“I change house every two days and ride with the Burqa. Betrayed by the NATO countries”: cartoonist Khaliq Alizada, persecuted by the Taliban, talks to Fatto.it

“I feel like the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, only they weren’t left alone after the terrorist attack, I am ”. Khaliq Dad Alizada he is 45 years old, a wife and two daughters. He is of ethnicity hazara, the Shiite minority that has always been persecuted in Afghanistan. “I Taliban they go house to house looking for us. They have a list with all the names of the people who have collaborated with the allies. Moreover, I am Hazara, so I have no hope ”. Until a few weeks ago, Khaliq made a living by drawing satirical cartoons for several Afghan newspapers. The main target of his work was the Taliban and for this reason he now fears for his own life and that of his loved ones. “My cartoons were very strong, I know, but this is satire, you know it better than me – he says to Ilfattoquotidiano.it – In every moment of my life, I risk being captured and tortured, just like it happened to Khasha Zwan“. Khaliq refers to the Afghan comedian who was tortured and killed by the Taliban after the capture of Acceptance. In the video of his arrest, Zwan is seen squeezed between two Taliban militiamen while one of them slaps him. That heartbreaking video went around the world, provoking reactions of indignation and bewilderment from the entire international community. But nothing more. “I saw that video too. I still remember Zwan’s face as he was loaded into the car and then beaten. I’ll never forget it. In those moments I had the chills thinking that I could be in his place ”, says the Afghan artist from the place where he hides.

Despite several attempts to escape from Kabul following the conquest of the Afghan capital by the Koranic students, Khaliq remained stuck there, although he worked in collaborative projects with theLower, the mission Then in the country. “I feel betrayed from that international community with which I have worked all these years. It’s like he sold us to terrorists, abandoning us in a real slaughterhouse“. Khaliq does not live in Kabul, he hides in Kabul and, like so many other people in his same situation, journalists, human rights activists, politicians and persons belonging to Ethnical minorities, try to get noticed as little as possible with every gimmick. “I never stay in the same place for more than two days because they go looking house by house for those who have collaborated with international forces and when I move – he continues – I wear a burqa so as not to be recognized. If I wear the burqa, they cannot discover me ”.

The cartoons Khaliq drew depicted bearded men often in sexually explicit positions or in violent situations where they were beaten up. “Portraying the Taliban in this way, with their genitals in plain sight or while they are being sodomized and beaten, it was a way to ridicule them, to make the people understand that they should not be afraid of them, but on the contrary laugh at them ”, he explains.

One month after the hasty and ruinous withdrawal of the Allied forces from Kabul, hundreds of civilians who have collaborated with the international community in Afghanistan are still stranded in that slaughterhouse. Last September 19th, in a press conference, Qari Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi, the interim director of the Government Media and Information Center (Gmic), announced the establishment of the “11 rules of journalism”. “Decided without any consultation with reporters, these new rules are chilling for the coercive use that can be made of it and are a bad omen for the future of independence and journalistic pluralism in Afghanistan “, said Christophe Deloire, general secretary of Reporters Without Borders, in a press release issued by the organization. What distinguishes these rules are ambiguity and generality and this leaves the possibility open to Koranic students to interpret them in a completely arbitrary way. According to what was stated at the press conference, in fact, in the new Islamic Emirate journalists cannot publish stories that are “contrary to Islam”, they cannot “insult national figures” or violate “privacy”. What the latter means everything and means nothing, if not adequately specified. As explained by Reporters Sans Frontières, among the imposed rules, as enunciated, there are principles that apparently seem to follow the cornerstones of democracy. According to what has been established, in fact, journalists must conform to what they are intended as ethical principles. They must “try not to distort the content of the news”, “respect journalistic principles” and “ensure that their news is balanced”. But, as the NGO denounces, “the absence of references to recognized international standards means that these rules can also be misused or interpreted arbitrarily”. All initial promises to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms have therefore been rejected. “I can no longer stay in Kabul – says Khaliq -, I fear for the lives of my children. The international and journalistic communities cannot abandon us in this hell ”.

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