Mangal, a prominent Afghan presenter, had
said in recent days that she feared for her life
By Emma
Graham-Harrison
 |
|
No
one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Mena Mangal.
Photograph:
ANI
|
A prominent Afghan journalist and political
adviser has been gunned down in Kabul, just days after she warned on social
media that she feared for her life.
Mena Mangal was shot dead on Saturday morning
in south-east Kabul. The attack, in broad daylight in a public place, prompted
an outpouring of grief and anger from women’s rights activists, directed at
authorities who had left her unprotected in the face of threats.
“This woman had already shared that her life
was in danger; why did nothing happen? We need answers,” said Wazhma Frogh, an
Afghan human rights lawyer and women’s rights campaigner. “Why is it so easy in
this society [for men] to keep killing women they disagree with?”
Mangal had shared her fears in a defiant post
on Facebook on 3 May. She said she was being sent threatening messages but
declared that a strong woman wasn’t afraid of death, and that she loved her
country.
Interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi
said unknown attackers had shot Mangal, and a special police unit was now
investigating.
In a tearful video posted to Twitter,
Mangal’s mother named a group of men as suspected killers, claiming they had
previously kidnapped her daughter. The group were arrested for that abduction,
she said, but later bribed their way out of detention.
Mangal made her name as a presenter on the
Pashto-language channel Tolo TV, the country’s largest private broadcaster, and
later worked for one of its key competitors, Shamshad TV.
Off-screen she was a passionate advocate of
women’s rights to education and work, and had recently become a cultural
adviser to the lower chamber of Afghanistan’s national parliament.
“Can’t stop my tears at the loss of this
beautiful soul. She had a loud voice, and actively raised [that] voice for her
people,” Frogh said.
Such a public killing was an “absolute
dishonour” on the police, intelligence services and national security council,
said the political analyst Mariam Wardak.
Over the past two decades of war in
Afghanistan there have been many attacks on and assassinations of women in
public positions, including policewomen and politicians, educators, students
and journalists. Some have been targeted by insurgents who object to women
having a role in public life, while others have been attacked by conservative
relatives or members of their own community.
But there is a sense that the latest murder
comes at a time when women are particularly vulnerable. Afghan women’s rights
activists have warned that they have been almost entirely excluded from a US
drive to broker peace with the Taliban, putting hard-won freedoms in jeopardy.
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, before
the US-led campaign to topple them in 2001, they barred women from education and most work, forcing them to wear the burqa.
The fight for women’s rights was often
presented as a major driver of western military intervention, but appears to
have been largely sidelined as the US tries to wrap up its longest ever war.
Although the Taliban has paid lip service to women’s rights at international
meetings, in the parts of the country it controls there are harsh restrictions
including a de-facto ban on secondary education for girls.
And just days before Mangal’s murder, the
Taliban attacked the headquarters of an international aid group in Kabul,
citing its work on women’s rights as one reason it was targeted.
The Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid
said Counterpart International had carried out “harmful western activities” in
Afghanistan, and was “promoting open inter-mixing between men and women”.
