found Tuesday.

The study by the World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who use established climate models to quickly determine whether human-caused climate change played a part in extreme weather events around the world, found that the 15 centimeters (5.91 inches) of rain that fell in a 24-hour period July 29-30 was 10% more intense because of global warming. The group expects further emissions of planet-heating gases will result in increasingly frequent intense downpours that can lead to such disasters.

Nearly 200 people were killed and rescuers are still searching for more than 130 missing people in Kerala state, one of India’s most popular tourist destinations.

“The Wayanad landslides are another catastrophic example of climate change playing out in real time,” said Mariam Zachariah, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London and one of the authors of the rapid study.

Last month’s rainfall that caused the landslides was the third-heaviest in Kerala state since India’s weather agency began record-keeping in 1901.

Last year over 400 people died due to heavy rains in the Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. Multiple studies have found that India’s monsoon rains have become more erratic as a result of climate change. “Until the world replaces fossil fuels with renewable energy, monsoon downpours will continue to intensify, bringing landslides, floods and misery to India,” said Zachariah.

India’s southern state Kerala has been particularly vulnerable to climate change-driven extreme weather. Heavy rainfall in 2018 flooded large parts of the state, killing at least 500 people, and a cyclonic storm in 2017 killed at least 250 people including fishers who were at sea near the state’s coasts.

“Millions of people are sweltering in deadly heat in the summer. Meanwhile, in monsoons, heavier downpours are fuelling floods and landslides, like we saw in Wayanad,” said Arpita Mondal, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and one of the study’s authors. Earlier this year another study by the same group found that deadly heat waves that killed at least 100 people in India were found to have been made at least 45 times more likely due to global warming.

India, the world’s most populous country, is among the highest current emitters of planet-heating gases and is also considered to be among the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate impacts.

“When it rains now, it rains heavily. In a warmer world, these extreme events will be more frequent and we cannot stop them. However, we can try to establish early warning systems for landslides and also avoid any construction activity in landslide-prone regions,” said Madhavan Rajeevan, a retired senior official at India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences who is from Kerala state.

Tuesday’s study also recommended minimizing deforestation and quarrying, while improving early warning and evacuation systems to help protect people in the region from future landslides and floods. The study said the Wayanad region had seen a 62% decrease in forest cover and that that may have contributed to increased risks of landslides during heavy rains.
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