Mortaza Behboudi : french-afghan reporter in the hands of talibans... Philippe Rochot.

Bayeux price: november 2022.

Meeting Mortaza Behboudi is first of all a shock: that of a frank, penetrating and pleasant look. I meet this young Afghan when he has just landed in Paris and gravitates around the Maison des Journalistes, an association that helps foreign reporters who have taken refuge in France. From the outset he made the effort to speak French. He has the will and the faculties. He will learn our language very quickly.

Refugee? He knows the problem. He was born in Kabul but soon experienced exile with his family, which retreated to Iran after the Taliban first seized power in Kabul in 1996. Mortaza worked from childhood in a brick factory to pay for his schooling. He was quickly drawn to photography. The Iranian revolution offered him an ideal training ground in which he gave himself without counting, but he was arrested at the age of 15 by the Revolutionary Guards and then released.

Afghans are not appreciated in Iran, which pushes him in 2012 to return to his native country, Afghanistan to follow internships in the local media. He is 17 years old.

House of journalists: Paris.

Reporting is his vocation, but he quickly sees its limits: journalists worried, threatened, censored media, clashes between tribes and armed groups still present. "The war started by the Taliban is a great source of violence," he says. From 2015, the Taliban and the Islamic State created information “black holes” throughout the country. It then became obvious that I had to leave. »

In Bamyan with Nicolas Auer and Dorothée Ollieric.

Mortaza Behboudi is comfortable in the Afghan field, through his knowledge of the language, the people, the country, the society and especially the state of mind of the populations. With French reporters, he manages to deal with difficult subjects such as these destitute families in a country who sell their children or these young girls who demonstrate to be able to continue going to school.

It is clear that for the Taliban his reports disturb. The new masters of Kabul want to intimidate him and with him the foreign journalists who come to Afghanistan to talk about the situation of the Afghan people. And as it is necessary to find a pretext for his arrest, the authorities accuse him of espionage. This kind of argument is raised by all fundamentalists and totalitarian regimes who fear the truths launched by journalists.

Philippe Rochot