Former Afghan BBC reporter seeks protection from the Taliban

An Afghan reporter who has been working with the BBC for many years is being actively targeted by the Taliban and is currently trapped in Kabul unable to reach the airport.

A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC is doing everything it can to secure the safety of our teams in Afghanistan.

“All the relevant expertise and resources across the BBC and with external parties are currently dedicated to this task,” he added.

The former BBC reporter, an Afghan national, is said to be a “high-value target” for the Taliban, and the group reportedly went to their home last Tuesday to kill them.

Jen Wilson, chief operating officer of Army Week Association in New York, said: “(The Taliban) like it when American TV journalists are on the ground because then they get to speak to the West, but they hate indigenous journalists, especially ones that were in bed with allied forces.”

Since the Taliban gained large swaths of territory in the past few months, many journalists in Afghanistan have gone into hiding.

Only a few weeks ago, Reuters journalist Danish Siddiqui was killed while covering the clashes between Afghan security forces and Taliban forces near a border crossing with Pakistan.

Siddiqui was working that week as a journalist with the Afghan security forces when he was caught and killed in Taliban crossfire.

Thousands of Afghan journalists, translators, interpreters and fixers have been providing invaluable information from the ground to international media organizations since the 2001 US-led invasion.