When the Camera is Threatened: The Taliban's Fear of the Truth

Shaqayeq Tue Jul 2025 4 months ago 398

Two of the faces behind the lens of these bitter moments—Samim Forough Faizi and Shakib Ahmad Nazari—are not just photographers. They are witnesses. Narrators of a land where narratives are buried under the shadow of fear, bullets, and religious tyranny.


With the Taliban returning to power, Afghanistan entered a period of suffocation and silence. Journalists are arrested, tortured, or forced into silence. Independent media outlets are being suppressed one by one. But what are the Taliban so afraid of? The answer is clear: the truth.


The truth exposes the oppression they normalize. The truth exposes the wounds they hide. The truth gives voice to the Afghan women, children, refugees, and intellectuals the Taliban seek to erase from the scene.


The Taliban fear one lens more than any foreign enemy: a lens in the hands of someone like Faizi or Nazari, someone who dares to record what this regime wants the world not to see.


The Taliban's fear of journalists is, in fact, an admission of their own illegitimacy. This fear of being documented shows that they know full well that history is watching—and indeed it is.


Every camera they break, every journalist they threaten, every protest they suppress only accelerates their moral decline in the eyes of the world.


But more importantly, these actions show something else: They are afraid. They are afraid of awareness. They are afraid of people waking up. They are afraid that they can no longer keep minds in the dark.


An attack on journalists is an attack on the collective conscience of humanity. This is not just a war against media freedom, it is a war against historical memory. The Taliban want the world to forget — but images like Faizi and Tazari’s remind us that forgetting is not an option.


Ultimately, you can silence a sound, but you can't make a lens permanently blind.

The world should not turn its back.

But what is more painful is not just the Taliban’s oppression, but the world’s silence in the face of this oppression. It is as if the world’s memory has become shorter than the suffering of the Afghan people. International media, human rights organizations, and institutions defending freedom of expression cried out when Kabul fell—but today, they stand by as the voices of Afghan journalists are gradually stifled.


Samim Forough Faizi and Shakib Ahmad Nazari represent thousands of silenced journalists, caught between two difficult choices: either tell the truth and pay the price, or remain silent and die. But they stand—with pen, with image, with voice.


The Taliban want to erase people's memories, but they have forgotten that a journalist is the living memory of a nation. Every report, every image, every article is evidence against the darkness.


This is our voice addressed to the Taliban:

You can arrest the journalist, but you cannot imprison the truth. You can break the pen, but you cannot silence thought.

History has always been written against the oppressors, and it will be so this time too.


And this voice is addressed to the world:

If you remain silent today in the face of the repression of Afghan journalists, tomorrow you will be responsible for the silence of history.

Freedom of expression has no borders. If it is silenced in Kabul, its echoes will reverberate everywhere.


Today, more than ever, Afghanistan needs the voice of the world. Those who support brave journalists, not just with slogans, but with action. With political pressure, with media help, by telling the truths that the Taliban want buried.


In the end, we will not forget. We will not let the names of our journalists die in silence. They are the tellers of truth, and truth never fails—if even the last reporter puts down their camera, their memory and their cry will live on.


And we will write until the day the light returns, until the last word.


But this isn't just an article; it's a statement.

A statement from the wounded heart of Afghanistan, from the embittered throats of journalists, from the lives caught between bullets and words.


Samim Forough Faizi and Shakib Ahmad Nazari are not the only journalists.

They are a reminder of what we still are: alive, aware, awake, and unafraid.


The Taliban wanted to take us back to the dark ages; an era when women were invisible, the voice of protest was a crime, and the reporter was the enemy.

But in the heart of this darkness, with all our weaknesses and pain, we hold a small light in our hands; a light called the pen, called the image, called the truth.

And this light, although weak, is still on.


This text is a wake-up call for all those who have closed their eyes.

For governments that appease the Taliban for political gain.

For organizations that only write about human rights in resolutions but do not hear the voices of Afghan women and journalists.

For people who ask: "Does Afghanistan still have problems?"


Yes, Afghanistan still has problems.

And this problem is not just about the Taliban's beards and guns,

Rather, it is in the indifference of a world that has become accustomed to our pain.


We don't want to be eternal victims. We have our own voice. We have journalists who, with empty hands, hold the truth.

We are the new generation, wounded but alive. Broken but standing.


And if the world remains silent,

We will write our own narrative.

With every article, every report, every cry;

As long as there are words, as long as there are cameras,

We have risen from our ashes —

And we will never be silenced again.


But our responsibility is not just to write and record this suffering.

Our responsibility is to stand with those who no longer have a voice. With journalists who keep the truth alive in the shadows, with minimal resources, under threat. They are the border guards of our collective conscience.


Today, Afghan journalists face not only censorship and threats, but also homelessness. Many have fled the country, wandering across borders, or dying in silent exile. And those who remain, with hearts full of pain, still write, still record, still try to keep the world awake.


These journalists are braver than any army. Because they fight not with weapons, but with the truth. And the truth, although it travels slowly, changes everything when it arrives.


I wish the world knew:

The Taliban are not only suppressing Afghanistan today, they are also eroding the foundation of freedom in the silence of the world. Every tongue that is silenced in Kabul is a warning to journalists in other corners of the world. Every journalist silenced in Kandahar or Herat is a reminder that freedom of expression, if defeated in one place, is threatened everywhere.


And with all the fatigue, with all the pain, we still write.

For Samim, for Shakib, for every journalist who still carries a lamp on his shoulder and runs in the darkness.

We don't write just to condemn, we write to remind ourselves that we are still human.


We still believe in the day when Afghan journalists will walk the streets without fear, without their hands raised, with their camera and pen.

The day when freedom turns from a dream into a reality.

And until that day, as long as there is even a blank page left, our pen will not be extinguished.

Written by: Shafqat Nouri Writer and observer of human suffering from Afghanistan On December 28, 2021, in the heart of Kabul, a shocking image was captured — an image that has now become a silent symbol of resistance and repression. It shows a journalist, his hands raised, a camera dangling from his neck, surrounded by armed Taliban fighters. He carries no weapon, no slogans; all he carries is the truth — and in today’s Afghanistan, that is enough to risk his life.

shaqaiq

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