2009

New York, August 12, 2009–Tuesday’s roadside bomb attack that seriously wounded two Associated Press journalists highlights the dangers journalists face in covering the escalating conflict in Afghanistan. 

With elections due on August 20, pressure is mounting on Afghan journalists, and it’s coming from all sides. The International Federation of Journalists helped organize a meeting in Kabul last week to draw the fractious journalists’ community together; there are four or five competing organizations, all vying for recognition, dominance, and funding. In March, the…

Tahir Ludin, David Rohde, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, were kidnapped on November 10, 2008, after Rohde was invited to interview a Taliban commander in Logar province outside Kabul. Ludin, an Afghan journalist, was acting as Rohde’s translator. Rohde was on book leave from The New York Times at the time of their abduction. According…

U.S. troops arrested radio journalist Noorajan Baheer on June 2, 2009, and detained him for two nights, according to Pajhwok Afghan News agency and Agence France-Presse. 

Reacting to reports that New York Times reporter David Rohde and his assistant Tahir Ludin have escaped Taliban captors who held them for more than seven months, we issued the following statement:

I am from Afghanistan, but I have lived in exile in Sweden for almost a year and a half. I spent my teenaged life in Pakistan, where I moved in 1997 to escape the savage regime of the Taliban.

New York, June 15, 2009–Intelligence officials at the National Directorate of Security (NDS) in Kabul should immediately release two Afghan journalists detained on Sunday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

Dear Mr. President: The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing ahead of your scheduled speech in Cairo on June 4 to bring to your attention important matters that are crucial to the long-term success of your stated goal of engaging the people–and not just the regimes–of the Arab and Muslim worlds.