Ep. 478 — Lotfullah Najafizada

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2022

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When he was 5 years old, Afghan journalist Lotfullah Najafizada watched as rockets landed in his front yard. He and his family moved around the country to escape conflict, but after the fall of the Taliban following 9/11, a new sense of calm—and a burgeoning media landscape—emerged. Lotfullah became the director of TOLOnews, the country’s most-watched station. He joined David to talk about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, engaging in peace talks with the Taliban, America’s successes and failures in the country, and what he wants people to know about the colleagues he has lost to violence.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:06.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.
0:18.0	The word hero is often overworked, but I want to introduce you to someone truly deserving of that title.
0:24.0	His name is Lahtfula Najavassada, and for nearly 10 years he ran Tolo News, a 24-hour news network in Afghanistan, bravely and honestly telling that country's stories.
0:35.0	He lost 11 colleagues during that time and lived himself under constant threat.
0:40.0	Now, a refugee from Taliban rule, he is a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
0:46.0	And listening to Lahtfula, talk about the sacrifices he and his colleagues made for democracy, makes you think about just how precious it is.
0:54.0	Here's that conversation.
1:02.0	Lahtfula, it's great to see you again. How are you doing?
1:07.0	Thank you, David. It's great to be with you.
1:11.0	How are you doing here in Canada now?
1:13.0	Right, this is where my parents are.
1:17.0	I've been visiting them and hopefully I'll be back to Chicago at the IOP very soon.
1:28.0	I want to talk more about that later, about this post-Taliban takeover period and just the itinerant nature of your life during this period.
1:41.0	But I really want to go back to the beginning of your story because it's quite extraordinary.
1:48.0	It may not seem that way to you because you lived it, but you were born in 1987.
1:54.0	This was at the very end of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
2:00.0	They left and what ensued was essentially civil war.
2:05.0	Talk about those early years of your life because then again you and your family moved around quite a bit in Afghanistan.
2:14.0	Right, right. Yeah, they left I think 89, so I don't remember that.
2:22.0	But the Soviet Union and the invasion I think changed the country.
2:30.0	And the departure also resulted into a civil war.
	...

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