Oct 24, 2008

Unjust sentence for Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh

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It was expected that the result of the last appeal court would be acquittal for Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh, but against all expectations the judge of the court sentenced him for 20-years in prison. This sentence was issued but the court didn’t mention directly the accusation of distributing an article on women's rights on the Internet which was said to be blasphemous. Seyed Parwiz Kambakhsh, arrested a year ago, was first sentenced to death by a court in Balkh.

The interesting point for the last trial was the statement of the Balkh University teachers, as witnesses telling to the court that “Parwiz Kambakhsh was trying to disturb the lessons in the class, by questioning about Islam”.
His friends have been denying about the supposedly blasphemous article and its distribution by Kambakhsh, but one of his classmates told the court that he had seen the blasphemous article with Kambaksh.

Regarding the witnesses at the last trial and the long term delay by the courtjudge, the judge now issued the sentence of 20-years in prison for Kambaksh against every expectation.
Many criticizers believe that disturbing and heckling basically exist in the classrooms, and that this is not a crime, but on the contrary should be discussed and solved in schools and at Universities.

Many believe the detention of Kambakhsh is more political rather than related to the blasphemous article which he downloaded on the internet. Meanwhile many top religious figures say that distributing blasphemy is not blasphemy, while they point out that the sentence for Mr.Kambaksh is unjust and far from their expectations.
Mohammad Afzal Noristani, the defense attorney for Kambakhsh, had already because the Court of Appeal is too slow to organize its sessions.

The defense lawyer Afzal Noristani has called the result of the Court of Appeal an unjust sentence. He also said he will appeal to the Supreme Court: "During the hearing they did not consider that my client is not the author of the article."

Afzal Noristani is going to deliver the documents for Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh to the High Court for the final sentence. The imprisoning of this young student of journalism at Balkh University has provoked reactions worldwide, but the last sentence by the Court of Appeal is utterly disappointing.

Sep 20, 2008

Taliban Uses US-made Stinger Anti-Aircraft Guided Missile

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… The fear starts when you feel you are someone, specifically when every one of us feels that we are important, for ourselves. But today when we flew from Kabul to Bamyian with a USAID Helicopter, we reached Maidan Shahr, the area that is strongly influenced by Taliban. The helicopter slowly started rising, and the passengers, all journalists, seemed worried. I don’t know, or may be it was only me having fear. Fear of becoming a victim of some guided missile which recently the Taliban are equipped with.

It will not be a surprise to hear that the Taliban are equipped with such a missile. Just a few weeks ago, there was a deadly US helicopter crash caused by a stinger guided missile in southern Afghanistan. As you will remember, our USA friends had equipped the Afghan warriors “Mujahideen” with their latest weapons in the times of the holey invasion of the Soviet Union. And today these guided missiles are used against US forces in Afghanistan.
In 2005, in a report at RTA TV was told how these missiles got out of work in the times of civil war, but recently the ISI had repaired them for the Taliban, in order to target the US aircrafts. If this news is right, NATO forces will have big challenges in the struggle against the Taliban.

However, Pakistani authorities announced that this is a baseless claim by the US. A report published by the Pentagon says that more than 250 Soviet aircrafts have been crashed by these missiles in the time of Soviet Union invasion in Afghanistan.

So... until we didn’t cross the Onai pass, every one of us was in fear. Fear of the possibility that a missile could hit us.

And now I am in Bamyian, where the Buddha Statues where blown up by the extremist Islamists of the Taliban. I am here, invited as a speaker in a two days seminar which is funded and organized by UNAMA and the US embassy to celebrate peace day.
I'll have to analyze, and focus on the impacts and roles of digital media and blogs, in -promised visions of- peace, security and democracy in Afghanistan, over the last 7 years.

Sep 8, 2008

History Turned Its Mirror Upside Down

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Today is the seventh year that we celebrate Ahmad Shah Massoud's ceremony. He was a powerful commander for the Jamiat Islami party and the Northern alliance.
Massoud was one of the most famous commanders who fought against the Soviet Union. Later, when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, Massoud turned his guns' target to his fellow citizen in order to get power in the country.

Today is a holiday and a respective day for his ceremony. In this ceremony, all the Northern alliance commanders are gathering in the Ghazi stadium to celebrate him and talk about his bravery and resistance against the Soviet Union and the Taliban.

But here in the western part of Kabul where I live, people are busy with their daily works, the shops are open and we can hear the music from each corner as usual as always. There is a reason why people are not interested and rather and thoughtless about this day, because in the time of the civil war they have suffered from this commander who controlled the two strategic mountains: the TV Mountain and Asmayee, in the heart of Kabul. Today, I recall those past days in the years of 1992, 1993, 1994. All things clearly pop up in front of my eyes: Qala shada, Pul Jamhuri, Karte 3, and the river bed where we three had to hide from 12 at noon until the dark night, to escape from shootings, and to escape from the bullets that were raining down on us.

I can't forget that day, when bullets were raining from the TV Mountain and the Asmayee Mountain. That day no one dared to get out of their houses. People who could be seen in the streets, the alleys, and every thinkable place that was visible from the mountains, they were immediately targeted by the soldiers of Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Today, I remembered that same summer day. While I was eating my lunch I heard that my brother was wounded on his way back home. I rushed out onto the street, and ran towards the hospital in Karte 3, but suddenly I got lost in the smoke, caused by the shootings from the mountains. I had to hide myself, in one of the ruined house which was bombed by Ahmad Shah Massoud. What a bizarre day, most peculiar moments I'd ever seen in my life. Today, while I am reminding those days and moments, my hair stands on end.

I do remember that day: I was in Pahlawan Juma's house. Suddenly I heard the horrendous sound of an explosion nearby. With Kabir, the son of Juma who was five years older than me, I ran out of the house. And then I saw Shahnaz, a young daughter, who lived in our neighborhood.

She never liked to talk with illiterate people, had no relation, struggle with twitches in blood.

Shahnaz had graduated from the Medical faculty of Kabul University.
But now, I saw that part of her head has fallen just one meter away from her body.
I remember she was always busy with her big medical books and in that days she was trying to get out, away from Kabul. She never liked to talk with individuals, but with groups, whilst advising what was good for the health and what was harmful.

Her hopes did not last long, and today, I saw her covered with blood. While I was shouting to the elders to help her, and save her, Kabir was vicious as always, and came to me while he was carrying the part of Shahnaz's brain that had fallen on the ground: "Nasim, look at this brain, the human brains are white and soft, it is amazing!"

The missiles were launched from Paghman by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the leader of Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan. Sayyaf is blacklisted in HWR as a criminal, but today this criminal is a Member of Parliament.

West of Kabul, mostly Dasht Barchi was among the daily targets of missiles by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's group.
My paternal uncle and his small daughter were killed by one those missiles in the middle of the night. He left his heart wounded family, his wife and six children. A long time has passed since that incident, but they are in the same conditions as they were in that time of war.

The massacre of the Hazara in Afshar is one of their masterpieces that shows their skills to kill, which will never be forgotten. They turned the west of Kabul into a ruined area. Thousands of innocent people have been killed.

With great sadness today we are witnessing that history turned its mirror upside down: one of them became a national hero and the other one became a legislator in such an arena where they are just getting fatter day by day, in the name of 'democracy and human rights'.

Today, in remembrance of those days with so many wounds and blood, and for my classmate who was killed on the way to school, I sat in my room and wept. And I found it a miracle that I am alive today.
In HRW: The Battle for Kabul: April 1992 - March 1993
Read Afghan amnesty covers Omar, Hekmatyar here….
Read War crimes immunity bill passes second hurdle here…
Read Afghan warlords in amnesty rally here…
Read war criminals win amnesty vote here…
Read Thousands rally in support of Mujahideen leaders here….
Read story from Kazakh an old Soviet Union officer who joined in holy invasion in Afghanistan here…
Read also in Russian language here…
Neweurasia’s Vitaly Mantrov interviewed (RUS) the veteran of the war in Afghanistan here…
Just after September 11 “The Afghan Trap” read here…

Aug 31, 2008

Anger and sadness

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Aug 19, 2008

My interview with Liberazione

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Here is an interview with me in Liberazione newspaper for the communist party in Italy. The interview is translated from English to Italian Language, you can find in this link.

Also you can read it in Mauro Biani's blog, he is an Italian famous cartoonist.

You can also find information about this newspaper here which is translated by google

I appreciate Mauro who worked on this interview to be published in Liberazione.

Aug 14, 2008

Towards a Critical Situation

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The security situation is deteriorated rapidly in the recent days. The rocket attack on Afghan capital airport indicates that the Taliban insurgents broken the entrance stability security gates towards Kabul. This means, Taliban are really close to capital nowadays. Horror is spreading fast among the people; the residents of Kabul are really worry what will happen in the next coming weeks.

Yesterday around 10:30AM there was a heavy conflict between Taliban insurgents and Afghan security forces in Surobi Tangi area (Kabul Province, Surobi District, Kabul-Jalalabad main road) Additional security forces have been dispatched to the area. As I informed, the clash is still going on since yesterday.

Also, yesterday three female aid workers for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and their Afghan driver were shot dead by gunmen who opened fire on their vehicle near the capital Kabul.

Jul 31, 2008

Back to Kabul

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I am in Kabul now. Over the last few weeks I was in Hamburg, Germany, for a Summer school on freedom and responsibilities in media. What a wonderful occasion and what wonderful people from 18 countries who I’ve met there. I miss all of them now and the only thing that remains with me are memories and pictures.

If this course was held in Kabul, it might not have been so successful and interesting. In Germany I had to learn every step, I had to learn about the people, cities and culture. I came back with lots of information and memories that I am now sharing with my friends who are coming to meet me.

One of the topics we had to work on was ‘dealing with the past’. Working with 8 people from different countries in one group on how we can deal with the past is not such an easy job. In most of the cases it is taboo to write about the past or it might not be so secure, or even dangerous. In a situation like Afghanistan it is very difficult to write about criminals and the warlords who are in power right now. But alas, in our class we never thought about the hows, and which methods we could use to write about our past. But now, I don't know what to do with these criminals who are in power and still threatening.
We only overviewed the history of Germany and the time when the Nazis committed genocide.

For several days, my heart was wounded. I couldn't imagine what happened to Jewish people there. But some times it was also very irritating when some of my colleagues were making funny pictures with the commemoration statue of a Jew who died from the severe conditions of living in one of the concentration camps. Maybe they had only eyes to look at the statue and the pictures around them. Maybe they only have eyes to look but have no heart to feel. May be most of us are like this, without doubt. Who feels our pains here? No one.

The Neuengamme concentration camp, close to Hamburg in northern Germany brings tears into your heart. You cannot believe how brutal and savagely those innocent people were killed. May be, this is an example of savageness of a period in history that reminds us to look back, to what has happened in the past. “We can not forget, but we can forgive always”, is a fine quote from Nelson Mandela.

Anyway, the workshop gave me the idea to build a group of researchers, to research about the massacre and genocide of the Hazara people of Afghanistan. In the 1880s in Afghanistan, King Amir Abul Rahman Khan committed a first Hazara genocide. Later in 2000, when the Taliban captured Mazar-e Sharif they massacred a number of 10,000 of the Hazara people, and when they captured Bamyian again they killed more than 10,000 of people. Today talking about the massacres and the civil war that took place in the 1990s has become a big taboo. If you talk about what happened during these times, you are labelled as an enemy of unity.

I hope to make a research-centre to research our past. This can also help Internationals because they can learn how many problems we had in our past. Unfortunately today, foreign politicians and those people who intend to favour Afghanistan and who are theorizing the construction of an Afghani nation-state don’t see that this will be a completely impossible mission. They have the wrong approach.

Jul 23, 2008

When bloggers talk to bloggers

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I wrote this here already

It seems that bloggers always looking for bloggers. It happened for me when I heard about Stefen Niggermeier, a famous media journalist and blogger. I was very interested to meet a successful German blogger. His blog is called BILDblog, it observes and takes the role of a watchdog in regard to the largest newspaper in Germany, the tabloid “BILD”, as it regularly points to errors in the paper. His blog received several prizes.

Having dinner and chatting with him and asking him about why he became a blogger was an interesting moment. Stefan believes the best way to practice free speech and to write is blog. “In your blog you don’t have to be worried about the text length, you don’t have to consider the editorial advice and those principals which are asked normally from the editor of the newspaper”, he said.

Mr. Niggermeier also shared his experience in blogging: “Blogging is easy, just start, if you have word, just put it together and work in a specific way, you will be a famous blogger”.
In this way he became a blogger, as he said, playing with buttons for bloggers, but finally he had a blog and today he is one of the most famous bloggers in Germany.

Jul 4, 2008

Meet Afghanistan's Most Fearless Blogger



Minutes into Afghan President Hamid Karzai's speech before the Afghanistan Donor Conference in Paris, he congratulated his country on its "independent media," which, having "grown exponentially" since the ouster of the Taliban, is a harbinger of Afghanistan's imminent rise to respectable statehood. With a fresh infusion of development dollars, no doubt, Karzai could build on the thriving infrastructure, cultivate a legitimate civil society, educate girls, smoke out the extremists, and generally rid the world of its turbaned bogeymen.

Not everyone buys that. Though the telecom infrastructure in Afghanistan is growing at a pace that exposes confounding contrasts—kids download videos on mobile phones while their houses lack electricity for much of the day—the mainstream press hasn't grown up as fast. Given expanding access to eyes and minds, the national press isn't as sophisticated as it could be.

"Fekrat's facial features are distinctly Mongoloid, in accordance with his Hazara heritage. His skin is rough and his look rugged, powerful in a primitive way; a rack of oversize teeth is arranged in what might best be described as a rebellious manner. He's fiercely independent, even irreverent, but then he's never had a reason to believe in the benevolence of a higher authority. Fekrat's father wanted him dead by the time he was 12 because Nasim didn't care for Allah and couldn't remember to pray, so he spent his adolescence fending for himself. He taught himself English, photography, journalism, the anatomy of the Internet, and he put it all together by posting his thoughts and photographs online. Then he started encouraging others to do the same and raising money on his Web sites so he could go into the provinces and spread the gospel".

Click the complete article here

or open this link http://www.slate.com/id/2194806/

Jul 1, 2008

The Second Round Blogging of Workshop in Bamyian

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Already published here

Under the auspices of Association of Afghan Blog Writers, the second round on blogging workshop was held for tens of Afghan journalists and writers in ancient city of Bamian. This workshop was underway from June, 12 to June, 15. First workshop of this series was previously held by the Association of Afghan Blog Writers in Kabul for journalists, university faculties, students and teachers.

Two western and three Afghan teachers participated in the latest round of blogging workshops. Mr. Martin (German journalist) who was supposed to teach in the first day of workshop, unfortunately failed to do so due to an illness. In the second day, first hours were dedicated to theoretical issues, in which Mr. Jeffrey Estern (young American journalist) approached weblog phenomenon from a western and modern-world perspective. Mr. Jeffrey compared visual and print media with blogging and evaluated the influence of blogging on public opinions, politics and other media, and said: “In our country, i.e. United States, along with three constitutional powers, Media is the fourth power which monitors activities of government. However, there was no body to supervise the media. After years and with the introduction of technology and internet, Weblog came into existence. Today, weblogs supervise the media, so that there have been several cases in which bloggers revealed misinformation of some prominent journalists who were consequently fired from their positions.”

After some theoretical discussions, the rest of the second day was dedicated to practical issues. According to directors, main goal of such workshops is to turn this new phenomenon into a public one so as to ensure that everybody practices the right of free speech with no censorship. Since increasing pressures of Information and Culture Ministry has led to more censorship by e-media and private TV channels, weblog may be a better choice to experience free speech as well as institutionalizing this principle in the Afghan society.

This was the second blogging workshop held in Afghanistan, and Association of Afghan Blog Writers is supposed to run similar workshops in other cities such as Herat, Mazar- Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandehar, Bamyian and Daikundi.

Blogging is an absolutely new phenomenon in Afghanistan and most of the people do not take it professionally. Therefore, such workshops directed by Association of Afghan Blog Writers may speed up the process of professionalization and facilitate it for Afghan bloggers. Today most of the youth and students have turned to this phenomenon. Though having access to internet is very problematic, the Afghan youth increasingly turn to weblog and blogging, and the number of Afghan weblogs is increasing. Up to now, more than 20,000 Afghan weblogs have been registered by Afghan people in various countries and through various blog service providers, such as Blogger, wordpress, Blogfa, Persianblog.

Barriers to the Way of Afghan Bloggers

Afghan bloggers have to deal with a wide range of problems. Due to recent controversies over Dari (Farsi) and after two correspondents in Mazar-e Sharif were sacked just for using Dari equivalents of ‘University’ and ‘Student’, Afghan Telecom has blocked two popular Persian blogger sites: Persianblog and Blogfa. Some believe that such acts are the continuation of fight of Abdul Karim Khoram(minister of Information and Culture) against Dari Persian.

On the other hand, there is the problem of power shortage. In spite of Hamid Karzai ruling for several years and presence of International Community in Afghanistan, Kabul inhabitants still do not have access to power. Power is available only 6 hours per day, and suffers fluctuations. This problem may be a big barrier to the way of Afghan bloggers and prevent them from updating their blogs.

Help Promote Free Speech

Directors of the project believe that turning this new phenomenon (i.e. Weblog) into a public issue between Afghan youth and writers can help the free speech and institutionalize democracy in Afghanistan. Today many emerging journals claim ‘independence and being free’, but they are unfortunately so associated with political trends and parties that practically come to experience self-censorship. Very often it happens that they fail to publish critical papers. On the other hand, Afghan journals and media have taken an opposition stance and the only thing they may criticize is the government, while there is a myriad of hot and sensitive issues happening all around Afghanistan neglected by such journals and media. Weblog enables the writer to publish his thoughts and criticisms freely and independently, using either real name or nom de plume.

Jun 27, 2008

Going to Germany

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I am writing this post from Dubai International Airport. Within a few hours I should leave to Vienna then for Germany. There is a short-term training course the so-called Summer Academy on freedom and responsibility in the media. I am very excited to attend this course well. This is my first visit to Europe I hope all things go well. I will try hard to benefit a lot from this workshop.

I hope to meet some useful and nice people there from other countries. Their will be 23 participants. I don’t know if I can screen some pictures from Afghanistan for participants and may be ask from Inwent to help me with that.

I like to share many things with other participants. I will try to write my experiences from Germany here after this.

Jun 9, 2008

Upcoming Blogging Workshop in Bamian

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I am preparing to go to Bamian to launch the second round of the Blogging Workshop. I had a little money left from the previous and first ever workshop in Kabul, which will serve for materials, renting computer lab, internet, transportation and stationary.
I hope this won’t be the last workshop on Blogging, because of financial problems. I appreciate the friends and people who helped us for the last workshop. I hope our friends and people who are really concerned about Afghanistan and digital media, and especially in the blogging spheres will help us.

We are going to bring together young people, journalists, students and people who are interested to blogging, in order to bring changes, in order to give news out of Afghanistan, in order to fight for freedom of speech.
I kindly ask people abroad to donate to us, and help us to fulfill our goals towards freedom of speech. I am sure, the small donations will be used for us to rent internet and a computer lab for teaching Blogging to journalists, students and for new generations who will bring changes for Afghanistan.

The second round of the Blogging workshop will be Thursday, June 12th and will continue for three days. In the last few months I regularly received phone calls from journalists, students, university teachers and people in Bamian who work for NGOs, they were asking me to go there to teach in the Blogging workshop.

I have already announced on behalf of Association of Afghan BlogWriters that those whom are interested to attend the blogging workshop, should start applying for the course. In one day we received 49 applications which were a lot more for us but we accept only 25 of them. So we had to close registration already.

For our Blogging workshop we rented a computer lab with 15 computer connected to internet, therefore we should ask for students to share their computer, otherwise we are out of capacity.
I hope this workshop will run well so we can come closer to fulfill our goal to promote blogging in Afghanistan in order to help digital media and support freedom of speech.

Just this morning I heard that Abdul Samad Rohani, a young journalist who was working for BBC for the last year, was found dead in Helmand. As an independent journalist and blogger I share my feelings and support his family and friends. This is shocking news for Afghan media and freedom of expression, especially for those journalists who work independently.

May 28, 2008

The Man With His Cage

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A man with his bird in the cage walks to the sunset in graveyard, western part of Kabul

May 4, 2008

Karzai Rejected the Juvenile Delinquency law

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The current controversy over the Juvenile Delinquency law illustrates the conflicts within the Afghan legal system. The conflicts are rooted in Afghan history itself. "From the 1880's until the 1960's, Afghanistan essentially had a dual judicial system. A system of sharia courts headed by clergy handled areas ... such as criminal law, family and personal law laid down in the sharia. A separate system of government courts handled state law issues, such as those relating to commerce, taxation, and civil servants." In 1964, an Afghan constitution, ratified by the Loya Jirga attempted to bring those threads closer together, but it was ripped apart again in the period of war with the Soviet Union and during the rule of the Taliban.

Following the defeat of the Taliban at the hands of US forces in 2002, an international conference in Bonn stipulated the appointment of a "Judicial Commission" whose role was to "to rebuild the domestic justice system in accordance with Islamic principles, international standards, the rule of law and Afghan legal traditions." That sweeping task proved easier said than done. A Stanford University study described some of the difficulties which arose.

  • Only 10 days after the close of Afghanistan's Constitutional Convention, Afghanistan's Supreme Court violated the word and spirit of Afghanistan's new constitution. Without any case before the court, and based on no existing law, the court declared on January 14, 2004 that a performance by the Afghan pop singer Salma on Kabul television was un-Islamic and therefore illegal. The video featuring the modestly dressed Afghan woman singing about rural life was recorded in the 1970s.
The juvenile delinquency law was already approved by parliament and senate, but didn't get Karzai's approval and was sent back to the parliament for more reforms.

Punishment Ages

The reason for not approving the juvenile delinquency law was because there were differences considering the ages for male and female juvenile delinquents. This law defines the ages for punishment at 18 years for boys and at 17 years for girls. But according to the general Human Rights, those under 18 are called children.

Human Rights organizations praised Karzai's action, but it was opposed by various persons in the opposition, who argue that this law is contrary to the Islamic Sharia Law. Karzai's refraining from approving the juvenile delinquency law was praised by many parliament members who also didn't agree.
Member of Parliament Azita Fafat says that all laws that are approved by the parliament must be in accordance with the constitution of Afghanistan and the international conventions that were already approved by Afghanistan.

Islamic Sharia Law

The members of parliament who approved the juvenile delinquency law, referred to Article 3 in the Constitution which says that a law can not be accepted when opposing the Islamic Sharia law. Irfanullah Irfan, another member of parliament pointed to natural differences between man and woman, and refrained from approving the juvenile delinquency law for a lack of Sharia rules.

The juvenile delinquency law was approved six months before, after which it was sent to the Senate for final approval. The Senate-members approved the law without any changes and sent it to the presidential office. Many lawyers believe the original sources of such disagreements are in the constitutional law because the constitutional text for civil cases is not clear enough.
For this reason anyone can interpret the articles of the constitutional law with special regard to their own interests.

Apr 9, 2008

For The First Time: Blogging Workshop in Kabul

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For the first time in Afghanistan, a two days Blogging workshop was organized by the Afghan Association of Blog Writers. The participants were an Afghan journalist, a University teacher, a poet and writers from different provinces and of various ethnic backgrounds.

The main goals of this workshop are better access of journalists to weblogs and other digital media. Since Afghan print and internet media are of a very low quality, blogs could help the Afghan print media and become a milestone in the media situation in Afghanistan.

This was just the first blogging workshop in Afghanistan. The plan is to continue with more workshops in different parts of Afghanistan, including Herat, Mazar-e- Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Bamyan and Daikundi.

Cultural activities in cyberspace, theories of blogging, detailed similarities and differences between web sites and weblogs, and the techniques of making a blog were discussed in these two workshop days. And at the end, each of the participants independently opened their new weblog in cyberspace.

The world's famous weblogs, the best Persian blogs and the world most popular blogs were introduced to the group and the factors that make a weblog better were among the issues that were explained to the participants.
The participants were technically taught how to open a blog, managing, browsing, linking, ways of writing and the skill of making a framework for the blog.

The Persian blog providers such as 'PersainBlog' and 'Blogfa' were introduced. Afghans yet were familiar with 'PersianBlog' and 'Blogfa' as service providers, now this workshop helped them to learn about other powerful service providers like 'Blogger' and 'Word press'. All of the participants then built their blogs on Blogger.

Blogging is a new phenomenon in Afghanistan, and only a few people make professional use of it. Therefore holding such workshops for the first time by the Afghan Association of Blog Writers can speed up this process and facilitate the work of Afghan bloggers.

Blogging is new in Afghanistan and today most of students and youth start to use it. Even though there are many obstacles for accessing the internet, the Afghan youth refer more and more to this than before, and the number of Afghan bloggers dramatically grows by the day.
Around twenty thousand Afghan blogs have yet been created in cyberspace by Afghans inside and outside the country, and using different service providers.

Afghan bloggers have already faced many challenges and difficulties. The two Persian service providers 'Persianblog' and 'Blogfa' have recently been filtered by 'Afghan Telecom', the private Afghan Telecommunication Company.

Some people believe that this work of Afghan Telecom occurs in following the anti–Farsi/Dari efforts and thus deleting the Farsi/Dari words from the city billboards by Abdul Karim Khuram, Information and the Minister of Culture.
They claim that this is a bare break of the subscribers' rights and should seriously be condemned.

The electricity and internet are complementary of each other. But unfortunately, after seven years of the Karzai newly born administration and the presence of the International community, Kabul citizens still don’t have access to electricity. Internet was supposed to become nationally accessible, but it doesn’t. There are many Net-Cafés in Kabul, but because they are so expensive, a large number of the interested youth can not use them.

More about Blogging Workshop:

1) Afghanistan: First blogging workshop in Kabul

2) Blogging workshop in picture

3) Promoting Blogging in Afghanistan B.B.C

4) For the first time Blogging in Afghanistan- Radio Zamaneh

5) An Initiative which is going to change Aghanistan+Pictures

6) How Blogging Workshop was held?

7) They’re blogging in Kabul!- CIPE Development Blog

8) Tactic: Organizing a blogging workshop - DigitActive.org

Related News about Blogging Workshop in Italian Blogs


1) Soldi spesi bene - Meri

2) Nasim e i bloggers di Kabul - Pino Scaccia's blog

3) Nasim Fekrat, un workshop sul blogging a Kabul - Pipistro

4) BlogFriends

5) BarBlog

6) PIU'BLOG

7) Tre Puntini

8) Zomberos

9) IL MURO

10)
Per la prima volta un blogging workshop a Kabul, Afghanistan- WIKIO