Kabul (WeNews\WFS) - It was April 4, 2007, and Shaharzad Akbar mulled it over a million times before pressing the 'publish' button. What went online that day on her blog in Farsi, called 'Mesle Aab, Mesle Aatash' or 'Like Water, Like Fire', was the first part of a series of posts she called 'insulting love', and it brought the worst backlash her blog had since she started it in 2006.
"The post argued that most Afghan popular songs and poetry portrayed a weak image of women and addressed them as property or an object rather than a full, intelligent human being," says Akbar, a 22-year-old graduate student at Oxford University in England.
Though she currently lives outside of Afghanistan, Akbar considers herself to be part of a slowly growing blogosphere of Afghan women writing about women's issues, politics and culture. As with other female bloggers, she takes advantage of a technology that affords them a rare opportunity for self-expression in a male-dominated culture.
Her blog post that day drew threats and "disrespectful, patronising or outright insulting comments," she says. One male reader even created a blog dedicated to defaming her and terming her and other female activists as prostitutes.
Zahra Sadt, another blogger, posts a profile image of herself showing a middle-aged, dark-haired, unveiled woman who half smiles at the camera. She uses an alias on her blog - her pen name from the time when she was a reporter - and when she can, she writes about issues such as poverty, the roots of prostitution, politics and the situation of women in Afghan jails. "With blog writing I wanted to say to people - especially Afghan men who don't accept women as active members of society in Afghanistan - we are writing about what we are," she says, adding, but "clear writing in Afghanistan is not easy and sometimes is not possible."
Sadt is a member of the Association of Afghan Blog Writers, which was started in 2006 by a male freelance journalist, Nasim Fekrat, one of the country's star online pundits. The organisation, created after another blogger was detained for the content he had posted, offers a glimpse of the small online world in a country where access to the Internet and electricity is scarce and society is male-dominated. "From 280 [members], more than 15 are women," Fekrat says.
But numbers, in general, are not easy to come by. Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-headquartered organisation devoted to protecting journalists worldwide, has no blogger figures for Afghanistan. Charmaine Anderson, country director of the Afghanistan base of Internews, an international media development organisation based in Arcata, California, and Washington, D.C., says the last numbers they've seen are from 2009; they suggest the country has about 2,500 active bloggers.
In 2006, Sadt created two blogs. One was more feminist, intended to respond to radical Afghan Muslims. But she had to delete it because of continuous threats. The other, the one she still updates, mixes journalistic and personal issues. "I couldn't write some things that I felt are important for Afghan people," Sadt says, referring to her current blog called Hugger-mugger notes. "We can't write topics that we want because we're not safe."
Both Sadt and Akbar say their women's rights posts sparked the most threatening reactions and letters. "I got many discouraging comments, especially when I wrote about women's issues and identity," Akbar says.
She recalls how she once wrote in her grey-toned blog a series of letters to her youngest sister Noorjahan about growing up a woman in Afghanistan. The online letters touched issues ranging from prejudice to sexual harassment to relationships in a male-dominated culture. Not only did she get bothered, she says, but her family also got into trouble and was threatened since she wrote under her real name.
Sadt recently wrote about a poor man who sought help from a religious leader named Ayat Ollah Mohseny. After she criticised the religious leader for not helping the man, Sadt says she was severely threatened and had to take down the post.
"Killing you is very easy," the online threat said. "You want to make destroyed the character of Mr. Mohseny. We can search you easy. You should remove this story."
Although press freedom was formally restored after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, it has proven to be fragile. "If you want to publish something [online], there's always a fear that they will accuse you," says Fekrat of the Association of Afghan Blog Writers.
He assigns three points on a 10-point scale to freedom of expression in his country. Afghanistan ranked 149 out of 175 in the 2009 Reporters Without Borders worldwide press freedom ranking.
"Freedom of speech is guaranteed in our constitution, but sometimes is broken from government, especially from police and also war leaders," says Zohra Najwa, a blogger whose blog portrait shows the profile of a veiled woman covering her face with a fully extended hand in a 'stop' gesture.
According to Nushin Arbabzadah, an Afghan female journalist who works for 'The Guardian' in England, "Blogging is a reflection of how people feel about the situation in Afghanistan." In 2004, she says, many exiles returned home from Iran, bringing with them their blogging customs learned in the more liberal neighbouring country.
Now there's more tolerance for different views but security's worsening due to the increasing threat of the Taliban. Women have it tougher. "They're more at risk, more vulnerable, they need more courage," believes Najibullah Sharifi, referring to female bloggers and reporters who cover politics and sensitive topics. Sharifi has worked as a journalist and fixer for Western media in Kabul for more than 10 years.
Like any blogger, Akbar knows her writing is a possible career hazard. "I sometimes worry that particular blog posts of mine that have been written with anger and frustration about injustices facing women will be used against me when I look for work opportunities in Afghanistan," she says.
But Akbar uses her real name anyway, saying it keeps her accountable to her readers. Whatever the threats, she says she will continue blogging: "Once you start a struggle you have to be there to end it."
By arrangement with Women's eNews.
[Author Affiliation]
(Almudena Toral, a La Caixa Foundation fellow, is a reporter from Spain. For original story, log on to: http://www.womensenews.org/story/media-stories/101005/afghan-female-bloggers-wince-and-then-upload)
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