A journalist and women’s rights campaigner has been gunned down in eastern Afghanistan, the latest in a string of targeted killings that have terrorised urban areas as the government tries to negotiate peace with insurgents.
Malalai Maiwand, a reporter at Enikas Radio and TV, was killed with her driver, Mohammad Tahir, on her morning commute to work in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province.
Her death comes a month after a leading journalist in Southern Helmand, Elyas Dayee, and a prominent former TV news presenter in Kabul, Yama Siawash, were killed in car bombings. This year has also seen human rights workers, moderate religious scholars and civil society activists picked off as they went about their daily lives.
The Taliban denied responsibility for Maiwand’s death and have not claimed the other killings. But analysts say the attacks have targeted people working in professions or in conditions – including mixed-gender offices – that the Taliban want to curtail or abolish should they regain power in Kabul.
They have created a climate of fear, leaving many questioning whether it is safe to continue at work.
“With the killing of Malalai, the working field for female journalists is getting more smaller and the journalists may not dare to continue their jobs the way they were doing before,” Nai, an organisation supporting media in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Alison Blake, called for an investigation into the murder and for support for journalists. “We must unite to uphold press freedom, their deaths must be investigated and their killers face justice for this wicked act,” she tweeted.
Afghanistan’s vibrant media is one of the unqualified successes of the post-Taliban era and a beacon in a region where many countries have poor records of censorship, suppression and violence towards journalists, from Iran to China and Pakistan.
“We join in expressing our condolences and condemnation of the murders of journalist Malala Maiwand and her driver this morning #NotATarget,” Blake wrote.
The UN mission also condemned the killing, noting that it was “particularly shocking that her life was taken on International Human Rights Day”.
Enikas, her employer, has been targeted before: its owner, Engineer Zalmay, was kidnapped for ransom in 2018. Maiwand comes from a family that had already paid a heavy price for trying to change Afghan society: five years ago her mother, another activist, was killed by unknown gunmen, Reuters reported.
Although women have made huge advances in Afghanistan since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban regime, they are still fighting pervasive discrimination, widespread violence and, particularly in rural areas, a struggle to access education, healthcare and work opportunities.
International donors have expressed concerns that any peace deal with the Taliban could erode precarious gains and entrench inequalities.
The Taliban severely restricted women’s rights when they ruled Afghanistan, and although they have promised women will be allowed their rights under Islamic law, they have declined to specify what that would mean in practice.