Afghanistan: Sep ‘08

IWPR’s new training and reporting project swung into high gear in September, as the training team recruited and tested potential participants for the IWPR project in Balkh, Jowzjan, Sar-e-Pul, Samangan, Faryab, Badghis, and Herat.

Successful candidates will receive approximately nine months’ of training and mentoring, and will have the chance to publish on the IWPR website.

Interest in the new project has been high. In Mazar-e-Sharif, more than 80 participants filled out the IWPR questionnaire, which ascertained background, experience, interest, and writing ability.

In Maimana, capital of the remote Faryab province, more than 60 potential participants took an assessment test – a part of the recruitment process – with over 30 per cent of them women.

In Herat, Samangan Sar-e-Pul and Jowzjan, the name and reputation of IWPR drew similar crowds. In all, close to 300 people took the IWPR test.

Once the questionnaires were collected, the team had to sort through them and agree on a list of participants. Many factors were considered in making a final selection: experience, place of employment, interests, as well as writing ability.

Of course not everyone could be accommodated; but over the next three years, IWPR will be working with several generations of trainees.

As the lists are finalised, the IWPR office will inform the successful candidates and begin organising the training sessions. Local editor Hafizullah Gardesh revised and edited the Dari version of the IWPR Afghan Journalists’ handbook; while I have begun work on lesson plans and exercises.

Workshops will begin shortly after the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the fast.

While IWPR’s project in Helmand province is winding down, the reporters are still active. They have provided some of the most comprehensive and reliable coverage of the ongoing battle to bring peace to the troubled region.

When the Taleban took the Marja area of Nad Ali district, most media were silent. As the insurgents crept closer and closer to the capital, the only reports that portrayed the true gravity of the situation belonged to IWPR reporters. When, just weeks after IWPR’s report Helmandis Fear Taleban Noose Tightening (Afghan Recovery Report 300, 11 Sep 2008), the Taleban staged attacks inside Lashkar Gah, the journalists’ analysis proved only too accurate.

Another report, Fears Over “Islamicisiztion” of Afghan Judiciary (ARR 301, 30 Sep 2008), drew attention to the growing fundamentalism inside the Afghan court system. Two high-profile cases spawned concern – that of Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, the young student condemned to death for allegedly downloading controversial material from the Internet; and Ghaus Zalmai, a former journalist, who helped produce a vernacular translation of the Koran.

The decisions in both cases were deeply flawed, according to experts, but adherence to the principle of an independent judiciary has kept the executive branch and the international community from interfering too heavily in the process.