‘Journalists can help end regional conflicts’

December 30, 2005

By Ghafar Ali

PESHAWAR: Journalists from Afghanistan and Pakistan should play their role in bringing peace to the region, Ahmad Saeedi, the Afghan deputy consul general in Peshawar, said on Thursday. “Journalists could help end conflicts,” Mr Saeedi told reporters at the concluding session of a 10-day workshop on ‘Objective journalism for defusing conflicts’.

The workshop was organised by Internews, Pak-Afghan Cross Border Training (PACT) and Media Training and Research Centre of the Department of Journalism and Communication at the University of Peshawar. Around 16 journalists from Balochistan and Afghanistan’s Qandooz, Maimana, Mazar Sharif and Khost areas participated in the workshop. Mr Saeedi said that Afghanistan had experienced around 30 years of unrest and turmoil and no cultural activity took place there during this period. He urged journalists to highlight the problems faced by the countries instead of focusing on minor issues. He said that journalists should perform their professional duties without ethnic, sectarian or religious bias. “It is a good initiative taken by the PACT and the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication and it will go a long way towards helping journalists bring the people of the two countries close to each other,” he said. He also appealed to the Afghan government to arrange such workshops in Afghanistan.

“This process should be continued on both side of the border as it will strengthen bonds of brotherhood between the two nations,” he said. Dr Shahjehan Syed, the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication chairman, said that the workshop provided an opportunity to journalists from different regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan to sit together and understand each other. “Cordial Pak-Afghan relations depend on the implementation of your training,” he told participants of the seminar.

John Butt, the PACT project director, said it was a step towards enabling Pak-Afghan journalists to work towards resolving conflicts.