Female Afghan journalists are on the run from the Taliban as the terrorists take over the country.
Two days ago I had to flee my home and life in the north of Afghanistan after the Taliban took my city. I am still on the run and there is no safe place for me to go.
Last week I was a news journalist. Today I can’t write under my own name or say where I am from or where I am. My whole life has been obliterated in just a few days.
I am so scared and I don’t know what will happen to me. Will I ever go home? Will I see my parents again? Where will I go? The highway is blocked in both directions. How will I survive?
Think about that folks, an Afghan journalist, a female, is on the run from the Taliban. In a country that is imploding.
One of the reasons it is imploding? Biden got elected and arbitrarily said ‘Everybody OUT!’ and thus the Afghanistan pull out of our troops commenced post haste. Without consideration of those left behind. The interpreters, the children, the women. The women journalists.
The Taliban is sweeping through the country consolidating its power. They are once again imposing their reign of terror across the land. What was once old is new again.
Women bankers are no longer allowed.
Afghan women bankers forced from roles as Taliban takes control https://t.co/rDX4N7UOuN pic.twitter.com/WiwY6F30qG
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 13, 2021
The Taliban have spies everywhere.
One teacher lifted her burqa on a warm morning and bared her face for just a moment, said Mah Jan, an educator in the northern Balkh province, where the Taliban has made significant inroads in recent months. Soon after, another colleague glanced at her phone.
Then came a message from the Taliban, delivered through a local elder. If they committed the same infractions again, the militants warned, “we will take you away and nobody can save you,” Mah Jan recalled.
Mah Jan, who declined to provide a last name out of fear of retribution, said a constant hum of dread has compelled her to say a final farewell to her family every morning before school, just in case she is killed in clashes between home and her ever-shrinking classroom.
Girls schools aren’t, as the WaPo implies, being shuttered voluntarily. Nope, the Taliban is once again imposing their dictatorial anti-woman edicts across the country. Which means women, according to the Taliban, are nothing but chattel whose only role is to be controlled by men.
The journalists, REAL journalists as compared to the fools at CNN, are trying to get the news out regarding what is happening to their country. These women are doing their damndest to tell the story while in active fear of their lives, that of their families, and essentially everyone around them.
Many of the women journalists such as Sadaf Siddiqui have no choice but to work under a pseudonym. Yet they persist against overwhelming odds. Shakiba Saeedi says it best.
“Journalism is my passion and it is a major responsibility, so I am continuing working despite the major changes in our environment,” she told Gandhara. “Our major challenge is security as fighting continues in many provinces.”
Saeedi says while the government often has complaints about the work of journalists, Taliban control would be devastating.
“The ideology of the Taliban is clear to everyone,” she said. “The Taliban is the same as it was in power two decades ago when it deprived women of key liberties,” she said. “It deprived women of the right to choose, education, employment, and even the right to go out of their houses,” she added. “We are now seeing that the Taliban is again imposing the same restrictions on women in the areas they control.”
Understandably, the Afghan women and the journalists working to report on their behalf are rightly ticked off at both the Afghan leadership and world leaders.
A must-see interview with one of the most outspoken women I have met in #Afghanistan #afghanwomen #talibanatrocities #sanctionpakistan pic.twitter.com/gohJnBkFbJ
— Bele Grau (@belegrau) August 11, 2021
Will the Biden Administration pay any heed to that well deserved smackdown? Not hardly. As Toni bluntly wrote here, the Taliban is winning while our generals play politics and Biden goes on vacation.
Courageous Afghan women and journalists are sounding the alarm. Media outlets such as The Guardian are now their voice for them while they do everything they can to survive.
Second in #WomenReportAfghanistan:
— Ruchi Kumar روچی کمار रूची कुमार (@RuchiKumar) August 11, 2021
"If we don’t fight now against extremist ideologies and groups that force them, we will lose our chance to defeat them. They will succeed in brainwashing society to accepting their agenda” #SalimaMazari by @Zainab_pirzadhttps://t.co/nEXjV9Plp6
Can't express how much I am proud of @ZahraJoya, who in 2011 came to Kabul to study law but ended up challenging and changing the Afghan media landscape https://t.co/3lkAZddFl4
— Zahra Nader (@ZahraYusufi) August 12, 2021
THEY are fighting with words and with guns. THEY know the harm the Taliban represents to their country, themselves, and to the world. THEY are doing their damndest to stop the Taliban. What is the U.S. doing? Begging the Taliban to leave our pretty embassy building alone. What is the EU doing? Issuing sternly worded warnings, warning that the Taliban is laughing at. This is what those brave women are up against.
Will the U.S. Embassy fall to the Taliban? It’s a sure bet given those terrorists have now swept seventeen capitals, including Helmand where U.S. soldiers saw some of the bloodiest fighting over the years, and are well on their way to take over more.
One journalist asked, “Please pray for me.” We are praying for you, we are praying for all of you.
Feature Photo Credit: Afghan women voters 2014 via USAID on Flickr, cropped and modified
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SFC D says: I served in the US Army for 24 years. A large portion of that time, from August of 1990 on, was deeply involved with whatever the latest middle-east problem was. Now, after essentially handing Iraq over to ISIS and letting the Taliban have Afghanistan back, I’m left wondering if I wasted a career. My apologies to all the Iraqis and Afghans left on their own.
Scott says: You and the others who served di all you could to set them up for success SFC-D, they chose not to take advantage of that, and let the goat molesting fleabags retake their countries, despite all the advantages they had. They have to want better for themselves.
Fyrfighter says: Good post Nina, and I definitely pray for these brave women, but here’s the thing… “the Afghan women and the journalists working to report on their behalf are rightly ticked off at both the Afghan leadership and world leaders. “.. Why aren’t they ticked off at THEIR OWN government and military? Afghan military forces outnumbered Taliban 3 or 4 to one when we pulled out our forces, and were better equipped (though gropey Joe, and the morons at the pentagon changed that by leaving so much equipment behind), so why are they folding like a cheap suit? It seems that should be the first target of these womens anger. They had the mechanisms in place to prevent this, but they haven’t. That’s the real problem in that rathole of a “nation”
Trpy says: C’mon man.
20 million women in Afghanistan are about to go back to the 8th century. Yet the feminists still support sleepy Joe.
I guess they are busy telling us how air conditioning is sexist.
AF JAG retired says: Let there be no doubt – these women are sacrifices to the ego of a selfish old man. If you want to leave Afghanistan, OK, but there are right and wrong ways to do it. As General Jack Keene points out, war there is seasonal; summer is the fighting season and things taper off in the winter rains. Winter would be the logical time to redeploy, slowly, giving the Afghan army time to adapt to less US air support, restoring that support as needed. Even if it succeeded this would require a year or two of careful planning and flexible adaption to circumstances as they developed.
But no! Kindly old Uncle Joe wants to crow that he took us out by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. For that, these women and their families will be killed or at best become refugees.
[…] He left his people. He abandoned his military. He abandoned the women and children of Afghanistan. Nazira Karimi has every right to be upset. She knows firsthand what the Taliban do. They murder, rape and pillage. Women are a special target […]
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