[cr-india] Afghanistan's media battleground

[George Lessard]

Afghanistan's media battleground

---- by Rahilla Zafar, Kabul ----

[excerpt]

Six years ago television was banned in Afghanistan and its single national
radio station was Taliban-run.

William Reeve was a BBC Afghanistan correspondent for two years in the
early 1990s during the time of the warlords and for two years in 1998-1999
during the Taliban regime.

He remembers the days when the main sources of reliable information for
Afghans, before and during the time of the Taliban, were the daily BBC
broadcasts in Dari and Pashto. In a country that has suffered through
decades of war, reliable news was needed to ensure safety.

“Surveys have shown that when big stories were being played out in
Afghanistan, as many as 70 per cent of the Afghan population would hear
what was happening in their country from BBC broadcasts in their own
languages.  Their lives would often depend on this. So they tended to glue
themselves to the evening BBC broadcasts all around the country,” Reeve
recalls.

Today the country’s independent media are considered to be a major success
story – but like most developments in this war-battered nation it finds
itself increasingly under threat.

While the establishment of an independent media has played a pivotal role
in uniting an ethnically-divided country, the re-emergence of warlords and
a reluctant government puts such gains in jeopardy.

Since 2002, hundreds of media outlets opened with the help of an
international donor community that recognised a free press as a necessary
ingredient of nation-building in a country where 90 per cent of its people
live in rural areas.

“There were so many media trainers here in 2002 that I wondered who was
going to feed the people,” says Dominic Medley who served as country
director for Internews in 2002, an organisation that has helped to set up
35 regional radio stations.

And despite a promising start, sustaining independent media stations has
become a challenge in Afghanistan. Obstacles include the rise of
warlord-backed media outlets; a growing lack of security for journalists;
and the reluctance of Afghan officials to embrace an independent media.

With so many actors involved from international military forces, foreign
governments, as well as Afghan political leaders and warlords, the media
have evolved at a fast pace that far exceeds what the actual market size
of 22 million dollars could support.

more at

http://knowledge.insead.edu/Afghanmediabattleground081226.cfm#