By Jacky Sutton
This paper looks at the important role of the media sector, particularly the private media, in supporting electoral processes and the development of robust electoral institutions in Afghanistan since 2002. It argues that educating media professionals about the electoral cycle and facilitating year-round engagement between electoral institutions and officials and media entities is essential to ensuring pluralist, accurate and informed coverage of elections in the run-up to, during and after polling day.
Given the complexity of Afghan politics, the paper gives an overview of nation building, media development and electoral processes in Afghanistan. The author was in Afghanistan in 2002, 2005-2007 and 2014 working with the UN and training the TOLO News elections team on electoral processes in the run-up to the presidential elections in April 2014.
Nation building in Afghanistan
Afghanistan as a unified entity has existed since the 18th Century, when Ahmed Shah Durrani brought together the fractious Pashtun tribes and conquered the Tajiks, Uzbeks and other peoples living in what is now known as Afghanistan (Saikal, 2004). Almost three centuries later the state building project he initiated is still a work-in-progress, with strong local traditions and tribal systems of governance offsetting the Kabul-centric notion of central government. In addition, external powers, particularly Russia and Britain, fostered tribal allegiances as part of their 19th Century “Great Game” – and as geopolitics changed they were joined by the US, the USSR, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and China.
Afghanistan’s location at the “crossroads of empires” has given it a rich cosmopolitan heritage based on Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and numerous local faiths. It is also ethnically diverse, with at 14 ethnic groups identified in the National Anthem although Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara predominate. The country’s mountainous geography and diverse agricultural base has militated against centralization, and while the central government has installed provincial and district-level governments, these are dominated by local power brokers who use their status to further personal or tribal agendas.
Women are key to the tribal and agricultural economy of Afghanistan and have been used to further allegiances and consolidate factional power bases. Efforts to promote women’s rights, particularly to autonomy and voice, have led to violent backlashes against them and against would-be reformers (Emadi, 2002).
Background to the media in Afghanistan
The evolution of mass media in Afghanistan was similar to that in Iran, which in turn was influenced by emergent nationalism in the ailing Ottoman and British empires and by the Communist Revolution. The first printing press was imported from India in 1873 and the first “newspaper”, Seraj al-Akhbar, was published in 1906. This was critical of the relationship between Britain and Afghanistan and was shut down for five years before being started up again by the “Father of Afghan Journalism”, Mahmoud Tarzi. In the 1920s reformist King Amanullah Khan encouraged the establishment of various ministry newspapers and women’s media, and set up Radio Kabul, which later became Radio Television Afghanistan.
Over the next decades the evolution of the media mirrored the political situation in the country. Broadcast media remained state-run until 2002 and a private print media emerged in the 1940s but was shut down in 1953 when Mohammad Daud Khan became prime minister. The next experiment with independent media began in 1964, with the promulgation of a national Constitution that guaranteed freedom of expression – which was reinforced by the 1965 Media Law. The 1973 coup that overthrew the monarchy heralded decades of censorship and repression and although television was introduced in 1978 the Soviet-backed government controlled it, as it did the print media and radio (Emadi, 2010).
When the Taliban seized power in 1996 they instituted an even more oppressive campaign against media freedoms, forbidding television and shutting down all radio stations except Radio Afghanistan (which they renamed Radio Sharia). Newspapers were forbidden from publishing photos, letters or editorials and in 2000 the Taliban launched their own newspaper, Islamic Emirate. According to a 2002 report by Bruce Girard and Jo van der Spek of the communications NGO Communica.org, Peshawar in neighbouring Pakistan became home to most of Afghanistan’s media workers, music and video producers and the BBC ‘s Afghan service (also based in Peshawar) was the “closest thing to a national broadcaster” (Girard and van der Spek, 2002).
The overthrow of the Taliban regime in October 2001 provided an opportunity for the development of a vibrant and diverse media sector in the country. In November 2001, broadcasting restarted and within weeks dozens of print, radio and television media entities had been set up, initially within the capital Kabul but quickly spreading across the country (Girard and van der Spek, 2002).
In 2010 a survey by Altai Media identified 75 terrestrial television channels, 175 FM radio stations and 800 print publications (Altai, 2010). [1] Two years later a report by Peter Cary for the Center for Media Assistance confirmed the continued growth of the sector, noting that 61 percent of Afghans had mobile phones and that internet cafes could be found in major cities (Cary, 2012). In 2014, an Asia Foundation survey of Afghanistan reported 68 private television stations and 22 state-owned provincial channels (TAF, 2014).
Much of the sector has developed through local entrepreneurial initiatives and with funding from political factions, but the international community has also played a leading role in funding start-ups and providing training and support to the development of legal frameworks. According to Cary, the biggest donor is the US Government through USAID, the Embassy in Kabul through grants to the NGO Internews and to private media ventures such as Moby Group, which is run by the Afghan-Australian Mohseni family (BBC, 2012, Cary, 2012).
Some support was also given to journalism faculties. For instance, UNESCO provided some support to the Journalism Faculty of Kabul University, which was founded in 1961 and is the oldest in the country. The US State Department-funded Afghanistan Journalism Education Enhancement Program (AJEEP) provides a grant for a partnership between San Jose State University and the universities of Balkh in Mazar-e Sherif and of Herat in Herat City. [2] The State Department also funds similar partnerships between Omaha University and Kabul University, [3] and between the University of Arizona and the University of Nangahar in Jalalabad. [4] None of the programs seems to include election reporting, although the USAID-funded Nai program does have an Afghanistan Capacity for Media and Elections component, which was originally funded by the now-defunct AusAID. [5]
Other donors include European countries (bilaterally and through the EU and UN), while a 2012 report by BBC Media Action has identified news outlets funded directly or through warlords by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and India (BBC, 2012). Iran has also provided funding for communications infrastructure and to the state-run Radio and Television Afghanistan (RTA), while Iranian and Chinese companies have been contracted to work on the national fiber optic ring being funded by the World Bank and the Afghan government (Hamdard, 2012, Oskarsson, 2013). [6]
In addition, a 2010 report for the US Institute of Peace found that people’s perception of the trustworthiness of media is determined by their ethno-sectarian identity – Pajhwok News Agency was seen as anti-Karzai while the Afghan Voice Agency was seen as being pro-Iran. The report also noted the ability of the Taliban to influence public opinion through locally appropriate media using language or themes that resonated with local populations (Fraenkel et al., 2010).
The contemporary media sector is vibrant and pluralist, and dominated by private ventures. Low literacy rates and poor distribution networks in rural areas mean that radio and television are predominant, although print media is an important vector in urban areas. The 2010 Altai survey found that 68 percent of respondents listened to radio, down from 85 percent in 2005, while almost half of respondents watched television. An Asia Foundation survey of 2011 found that 28 percent of respondents watched television compared to 45 percent who listened to the radio (TAF, 2011). These findings confirm the case made by Girard and van der Spek in 2002 for community radio, particularly in the context of women’s rights and minority status voices (Girard and van der Spek, 2002).
The state-owned entities, Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), Bakhtar News Agency and Educational Radio and Television (ERTV) have national reach but were used by President Hamid Karzai for government propaganda and have not developed robust editorial practices or innovative content. The 2009 Media Law, which is still extant, confirms government control over RTA, despite provisions in the 2001 Bonn Agreement for it to become a public service broadcaster.
The BBC has identified five main categories of media in Afghanistan, including what they term “warlord media”, which is media funded by local tribal leaders and politicians for their own personal or tribal agendas (BBC, 2012). The other categories include mainstream commercial media, mainly television, local FM radio (including radio set up by the ISAF forces through the Provincial Reconstruction Teams), Taliban media and government media.
In 2002, Girard and van der Spek noted that the Internet was all but illegal and restricted to government, the United Nations and some international NGOs, there were minimal mobile phone services and the landline services were all but defunct. This was also the author’s experience as an information consultant for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Kabul in that year. A decade later Altai, BBC, Asia Foundation and Cary noted the proliferation of mobile phones and Internet platforms for digital content. According to a 2012 report by Javid Hamdard for the USAID-funded Afghanistan Media Development and Empowerment Project (AMDEP), there was a nationwide network for telecoms, a finding which was also confirmed by the Asia Foundation in 2014 (Girard, 2002; Altai, 2010; TAF, 2011; BBC, 2012; Cary, 2012; Hamdard, 2012, TAF, 2014).
In 2002 just two companies operated in Afghanistan, Afghan Wireless and Communication Company (AWCC) and Roshan, both of them set up by private funds. [7] These were joined in 2006 by South Africa-based MTN and UAE-based Etisalat and now the sector is one of the largest legal revenue streams in the country, with an annual average revenue of USD140 million and providing direct and indirect employment for over 100,000 people. In 2012, Hamdard reported six active telecom service providers and 44 licensed Internet Service Providers (ISPs), including the state-owned fixed line operator Afghan Telecom and Local Fixed Service Provider Wasel Telecom. He estimated that there were over 17 million phone subscribers and one million Internet users (Hamdard, 2012).
Internet remains a minority media platform, partly because of illiteracy, a lack of reliable infrastructure (communications and electricity, particularly in rural areas) and the continued reliance on expensive satellite connectivity. Nonetheless, digital and social media use is growing rapidly, with leading media entities and politicians setting up Facebook pages [8] and Twitter accounts [9] and Internews launching multimedia centres in the provinces. [10]
Legal and regulatory framework for the media in Afghanistan
The legal and regulatory framework for media and ICTs is still a work-in-progress, but the foundations were laid in 2002 with the signing of Decree 4517 that granted the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) statutory authority to issue licenses and allocate spectrum frequency to the telecoms sector. A year later, a Telecom and Internet Policy was approved by the Council of Ministers, and the MCIT set up the interim Telecom Regulatory Board, which began operations in 2004. This body replaced the Taliban-era (2000) law with a new Telecom Law (2005), which established the Afghanistan Telecoms Regulatory Authority. Since then an ICT Law has been submitted to Parliament, as has a cyber-security law.
The legal framework for media is less developed than that for telecoms. In 2002, a Mass Media Law was passed to replace Taliban-era laws; since then four media laws have been approved and according to a 2014 Freedom House report, [11] it is unclear what provisions should be applied at any one time. For example, the 2009 Law [12] created a Mass Media Commission as a regulatory body to replace the 2005 Media Violation Investigation Commission (MVIC), which is headed by the Ministry of Information and Culture. However, the MVIC is still in existence and there is no clear definition of what a “violation” is or what Constitutional protection applies in the face of “un-Islamic” content. [13]
There is still no Freedom of Information law, although one was drafted in 2013 and the Asia Foundation reported in 2014 that it had been approved by the Wolesi Jirga, or Lower House of Parliament. In the run-up to the 2014 presidential election, both leading candidates, the incumbent President Ashraf Ghani and the current Chief Executive Officer Abdollah Abdollah, committed themselves to protecting media freedoms but neither the Upper House or the President have approved the FOI law (TAF, 2014). Many commentators feared, however, that the withdrawal of international forces and concomitant reduction in funding for media development projects could reduce the leverage of media professionals in policy debates and leave journalists, particularly women journalists, to a backlash by conservative and tribal forces for whom media freedoms and exposure to “Western” ideas are inimical.
Media and elections in Afghanistan
Limited elections have been a feature of Afghan political life throughout the 20th Century, although universal suffrage was only granted in the 1964 Constitution. The post-Taliban elections of 2004 was the first time in decades that women were allowed to vote and in 2005 it was only because of a constitutional quota of 25 percent that they were represented in Parliament at all (NDI, 2006). A Joint Electoral Management Board (JEMB) was established in 2004 (Austin, 2006, TAF, 2004) and until its dissolution and the formal establishment of the Independent Electoral Commission in late 2005, it was effectively managed by various international organizations led by the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA).
The JEMB set up a Media Commission (MC) in August 2004 to monitor the coverage and fair reporting of the electoral campaign by the domestic media, advise the JEMB of any violations of regulations during the campaign period and make recommendations to the JEMB. [14] The MC drafted the Mass Media Election Campaign Code of Conduct, the Regulation on the Application of the Mass Media Election Campaign Code of Conduct, and the MC Investigation Procedures. The mandate of the MC expired 15 days after the polling day for the 2004 presidential elections. However a report by the Asia Foundation in 2004 found that many journalists were either unaware of the existence of the MC or unsure of its mandate and jurisdiction, while another report by NDI on the 2004 elections did not even consider media as an important external stakeholder to the electoral process (NDI, 2006).
After the 2005 elections, the JEMB was dissolved and an Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) [15] was formed with an Afghan Secretariat. It continued the temporary Media Commission of the JEMB but it took the violence and fraud of the 2009 and 2010 elections, and the attacks on the media launched by incumbent President Hamid Karzai [16] to focus attention on the vital role of media in electoral processes. An EU Electoral Observation report criticized the President’s actions as inconsistent with the constitution, and praised both the media and the IEC, but noted that the latter’s regulatory powers through the MC were insufficient, particularly against institutions such as RTA (EU, 2009).
The 2014 presidential elections introduced another level of discussion over media regulation with the introduction of online news and commentary. The draft Cyber Law had not been passed and the IEC was unsure how to regulate social media, which was not mentioned in the 2009 Media Law, [17] or in the 2009 IEC Regulation Establishing the Media Commission, [18] or the 2013 IEC Media Regulation. [19] In discussions with the IEC in January 2014, it was clear that the Media Commission was struggling to square its regulatory remit with the inherent lack of editorial control of Facebook pages, blogs and Tweets and with no legal framework to guide them.
The NDI reported in its March 2014 Election Update that there were now 2.4 million Afghans online, compared to about 2000 in the 2004 elections. Furthermore, Foreign Policy reported how Facebook pages were being used to incite ethno-sectarian tensions. [20]
Social media, as Foreign Policy author Sam Schneider noted, was also used to launch an Ushahidi-style platform for election monitoring, known as Paiwandgah (place of connection in Dari). [21] This uses a network of citizen journalists to monitor and report local news and events and it was widely agreed that social media combined with word-of-mouth was a driving force behind the high turnout. [22] Participants of the 2nd Afghan Social Media Summit in Kabul in October 2014, which focused on the role of social media in elections, shared this conclusion [23] which was made clear on the comparative data visualization platform set up by the NDI. [24]
Traditional media entities also developed online platforms or improved existing ones. Tolo News set up a dedicated election website [25] as did Pajhwok News Agency [26] and almost all news entities set up Facebook pages. Media entities also worked with IEC to define editorial responsibilities for online platforms and the IEC provided workshops and seminars to explain aspects of the electoral processes, using its Facebook page to announce the events and invite participation.
It remains to be seen what kind of regulatory framework for cyberspace will evolve in Afghanistan. Lessons from across the world indicate that governments of all shades and sizes prefer to repress rather than manage the noisy proliferation of voices. However Afghanistan’s 2014 elections, which saw a massive turnout of women voters and young people, indicate that these voices will not be silenced easily.
[1] The data is presented visually through an Internews project: http://data.internews.org/af-media/
[2] The Afghanistan Journalism Education Enhancement Program (AJEEP): http://www.sjsu.edu/ajeep/
[3] University of Omaha and Kabul University, Journalism Partnership: http://world.unomaha.edu/cas/projects_journalism.php
[4] "University of Arizona School of Journalism awarded $1 million grant to help Afghan university create journalism program", The University of Arizona School of Journalism: http://journalism.arizona.edu/content/university-arizona-school-journalism-awarded-1-million-grant-help-afghan-university-create-j
[5] Nai - Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan: http://nai.org.af/en/page/afghanistan-capacity-media-and-elections
[6] The World Bank, Afghanistan ICT Sector Development Project: http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P121755/afghanistan-ict-sector-development-project?lang=en
[7] According to Hamdard, AWCC was founded by Ehsanullah Bayat, an Afghan-American entrepreneur and is a joint venture with the Afghan Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and US-based Telephone Systems International. Roshan is owned by an international consortium of three major shareholders, Agha Khan Fund for Economic Development, Monaco Telecom International and TeliaSonera Telecommunication Company.
[8] Socialbakers, Afghan Facebook Pages Monitoring: http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/afghanistan
[9] Socialbakers, Afghanistan Twitter Monitoring: http://www.socialbakers.com/twitter/country/afghanistan/
[10] "Multimedia centers help Afghans access social networks", Prime News: http://www.pnewsp.com/story/49
[11] Freedom House, 2014 Freedom of the Press Report, Afghanistan: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2014/afghanistan#.VHUXz1eUdN8
[12] The Law on Mass Media: http://www.afghan-web.com/politics/storage/law_on_mass_media.pdf
[13] "A ‘Jihad on the Media’? Afghan journalists face the storm in insecure legal waters", by Wazhma Samandary, Afghanistan Analyst Network, 2013: https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/a-jihad-on-the-media-afghan-journalists-face-the-storm-in-insecure-legal-waters/
[14] Media Code of Conduct: http://www.elections-afghanistan.org.af/commission.htm
[15] Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan: http://www.iec.org.af/
[16] "Afghan media blackout plunges election day into confusion and fear", by Jon Boone, The Guardian, 2009: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/19/afghan-election-violence-blackout
[17] The Law on Mass Media: http://www.afghan-web.com/politics/storage/law_on_mass_media.pdf
[18] Media Commission Establishment and Mass Media Activity Regulation 2009: http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/legalframework/regulations/eng/RegulationOnMediaCommission.pdf?phpMyAdmin=5918814359a9c7d86aecbc64a35a592d
[19] Regulation on Media Activities during Elections, 2013: http://iec.org.af/pdf/legalframework/2013-regulations/eng/reg_on_media_acitivities_eng.pdf
[20] "A Double-Edged Sword: Social Media and the Afghan Election" by Sam Schneider, The South Asia Channel, 2014: http://southasia.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/10/16/a_doubled_edged_sword_social_media_and_the_afghan_election
[21] Paiwandgāh: http://paiwandgah.af/en/
[22] "Experts: Afghan turnout boosted by social media", by Masood Saifullah, Deutsche Welle, 2014: http://www.dw.de/experts-afghan-turnout-boosted-by-social-media/a-17550372
[23] "Role of Social Media in 2014 Presidential Elections", TOLO news, 2014: http://www.tolonews.com/en/afghanistan/16808-role-of-social-media-in-2014-presidential-elections
[24] Afghanistan Election Data 2014: http://2014.afghanistanelectiondata.org
[25] Afghanistan Elections 2014, TOLO News: http://elections2014.tolonews.com/
[26] Pajhwok Afghan News, Elections 2014: http://elections.pajhwok.com/en
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