FRANCAISAmitié Franco-Afghane - Comments
​1) The mission
-Above all, AFRANE informs about Afghanistan and publishes Les Nouvelles d’Afghanistan (“News from Afghanistan”) since it was created in 1980. During the Soviet occupation, the difficulty consisted in releasing information without being accused of spying, and without implicating the sources. For this reason, the authors of articles and the villages described were not explicitly named. As it did not hide its liking for the Mujaheddin freedom fighters, AFRANE was among the associations a researcher, Helga Beitenmann, suspected of minimising the rebels’ abuses and of dismissing their detractors, rejected on Moscow’s side. After the Soviets left, AFRANE was also criticised because of its geographical position in Afghanistan. By keeping on running a program in Kabul rather than in the Panchir valley in 1992-1997, for instance, AFRANE was unfairly accused of supporting the Taleban rather than the armed opposition of Ahmed Shah Massoud.
-For further information, let us mention another association, Aïna, which publishes news about Afghanistan. Created in 2001 by Reza Deghati, an Iranian photo reporter, Aïna helps the rebirth of the Afghan press. It supports in particular the Kabul Weekly, which had to stop during the Taleban period, and Malalai, a women’s magazine. With a media and cultural centre built in the capital city, it also organises the distribution of newspapers by street children in Kabul, and runs a mobile cinema throughout the countryside. Though recent, Aïna has already had victims. On the 19th of December 2002, while they were walking with two French journalists in front of the military hospital in Kabul, two local employees working as interpreters were killed during a terrorist attack against the barracks of the International Security Assistance Force.
