Borzou Daragahi in Kabul
It was a dangerous whim. Living under the cruel shadow of
the Taleban, Osman Akram decided to start a photocopied
underground satirical magazine filled with nasty jokes and
cartoons about the extremist militia that had taken over
Afghanistan.
The 45-year-old former journalist and engineer faced a
number of challenges in getting his illustrations and mock
news reports of life under the Taleban to his readers. First,
how to produce it. Most of the photocopy shops in Kabul are
near government ministries.
Indeed, a Taleban official once grabbed a copy of his
magazine and demanded to know what it was. Akram took a deep
breath. 'I told him it was for children,' he recalled. 'He
believed me.'
Under the Taleban, independent media were ruthlessly
suppressed. One political cartoonist had all her work burned
by the Taleban before an exhibition. Only government
newspapers and radio broadcasts were allowed. But with the
defeat of the Taleban and the installation of Hamid Karzai's
shaky provisional Government, Afghan journalists, egged on and
funded by media-oriented non-governmental organisations, are
experiencing unprecedented freedom.
The new press law, hammered out quickly by the interim
Government, is full of contradictions and loopholes,
journalists say.
But the Afghan press - never really free in its entire
history - is experiencing something of a blossoming. 'There
was never a time of media freedom here before,' said Fahim
Dashty, editor of Kabul Weekly, a 4,000-circulation weekly
that has become omnipresent in the city.
More than 80 publications - including Osman Akram's
Zanbil-e Gham (meaning 'cart of sorrow') - have obtained
permits to publish. A new independent radio programme, called
Good Morning Afghanistan, has begun broadcasting, using its
daily one-hour time slot to inform people about recent events
rather than promote ideological causes. 'We have to find a
compromise between freedom of speech and national security,'
Ostad Elahai, a professor at Kabul University, said.
Nearly a dozen publications devoted to women have been
launched, including Malalai, a 3,000-circulation monthly
magazine in English, Dari and Pashto. A recent issue included
an interview with the 'only parachutist woman in Afghanistan'
and an article entitled 'Women's Rights Trampled' touching on
men's fears about women's liberation.
Still, news directors and editors step carefully.
Journalists tiptoe around subjects such as religion in the
fiercely Muslim nation. They say they must be careful not to
inflame still unhealed wounds caused by more than a decade of
civil war. 'We have to use our freedom responsibly,' said
Barry Salaam, programme director of Good Morning Afghanistan,
which is funded primarily by a Danish non-governmental
organisation.
Official press censorship - especially in Kabul - is
non-existent compared to the atmosphere under Russian,
mujahedeen and Taleban rule, when there was no independent
media save for underground publications such as Akram's
Zanbil-e Gham.
He managed to get 15 editions of his magazine to press
during the Taleban years. The first issue featured a cartoon
of two hands chained behind the front of a burqa, the
face-covering cloaks the Taleban forced all women to wear. He
closed shop about a year before the Taleban fell, when a
friend was caught with the publication and interrogated by the
Taleban. His friend was let go. 'The Taleban didn't understand
satire,' said Akram.
But the official attention to his publication was too much.
He suspended publication until just days after the Taleban
fell, when he published the first above-ground issue of the
magazine. Today, thanks to a little foreign help, Zanbil-e
Gham is a bona fide magazine, with a print run of 1,500. A
recent issue savaged international forces ostensibly in the
country to protect Afghans from al-Qaeda terrorists, but
apparently more obsessed with protecting themselves from the
locals.
'There are no red lines,' he said.
'I told a Taleban official the [underground satirical]
magazine was for children. He believed me'
