Afghanistan's media has undergone an unprecedented transformation in recent years. Following turbulent decades of censorship and propaganda that echoed a wider turmoil in Afghan politics and society, the sector today is at its most independent, vibrant and effective. But the successes are fragile.
In 2001, on the eve of military intervention by the US, UK and their allies, people had only one reliable option to find out what was happening in Afghanistan: the international media. There were a small number of dedicated and committed in-country Afghan journalists, but most of them were working for international media or international news agencies. The only Afghan media entity within the country, with the exception of a few clandestine publications, was the Taliban's Shariat newspaper and a radio station of the same name. Of course, both of these outlets provided the ruling regime's account of events.
As with its predecessors, the Taliban regime exercised tight control over freedom of expression. Nonetheless, their ability to control reporting by international journalists had some limitations. Kate Clark, the BBC's Kabul correspondent during the Taliban era and current head of the Kabul office of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, recalls that visiting international journalists had to work with interpreters registered at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which allowed the government to monitor and control whom they spoke to and what they saw. According to Clark, in some cases, English-speaking translators helped journalists "find interviewees who were not state-sanctioned, often at great personal cost". If caught, at a minimum they would lose their job. During this period, a small community of Afghan journalists worked with international media organisations including Associated Press (AP), Agence France Presse (AFP), Reuters and the BBC.
In this context, Kabul-based international media were vital for providing news coverage of Afghanistan at a time when the country was extremely isolated, while also keeping domestic audiences informed with balanced and independent news. The Taliban were not "as heavy-handed as might be assumed", Clark remembers, at least as far as the international media were concerned, adding that they accepted reporting that was "fair and fact-based". However, their attempts to control reporting did increase in their last year of power, arresting, for example, a BBC translator, accusing him of being a communist. The Arab fighters of al-Qaeda felt at liberty to do the same, detaining AFP's correspondent when they caught him photographing militants in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the US.