Women are back to conduct tv shows in Afghanistan
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Alaina
- . August 18, 2021
- . Update: August 18, 2021 7:55 pm
Women are back to conduct television in Afghanistan after two days of absence. Yesterday morning from the studios of Tolo News, the first Afghan news and current affairs television network broadcast 24 hours a day, a live broadcast unthinkable twenty years ago. Sitting across from each other are Mawlawi Abdulhaq Hemad, one of the Taliban representatives for media and communication, and journalist and presenter Beheshta Argand. He asks for reports of abuses by the Taliban, house-to-house searches. Hemad replies that he is amazed that “people are still afraid of the Taliban.”
Shortly before, Saad Mohseni, director of the Moby group that controls the broadcaster, wrote on social media: “For those who are concerned about Tolo News, I can only assure that ours are fine and that we have continued with our broadcast, uninterrupted during this “transition.” Then sharing the image of one of the channel’s presenters, accompanied by the words: “We are here to inform you, stay with us.” Not only the presenters in the studio but also sent to the streets of Kabul and Tolo News. Yesterday, two women returned to connect live from the capital’s streets: Hasiba Atakpal and Zahra Rahimi.
Historical images. But it is still too early to say whether they correspond to real change or the group’s need to show themselves presentable to the rest of the world. If the more moderate face the Taliban want to give of themselves after entering Kabul, encouraging women to work and even to participate in the formation of the new government is not the way to cover the policy of exclusion of women who have already fielded in the areas under their control.
Therefore, on the one hand, the Taliban 2.0 is sitting in a television studio in front of a woman. On the other, the militiamen paint white women’s photographs in front of clothing stores to cover them—two souls of the same group. And a country trying to figure out which one will prevail.
Indeed, two days after the capital conquest, thousands of women are locked in their homes for fear. Then, as for months now, activists and journalists remained locked in their homes, terrified by a wave of targeted killings. Journalists like Malala Maiwand. Malala was a journalist from Enikass, a prominent radio and TV station in Nangarhar, a few kilometers from Pakistan. Last December, she was twenty-six when shooters killed her and her chauffeur in an attack in front of her house while she was going to work. Her fault: being one in front of a camera and a civil rights activist.
