On our minds: Afghan women who face dangers for doing their jobs — and are willing to face greater ones for telling me about it. |
Brave Women, Under Dire Threat |
 | | Rada Akbar, a Kabul-based photojournalist and artist, in 2019, at her annual art exhibition called "Superwomen," honoring prominent women from Afghanistan's history.Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times |
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In many places, the greatest dangers to journalists arise when they reveal the intersection of power, secrecy and corruption. Articles about connections between cartels and politicians in Mexico, a bribery scandal in the Philippines and illicit actions by the governments of Egypt and Turkey have all led to journalists being imprisoned on trumped-up charges, attacked or even killed. |
| THE INTERPRETER Female Journalists Targeted for Death in Afghanistan | |
But the three young women who were shot to death on Tuesday outside of Enikass, the Jalalabad television station where they worked, were not investigative muckrakers. They did not expose corruption or criminal dealings. Mursal Hakimi, 25, Sadia, 20, and Shanaz, 20 — many Afghans have a single name — worked in a department that records voice-overs for foreign programs. |
Rather, they are caught up in a struggle over the country's future. The Taliban and other extremist groups, including the Islamic State affiliate that has claimed responsibility for the young women's murders, appear to be using targeted killings as a way to instill fear and assert their power as official peace talks limp toward a conclusion. |
And killing women offers terrorists a kind of grim two-fer: not just a signal to the public at large that they cannot rely on the laws and protections the government has passed since 2001, but also an assertion that women must obey the strict interpretation of Islam that the groups demand. |
Covering a story like this is different from those that I mentally categorize as "people in suits in rooms" — reporting on negotiations over laws and treaties that are carried out by professionals in air-conditioned suites with plenty of snacks and security outside. Suits in rooms are important, and bring their own journalistic challenges, but articles about them rarely put lives on the line. |
Writing about the violence that ordinary women face around the world is different. I was very aware, as my colleague Fatima Faizi and I reached out to potential sources, that I was asking people who were already facing great danger to take on a little more — by speaking to me about it on the record. And I have carried similar knowledge when I've reported on women's experiences of domestic violence and sexual assault in the past. In covering the dangers they face, I might be heightening them. |
I think it is a risk worth taking, because these stories matter. But then again, little of that risk falls on me. That knowledge felt particularly heavy this time, because I was writing about the dangers to fellow female journalists, and the difference between my situation and theirs could not be starker. Like many of my Times colleagues, I've faced frightening situations on the job, but I enjoy the dual privileges of an American passport and the backing of a powerful newspaper. There is always someone I can call for help if I need it. (If you are a subscriber, thank you — you provide the resources to help keep Times journalists safe.) |
But for Rada Akbar and Mariam Alimi, the two photojournalists I quote in my column, there are no easy escapes. Both women have been threatened and followed by strange men. Ms. Alimi's home was robbed, and people regularly try to hack her email and social media accounts. Both women have families who are terrified for their safety. Ms. Alimi told me that her mother and brother have begged her not to leave her home, and to stop doing her work. Both work in a country where armed extremists are picking off their colleagues in broad daylight, gunning them down with impunity. |
The news of this week's murders was "a warning to me," Ms. Alimi said. |
But they do not have anyone to call. When Ms. Akbar went to Afghanistan's federal security services for help after being threatened, they told her there was nothing they could do. She should change her phone number, they said, and leave the country if she could. |
But she is still there, and still working, as much as she can. Since 2019 she has put on a yearly art exhibition called "Superwomen," which honors prominent women from Afghanistan's past and present. This year she set up the gallery and installed the art, but it won't be opening as planned on March 8. The security risks are just too great. Instead, she will use the deserted hall as a way to honor those who were killed in the recent attacks. |
Ms. Alimi feels torn as well. "If I want to move from this country, I'm losing my job. I lose everything I achieved in the last many years," she told me in the interview. "And if I stay, I may lose my life." |
- I've long been fascinated by the 1962 protests in the Soviet city of Novocherkassk, so I am trying to steel myself to watch the film "Dear Comrades!" It's likely to be excellent, but perhaps more of a downer than my frail heart can take right now.
- Via Corrine McConnaughy, a Princeton political scientist, three interesting studies on women and risk, all boiling down to a simple but frustrating conclusion: it's not that women are more "risk averse" than men, but that women face more negative consequences than men who appear to take the same risks.
- This review of "Burnt Sugar," a new novel by Avni Doshi, immediately put it at the top of my reading list.
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