Freshta Jalalzai
On August 6, 2021, I awoke to a haunting truth: My dear friend and former colleague, Dawa Khan Menapal, was silenced forever. A dedicated journalist, he served as the deputy spokesman for Afghanistan’s last president, Ashraf Ghani, and was the head of the Afghan government’s Media and Information Center at the time of his assassination in the heart of Kabul.
As the Afghan government teetered on the precipice of collapse, Kabul transformed into a haunting tableau of high-profile killings. Many of the victims – government officials, journalists, religious figures – had well-known faces. The violence had entered a new and chilling phase: High-profile explosions had been supplanted by a wave of assassinations across the country, instilling a pervasive sense of fear. This shift not only heightened the tension in the streets of the Afghan capital, but also eroded the trust that many had placed in the Afghan security forces. The very fabric of society seemed to fray, as each shocking event further underscored the precariousness of life in a nation beset by turmoil.
Yet, I could never have imagined that Menapal would become one of the casualties. He was not the kind of man whose absence one could easily envision; his vibrant spirit seemed indomitable, a beacon of resilience that promised to persist even in the darkest of times.
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