tajikistanweb.com

200208 - The Afghan Minister of Information and Culture was summoned to the parliament on Tuesday to explain his latest acts considered by many as a campaign against the Persian language in Afghanistan. Breaking the silence on the issue, both Persian and Pashto websites of the BBC reported the news.

The parliamentary cultural commission led by Mohammad Mohaqqeq has listed 6 instances of 'anti-Persian measures' undertaken by Abdul Karim Khurram, the Minister of Culture. The commission accuses Khurram of wiping his Ministry’s Persian name off its banner, replacing the Persian word for "gallery" with its English equivalent, punishing three TV workers for using Persian words for "university" and "faculty", altering the linguistic pattern in some of the National TV programs, and re-naming Kabul streets and districts. Due to unruly behaviour of a few MPs the session adjourned indefinitely after listening to Khurram’s responses to only first two accusations.

As for the "Kabul Gallery", Khurram stated that a new commission would be formed to decide whether to return to its previous Persian title "Negarestan" or invent an absolutely new name for it. It wasn’t immediately clear how the commission would be set up and whom it would include.

Referring to his Ministry’s title Khurram accepted that the names of all government agencies and ministries should be written in both Persian (Dari) and Pashto which are official languages of Afghanistan. It is not known when the hearing will continue.

The BBC Persian/Pashto Service had abandoned the coverage of the dispute as its first report on reprimanding a journalist in northern Balkh province for using Persian words on February 9 caused wide-spread protests within and outside Afghanistan. Protest rallies by Persian-speakers of Afghanistan and beyond took place in London and Mazar-i Sharif, some Pashtun supporters of Khurram gathered in Kandahar to set aflame a BBC World Service banner for reporting the case in the first place. All these developments have been ignored by the BBC Persian/Pashto Service. It is believed the service will remain precautious in covering the linguistic dispute.

Allegedly, a complaint e-mail to the BBC World Service’s officials signed by "a Dr Spinghar Atal from Afghanistan" has deterred the Persian/Pashto Section from further reporting on the linguistic war between Afghanistan’s main ethnic groups.

Apart from three officials in London’s Bush House a Pashto website (Tolafghan.com) has received the complaint via e-mail and published it. The author, who suspects the BBC Persian in ‘fascist attitude’ against Pashtuns, has no misspelling or mistakes in names and titles of the BBC World Service’s authorities. This weird accuracy and a perfect knowledge of the BBC World Service’s hierarchy in turn have awakened suspicion within the service that the author could be sitting in the same room. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the sender’s IP address belongs to the bbc.co.uk server itself.