The warlords fought their battle on TV – The World

portrait warlord Abdul Ali Mazari, Hazara and killed by the Taliban in 1995, hangs on the walls of every room in studies Farda TV in Kabul, as if it were a leader spiritual. Presenters of programs are also chain that ethnic minority in Afghanistan, and its entire staff.

“Any person of any ethnicity can work on this television. Put a condition not to be Hazara” says the head of news, Hussain Bakhman, although he is of that ethnicity and explains that only correspondent in the Afghan provinces of Bamiyan, Ghazni, Herat and Balkh, where important Hazara communities live.

Farda TV property is warlord Mohammad Mohaqeq, whose name appears in multiple reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accused of serious violations of human rights in Afghanistan at the beginning of the nineties.

Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum, also accused of war crimes, is omnipresent in television Aina, property and whose staff is basically ethnic Uzbeks. And Burhanuddin Rabbani, former Afghan president involved in the conflict, was and remains the owner alma mater Nur television, where the Tajiks are the majority.

The warlords have started a real war channels in Afghanistan with the intention of promoting the ethnic group they belong to and distort the past in a country where 60% of the population is under 24 years and each time is less historical memory. accused of war crimes are supposed national heroes on your television. They control a dozen channels.

“These televisions began to proliferate in 2007,” says Mujeeb Khalvatgar, executive director of the NAI organization in favor of freedom of expression. That year the Afghan Parliament greenlighted an amnesty law which states that none of the actors who participated in the war in Afghanistan can be tried at home .

According Khalvatgar, there is a clear link between the adoption of the law that gives immunity to the warlords and the appearance of its television channels. The media law does not help. “Any Afghan who is over 18 years and has been tried by a court can have a television,” says the head of NAI. No warlord judged.

Nur opens its information with the news that Rabbani’s son, Salahuddin, met with the Turkish Ambassador in Kabul, even though the rest Track of the day the most important information are the results of the presidential elections in the country. Between program and program, photos of Rabbani and other mujahideen leaders who participated in the war in Afghanistan is; and the face of Rabbani became long in the permanently-Nur present in the upper right part of the fly-screen television when the ex-president was assassinated in September 2011 in a Taliban attack.

In Negah and Farda TV channels, controlled by war lords Hazara Karim Khalili and Mohaqeq respectively predominate production South Korean soap operas because Hazaras are of Mongolian origin and therefore have features slanted and they identify with the protagonists of this series.

However, the Watan television aimed at viewers Pashtun, they belong to the Taliban issued series produced in Pakistan, one of the few countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan and is sanctuary for the insurgents.

According to a 2007 survey by the company Altai, 73% of the Afghan population has access to radio , but only 37% television, especially in urban areas. That percentage will have changed over the years, but not significantly because the lack of power remains a widespread problem in the country.

That’s why the CEO of NAI believes that broadcasters the warlords have reduced scope but warns that they have unlimited resources. The warlords have been enriched by rampant corruption in the country. In a crisis, your television would be the few that survive.