Barna’s working day begins early in the morning, hours before she enters her office at a private media outlet in Kabul’s trendy Karte-e Char area.
Barna, a 26-year-old Afghan reporter whose name has been changed for security reasons, says she carefully chooses stories to pitch to her editors via WhatsApp messages while she is still riding on a packed minibus in an hour-long journey to work.
“By the time I reach the Pol-e Sorkh crossroad, which is about 15 minutes from the office, the editors and I go through several topics to make sure we pick a story that is important and interesting but at the same time is safe enough not to anger the authorities,” Barna says in describing her daily work.
“We have many red lines. We have to avoid certain topics, and we have to tone down our criticism in order to survive under the Taliban,” she told RFE/RL by phone from Kabul. “Our work and lives are full of restrictions and the government continues to impose even more.”
Afghan journalists fear that they will soon lose what Barna described as their “last remaining freedoms” after the hard-line, Taliban-led government recently banned the publication of human and animal images as part of new “morality laws.” Unveiled in August, the laws also say that a woman’s voice should not be heard in public.
Several Afghan provinces -- including Kandahar, Helmand, and Takhar -- shut down most television stations to comply with the ban.
Television channels in these provinces have effectively been turned into radio stations, leaving dozens of cameramen, photographers, video editors, and others out of work. The radio stations, meanwhile, were prohibited from airing a woman’s voice.
Afghan media reported last week that all other television networks in the country have been given two months to follow suit. But a high-ranking government source denied those reports on October 29.
The source told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi that authorities will “address the issues that some visual media outlets are facing in some provinces,” but did not elaborate.
A cameraman in Takhar who lost his job because of the ban said the latest restrictions on the media will plunge Afghanistan into the dark ages.
“It feels like we live in a backward society that does not care about progress and development,” the cameraman told Radio Azadi, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Media without photography and video is like a body without a head.”
A poster of Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada is seen along a road in Kabul.
Another Afghan journalist condemned the ban as “irrational” and “extremist” and said the government would not be able to implement the policy throughout the country.
A 27-year-old reporter in Kabul said Afghan media “would lose thousands of media workers” if the Taliban tries to enforce the ban.
“Many will lose their jobs, and many others will leave the industry because our work will become meaningless,” the reporter told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity. “How can you keep your audiences with male-only radio reports with no video and no music?”
Thousands of Afghan journalists have left Afghanistan since the ultraconservative Taliban returned to power in August 2021.
According to press watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), of the 10,870 men and women working in Afghan media at the beginning of August 2021, only 4,360 were still working in the industry in December of that year. During that period, of the 2,490 female journalists, just 410 were still in their jobs.
At least 141 journalists have been detained or imprisoned under Taliban rule, RSF reported in August, but added that no media workers were imprisoned at the time of its report.
“The biggest problem is that we don’t have anywhere to complain,” the Kabul-based reporter said. “Who do you complain to when the culprit behind your problems is the government itself and it doesn’t care about the criticism from the international community or public opinion?”
Dream Versus Reality
In Kabul, Barna and her colleagues haven’t yet been told to comply with the new “morality laws,” but the staff -- like most journalists across the country -- are bracing themselves for it. Barna says her female friends working in radio and TV are fearing the worst.
“Women journalists are already the hardest hit, and we stand to lose more,” she said. “Most Taliban officials refuse to speak to female reporters, so we must ask our male colleagues to get comments from officials for our reports.”
Barna says officials from the Vice and Virtue Ministry have installed security cameras at her workplace and pay random visits to ensure female workers don’t breach the strict Islamic dress code.
The latest constraints on Afghan media workers come amid the backdrop of grinding poverty and unemployment in the country.
Several journalists working for Afghan-owned media outlets in Kabul told RFE/RL they earn between 40 to 70 percent less in comparison to the wages they received before the Taliban came to power.
A member of the Taliban security forces keeps a vigil during an event at the office of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association in Kabul on May 3, 2023.
Due to a lack of funds, many media outlets have eliminated benefits such as shuttle buses and free or subsidized lunches for their employees.
Barna earns the equivalent of $150 a month, roughly half of the salary she made before August 2021.
“I dream of having enough money and freedom again to go to coffee shops in Pol-e Sorkh with my colleagues, as we used to do,” she said.
Many coffee shops along the bustling Pol-e Sorkh Road -- once popular with Kabul’s young people -- have been closed or turned into so-called family restaurants.
“But for the time being, my main concern is not to lose the last remaining freedoms we have, such as being able to work in the media, speak to people, and watch a TV report,” Barna said.
Wider Region
The situation of the media has deteriorated in other neighboring countries in recent years, with many independent journalists and bloggers languishing behind bars for their criticism of authoritarian governments.
Uzbek blogger Shohida Salomova has been placed in a psychiatric hospital after she reported that the son-in-law of President Shavkat Mirziyoev had purchased “20 expensive houses" in a wealthy Tashkent neighborhood.
In Tajikistan, independent journalists who criticize government policies often face long-term prison sentences on trumped-up charges with trials being held behind closed doors.
In Turkmenistan, independent media are nonexistent, while several journalists have paid the ultimate price for their work. Among them was 35-year-old former RFE/RL reporter Hudaiberdy Allashov, who died earlier this year after a long illness that his supporters say was brought on by pressure from the government due to his work.
Allashov had been jailed, beaten, and tortured with electric shocks, according to police sources. No one has been brought to justice.
Soltan Achilova, one of the few remaining independent reporters in Turkmenistan, says authorities not only put pressure on her but also target her relatives, friends, and anyone who gives her an interview or a comment.
She says security services have bugged her phone, often hack her e-mail account and personal computer, and follow her “everywhere.” She has been physically attacked several times and once strip-searched at the airport.
“When I call someone, security agents contact that person immediately and threaten them with dismissal from work. If that person doesn’t have a job, the agents threaten their relatives with dismissal and even imprisonment,” Achilova, 74, told RFE/RL on October 27.
Despite the ever-tightening space to operate, Achilova is not giving up her profession, saying that without reporters society will become a dark, silent place.