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Afghanistan: Terrified female Afghan journalist ‘Ms Z’ hiding in Kabul speaks out under Taliban rule

While Perth is a long way from Kabul, Ms Z is too afraid for The West Australian to publish her full name. The Taliban has made its assault on Afghan media representatives abundantly clear. And being a woman in media puts her in an exceptionally precarious position. Already the 32-year-old is taking a risk. Though optimistic by nature, the longer Ms Z lays in wait while her beloved country is ravaged by terrorists just outside that small window, the more her hopes Afghanistan can be saved are fading. “I feel very hopeless. I feel very bad about this situation. I do not know how, but everything must be changed,” she says. “Our people don’t deserve such endless pain.” The journalist has built up a tough layer of armour over her career as a war reporter. Born into calamity, her childhood knew only of Taliban rule until it was toppled in 2001. But she had watched her family and friends suffer under its regime and vowed to rise up against it. Once dedicated to educating the world on the atrocities suffered by women and children at the hands of the oppressive regime, she now finds herself the victim, sharing her own story as Kabul again falls to Taliban control. “I used to contact with women who lived under the Taliban control area, and when I heard their stories, I felt that pain in their voices,” she says. “But now even I’m not able to talk about my own story about my own pain freely in social media. I had to deactivate my Facebook account, which had more than two thousand followers. “I feel like I have lost that ability to write and speak up about other Afghan women and deliver their stories and messages to the world. “Today I am a victim of this nonsense political war and I lost my hope, my motivation and everything that I have gained in the last 20 years. “And it really hurts.” The enormity of Ms Z’s sense of loss is paralysing — both physically as she hides away in fear of being caught and punished, and perhaps even killed, and emotionally for a country that fought so long and so hard to hold together. “Life in Afghanistan has changed for everyone after the control of the Taliban, especially for women,” she says. “Personally, I feel deprived of my soul. I breathe only, I want to speak but I feel I have no tongue, I want to move but I feel I have no legs. “I’m frozen mentally and physically.” Ms Z has weathered the storm of three wars — a war for her homeland, a war for press freedom and a war for women’s rights. The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan (1996-2001) it ruled with an iron fist, enforcing Sharia law at its most harsh interpretation. Things changed in 2001 when Islamist militant group al-Qaeda launched its September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, in which nearly 3000 people were killed. The group’s leader and mastermind of the terrorist plots Osama Bin Laden was being held under the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The United States intervened and ousted the Taliban, but its militants remained at Afghanistan’s fringes as a weakened but still present threat. Bin Laden escaped, but would be hunted down and killed in Pakistan 10 years later. Afghanistan rebuilt, with women returning to the workforce and female journalists a strong presence in the effort to bring a voice back to a war-weary country which had lost its free press under the regime. A vibrant media industry has bloomed in Afghanistan in the two decades since. However, violence and instability continued to pose a threat from the Taliban’s strongholds. Journalists were never completely safe from militant forces, and attacks against media workers across the country increased sharply once talks began between the Afghan Government and the Taliban. Between 1998 and 2013 the highest number of deaths according to UNESCO’s observatory of killed journalists was three. By the end of 2014, however, Afghanistan suffered its bloodiest year since 2001. That number shot up to five, and continued its upward trend to peak at 16 in 2018. So far this year UNESCO has recorded at least seven deaths — four of whom were women — and that number is expected to rise. Just two days before the fall of Kabul on August 15, Human Rights Watch urged world leaders to urgently evacuate “at-risk” Afghans — including media workers — and their immediate families. Two days after Kabul was taken, the world watched in disbelief as Afghan TOLO News anchor Beheshta Arghand — clad in a black hijab but her face remaining uncovered — appeared live on air just a few feet from a Taliban official. The man had appeared at the studio uninvited and demanded to be interviewed. It was the first time a female presenter had appeared live in a TV studio opposite a Taliban representative. When questioned, the official claimed this time the Taliban would take a more moderate approach to its ruling, with a greater respect for women’s rights. But once the cameras stopped rolling, Arghand said, the official decreed all women at TOLO News must wear a hijab, before suspending female anchors at other stations. All media were forbidden from reporting about the Taliban’s takeover. A week later Arghand and her family fled Afghanistan in fear of their lives. Back in her hiding place in Kabul, Ms Z is similarly unconvinced of the Taliban’s claims of moderation. But unlike Arghand she remains trapped in the captured capital, saying desperate Afghans had claimed the identities of journalists and other at-risk nationals in order to escape. “We lost everything. There is nothing left to lose but our lives,” she says. “We journalists are stuck here since people who do not know what the job of a journalist is used our names and transferred abroad. We are worried about being identified and killed by the Taliban. “My friend was a reporter in Herat province. She came to Kabul due to severe threats, but when the Taliban entered Kabul city only two days later, the Taliban went to her house in Herat and threatened her family that if they do not give her address, till the morning, the Taliban will kill all of them one-by-one. “Right now her family lives in a secret place.” Ms Z is under no illusions she could be next. The Taliban have threatened her before. But when Kabul was seized the odds turned further against her. “As an Afghan journalist, I feel more insecure these days. In these conditions, I cannot talk openly. I cannot write about what’s going on in this city, and this means a gradual death for a journalist who spent a decade of her life to inform people,” she says. “I’m still in Afghanistan, but I want to go to a safer place so that I can report what I have seen and inform the world more about the situation in this country. “All my friends have left Afghanistan in the last two weeks, my relatives have taken refuge in neighbouring countries and a number of my colleagues have also left the country. “While covering some stories, I have been threatened many times by the Taliban, but I was not afraid. Being a journalist in a country like Afghanistan is of course not an easy task. “But now I live in a city under Taliban control. I have to be afraid because they can do anything. “They can kill anyone and there is no one to ask them why.” For women, the Taliban’s return marks a particularly dark period. Under its previous rule women’s rights were almost non-existent. Among the restrictions they faced, women were forbidden from working and from receiving an education. They were not to set foot outside their homes without a male relative and a burqa was required at all times. Breaking the rules resulted in public whipping. Or even execution. The Taliban has since pledged women will have rights in Afghanistan “within the bounds of Islamic law”. But Ms Z believes nothing has changed, and feels abandoned to the regime after the US withdrew its last troops from the country on August 30 to officially end the 20-year war. “For Afghan women, the takeover of the Taliban means the loss of the gains of the last 20 years,” she says. “Women have lost their inalienable rights. They are not allowed to work in society, they are not allowed to appear in the media, they cannot work in banks right now, they cannot work in other beauty salons. “The Taliban even cover the faces of women installed in the showcase of beauty salons and billboards with white colour. “Our women are experiencing a dark period again, and this time, the United States has given this disaster to Afghan women, and we will never forget this oppression and will not forgive the US. “Freedom of expression has lost its meaning. When the Taliban enters the news studio with guns and stand behind the anchor, freedom of expression is dead. When a female reporter is not allowed to enter her office, freedom of expression is dead. “We no longer have anything called freedom of expression in Afghanistan.” Ms Z is pleading for help — not just for herself, or for the other women or journalists whose lives are at risk. But for Afghanistan itself. “I want to say to the world — please do not allow the Taliban and other extremist groups to destroy Afghanistan anymore. Do not allow them to establish a safe haven in Afghanistan,” she says. “Afghanistan is the heart of Asia. If extremist groups grow here, you and your country will not be safe. Please do not support the Taliban. “The process of transferring journalists and people who were in serious danger was not transparent, and more than a thousand media workers and civil society activists are trapped in Afghanistan. “If the governments around the world really do not want the voice of Afghans to be silenced forever, then they must act quickly to transfer the Afghan journalists and people who are in serious danger. “Otherwise one-by-one the Taliban will kill us, and the voice of 35 million Afghans will be silenced forever. “Please listen to the voices of the millions of Afghans. We are also human beings — peace and freedom are our inalienable rights. “Please save us. Please.”

exclusiveAfghanistan: Terrified female Afghan journalist ‘Ms Z’ hiding in Kabul speaks out under Taliban rule

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Afghanistan: Terrified female Afghan journalist ‘Ms Z’ hiding in Kabul speaks out under Taliban rule