Source:
McClatchyHERAT, Afghanistan — Students at Afghanistan's Herat University thought that they were living in new era of openness, one in which the right to criticize authority was increasing.
Last week, however, the Iranian Consulate in this Afghan city near the Iranian border complained to the Afghan Ministry of Culture that the student newspaper, "Pegah," was inappropriately critical of Tehran's crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators.
The newspaper was closed for 10 days, the university fired the responsible journalists and the paper was reopened with no news of the protests.
The measure, however, is likely to backfire among Afghanistan's increasingly educated and media-savvy younger generation. Student groups denounced the newspaper's closure and refused to hold their tongues in public.Mohammed Faqiri, the spokesman for Herat University's "New Generation Club," admits that his group has some pretty advanced views for young people in a traditional Muslim nation, but he said he's sure that his group is in the mainstream on one issue: Iran.
"The Iranian government has finally exposed itself as a theocratic, totalitarian regime," said Faqiri, 23, a leader of the organization of a dozen students who meet secretly once a week because the Afghan government frowns on their independent political activities. "Iranian leaders are trying to hang onto power by killing people and destroying their free media."
That's a shift in sentiment, considering the role Iran has played in recent years as a cultured, wise and stable big brother to backward Afghanistan.Devastated by the brutality of their own warlords, many Afghans looked to Iran during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and the Taliban rule of the 1990s and again after the U.S. invaded their country in 2001.
Read more:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/71009.html
This article made me think of how helpful the following may be in:
POLL-Obama scores highest marks in global confidence 29 Jun 2009 21:00:13 GMT
Source: Reuters
U.S. President Barack Obama inspires the most confidence of any world leader, according to a global poll released on Monday,
with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earning the lowest marks.The poll of people in 20 countries, which include nearly two-thirds of the world's population, found
an average of 62 percent had some or a lot of confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs.
No other world leader inspired confidence from more than 40 percent in the poll. Ahmadinejad, whose disputed re-election has sparked street protests in Iran,
had the confidence of 28 percent he would do the right thing, while 49 percent had no confidence in him.We've had quite a turnaround in less then a year.
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