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Sketches
The shackled press

Tuesday, May 7, 2002
By Ana Marie Pamintuan
The Philippine Star

The interim government lacks competent people, public coffers are empty, there are no industries and no exports. Tribal warfare is threatening to tear the nation apart.

Sultan Ahmad Baheen and M. Faheem Dashty must now be sweltering in the 40-degree heat of Islamabad, waiting for their return flight home. Manila at 34 degrees was scorching enough for Dashty, 23-year-old chief editor of Kabul Weekly, who grew up in a land where there’s snow.

To get to Manila from Kabul, the two journalists from Afghanistan had flown to Islamabad, Pakistan. They waited three days for their connecting flight to Lahore, where they had a nine-hour layover before flying to Bangkok, Thailand. There they again waited six hours for their flight to Manila. The trip back would have the same waiting periods, they told me during a visit to The STAR office over the weekend.

At least they can travel abroad and have families to return to back home in Kabul. The two men were their country’s delegates at the conference here last week sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) to mark World Press Freedom Day.
(More: The Philippine Star News Source)
2002 © The Philippine Star.

Dan