‘A black day’ for journalists in Afghanistan
Suicide blast targets reporters, photographers on deadliest day for media in 17-year conflict Security forces run from the site of a second suicide attack in Kabul on Monday.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN— Just after 8 a.m. Monday, a familiar boom filled the air and rattled windows across the Afghan capital. Local news photographers, reporters and TV crews grabbed their gear and rushed to the scene of the latest suicide bombing in a long and bloody conflict. Though such incidents were never without risk, the journalists were used to covering them — and rather competitive about getting there first.
But about 20 minutes later, when the journalists were gathered watching emergency workers at the bomb site in a high-security official zone, another explosion erupted in their midst. A second suicide bomber, on foot and carrying a press pass and camera, had joined and targeted the very group of people tasked with covering such violence.
Of the 25 Afghans who died in the twin blasts, nine were journalists at the second one. An additional 45 people were injured. Claimed by Daesh, it was the single deadliest attack on the press since the overthrow of Taliban rule in 2001. Later in the day, Ahmad Shah, an Afghan reporter for the BBC, was killed in a separate attack in Khost province.
“This is a black day for our country, and for every journalist in Afghanistan,” Fawad Nasiri, 25, a journalist at Radio Azadi, said Monday morning. He was waiting outside an operating room at Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, where one of his colleagues was undergoing surgery. “We lost a lot of friends today. I’m sorry, I cannot say any more.”
A few hundred metres away, at the hospital morgue, a cluster of men watched sombrely as the body of Nawroz Ali Rajabi, a young reporter for the TV One news channel, was pulled from a steel drawer and lowered into a pasteboard coffin.
The men were his brothers, cousins and colleagues. Several peered down at his burned and bruised face, then gasped or turned away, sobbing.
One man gently zipped up the black body bag. Another nailed down the coffin lid. A cousin, red-eyed and shaking with anger, shouted, “The sons of generals and officials drive in armoured cars, but we poor people are being killed.” Then the men hoisted the box onto their shoulders, chanting a Koranic prayer, and carried it out to be buried.
The blasts, which occurred in the heavily guarded zone that houses foreign embassies, Afghan government offices and NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, also killed Shah Marai, the chief photographer here for Agence France-Presse and a father of six, and seven journalists from local TV and radio stations.
The slain journalists represented a mix of international news organizations —AFP, the BBC —and local outlets such as Afghanistan’s Tolo television. One of them, newly minted producer Maharram Durrani of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, was part of a small cohort of female broadcasters, photographers and reporters who in recent years have helped change Afghanistan’s largely male press culture.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders named the other victims as: Tolo News cameraman Yar Mohammad Tokhi, who was to have been married within weeks; two other journalists for Radio Free Europe — Ebadollah Hananzi and Sabvon Kakeker; two cameramen for Afghan network TV1, Ghazi Rasoli and Norozali Raja- bi; and Salim Talash and Ali Salimi of local Mashal TV.
Six others were among the wounded.
The heavy casualties left Kabul’s war-hardened press corps reeling in shock and grief. Dozens of Afghan journalists have died covering combat and conflict in recent years, but this was a deliberate attack on a group of professionals and friends in the capital, many of whom who had worked together for years.
Afghan press associations and individual journalists complained Monday that the government was not doing enough to protect them, and some suggested they be provided with armed guards and flak jackets. There was also anger that the Afghan intelligence service did not take more defensive action after the first bomber, on a motorbike, detonated his explosives outside its compound.
“On the one hand, we have to cover the news. On the other hand, our people need to be protected,” said a TV One manager who asked not to be named, citing insecure conditions for journalists. In addition to Rajabi, he said, a station cameraman died in the blast.
The deaths point to heightened peril for journalists across the globe. The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders said 50 professional journalists were killed last year, together with seven “citizen journalists” and eight media workers.
Many of the journalists killed in Monday’s attack had resisted a narrative of Afghan victimhood, seeking to use their work to offer an engaging, nuanced view of their country and their compatriots.