[Gunmen attacked Malalai Maiwand, a
well-known TV and radio journalist, in Jalalabad. Her death is one of a string
of high-profile targeted killings in Afghanistan.]
By Zabihullah
Ghazi and Thomas
Gibbons-Neff
Gunmen shot the journalist, Malalai
Maiwand, 26, a television and radio presenter with Enikas Radio and TV, as she
was traveling in her car in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar Province in
eastern Afghanistan. Her driver was also killed.
No group immediately claimed
responsibility, and the Taliban denied any involvement.
Ms. Maiwand is the latest casualty
in the high-profile targeted killings that have racked Afghanistan in recent
months, especially in the major cities including the capital, Kabul. The
attacks have prompted a public outcry accusing the government of failing to
protect its citizens.
Ms. Maiwand’s father, Gul Mohamad
Mullah, called on the government to find his daughter’s attackers and “not just
promise to investigate the case and never find the killers.”
The presidential spokesman, Sediq
Seddiqi, called the shooting a “terrorist attack,” while Zabihullah Mujahid, a
Taliban spokesman, said the killing “had nothing to do with us.”
Shaharzad Akbar, chairwoman of the
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said on social media that
the attack amounted to a “war crime.”
Ms. Maiwand had worked at Enikas
for seven years, and while there had been threats against the television
station, none were directed specifically at her, said Zalmay Latifi, the
station’s head. Ms. Maiwand’s mother, a women’s education activist, was killed
by gunmen about a decade ago, according to her family.
So far this year, 10 journalists
and media workers have been killed in Afghanistan, said Mujib Khelwatgar, the
chief executive of Nai, an organization that supports open media in
Afghanistan. Ms. Maiwand’s death followed the killing of two other well-known
media personalities.
Aliyas Dayee, a beloved radio
journalist, was killed when
a magnetic bomb attached to his car exploded on Nov. 12 in Afghanistan’s
southern Helmand Province. Yama Siawash, a well- known former news anchor who
was working for the country’s central bank at the time, was killed by an
explosive device affixed to his car in Kabul on Nov. 7.
Rafi Rafiq Sediqi, the former chief
executive of a local news network, Khurshid TV, also died under questionable
circumstances in Kabul on Nov. 26. A spokesman for the interior ministry said
Mr. Sediqi had died from “gas poisoning.”
In the case of Mr. Dayee, the
Taliban had threatened him in the days and weeks leading up to his death and
had ordered him to stop reporting on the insurgent group’s operations in
Helmand Province, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. Other Afghan
journalists have received similar threats from the group in recent weeks,
prompting at least one to flee the country.
Days before Mr. Dayee was killed,
he had asked his brother, Modasir Dawat, for a picture of him in Kabul to post
on social media. He wanted people to think he had left Helmand, his brother
said.
“The government promised an
investigation, but we haven’t heard anything yet,” Mr. Dawat said. “We don’t
know who killed my brother and why.”
The Taliban never publicly claimed
responsibility for the attack.
Najib Sharifi, director of the
Afghan Journalists Safety Committee, did not point directly to one organization
for the killings, but implied that insurgent forces were behind them. At the
same time, there is a growing suspicion that pro-government groups could be
behind some of the threats, in an attempt to put more pressure on the
Taliban as
peace negotiations continue in Qatar.
“Some groups think that the last
two decades of change in Afghanistan are their biggest threat, and the media
reflects that change, so that is why journalists are targeted,” Mr. Sharifi
said.
Mr. Siawash’s father, Dawood, has
posted the same message on social media nearly every day since his son’s death:
“The government should point out the terrorist killer of Yama Siawash,
otherwise the government itself is the killer.”
The Taliban often use unclaimed
attacks to spread fear and undercut the Afghan government — all while
refraining from large-scale attacks in cities under a February
agreement with the United States that encouraged all sides to reduce
violence.
Instead, the insurgent group has
relegated its violence mostly to the countryside, especially in offensives in
the country’s south, and has often used the targeted killings for propaganda
purposes.
From July to September, unclaimed
insurgent attacks in Afghanistan were up by more than 50 percent from the
previous quarter, accounting for nearly half of civilian deaths, according to a
U.S. government watchdog report released last month. In
November, at
least 200 civilians were killed across the country.
In 2018, a particularly brutal year
for news media workers in Afghanistan, 15 people were killed, according to
a report from Reporters Without Borders, including nine
journalists who were killed in twin bombings in Kabul claimed by the Islamic
State affiliate in the country. Five media workers were killed in the country
in 2019.
While endemic corruption and a
flailing economy continue to plague Afghanistan, its local news outlets have
flourished in the wake of the 2001 U.S. invasion.
Zaki Daryabi, the editor of
Afghanistan’s Etilaatroz newspaper, was recently awarded this year’s
Transparency International’s Anti-Corruption
Award for a series of investigative reports into the government’s
mismanagement.
Zabihullah Ghazi reported from
Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff from Geneva. Fahim Abed and
Fatima Faizi contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
