And don't call me "Shirley:"

James Rupert, Newsday
Wednesday, June 21, 2006

(06-21) 04:00 PDT Kabul, Afghanistan -- The war against the Taliban has gone badly these last months, but Afghanistan's national intelligence agency has devised a secret plan to reverse the tide of bad news.

In a coordinated action this week, the intelligence operatives drove up to TV stations and newspapers in muscular SUVs and dropped off an unsigned letter ordering journalists to report more favorable news about the government.

In particular, the letter said, they should avoid "materials which deteriorate people's morale and cause disappointment to them."

The men from the National Security Directorate would not give their names, and to better ensure secrecy, the letter instructed journalists that "publishing or copying this document is unauthorized."

Immediately, of course, it was Afghanistan's top story: The government was imposing censorship, and local and international press groups were protesting in outrage.

By Monday night, the fire reached China, where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is traveling.

Karzai's aides there denied that authorities were infringing on press freedom. Rather, "the government ... requested the local media organizations in Afghanistan to refrain from glorifying terrorism or giving terrorists a platform," their statement said.

The security directorate's letter also demands special protection for the feelings of the mujahedeen -- veterans of the 1980s guerrilla groups that fought Soviet occupation. Many mujahedeen leaders are reviled in Afghanistan for destroying the country in civil war after the Soviet withdrawal -- but they regained positions of power by providing the ground forces that helped the U.S.-led military coalition topple the Taliban in 2001.

They are not to be criticized or called "warlords" -- a common term in Afghanistan for the more powerful among them, it specified. And Afghans called back by Karzai from exile abroad to take posts in the government are not to be called "westernized."

Whatever the incident may mean about the maturing skills of Afghanistan's CIA-mentored intelligence community, it is just more bad news for the 4-year-old independent press.

The Afghan Independent Journalists Association counted more than 40 attacks on journalists last year, including arrests, beatings, abductions, vandalism and two slayings. A magazine editor was sentenced to jail after writing that women should not be stoned to death for adultery and that giving up the Islamic faith is not a crime.

Stoning is a family value, after all. I look forward to the time when I too can enjoy the rights and freedoms Afghani women do, brought to me by our own Talibornagains. SFGate.