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HERAT, Afghanistan — Students at Afghanistan's Herat University thought they were living in new era of openness, one in which the right to criticize authority was increasing.

Last week, however, officials at the Iranian consulate in Herat, near the Iranian border, complained to the Afghan Ministry of Culture that the student newspaper, Pegah, was inappropriately critical of Iran's crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators.

The newspaper was closed for 10 days, the university fired the responsible journalists, and the paper was reopened with no news of the protests.

The measure, however, is likely to backfire among Afghanistan's increasingly educated and media-savvy younger generation. Student groups denounced the newspaper's closure and refused to hold their tongues in public.

Mohammed Faqiri, the spokesman for Herat University's New Generation Club, admits that his group has some advanced views for young people in a traditional Muslim nation, but he's sure his group is in the mainstream on one issue: Iran.

"The Iranian government has finally exposed itself as a theocratic, totalitarian regime," said Faqiri, 23, a leader of the organization of a dozen students who meet secretly once a week because the Afghan government frowns on their independent political activities. "Iranian leaders are trying to hang onto power by killing people and destroying their free media."

That's a shift in sentiment... >>>