Newspaper back on the streets after five years

"Be quiet Afghans, international funds are coming" read the caption of a cartoon showing a monster of high prices eating poor people, while a man hushes them into silence looking towards the foreign aid.

The cartoon was on the front page of the Kabul Weekly, an independent newspaper that appeared for the first time on Thursday in the Afghan capital after being banned in the winter of 1996, the year the ousted Taliban captured the city.

"We are committed to objective journalism," its editor Fahim Dashy told IRIN. On Thursday 2,500 copies of the weekly, with parts in English, French, Darri and Pashto languages, were distributed. Dashy’s weekly has promised to work for democracy, defend human rights, combat terrorism, and publish authentic and impartial news.

"The need for open press environment is very strong. Independent press is always important, as we say, it is the cornerstone of a democracy," Martin Hadlow, director of the UNESCO office in Kabul, told IRIN. UNESCO was instrumental, along with NGOS, in helping Dashy publish the weekly after the presses had been silent for so long.