By Rhoda KwanNBC
News
Veteran Afghanistan correspondent Lynne O'Donnell says she has never seen the Taliban more brutal or the millions of people the austere fighters turn to rule more wretched.
“I really never expected to find it as bad and as horrible as I found it.
It is a very, very sad, unhappy, traumatized and depressed place,” she explained after revealing that she was forced to retract very harsh reports about the fundamentalist Islamic group.
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“They are worse off,” he said, commenting on the changes the Taliban have undergone since they came to power more than 20 years ago.
The Australian journalist was speaking during a telephone interview after being expelled from Afghanistan after just four days in the capital, Kabul.
Her account of her experiences there gained attention after she was visited by Taliban intelligence officers who, she says, took her to her headquarters on July 19 and demanded that she hand over her sources to previous reports.
O'Donnell said she was held in a messy office, where the four officers wanted her to apologize for her 2021 work, which focused on reports about members of the Afghan LGBTQ community and about minors being forced into a life of sexual servitude to Taliban members.
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She said she was forced to retract reporting about the Taliban via Twitter, and to tweet apologies for three or four reports accusing authorities of forcibly marrying off teenage girls.
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A second tweet said the stories were "without any solid evidence or basis, and without any effort to verify the cases through on-
site
investigation or face-to-face meetings with the alleged victims."
“They yelled at me, they mistreated me, they told me I had to explain myself and every time I tried to explain myself, they yelled at me again.
They accused me of being an agent of the government intelligence agencies,” she stated.
During his four hours of detention, there was always an armed man in sight, he said.
O'Donnell said she agreed to meet with the agents under duress, after they threatened to circulate her photo and details to border patrol posts around the country to prevent her from leaving if she refused.
He left the Afghan capital the next day, four days before his original departure flight.
The Taliban have a history of pressuring local journalists to publish favorable reports and threatening them if they are seen as too critical.
A Taliban spokesman denied last week that O'Donnell had been detained, but said she was no longer allowed to return to Afghanistan because she "didn't do journalism."
Speaking to NBC News, Bilal Karimi denied her claims, accusing the journalist of being part of a propaganda campaign launched by "the enemies of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan."
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Another Taliban intelligence official accused her of "planning to provoke" the extremist group into arresting her or taking other steps against her to cause trouble.
O'Donnell had returned to Kabul on July 16 to see for herself how the Taliban government had reshaped the country since the group returned to power last August.
Journalist Lynne O'Donnell in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, in 2009. Courtney Body / AP
He was on the ground when the US-led invasion displaced the Taliban in 2001, and until the last hours before the group returned to power last year.
She was also a bureau director for The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse from 2009 to 2017.
Before and immediately after the chaotic US and Western exit from Afghanistan, Taliban leaders claimed to have moderated since they first came to power in the 1990s.
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Since then, the country has been in economic, political and social turmoil as many foreign funders have left.
Aid agencies have warned that millions of people are facing starvation and possibly even starvation.
Meanwhile, the Taliban have placed draconian restrictions on the rights of women and girls, prohibiting them from working or leaving home without reason, and forcing them to wear full-covering burkas.
O'Donnell directed her criticism at the Taliban and their government, as well as how they treated her.
"They are more brutal, they are vindictive, they look for people by name, by category: journalist, women's rights activist... They go after people," she said in the interview.
"They weren't like that last time," she recalled.
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O'Donnell's accusations have sparked concern from international press rights groups, with the Committee to Protect Journalists issuing a statement calling on the Taliban to end their "campaign of intimidation and abuse” against journalists from Afghanistan and other countries.
"The Taliban must apologize to Lynne O'Donnell for the treatment she received in the country, and allow all journalists to work free from fear," program director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in a statement.
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The episode also highlights the deterioration of press freedom in the country in the first year of the Taliban's return to power.
"O'Donnell's story suggests that it is going to be increasingly dangerous for journalists, especially women reporters, to cover human rights violations in Afghanistan, especially violations against women," said Karima Bennoune, visiting scholar. from the University of Michigan Law School and a former United Nations Special Rapporteur.
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"It is clear that the Taliban do not understand freedom of expression, including that of journalists, and believe that they can prevent news of their gross abuses from circulating through coercion," he said.
A study on Afghanistan, carried out by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in December, revealed that 231 media outlets have had to close, while more than 6,400 journalists have lost their jobs since August 15, 2021. Among Afghan women journalists, 4 out of 5 no longer work.
A UN report from earlier this month also revealed that six journalists have been killed, five of them by self-identified militants from the Islamic State terror group and one by unknown perpetrators.
“During the last ten months, RSF has registered several abuses against foreign journalists, especially in the first months after August 15.
But this is the first time we have heard of arrests and threats of imprisonment or pressure to repent,” said RSF spokesperson Pauline Adès-Mével.