Memorial's award furthers Afghan journalists' efforts

By Judy Gibbs Robinson

Published: April 19, 2005

Jamila Mujahid, right, said women are still targets of violence in Afghanistan, where she and Najiba Maram, left, founded the Voice of Afghan Women Radio, a women-owned and operated station. The station is the first recipient of the Reflections of Hope Award from the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

Jet-lagged after a three-day journey from one of the world's most bombed cities, two Afghan journalists offered condolences Monday to Oklahomans who endured a single bombing a decade ago.

"We know exactly what they are going through because we've dealt with this so many times," Jamila Mujahid of Kabul said through an interpreter at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. "You guys suffer from terrorism, and we go through that, as well."

Mujahid and Najiba Maram of the Voice of Afghan Women Radio came to Oklahoma City to accept the first Reflections of Hope Award tonight.

The $10,000 prize from the Oklahoma City National Memorial honors a living person or group whose work shows that hope thrives in the wake of political violence.

In Afghanistan, political violence continues three years after the Taliban defeat, Mujahid and Maram said.

"There is a group of people that is very dangerous to us and to the women of Afghanistan," said Mujahid, the spokeswoman for the pair. "This radio we created is like a bomb that fell on them."

In that atmosphere, they work without salary to keep the Voice of Afghan Women Radio on the air from a one-room studio.

The prize money could change that, but Mujahid and Maram also want to launch a TV broadcast.

"Radio and TV will write a new page in the history of Afghanistan," Mujahid said. "Right now, we are starting something for the women of Afghanistan, but we need help. What you pay for the price of one bomb, we could run our station for 10 years."

The Voice of Afghan Women Radio is owned by women and operated for women in a country that throughout the 1990s banned women from universities and the workplace and required them to hide behind tent-like garments outside their homes.

Mujahid, a college-educated TV news reader before the Taliban took over, spent a decade locked out of her job but was eager to return. When the Taliban regime was routed in November 2001, she hurried to the radio station and went on the air. Her first words: "The Taliban have gone."

"For 10 years, I wanted to say that," Mujahid said Monday, dressed in a red pantsuit, black scarf and sandals that revealed pink-polished toenails attire she still would not wear in Kabul, she said.

"If you compare it to before, it's much better, but I don't think it is enough. It hasn't changed enough for us to be happy with it," she said. Maram nodded in agreement.

They hope the award and other commendations will help Afghan women secure equality at home by showing they have support abroad.

"Winning this award is a backup for us women in Afghanistan that America is backing us up in this," Mujahid said. "We are hopeful that they will not leave us alone after this award that they will continue to back us up."