[Beheshta Arghand, now in Qatar,
says militants don’t accept women as humans and started targeting them soon
after takeover]
By Guardian staff and agencies
“Women – Taliban they don’t accept.
When a group of people don’t accept you as a human, they have some picture in
their mind of you, it’s very difficult,” Arghand said.
Arghand’s interview was a
propaganda coup for the Taliban that made headlines around the world. The
militants aimed to show a more moderate face as they promised to respect
women’s rights.
But Arghand has told how off-camera,
the facade soon fell, and it was about a week before her life turned into a
nightmare. The Taliban ordered her employer, Tolo News, to make all women wear
a hijab – closely covering their heads but leaving the face uncovered. The
Taliban also suspended female anchors in other stations.
Female
presenter interviews Taliban spokesman on Afghanistan television
She said the Islamist group asked
local media to stop talking about their takeover and their rule. “When you
can’t [even] ask easy questions, how can you be a journalist?”
Many of her colleagues had already
left the country despite Taliban assurances that the freedom of the media were
improving every day and that women would have access to education and work. She
was soon to follow, along with her mother, sisters and brothers. They joined
the tens of thousands of foreigners and Afghan nationals who took part in the
chaotic US-led evacuation.
“I called Malala [Yousafzai] and
asked her if she can do something for me,” she said. Yousafzai, who she had
interviewed, helped to get her on Qatar’s list of evacuees. The Nobel winner
survived being shot by a Pakistani Taliban gunman in 2012 because of her
campaigning for women and girls’ education.
Arghand recalled how she adjusted
her headscarf to look more like a traditional close-fitting hijab when a
Taliban official showed up, uninvited, in her studio, asking to be interviewed.
It was only two days after the Islamist group took over Kabul.
“I saw that they came (to the
television station). I was shocked, I lost my control … I said to myself that
maybe they came to ask why did I come to the studio.
“[Luckily] I always wear long
clothes in the studio because we have different people with different minds,”
the 23-year-old told Reuters in Doha, where she has lived since fleeing Afghanistan on 24
August.
She looked down at her body to be
sure that no other parts were showing and started firing her questions,
becoming in the process the first Afghan female journalist to quiz a member of
the hardline group.
Looking back, Arghand said she
realised how much she loved her country and a profession she chose over the
objections of her family.
“When I sat in the airplane, I told
myself that now you don’t have anything,” she said.
With Reuters
