‘Journalism is sacred work’: Afghanistan’s front line reporters

Despite targeted killings and an uncertain future, journalists in Afghanistan are not turning away from the profession.

Kabul, Afghanistan – It was about 8am on a Monday morning in April 2018 when Bushra Seddique felt the multi-storey apartment building she was living in with her family in Kabul’s Shash Darak district shake. Smoke billowed from the street below. She barely had time to process what was happening as her father rushed the family out of the house, past the injured and the dead, but she remembers seeing journalists running, cameras in hand, towards the scene of the explosion. Half an hour later, a second explosion went off; nine reporters who had arrived at the initial blast site were killed.