The 21 million women and girls the world forgot

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:10Today, we hear from the women inside Afghanistan the Taliban want to silence.

0:25Exactly five years ago, this time I was in Kabul. It was a scary time. I think it was the beginning of the city's fall to the Taliban. And Taliban fighters seized four more provincial capitals today. The ground offensive puts the Taliban closer to the capital of Kabul. In August 2021, the Afghan journalist Zahra Joya was in Kabul, where she and her family lived. Over the previous 10 days, she had witnessed what would have once seemed impossible. Taliban militants advancing through Afghanistan at astonishing speed, taking control of her country province by province. It was just four months after the US and the UK had announced they would be withdrawing their troops.

1:10And now, two decades of fragile democracy was being swept away. It was unbelievable for us that so quickly the Taliban took control and everything vanished overnight. in front of our eyes. A defence official says the capital of Kabul could be threatened within 30 days or possibly sooner. On this day five years ago, the Taliban were outside the gates of Kabul. I remember talking to Zahra and she still didn't believe that they could take the city. Then, just a few days later, on the 15th of August... Taliban forces entered the heart of the Afghan capital, Kabul, today, the culmination of a rapid advance...

1:51The first thing they did, they opened the doors of the prisons. Hundreds and thousands of prisoners, they're just dangerous people. They just be free and then they come to the city, basically. In the next few hours, everything collapsed, basically. Chaotic scenes, who will leave and who will be left behind. Is this how the West's 20-year adventure in Afghanistan will be remembered?

2:23Zahra was in her office when she got the call that Taliban militants were on the corner of her street. It was very obvious that the Taliban are there with their very long hair, with their guns on their shoulders. And then when I went to my house, I do remember that I used the iPhone 6, a very old one. Then suddenly it didn't work, it stopped. The phone stopped working. Yeah, the phone stopped working. Then I wanted to take it to the shop to fix it, basically. Then I realized that no, I'm not allowed. I'm a woman. And the first thing the Taliban did was order the woman to stay home. I asked my brothers, can you please help me with this?

3:13And then I realised now how life will be difficult for me as a woman, as a journalist, that I will rely on male members. Zahra, like millions of women across Afghanistan, could remember what it was like to live under the Taliban. She knew what was coming. My freedom, my identity, my dignity, every single human rights that I have, it's gone.

3:47I feel something inside me is burning and I got angry, I got frustrated and I felt like, why it's happening so soon? Five years on, everything she was afraid of has come true. All of this happening in Afghanistan and somehow in silence. From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in Focus, the 21 million women and girls the world forgot.

4:25Zara Joya, it's so great to have you here today on Today in Focus. We know each other very well now. We've known each other almost exactly five years since you were living and working in Afghanistan as a journalist and the founder of Afghanistan's first female-led news agency, which you started, Rukshana Media, and the two of us got together to do a series of pieces that were supposed to mark the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in September of 2021. Obviously, things didn't pan out as we expected. I think it's probably at this point worth just giving a bit of an overview of what has happened inside Afghanistan to women since August 2021.

5:14Unfortunately, the list is so long. During these five years, the Taliban supreme leader issued more than 400 degrees and edicts. And about 100 of these edicts and degrees target women directly. In one ridiculous order that the Taliban, the supreme leader, the Taliban ordered, it was about women should not speak to each other loudly. Like you and me, we are doing. From the Taliban perspective, it is crime. Just off the top of my head, it began by girls being banned from secondary schools, women not being allowed to attend universities, women losing most chances of paid employment, especially as public servants, women now not allowed to train as wives anymore, women not allowed to go to parks, not allowed to go to beauty salons, not allowed to enter any public building, including hospitals now without a male guardian.

6:13They're largely restricted to their homes and when they do go out, women have to cover themselves completely in public. No bare skin, even their hands can be shown. And as you said, now not even allowed to raise their voices loudly in public. I think it was in January this year when the Taliban published a law, a new law about divorce. Basically, if a woman is bitten by a husband, then until the husband broke a bone in the body of a woman, and then the women should prove that in the court, then they will issue a divorce. Otherwise, the beating, it's completely acceptable and there's the husband right.

7:02The second thing was horrifying. A nine-year-old girl, her father and grandfather can accept the marriage on behalf of her. At nine years old? At nine years old. you've helped us speak with some women inside the country. We've obviously obscured their voices for safety reasons.

7:26And, you know, there are a lot of retributions for people in Afghanistan who speak out against the Taliban. They could be thrown into prison. There are even these medieval-style punishments like flogging for speaking out or insulting the leadership. So the women who sent in these voice notes have taken an extraordinary risk in speaking to us about what it's like living under Taliban rule. And some of our Guardian colleagues have read out the translations of what they told us. It's been five years since we were able to study. I couldn't continue my education to become a midwife. My daughter couldn't go to school either.

8:07People who live outside Afghanistan are in safe places. I wish they could come and live in Afghanistan for just one day to see how women are humiliated. Women are insulted because of their bodies, because of the way they wear their hijab, and even for not wearing socks. You know, one thing that really struck me listening to those voice notes is just how suffocating and boring and claustrophobic this life is that has been forced on almost 22 million women. Many girls have been forced to leave school and university. This means that the future we spent years working towards has just been left unfinished.

8:49Now most of our lives are spent inside our homes, surrounded by four walls. We continue to keep hope alive despite all these restrictions and we try not to be forgotten. They've become completely dependent on the men in their family to do almost everything Yes, now there is a punishment for male members of the family that if a woman leave house without a male chaperon then there is a punishment for men and women, for the whole family Ordinary Afghan men become the Taliban unpaid soldiers Yeah, so they start imposing their restrictions on the women in their own family. Yes. These days when I wake up, I no longer have the clear goals I once had.

9:39Most of my time is spent doing housework. This is especially painful because I completed my education in two fields with great difficulty. One in medicine and the other in archaeology. But now there's no difference between me and a housewife or someone with no education because I can't use my knowledge or professional skills.

10:04In five years of this, we know is having a catastrophic impact on women and young girls. Absolutely. So now women and girls are suffering from depression and anxiety. I mean, I think hundreds of Afghan women have committed suicide. Those are only the ones that have been recorded. Is that right? Exactly. There is no independent organisation inside the country to record this. But what we are doing in our capacity in Rukhshana Media, that we are recording every single of these women that they are taking their life or murdered by a family member because of the domestic violence.

10:48My dream was to become a doctor one day, but that dream was left unfinished when I was forced to stay home. I secretly enrolled in educational courses twice but both were eventually shut down I had no choice but to remain at home and spent my days doing the household chores Later, I was married at a very young age Taking on the responsibilities of being a wife at such a young age was very difficult Every day, I hoped that one day things would change but unfortunately, they never did

11:24Zahra, this isn't the first time that you've seen the Taliban in control of Afghanistan. It was after a chaotic civil war in the 90s that they first came to power. And back then they also imposed a fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia law on your country, something you've written about extensively in your new memoir, The Vanishing Girl of Kabul. Could you talk to us about the lengths that you had to go to in order to get yourself an education? So in the first row of the Taliban, even primary school was banned for girls in Afghanistan. So I was in the village with my family and I had my uncles and that they were older a few years than me.

12:09Okay. So I really wanted to be like them, to go to school. And then I was not allowed. And then this idea came to my mum. My mum helped me to, you know, make boy culots. So your mum suggested that you dress as a boy. And I did. I had this chance to be outside, to be free. How did you do that? Like, did you have to have a whole different alter ego? So basically, I changed the entire identity. My mum made this boy culots for me. and then my mum cutted my hair. My name was Muhammad. Of course, I think so many of people around me because they knew that I was a girl and they knew about this but they didn't say anything and I really enjoyed it.

13:07I was a boy. I was a free person, I think. Still, I feel like I was so strong. How long did you do that? How long did you sit in the classroom? Yes, I'm from five age to 13. Five to 13. Yeah, I think it's seven years or something, yeah. After several years of living and studying as Mohammed, in 2001, you know, 9-11 happened and then the US-led coalition invades Afghanistan and, you know, removes the Taliban from power. Do you remember the Americans coming to your district and understanding that a new era for Afghanistan was starting? I do, yes. When I went to the school, we saw American soldiers, Western soldiers in our area.

13:58And then it was funny. At the beginning, we as children, we were afraid. And then they gave us cookies. I mean, they must have looked so strange to you. Yeah, it was strange. And then obviously very soon, And our school announced that the girls are allowed to come. And then I returned in the evening and I told my other siblings that you are allowed to go to school. And did you kind of fling off your Muhammad costume and go to school and say, actually, I'm Zahra? It was not easy, no. I still stayed in that clothes. and my father, he brought me a school uniform, a black dress and a white scarf. And the day that I went to the school, everyone was shocked, including myself.

14:50And it was really, really difficult on the day that I changed my identity again as a girl. And if we kind of fast forward a little bit, you end up finishing your studies, going to university. all of this would have been completely impossible under the Taliban. Of course, it wasn't an easy time to be living in Afghanistan. The 20-year US occupation had created a war that had killed tens of thousands of civilians. But it was also a new era for Afghan women. We're suddenly working and having a career was possible, hard, but possible. And you decided to be a journalist. You set up Rukshana Media, which was the first female-led news outlet in the country.

15:34Why was it so important for you to focus on telling women's stories? In 2011, when I finished my school, then I moved from my village to Kabul to the capital of Afghanistan. I met so many women in the first semester in my uni. there were a lot of stories in common, painful stories, daily life experience. And at least for me, it was very unheard. I thought, why do we have so much in common, but nobody is talking about this? And I thought, I'm going to be a journalist. I think my generation, we were very hopeful and very ambitious about doing something better for our future. for the country, it was possible, honestly.

16:25Keeping thousands of troops grounded and concentrated in just one country at a cost of billions each year makes little sense to me. In April 2021, there came the news that Joe Biden announcing then the US president that all of US troops would be pulled out of Afghanistan by September that year. We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan, hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal. As you said, you saw the first American soldiers when you were still at primary school. You'd seen them for most of your life. I mean, what was it like hearing that news?

17:06So I was a journalist. I heard a lot of people's perspective. So first of all, many people that they were in the heart of the war in southern Afghanistan, in some part of Afghanistan, They were kind of happy. But for me, as a journalist and for other my generation that we believed and we fought against Taliban ideology, we fought against misogyny a lot. It was really sad that we heard that we will not be able to, you know, protect our achievement. As the US troops left, there were those weeks when the Taliban swept through the country and the provinces fell. You know, it was stunning how quickly they were able to take control of the country.

17:53You know, how much support they had and what little resistance the government put up. What was that time like for you? I was in my house for 10 days. It was a horrifying time because I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat anything. And then suddenly our door knocks and then one of our neighbors, they asked my dad to be aware about this Taliban, just starting searching house to house to find generals, to find policewomen, policemen and those that they work with the government. They worked with the NGOs and as a journalist. then I found that there is no way for me to work or to be the same woman that I was a few weeks before.

18:47You were in almost constant contact with myself and other Guardian colleagues during that time and you actually sent some voice notes to Today in Focus in August 2021 as the Taliban arrived in Kabul. We thought we might play one to you now. Can you hear? The Taliban are coming. They are in the city right now, unfortunately. Today, my city in Kabul, it looks like very sad and very painful. My feeling is just sad. Oh, my God. So sad. I know. What does it feel like listening to that? It's just heartbroken. It just reminds me of how I was in a terrified situation. I felt like it was not real. In the sheer panic of those days when people realised they had this really small window of time to decide to leave while the evacuation flights were still going, You know, probably all remember those terrible scenes of people clinging to the bottom of planes.

20:06They were so desperate to get out. As a woman journalist, you decided you also had to go. You know, and it wasn't easy, but you and your sisters managed to get on what I think was one of the last flights. It was. It was 1 a.m. in the morning. I went to my parents' room and I shared this news with them. Then we went. It was like, you have to go now. or you're not going to get on that flight. Exactly. And then it was the most terrifying time when I said goodbye to my parents. And I really didn't know that, you know, when I will, or ever, I will see them again. I think it was the most horrific experience that I have ever in my life.

20:55It was a military plane. I think more than 300 or 400 people were there. Everyone was so exhausted. When I sit down, then I just have a call to my dad that we just sitting in the plane. My sisters, they started crying. You know, when the plane took off from Kabul sky, Something inside me broke, obviously. When my sisters stopped their crying, then it was my turn.

21:38Coming up, Zahra's undercover reporters working inside the Taliban's Afghanistan.

21:59So that was five years ago, which I can't believe. You made it to the UK. I know you weren't in the hotel for a long time until you could get housing. And, you know, since then, every single day you've got up and you've carried on your work reporting and running Rukshana from exile as a refugee. you still have reporters working for you now secretly on the ground they're in Afghanistan and because of the conditions they now work under they all use fake names they don't know about each other do they just to make sure that that if they are arrested they're safe the others are safe what kind of anxieties do you have for their safety I feel like in Rukshana media we are not doing simply journalism anymore it's a kind act of resilience we are just resisting for our right freedom of speech and giving this chance for women to amplify their voice so for me it's a combination of you know panic attacks it's a nightmare threatening messages still threatening Threatening messages.

23:14Exactly. Threatening messages from Taliban themselves, from Taliban members. So for my colleagues, I think they are putting their life on their hands and gathering information. And some of your journalists have actually sent in some voice notes about their working lives. I think it's worth stressing that they are in real danger. So we've digitally altered their voices.

23:41In all the years since the fall of Kabul, I have faced countless challenges while working in the media. People are afraid to speak. Even hearing the name Taliban is frightening for many people, let alone talking about their actions or criticising them. Many times, sources have agreed to speak with me at first, but a few hours later, they changed their minds because they were afraid and decided to stay silent instead. Every time I leave home, I feel like a soldier going to a battlefield. I don't know if I'll return home safely. Every time I leave home to report a story, I feel worried and afraid.

24:17I'm always very careful and make plans that no one discovers who I really am. I'm afraid that if the Taliban identify me, they could arrest me and torture me. In 2024, I wanted to report on a carpet weaving workshop a little outside the city centre. That day none of my brothers were at home So I went alone On the way we reached a Taliban checkpoint They first ordered the taxi driver to get out And asked him loads of questions They insulted and humiliated him For taking a woman alone in a taxi without a male guardian Then it was my turn They took my home address and my phone number They asked why I'd come to the area I told them I was visiting a friend The Taliban officers told me That if I was really visiting a friend I should call my friend and asked them to come and meet me.

25:04My friend and her husband came to the office and told the Taliban that I was their friend and also a relative. After that, they let me go. Since that day, I've never been able to leave home alone without fear. Now I always try to arrange interviews when one of my brothers is at home so they can go with me.

25:34And yet, five years on, despite this dystopian world that Afghan women have found themselves in, Afghanistan has basically fallen out of the news. You rarely hear about the plight of millions of Afghan women anymore. And, you know, even now, incredibly, seems like Afghanistan has become this destination for travel influences. I'll be exploring Kabul, immersing myself in local life, meeting the Taliban. So your wife doesn't work, right? No, no. She's a queen. She doesn't even go outside to buy the groceries. I do everything. Yeah. And I mean, these are just a handful of travel vloggers. But is this part of this creeping normalisation of the Taliban?

26:20Yes, there is, you know, a lot of kind of engagement going on with the Taliban. Last month, the European Union issued a visa to the Taliban delegation to go to Brussels. The EU has not recognised the Taliban government, but says limited talks are needed to arrange the return of Afghans who have no legal right to stay in Europe. Many campaigners are concerned about it. They see this as normalisation, that step by step, these kind of meetings start to legitimise the Taliban as a kind of... Does this all leave you feeling betrayed? Absolutely. It is betrayal. And also we feel like the world just abandoned us.

27:03In 2001, when the United States said that we will invade Afghanistan, one of the justifications was that we will protect women's rights. And it didn't happen. It's Afghan people that they are suffering. But it has a consequence to the world. Now during these five years, 8 million, according to official reports of the UN, 8 million left the country. Now Donald Trump completely shut down everything for Afghans and the UK is the same. Even they have banned a student visa for Afghan students. The move is part of the UK's crackdown on asylum seekers. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the visa system was being abused by students.

27:53Officials said the UK would focus on its proud tradition of helping those who were genuinely in need.