Ahmad Sardar

Ahmad Sardar (died March 20, 2014) was an Afghan journalist.^[1] He, along with nearly his entire family, was killed by Taliban gunmen in a mass shooting in Kabul in March 2014. He was 40 years old.^[2][3]

Sardar began his career as a journalist in 2001 with the fall of the Taliban, when he started working as a translator for Japanese journalists. He was hired by Agence France-Press in 2003 to cover the daily briefings by the United States-led coalition at Bagram Airfield,^[4] and became well known in the Afghan media world, and had quickly worked his way up to senior correspondent for AFP at the time of his death.^[5][6] He also headed a successful media firm, Pressistan, which he founded in 2009 to support visiting foreign correspondents and to train local journalists.^{[7][8][9][10]} Interviewed in 2012, Sardar said of his job: "I don't think the experiences of a journalist in a country like Afghanistan and a city like Kabul are that pleasant. For example, suicide attacks: we have to go to the scene and look at something very tragic, we have no choice."^[11] Ironically his last article was on male lion cub Marjan, on March 19, 2014, which narrated the pathetic state in which Marjan was being housed on a rooftop by a businessman, who had bought the male lion cub as a status symbol for $20,000, and kept his pet on a roof terrace.^[12]

On the evening of March 20, 2014, as the Taliban insurgency was escalating in the run up to the April national elections,^[13] Ahmad and his family were having dinner at the Serena Hotel in Kabul, to celebrate the Persian New Year, Nowruz.^[14][15] Four Taliban gunmen sneaked weapons into the hotel before going to its restaurant and opening fire; they killed nine people. Four of those killed were Sardar, his wife Humaira, his daughter, Nelofar (aged 6) and his eldest son, Omar (5).^[8] The youngest son, two-year-old Abuzar, was hit with multiple rounds and went into a coma, but survived the attack.^[16][17] According to Afghan officials, Sardar's family were not the deliberate target of the attack.^[18] One of the attackers was believed killed by one of the hotel's armed guards;^[19] the rest were killed by Afghan special forces.^[20] Surviving son Abuzar may go to Canada to live with an uncle.^[21] While they claimed responsibility for the attack, after realising who had been killed, the Taliban insisted the murders of Sardar and his family had been unintentional, a result of crossfire, even going so far as to issue a rare apology for the deaths of the children.^[8]

Sardar's death was mourned by an eclectic mix of Afghans and foreigners, from President Hamid Karzai,^[22] who visited his surviving son in hospital,^[23] to former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum.^[11][24] Many Afghan journalists said they would boycott every Taliban statement and every Taliban-related story for two weeks in protest.^[19] Ahmad was described by his bureau chief as "[c]lever, informed, stylish and bubbling with boyish enthusiasm, [...] a five-star journalist, a friend to all at AFP—and a man who impressed every single person he ever met."^[6] Mujib Mashal of Harper's Magazine, who met Sardar a month before his death to discuss setting up a magazine, praised his sheer endurance, "something increasingly rare in his generation of Afghan reporters, many of whom have moved on to new careers, exhausted by more than a decade of conflict."^[7] Fellow Afghan journalist Harun Najafizada noted that Sardar had had any number of opportunities to leave Afghanistan, but had always opted to stay.^[18] The UN Security Council condemned the attack,^[25] with International Federation of Journalists describing Sardar's murder as a "horrifying killing",^[26] while Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, said Ahmad's loss would be felt "keenly".^[27] The American Embassy in Kabul rearranged a press conference so as not to clash with a vigil taking place the Wednesday after his death.^[8] His Pressistan Twitter account, which Sardar was always active on, was taken over by his friends to continue as a source of news and views in Afghanistan.^{[citation needed]}