Dr Hazrat Bahar was a faculty member in a journalism school at Shaikh Zayed University in Afghanistan. He has a Ph.D. in media and communication and MA in international relations. Dr. Bahar is now a postdoc research fellow at Leipzig University. His fellowship is partially supported by the Institute of International Education (IIE). He has written about media and its effects in Afghanistan, and some of his works have been published in academic journals and media outlets. His interest includes the effects of media, media systems, media in Afghanistan, and political communication.
Topic:
Media and “Public Space” in Afghanistan: From Fragmentation to Fragility
After the collapse of the Taliban and the establishment of a new government in late 2001, Afghanistan once again became a buzzword, which attracted a greater attention of the international community. A new constitution was introduced and ratified in 2004. It also paved the way for media law, which was developed under a broader paradigm of liberalism. Besides that, the international community also ‘generously’ supported the media (Barker, 2008). Thus hundreds of media outlets were established, and new media institutions were founded, which in turn, trained media practitioners and encouraged free speech. Besides that, Afghanistan had a relatively more liberal media system compared to its neighbouring and regional countries.
It was ranked 120th out of 180 countries by Reporters Without Borders (RSF, 2021). Nevertheless, the country constantly remained fragile in terms of security, politics, and economy. Such fragility, though fluctuating, continued to deteriorate until an agreement between the United States and the Taliban was reached and signed in late February 2020 in Doha of Qatar. Following the agreement, the country experienced a drastic increase in security, and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan collapsed in mid-August 2021. During these more than two decades, studying the media system of the country remained unexplored. Therefore, Dr. Bahar’s study attempts to examine what the system was and how it was developed.