Afghanistan Times
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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: Daesh (IS) has threatened to execute journalists in eastern Nangarhar province aimed to get more media coverage than the Taliban for its brutality as it did in Syria and Iraq.
The group through their newly emerged FM Radio ‘Voice of Caliphate’ has threatened to kill journalists in the province. The group’s radio is accessible around the provincial capital and the surrounding districts.
Nangarhar-based journalists, who did not want to expose their names due to fear of persecution, have told media that the broadcasters of the Daesh radio were reporters in the province who have all information about the journalists working for the independent media.
According to a news report of the VOA, the journalists in the province said that they have been suffering challenges after the threats, saying that the threat to their lives has rolling a negative impact on their careers.
The union of journalists in the province urged the government and all warring parties to ensure security of journalists as they are neutral and siding with no one in the war.
The provincial governor’s spokesman, Attaullah Khogyani, said that a mechanism is being worked out to protect the journalists. He said the journalists would safe once the mechanism was implemented.
Meanwhile, Director of Communications and Information Technology in Nangarhar, Engineer Azizullah Habibi, said that concrete measures have been taken to dismantle the Daesh radio. He said technical difficulties making it difficult to block its signals.
The radio was launched amid growing concerns that the terror group was gaining foothold in Afghanistan with their attempts to establish a regional base in Jalalabad, capital city of Nangarhar.
The US and NATO military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, said past week that the Islamic State fighters from Iraq and Syria are also entering the area and seeking to establish a regional stronghold in Nangarhar with support from local loyalists in Afghanistan. He estimated the Islamic State group has between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters in the area.
