Mirwais Jalil

Mirwais Jalil (1969 – 29 July 1994), was an Afghan journalist for the BBC World Service near Kabul, Afghanistan. Jalil has been praised for being crucial in the BBC's coverage of the Afghanistan civil war and as a highly credible journalist. On 29 July 1994, he was returning from an interview with Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar when masked men kidnapped him, and Jalil was found murdered the next morning outside of Kabul. Jalil's aggressive coverage of the civil war between the mujahedeen was seen as authoritative and is said to be the reason of his fate.

Personal Mirwais Jalil was born the son of a medical practitioner in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1969. Growing up, Mirwais became fluent in Persian and Pashto, two main languages in Afghanistan. After Mirwais finished high school in Kabul, his family moved to Pakistan to escape the dangerous and volatile landscape that had erupted in Kabul. Mirwais took an English class and soon became a freelance reporter. His freelance reporting would soon land him a position with the BBC where he would cover the raging Afghanistan civil war that was waging in Kabul. Miwais enjoyed the excitement of covering the front lines in Kabul and his passion and authoritative reporting made him a valued journalists in covering the war in Kabul. He soon became a key factor in the raging civil war that took place in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. Mirwais was travelling on a dirt road near Kabul with an Italian journalist, Ettore Mo from Corriere della Sera, when the Volkswagen was ambushed by a black sedan where five half masked figures jumped out and grabbed Mirwais from the car he was travelling in. He was brutally pulled from his backseat position in the car where he was dragged against his will at gunpoint and put into the waiting black sedan. The black sedan fled at high speeds away from Ettore and Sharif, the driver of Mirwais's car. Mirwais was the only passenger kidnapped. Those were the final moments anyone saw Mirwais alive. His body was found with multiple stab wounds and gun shots and was discovered only a couple kilometres from where he had been abducted near Chelsitoon, Afghanistan, a suburb of Kabul.

Context Chelsitoon is a suburb in the south of Kabul.There was a civil war in full battle at the time of Mirwais's death. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was engulfed in a fierce battle with the Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani over Kabul and strategic positions that both forces wanted to occupy. At the time of Mirwais's death in July, it had been reported that "1.5 million Afghans had already lost their life in the war," according to The New York Times. The fighting was the fiercest in Kabul for a number of weeks. After Mirwais's death, both Hekmatyar and Rabbani blamed the other party for his death.

Reactions After Mirwais's death, the editor of the BBC sent out letters to both Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Burhanuddin Rabbani in an attempt to get better protection for the journalists covering the bloody war. The BBC refused to say who they thought was responsible for Mirwais's death. Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar blamed President Burhanuddin Rabbani for the death of Mirwais, and President Burhanuddin Rabbani blamed Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. People from the United Nations and individual governments believed that Afghanistan was in so much turmoil that the country was beyond help and the world was now looking down on the devastation and destruction of Afghanistan.