The radical Taliban movement that came to power in Afghanistan (banned in the Russian Federation) are ready to support the local media, which lost their sources of financing after the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country, the spokesman for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA, used by the Taliban) Zabihullah Mujahid said on Tuesday.
"The reasons why some [Afghan] media stopped working after US troops left the country are not related to [the activities of] the IEA, but to the loss of their funding from foreign forces and embassies," Mujahid noted on his Twitter page. He assured that the current Afghan authorities "will do everything possible to solve the financial problems of these media outlets."
As the IEA official assured, in Afghanistan, media workers "can work and broadcast freely within the limits of the law." Mujahid argues that "if a journalist in Afghanistan is summoned to certain bodies to obtain information, it does not necessarily mean torture or imprisonment." "The fears of some international circles about this are not justified," he is convinced.
In a press freedom ranking presented Tuesday by the nongovernmental organization Reporters Without Borders, Afghanistan dropped 34 places to one of the last 180 nations on the list.
In late December, the Association of Independent Journalists of Afghanistan and Reporters Without Borders released a report showing that in the months since the Taliban came to power, 43 percent of the Afghan media disappeared and more than 6,400 journalists (including more than 80 percent of women) lost their jobs. According to the National Union of Journalists of Afghanistan, as of January 17, about 90 percent of employees of Afghan media were deprived of free access to information with the arrival of radicals.
The Taliban launched a massive operation to take control of Afghanistan after the US announced the decision to withdraw its military forces from the country. On August 15, 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul without a fight and President Ashraf Ghani left the republic. On September 6, the Taliban claimed control of all Afghan territory, and on September 7 they announced the composition of the provisional government, the legitimacy of which has not yet been recognized by any country.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from TASS