As Afghanistan continues to burn after the recapture by terror outfit Taliban, members of the international press have expressed their concern that the country's media will be shut down and it will be challenging for the international press to enter the war-torn country.
Pulitzer prize recipient Afghan photographer Massoud Hossaini, who had fetched the prestigious award in 2012 was quoted in an Agence France-Presse report that the Taliban are fooling the West by promising to let journalists operate freely and they're trying to "kill the media slowly".
He also noted that Afghanistan's new rulers were already restricting female journalists in particular.
"The Taliban will completely close down the media, and they will also cut internet completely and probably become another North Korea for this region," Hossaini was quoted saying in the AFP report.
"Right now they are fooling the international community, they are fooling westerners," he said, branding the terror outfit's first press conference after their recapture a "gimmick".
One well-known female journalist told him "the Taliban do not even let me get out of my office" and she was now trying to leave," he said to the agency.
"For sure no woman can walk in the street, we see that female journalists go with the microphone, no it's not possible," said Hossaini.
The 39-year-old's dire warning on the future of the media in Afghanistan comes as he recovers from an escape from Kabul on the last commercial flight the day the Taliban took power. He is currently residing in the Netherlands. Hossaini, had also spent most of the first twenty years of his life as a refugee in Iran and only returned to Afghanistan after 9/11.
AFP reported that Hossaini has been a long target of the Taliban especially as a recent story that "he and a foreign journalist had covered about the group carrying out forced marriages of women and girls to Taliban gunmen".
"After receiving threats on social media, the pair booked tickets out of Kabul, with Hossaini travelling on the morning of August 15 as it became clear the Taliban were closing in," the report stated.
"When the plane took off as the last commercial plane before Kabul falling, we cried," he said to the agency.
"I saw that many friends, even foreigners were crying, because they felt like me that we cannot go back to Kabul again," he added.
Hossaini is currently a freelance photographer. He was earlier working with Agence France Presse and Associated Press.
