POLITICAL OR PERSONAL? TWO FEMALE JOURNALISTS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KABUL 001896

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E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/08/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL PTER EAID MARR AF
SUBJECT: POLITICAL OR PERSONAL? TWO FEMALE JOURNALISTS
MURDERED THIS WEEK

Classified By: Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Carol Rodley for reasons
1.4 (B) and (D)


1. (C) The June 5 assassination of Zakia Zaki marked
the second murder of a female journalist in
Afghanistan in a week. On June 1, Shakiba Sanga
Amaaj, anchorwoman for Shamsad TV, was similarly
gunned down at her home in Kabul. While not directly
connected, the two murders have sent shock waves
through Afghanistan's media community and point to the
continuing threat faced by Afghan journalists
generally and the unique vulnerability of female
journalists in particular. Rumors abound as to
whether Zaki and Amaaj were killed by extremists due
to their public profiles as female journalists or due
to personal animosities with political rivals or even
by their own family members. Either way, both murders
can be categorized as a response to these women
stepping outside socially-accepted norms for women's
behavior (in the personal and public arena) and are
part of a larger, more recent trend towards silencing
and intimidating journalists, particularly in the
central provinces. End summary.

JUNE 5 MURDER OF ZAKIA ZAKI, MANAGER OF PEACE RADIO
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2. (C) Zakia Zaki was shot 7 times while sleeping
after three men allegedly broke into her home north of
Kabul. Immensely popular within her community, Zaki
held three prominent positions in her hometown in
Parwan province: She was headmaster of the local girls
high school, director of a cultural and community
center assisted with funding through USAID's rule of
law project, and owner of Radio Peace, an independent
radio station that was the first radio station
established during the anti-Taliban resistance
movement in the North. Zaki, who reportedly worked
with Ahmed Shah Massoud and the Northern Alliance
during the resistance, had been the station's first
radio presenter. Through Radio Peace, Zaki was
reportedly an outspoken critic of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
as well as corruption by local warlords and provincial
government officials. Aside from her work with Radio
Peace, Zaki had represented Parwan in the
Constitutional Loya Jirga, then unsucessfully ran for
a seat in the current Parliament. Those who worked
with her in the media and civil society circles
describe her as an amazing woman who was loved by many
in her community.


3. (C) Speculation continues as to whether Zaki was
murdered by extremist elements who disapproved of her
role as an outspoken female journalist, by local
strongmen who wanted to send a powerful message to
curb her and other journalists' criticisms of their
activities, or by agents of her political rival and
current member of Parliament, Samia Sadat. Sadat beat
out Zaki for a mutually-contested seat in the 2005
Parliamentary elections. In early 2006, Sadat
narrowly escaped an assassination attempt against her
for which she blamed Zaki. The following February
journalist Abdul Qudoos, who worked under Zaki at
Radio Peace, was arrested for plotting the murder.
After great outcry from the Afghan and international
media community, who insisted Qudoos' arrest was
merely an attempt by local government officials to
silence prominent journalists, all charges were
dropped. Abdul Qudoos was released in February 2007,
after spending nearly one year in jail. Nevertheless,
Sadat's suspicion of Zaki's connection to the plot was
widely known. On May 30, 2007, a second assassination
attempt against Sadat again proved unsuccessful when
her vehicle was hit by an IED while driving through
Parwan. Just one week later, another murder attempt
was launched, but this time Zaki was the intended

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target and her attackers were successful.
Given the history between the two women, many
journalists have suggested Zaki was killed due to her
rivalry with Sadat. However, Rahimullah Samander of
the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association
(AIJA),who knew Zaki well and has spoken with her
family since the murder, told POLOFF his own theory
that extremists or local warlords are behind the
assassination attempts against both Zaki and Sadat but
are playing off of their history of rivalry to evade
investigation by police officials.

JUNE 1 MURDER OF SKAKIBA SANGA AMAJ, SHAMSAD TV ANCHOR
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4. (C) Just four days before the murder of Zaki,
another well-known female TV personality, Pashto-
language "Shamsad TV" anchorwoman Skakiba Sanga Amaj,
was also shot and killed outside her home in Kabul.
As in Zaki's murder, there is wide speculation as to
whether Amaj was gunned down by extremists who
disapproved of her role as a woman in the public eye,
or as an "honor killing" at the hands of family
members reportedly angered over her refusal to abide
by an agreement to marry a distant relative made when
Shakikba was a young girl. Amaj was rumored to have
been romantically involved with a co-worker at Shamsad
TV, further incensing the family's ire against her.
Media reports and journalists who worked closely with
Amaj assert that she had been receiving threats from
unidentified persons admonishing her to stop working
as an anchor for Shamsad. However, during several
media interviews, Amaj's father blamed her relatives
for the murder and denied that she had received any
threats before her death. On June 7 police officials
arrested two men, identified by Amaj's father, in
connection with her murder but have not indicated
whether the men are related to Amaj.

MORE MEDIA INTIMIDATION IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES
-------------- ---


5. (C) Media contacts report at least three other
cases of intimidation of journalists in the central
provinces (Kabul, Parwan, and Kapisa) within the last
month. While not directly connected to the
assassinations of Amaj and Zaki, Rahimullah Samander
of AIJA asserts that these isolated incidents are
part of a growing trend in which strongmen or
extremists in Afghanistan's central provinces are
sending a clear signal to journalists to tread
carefully in their reporting of local events.


6. (C) On May 24, unknown gunmen shot Abdul Manaf, a
23-year-old journalist working for a small independent
radio station in the Nijrab district of Kapisa
province. Manaf survived with bullet wounds to his
thigh but maintains that Nijrab police have been
uncooperative in the pending investigation. On May
30, Ariana TV reporter Shakib Dost was allegedly
harassed and intimidated by security officials at
Parliament due to disparaging remarks he had made of
MPs while on camera earlier that day. In a
separate incident in Kabul Province, the owner of a
fledging radio station in the Karabagh district has
reported being harassed, beaten and having his
equipment confiscated by District Police Chief Khwaja
Abdul Rahim. Kabul Governor Hajji Din Mohammad and
Minister of Information and Culture Abdul Karim Khoram
have reportedly tried to intervene in this case, but
according to AIJA, the equipment has not been returned
to the radio station, nor has any investigation of
Rahim's role in the incident been conducted.

COMMENT
--------------

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7. (C) The lives and eventual deaths of journalists
Zakia Zaki and Shakiba Sanga Amaj have played out like
the Indian soap operas that are so popular among
Afghan TV viewers, and in real life, attempts to
untangle the motives behind these women's murders
illustrate the futility of trying to separate the
personal from the political in local Afghan politics.
(In this context, it is worth noting that
to date, the May 18, 2005, assassination of Tolo TV's
female music-television host Shaima Razayee, who was
well-known as one of the first Afghan women to drop
the burqa and don western attire on local television,
remains unsolved.) Whether or not their roles as
female journalists were the primary impetus behind
their deaths, their assassinations have sent a
powerful message to other women around Afghanistan.
For even if their deaths were purely personal, Amaj
and Zaki's murderers knew that their notoriety as
journalists would ensure widespread coverage of their
intended message that those who step outside the
boundaries prescribed to women in Afghanistan -
professionally or personally - face dire consequences.
WOOD