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It took the international community two long decades of sacrifices with blood and fortune to establish some sort of representative governance in Afghanistan, which the Taliban overthrew in days, and the media threw the entire story off its radar in weeks.

In January, some Taliban members in northern Mazr-e-Sharf city allegedly gang-raped eight women in custody. These women were part of the group of people arrested while trying to flee the country following the Taliban takeover in the wake of the withdrawal of foreign troops.

The Taliban, obviously, denied this.

My friends in Kabul told me that the women who survived the gang rape were later killed by their families in the name of honour after they were handed over by the Taliban. The rest of the women, they said, were still missing.

In less than seven months since the Taliban took over the country, most of the girls secondary schools remain closed.

The barriers between young women and higher education are at the highest, women are banned from most paid employment, womens sports have been banned, and over 72% of women journalists have lost their jobs.

In their early days of power, the ministry of womens affairs was swiftly replaced by the Taliban with the infamous ministry of virtue and vice, which later saw an array of restrictions imposed on womens travels. Women have been beaten and abducted for peaceful protests for their right to work, education and health more and more people now selling their daughters away for mere survival.

Yet there is a deafening silence in international media, which seems to have become bored with the plight of the Afghan people, especially women.

The life of a woman under Taliban rule is not a mystery to the outer world. Yet international media are becoming increasingly disinterested and distracted.

After the initial winners and losers coverage that kept newsrooms busy for a few weeks, as soon as the international troops and contractors left, international media made an exit too.

The US abandonment of Afghanistan set its people on a trajectory that prophesied a life of intimidation, terror and incarceration human rights violations, poverty and statelessness that proved their worst nightmare true.

But the US government is not the only one lying to the world about what actually happened at the end in one of the longest wars in history. International media lied as well by concealing information and dismembering the voice of so many affected people.

The absence of war is not peace.

Journalists may not be propagating war, but through inconsistent and infrequent coverage they are also not prioritising peace with the US-led coalition quitting and the Taliban ruling Afghanistan. It gives way to propaganda and misinformation to permeate through without public attention or inquiry.

On top of that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which led to fluctuations in the global stock markets, and the surging Covid-19 infections around the world have resulted in war-ravaged Afghanistan disenfranchised and ignored by international media continuing to suffer silently and helplessly.

The international media spotlight on Afghanistan is fading fast.

Yet the agony of the Afghan people, especially women and young girls, is far from over the crisis is only escalating, with the crumbling healthcare and services system caught between international isolation and hardline Taliban rule.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, local media does not have the freedom to raise questions, let alone investigate. Taliban control local media insofar as heavily armed Taliban fighters have been seen to accompany their leaders when they make live TV appearances.

Separate surveys by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) have revealed that over a half of Afghanistans media outlets have closed since the Taliban took power back in August.

For surviving journalists, the Taliban announced the vaguely worded 11 journalism rules basically their way of censoring and controlling media.

And now, with the western media broadly shelving the coverage of Afghanistan, theres hardly anyone left to rely on with conflict de-escalatory coverage that is grounded in the frameworks of humanisation, justice and peace.

Yet, amid the threats of abduction and targeted persecution, a group of women took to the streets of Kabul on Sunday, demanding access to education and work. For these women to stand in the face of tyranny that even the most powerful country in the world does not want to face is an act of resilience in the most desperate of times.

It calls for robust international media coverage and solidarity.

Yes, some primary girls schools have reopened this month and some women have been allowed to return to work in the education and health industries, but human rights violations, hunger, poverty and sickness remain at a record high, and a predicted famine is around the corner due to economic crisis. And with people resorting to selling their daughters and kidneys in the black market for bare survival, one must recognise that there is hardly any strength left in them to stand for themselves.

These stories need to be told to shake minds and souls around the world for action.

With the era of media witnessing war and other distant crises came the age of the attention economy, where quite important issues struggle to survive in the public discourse for longer periods of time.

They need constant reminders. The continuity aspect of postwar follow-up reporting can give visibility to stories that may have been missed by the public in the first instance. The news media cycle is swift and urgency-centric. The continuity aspect keeps information alive and safe from obscurity.

We need to remember that what Afghan men and women have been fighting for since the 1970s and the SovietAfghan war is the same reason the Ukrainians are fighting now. The only difference is that the Afghans have been neglected and betrayed over and over again.

Peace reporting in a conflict is crucial and places a lot of responsibility on the journalists.

In the global fight between the pens and the AK-47s, the international media and journalists need to stay engaged in Afghanistan through peace journalism and not allow the latter an easy win.

Dr Ayesha Jehangir is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Technology Sydney

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The media spotlight on Afghanistan is fading fast but the agony of its people is far from over - The Guardian

KUALA LUMPUR: The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) needs to intensify assistance to the Afghan people whose lives are seen to be getting more and more stressful every day, said Geostrategy expert Prof Dr Azmi Hassan.

He said the assistance was necessary to prevent the people in Afghanistan from continuing to face the threat of starvation.

"The United States action early last month seizing funds belonging to the Afghan government that were frozen after US troops withdrew from the country's soil has had an impact on the people of the country. The majority of them are living from hand to mouth.

"Therefore, the OIC must continue to ensure that this assistance continues to be enhanced from time to time to ensure that the fate of the Afghan people continues to be protected," the Senior Fellow of the Nusantara Academy for Strategic Research (NASR) told Bernama.

Earlier last month, the US seized US$7bil (RM29.4bil) in assets belonging to the Afghan government and said it would be divided between the much-needed aid for the Afghan people and for the victims of the 9/11 attacks.

US President Joe Biden had allocated US$3.5bil of Afghanistan's frozen US$7bil funds to be used for pending legal proceedings and compensation claims for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.

Azmi added that the Taliban-led Afghan government was now seen to be able to survive for five months to a year despite not having the funds.

"The Taliban government may be able to withstand without the funds, but the victims are the people.

"In this case, the decision is in the hands of the Taliban government itself to convince the international community, including the OIC, that they (the Taliban) would honestly implement their promises, especially in terms of assistance to the people of the country," he said.

Last Wednesday (March 16), Deputy Foreign Minister Datuk Kamarudin Jaffar said Malaysia would donate 1.6 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Afghanistan in an effort to help the country recover.

Following the withdrawal of US troops in August 2021 after occupying the country for 20 years, the Taliban forces overthrew the government of Mohammad Ashraf Gani and took over the administration but faced difficulties due to a serious lack of funds. - Bernama

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OIC needs to intensify assistance to Afghanistan - The Star Online

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The United Nations Security Council agreed to renew its assistance mission for Afghanistan for another year on Thursday not long after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the situation in the war-torn nation in January as "hanging by a thread."

His words, observers say, served as a stark reminder of the state of affairs that saw the sudden downfall of its government following the Biden administrations rapid withdrawal of U.S. military forces last August.

"The Russian play in Ukraine is directly related to the weakness and incompetence we displayed to the world with our tragically flawed withdrawal from Afghanistan," said Christopher Miller. Miller served as acting secretary of defense in the Trump administration and was a veteran of the Afghan campaign. "The Chinese, North Koreans and Iranians took note. We are in the most dangerous geo-strategic situation since the Cuban missile crisis."

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Miller was one of the first officers to lead troops into Afghanistan where he commanded the Fifth Special Forces group after 9/11. Miller, who retired as a colonel in the special forces, also trained and fought alongside Afghan troops during his service there.

He pulled no punches over the U.S. withdrawal: "It's an absolute disgrace, and I'm ashamed personally and professionally at how we left our Afghan allies in such a desperate situation. It was completely preventable."

Prior to becoming acting defense secretary, he was part of a team working on the Trump administrations withdrawal plan. He said the narrative used by the Biden administration that characterized the situation as "unpredictable" was negligent.

Newly graduated Afghan National Army personnel march during their graduation ceremony after a three-month training program at the Afghan Military Academy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 2020. (AP/Rahmat Gul, File)

"Our adversaries noted our fecklessness, and we couldn't have provided them more powerful ammunition to create dissension with our allies and partners. We're going to be dealing with the blowback on our ham-handed, disastrous withdrawal for the next 20 years -- I'd hate to be a military man or diplomat trying to convince a potential partner to work with us."

During the early days of the withdrawal, reports of resistance by anti-Taliban forces, including elements of the Northern Alliance with a new group called the National Resistance Front (NRF), came together. However, without U.S. funding, their efforts will be in vain, according to Miller and other experts.

Miller bemoaned the lack of planning leading up to the Taliban takeover and said the US should support "anyone or group in Afghanistan that wishes to establish a meaningful government that can create opportunity and justice for the Afghan people."

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Miller maintained the lack of planning meant that Taliban forces defeated the Northern Alliance and other forces during their hour of need.

"If we had armed them and provided a handful of advisers to direct airstrikes, the Northern Alliance would still be in control of an enclave in the north that we could have developed additional resistance forces to use to pressure the Taliban to moderate their behavior (perhaps even establish a coalition government) or to mass forces to move on Kabul."

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Freedom for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), said the National Resistance Front (NRF), based in Tajikistan and led by former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, so far has had minimal impact and said the Biden administration needs to both arm and fund them, "but the administration does not want to reengage in Afghanistan. It is inclined to work with the Taliban instead."

Roggio is the editor of the acclaimed Long War Journal, a publication that has provided in-depth analysis of the global war on terror since 2007. He described Afghanistan as a "black hole for terrorists," noting the terror threat coming out of Afghanistan is "significant."

He said al Qaeda and its leadership once again have found themselves a safe haven to operate from if they so choose. "The Taliban-al Qaeda alliance is strong, it was never broken," he added, while noting, "Other international and regional terror groups such as The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, the Turkistan Islamic Party, the Islamic Jihad Union, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Ansraulah are currently operating" under the Taliban's protection.

With no U.S. presence in Afghanistan and bordering countries, he painted a bleak picture for those who were left behind by the U.S. and our ability to fight the terrorists there.

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"The Biden administration has done little to help because it has next to no capacity to help. Additionally, President Biden does not seem inclined to help. His attitude towards Afghans who have supported American efforts has been callous since the moment he announced the withdrawal." Roggio concluded that the "ability to conduct counterterrorism strikes against al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terror groups has been reduced to nearly zero."

With the U.S. presence now non-existent in Afghanistan, the question observers want to know is who will fill the vacuum? While Miller noted that Russia, Pakistan, and Iran are looking across their common borders, China has taken a particular interest. "Beijing certainly wants to take advantage of a U.S.-free Afghanistan, but it is not entirely clear that it will be able to do so," noted Gordon Chang, a leading expert on China.

Chang, a distinguished fellow at the Gatestone Institute, described Beijings thinking: "China wants to use Afghanistan as the first part of a land bridge to the Arabian Sea so that it will not be dependent on the Strait of Malacca, a choke point. Moreover, the Chinese covet Afghanistans minerals, like copper and lithium, and they want to make sure Afghan territory will not end up as a refuge for militants attacking China."

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, political chief of Afghanistan's Taliban, in north China's Tianjin, July 28, 2021. (Li Ran/Xinhua via Getty Images, File)

Chang says it wont necessarily be easy, noting, "None of these objectives will be obtainable unless the Afghan Taliban or some other group establishes control and stabilizes the situation. If some group does accomplish that, China will probably get most everything it wants."

And with a human rights situation in tatters, those who are suffering the most are women and girls and religious and other minority groups.

Paul, who didnt want to use his real name out of fear, is an Afghan Christian. He told Fox News Digital that he was able to escape to the U.S. and says Christians like him have been ruthlessly targeted by the Taliban: "If a Talib knows you are an Afghan Christian, thats a great blessing for him to kill you."

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Afghanistan recently topped North Korea as the worst country in the world for Christian persecution. The yearly World Watch List is published by Open Doors USA.

Paul described the dire economic situation that he left behind him: "People dont have jobs, and yeah, many sell their kidneys, people (are) starving,"

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Speaking at a recent U.N. Security Council meeting, Afghan American Womens rights activist Ahbouba Seraj said, "It has taken less than six months to completely dismantle the rights of women and girls across the country."

Yet even with all the despair and instability in Afghanistan, Miller still held out hope for the war-torn nation. "The Afghan people are enormously industrious and rugged, and Afghanistan has a large amount of natural resources that could be developed -- they just need meaningful leadership," he said.

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Afghanistan faces crisis on the ground as tens of thousands hide from Taliban, observers say - Fox News

After the government in Afghanistan fell last year, the darkness was rapidly closing in.

Hundreds of journalists were forced to leave Afghanistan. Many are in hiding, hoping to do the same. Some have tailored their content to ensure they stay on the right side of strict Taliban media guidelinesissued after the group promised to honor a free press. Others who stood defiant have been beaten by threats and violence.

Waliullah Rahmani fears that recent history is being repeated and Afghanistan is once more becoming an invisible, ungoverned space where terrorists thrive and jihadism threatens the security of the world.

It is inevitable, Rahmani said from his own place of safety in northern Europe. You will see the situation of the 1990s repeated. International terrorist organizations will come to Afghanistan, and because there is no one to see them, they will operate freely. And then, if not another 9/11, then somethinga big, big threat to international security will, for sure, take place.

Farshad Fattahi was an investigative reporter in the western city of Herat with independent ASR Television. In late July he went to Kabul for research. While he was away, the Taliban took control of Herat and closed down the station.

He lives in a secret location in the capital, with no money and no income, afraid for his life as the work that was once his living is now his liability. He hasnt been back to Herat, or seen his family, since he left. I am very afraid that my identity will be revealed, and if this happens it will mean big trouble for me, Fattahi said.

Fattahi is just one of the hundreds who have been unable to find a way out of Afghanistan and to safety; vulnerable people like Fattahi are trapped, aware of the consequences of being found by the Taliban.

Almost as soon as they took control, the Taliban began detaining and beating journalists; at least two were beaten so badly after being detained while covering an anti-Taliban protest by women in September that one has lost part of his hearing and eyesight.

Last fall, media regulations were issued, aimed at ensuring the only news fit to print is that which suits the Taliban. News organizations must coordinate with the Taliban, curtailing critical independent reporting.

Human Rights Watch described the new regulations as so vague and sweeping that journalists are self-censoring for fear of falling foul of the Taliban and ending up in prison.

Related: Reporting on Americas longest war

The Talibans return came almost twenty years to the day after the United States invaded Afghanistan, on October 7, 2001, and ended their five-year regime in retaliation for giving sanctuary to Al Qaeda while the 9/11 attacks were planned and carried out.

During that time, the Western alliance poured in billions of dollars to create a modern, democratic state. The United States alone invested $1 billion in building media and communications, and was largely paid back with a vibrant sector of dedicated, world-class professionals.

It was a source of pridea bright light shining on a corrupt polity and poorly managed international military and aid efforts. Hundreds of millions of dollars disappeared into the pockets of politicians, businesspeople, community leaders, and aid administrators. Afghanistans journalists played their role in holding them to account. Many reporters, broadcasters, photographers, and camera operators were killed.

In recent years, that independence was challenged by the president, Ashraf Ghani, who fled Afghanistan on August 15, clearing the way for the Taliban. He held media in contempt and followed the lead of Donald Trump in branding criticism of him or his administration fake news to undermine public trust in journalism.

Even before the Talibans return to power, eleven journalists had been killed in Afghanistan in 2021, including Danish Siddiqui, a Pulitzer-winning Indian photographer with Reuters, who was embedded with Afghan Special Forces near the Pakistan border on July 16.

According to unesco, eighty journalists have been killed in Afghanistan since 2005; the worst year was 2018, when nine journalists covering a suicide attack were killed by a second bomb aimed directly at media.

The Taliban campaign against journalists picked up in 2020, after they signed a bilateral deal with Trump that pledged a US military drawdown, to zero, by May 1 of 2021. The deal bypassed and undermined Ghanis government, transforming the insurgents into a legitimate political entity. They declared victory over the Western alliance and ignored the conditions of the deal that applied to them, including cutting ties with Al Qaeda.

Instead, their brutality against Afghan civilians and military intensified, and journalists became specific targets, along with politicians and government officials, human and womens rights advocates, judges, police, and military leaders.

Of the media outlets still operational on August 15, 70 percent have disappeared, Rahmani said. This is natural, because the Taliban have never been tolerant of media; they censor; they dont allow any narrative but their own.

Related: I fled one war, and I was trapped in another

Journalists were among the thousands evacuated in the chaotic international airlift that followed the August 15 Taliban takeover, according to Najib Sharifi, head of the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee. By his own rough estimate, in the weeks following the collapse of the republic, around two hundred journalists had left the country and, he said at the time, at least another three hundred need to get out. They are spread all over the country, he said, though journalists in the provinces are much more under threat now that independent reporting has become a thing of the past.

International media-support organizations have largely failed to provide the help that Afghanistans journalists have needed in a time of extreme distress.

Many who do arrive in Western capitals find that the support they are offered can come with strings attachedconditional, for instance, on applying for asylum and being sucked into the maw of the global refugee bureaucracy, often not permitted to work while their applications are processed, which can take years.

Reporters Without Borders, for instance, was able only to provide journalists with basic information about the asylum process, and explain [to] them which organizations will be able to support them during the asylum process, according to Victoria Lavenue, the organizations head of assistance in Paris.

This presupposed that journalists wished to give up their professional status and enter the refugee bureaucracy, effectively becoming wards of the state, unable to work or live independently, often for years, while their applications for resettlement were processed.

More than a hundred journalists from Afghanistan issued an open letter via Reporters Without Borders begging international organizations to pressure the Taliban to embrace freedom of speech and free media. Their call goes unheeded.

As the new regimes intentions unfurled, Afghanistans media owners adopted differing tactics for survival, some loudly holding on to their journalistic principles, others morphing into what one former news executive called the Talibans propaganda platforms.

Rahmaniwho was already living under extreme threat when the republic fellwent into hiding immediately after the Taliban entered Kabul. His website, Kharbanama, and Reporterly, a daily subscription roundup of significant news on Afghanistan, went silent until Rahmani reemerged in late September in northern Europe. He rebranded and relaunched the newsletter as Brevity. Now he needs to find his way to an English-speaking country where he can continue workingand avoid the asylum trap.

Its a different story for ToloNews, owned by the Moby Group, which was established in 2003 and funded largely by American taxpayers, with startup money from the US Agency for International Development. It pioneered 24-hour TV news, as well as entertainment programming. Its owner, Saad Mohseni, has been compared to Rupert Murdochand attended the Australian moguls recent star-studded birthday party.

Immediately after the Taliban entered the capital, Tolo management tried to preempt their clampdown and ordered women presenters to, first, stay at home and then, when they were allowed back to work, to alter their dress to appear more conservative, as Farid Ahmad, the stations former deputy operations director, wrote in an article for Newsweek.

Former Tolo journalists said they were directly threatened by the Taliban. Some spent weeks working, eating and sleeping in their offices in the Moby compound in central Kabul as Taliban gunmen repeatedly visited their homes, searching for them by name.

Many Tolo employees were evacuated from Kabul immediately after the capital fell. They are now scattered around the world, in Pakistan, Qatar, Mexico, Turkey, and Albania, waiting for resettlement. Many received an email from Tolo immediately after they left Afghanistan terminating their employment. Many said they have not received their August salary. Many more are desperate to leave.

While Tolos owners had made an obvious effort to stay on the right side of the Talibaneven while requesting funding from the State Department to relocate operations outside Afghanistanone crusading daily newspaper tried to stick to its journalistic principles. Etilaatrozmade its reputation revealing the filthy underbelly of Afghanistans powerful and connected. In the days after August 15, when anti-Taliban protests erupted in major cities, its coverage was as hard-hitting as usual, with editors and journalists alike vowing that their mission to uphold freedom of speech would not be compromised.

And then, on September 8, video journalist Nemat Naqdi and photojournalist Taqi Daryabi drew global attention for the injuries they sustained under Taliban torture. They were detained while covering a womens rights demonstration in Kabul and held for two days. Publisher and editor Zaki DaryabiTaqis brothersaid Naqdi has lost 40 percent of the sight in one eye and needs surgery to repair a burst eardrum.

Zaki Daryabi, who won Transparency Internationals Anti-Corruption 2020 award, said that Etilaatroz now publishes just a few news stories a day, having decided that the hard-hitting investigations into official graft that made its reputation would risk further violent reaction from the Taliban.

Zaki left Afghanistan in mid-October, forced to flee his homeland, he said, in fear for his life under threat from the Taliban.

TOP IMAGE: (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

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What happened to Afghanistan's journalists after the government collapsed - Columbia Journalism Review

The Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan was dubbed a monumental security challenge for the international community. A humanitarian crisis ensued, with millions of Afghans plunged into poverty, and the country's economy began to collapse.

Major world powersscrambled to tackle the situation, and efforts were made to ensure Afghanistan's stability and put pressure on the country's new Islamic fundamentalist rulers.

Seven months later, Afghanistan is no longer a main concern for Western powers, as they shift their focus to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Observers say the Taliban see it as an opportunity to implement their hard-line policies in the country, knowing that the international community is "busy elsewhere."

Tamim Asey, the executive chairman of Kabul's Institute of War and Peace Studies and a visiting research fellow at King's College London, told DW that he believes "a lack of international interest" in Afghanistan's crisis could pave the way for terror groups and criminal networks to regather and regain strength.

"Unfortunately, Afghanistan has taken a backseat. This will push Afghanistan further into turmoil and will provide an opportunity fortransnational criminal networks to recover," he told DW.

Few in the West see an immediate security threat emanating from Afghanistan. So far, the Taliban are seeking to gain international recognition and financial aid and have been more inclined toward a "diplomatic" approach than employing violent tactics.

But experts say this superficial calm may not last for long.

"History tells us that humanitarian crises could lead to violent conflicts. It is easier for terrorist groups to operate in a country that is facing economic turmoil. Afghanistan is no exception," Shamroz Khan Masjidi, an Afghan political analyst, told DW.

If the humanitarian crisis is aggravated in Afghanistan, even the Taliban won't be able to manage the situation, as evidenced by recent violent attacks by theIslamic State group.

Salahuddin Ludin, a political expert in Afghanistan, told DW that life has become "extremely difficult" for most Afghans.

"International aid organizations have left the country. The Taliban are unable to pay the wages to government employees. The public health care sector is in a disarray," he pointed out.

Apart from the suffering of the rural population, even Afghans based in cities are finding it impossible to make ends meet.

Ludin said many Afghans had put their savings in bank accounts: "Now, they cannot access them. Afghan businessmen, for instance, cannot make international transfers, which has resulted in high commodity prices in the country."

The Taliban have been demanding that the United States releaseAfghanistan's frozen assets so that they can tackle the worsening economic crisis. Washington has refused to hand over the money to them, which means that Afghanistan's Islamist rulers could look for "financial aid" from "non-state actors," say experts.

Sardar Mohammad Rahman Ughelli, Afghanistan's former ambassador to Ukraine, says the world is already "forgetting" about the Afghanistan crisis.

"Even the international media is not covering the crisis in Afghanistan," he said, adding that the Taliban are now free to implement their regressive policies in the country.

Some observers say the current situationis disturbingly similar to the geopolitical scenario in the late 1990s. The Taliban seized power in 1996, but the international community did not fully grasp the potential consequences of the new paradigm.

Away from the global spotlight and with a lack of world interest in Afghan affairs the country became a hub of local and international militant groups.

"The Taliban have ties with international terrorists. Their return to power has emboldened jihadi organizations in the region. As they consolidate themselves, their tactical and strategic ties with terrorism financiers and sponsors will grow and will eventually jeopardize peace and security in the region and beyond," Farid Amiri, a former Afghan government official, told DW.

Tariq Farhadi, an adviser to former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, agrees with this view. "The international community forgot about Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 during the Taliban's first regime. It is possible that it will be forgotten again," he added.

The longer the Taliban stay in power, Amiri said, the more difficult will it get to maintain stability in the region.

"Regional powers will start supporting proxies to keep the violence within Afghanistan's boundaries. But it will only be a short-term solution to the Afghan conflict," Amiri said.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru

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Ukraine war: Why the West cannot afford to ignore Afghanistan - DW (English)