Back to Iraq | Being a recounting of my journalistic ventures in Iraq

Think this blog is all about Iraq and Lebanon? Fear not, Afghanistan gets a lit­tle time, too, and I received this let­ter from reader Bob who wanted to draw atten­tion to a real prob­lem over there.

I have a son in the US Army. He spent a year in Afghanistan remov­ing land­mines and IEDs. He’s now in Iraq patrolling lit­tle vil­lages north of Bagh­dad. Through his deploy­ment in Afghanistan, I dis­cov­ered a 6 week con­sult­ing job in Kabul, help­ing launch an edu­ca­tional TV net­work there in 2005. I’ve kept in touch with sev­eral of the staff who have received very seri­ous death threats, and am try­ing to help them from the US. I spon­sored one jour­nal­ist who had to flee for his life to come to the US on a stu­dent visa. After a year, we got him rec­om­mended for polit­i­cal asy­lum. Another, [Amin Wahidi](http://www.aminwahidi.blogspot.com) went to the Venice Film Fes­ti­val, but received threats that cul­mi­nated in “we’ll meet you plane with a sui­cide bomber when you come back to Kabul.” Italy granted him refugee sta­tus for 6 months, but we’re try­ing to get him into the US to go to school.

Amin’s story is cer­tainly har­row­ing. He’s a 25-year-old jour­nal­ist, film­maker and free-speech advo­cate from Kabul, who is liv­ing the deep­en­ing cycle of vio­lence in Afghanistan. It’s remind­ing many of life under the Tal­iban, when jour­nal­ists faced vio­lence and cen­sor­ship. Today, some of that is com­ing from the Afghanistan gov­ern­ment, Bob writes. “They have been threat­ened, arrested, jailed, kid­napped, had their stu­dios van­dal­ized, and been beaten.” Sev­eral young media pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing women, have been killed. This year, two have been mur­dered, caus­ing the few edu­cated and cre­ative peo­ple to flee Afghanistan. It sounds eerily sim­i­lar to what’s hap­pen­ing in Iraq.
And the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ist backs him up. Things have been get­ting worse for every­one in Afghanistan over the last few years, despite the efforts of coali­tion and Afghan forces.
Focus­ing on Amin isn’t fair to the other Afghan jour­nal­ists who toil every day, but what he wants to do next is illus­tra­tive. He wants to come to the U.S. to fin­ish his edu­ca­tion, make films and doc­u­men­taries about Afghanistan and be a life­line for his left-behind col­leagues through the Afghan Acad­emy of Arts and Cin­ema Edu­ca­tion and The Film­mak­ers Union of Afghanistan. Most impor­tant, he wants to return to his native land to make films about the hur­dles to enter­ing the mod­ern world.
Per­haps by help­ing Amin, oth­ers can be helped, too. Any­one wish­ing to help can [email me](mailto:chris@back-to-iraq?subject=Helping Amin) and I’ll for­ward them on to Amin’s friend Bob here in the states.