Jason MotlaghTIMEJune 24, 2009 The escape
of veteran New York Times correspondent David Rohde
from Taliban captors was a rare piece of good news from the
Afghan-Pakistan borderlands. For more than seven months, there was
almost no
public word on his fate. Western news agencies kept silent
about the kidnapping of the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, the
Afghan reporter Tahir Ludin and their driver, out of concern thatinternational attention might jeopardize their safety. The trio was
betrayed by a Taliban commander with whom Ludin had arranged meetings
several times before. It was yet another reminder of the
dangerous
unpredictability of reporting the Afghan war. With negotiations for
their release at a stalemate, Rohde and Ludin jumped the wall of the
compound where they were being held, in North
Waziristan, while guards
were asleep.While abductions of foreign journalists can end and have ended in
tragedy, the risks facing Afghan journalists are even greater. The
Taliban and other
lawless elements in the country are often motivated
by the potential ransoms — sometimes worth several million dollars —
they believe foreigners can bring them. Afghan journalists who fallinto their hands generally do not offer the same moneymaking
possibilities. And so the escape of Ludin, who like some other local
journalists acts as a "fixer" for foreign correspondents,
was
particularly welcome. Most Afghan reporters know the prevailing reality.
"We know that the
chances are greater we might be killed if we are taken by the Taliban,"
says an Afghan photographer working part time for a Western news
agency. He and his local colleagues
trust that their employers will
support them "to a point," he says, but they accept that insurgents are
likely to punish them as "traitors" for working with foreigners, absent
the
prospect of a hefty ransom. "They won't think too much about what
to do with us. That's something we have to accept," says the
photographer. (Ransom does not appear to have been a factor in
Rohde's
case, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. denies that it paid a ransom
to effect the release of its reporter Melissa Fung in November 2008.) The killing of Ajmal
Nakshbandi provides a grim counterpoint to the
Rohde story. In May 2007, the freelance Afghan journalist and
translator was accused of being a spy, abducted and beheaded by the
Taliban in southern
Helmand province. The Italian correspondent he was
working with, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, was later released in exchange for
five militants and an undisclosed sum of cash paid by the Italian
government.
Another Afghan reporter working in Helmand, Abdul Samad
Rohani, was killed last June while investigating a story for the
British Broadcasting Corp. on illegal poppy cultivation. The Taliban,
usually
quick to claim credit even in instances where they may not
actually be involved, denied any role in his death. Afghan journalists
and human-rights watchers allege that he was slain by gunmen with
links
to the drug trade.The danger does not only come from drug lords and the Taliban.
Afghan journalists say their government is not making reporting any
easier. Islamic hard liners, former
warlords and corrupt officials,
they explain, are behind an increasingly harsh assault on press freedom
— one of the country's key post-Taliban achievements — that has spawned
an
increasing amount of self-censorship. A recent report by the Afghan
Independent Journalists' Association said that over the past year, 25
journalists were arrested, 24 were beaten or intimidated by
public
officials, 22 received death threats and four outlets were forced to
close. Rahimullah Samandar, head of the association, says religion,
official graft and certain issues related to national
security are now
seen as "red lines," crossed at one's peril.Two al-Jazeera journalists, Qais Azimy and Hameedullah Shah, were
released on Wednesday after being held incommunicado
by Afghanistan's
intelligence service for three nights on grounds that they were a
"threat to the internal security of the country." The evidence: a June
11 report produced by Azimy in which
a Taliban commander in Kunduz
province boasted that he has hundreds of fighters and a dozen suicide
bombers ready to strike. The Qatar-based TV network insists the story
was balanced by an interview
with a German coalition officer.
Questioned by one of its staff at a press conference, President Hamid
Karzai countered that the story was "not a case of press [freedom] — it
was a case of
making a story in favor of terrorism."Meanwhile, as dramatic as Rohde's escape was, the story is not yet
complete. The young Afghan driver, Asadullah Mangal, who drove Rohde
and Ludin
to the unlucky assignment, was apparently too afraid to make
a break. Now he is alone. If local journalists have little market value
for the Taliban, how much will the group value a driver?This story was reported in part with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.Learn more about this reporting project.See the story as in originally ran in TIME.Back to top
Soldiers from the Afghan National Army keep watch in Kandahar city, following clashes which killed Kandahar police chief and eight other officers June 29, 2009. The police chief for Afghanistan's southern ...
