"The Taliban have changed": filmmaker describes change since the outbreak of the Ukraine war

Created: 2022-08-16Updated: 2022-08-16, 11:40 am

By: Catherine Brown

Vanessa Schlesier in Pakistan near the Afghan border.

© Private

The Ukraine war moves and appalls the world.

But there are also beneficiaries: the Taliban in Afghanistan feel more and more unobserved.

They're tough on journalists.

Kabul/Mannheim – Vanessa Schlesier had only been filming for five minutes when a Talib attacked her with an AK-47.

"We accompanied women's protests in Kabul," the 38-year-old journalist from Mannheim tells our newspaper.

“The Talib used the Kalashnikov as a baton and hit my translator.

In Afghanistan, men are now liable for their wives.” The fighter then followed them through the city for half an hour.

"I got really nervous," Schlesier recalls.

The filmmaker has been to Afghanistan on and off since November.

Schlesier used her camera to document the work of the "Kabul Airlift", a civil aid organization from Berlin that evacuated local workers, human rights activists and women's rights activists from Afghanistan.

"The Taliban and the situation in Afghanistan have changed significantly during this time," says Schlesier.

“When I went to Afghanistan for the first time last winter, I was warmly welcomed by the Taliban.

I got press accreditation and a State Department spokesman said to me: 'You journalists are very important to us, you are allowed to move around here freely – because you have to report on how safe our country is now'.”

Taliban intimidate reporters and expel them from the country

But the Afghans, says Schlesier, feel anything but safe.

And many Western journalists would have reported on exactly that.

At some point the Taliban then began to intimidate reporters and expel them from the country.

“A colleague was put under house arrest for a day.

Other journalists were arrested and had to apologize on Twitter for their coverage.”

At least since the Ukraine war, the Taliban have not made much effort to present a friendly image.

"The night that Russia invaded Ukraine, the Taliban gathered on the streets of Kabul - they searched every house and every car," says Schlesier.

"The whole world looked at Ukraine, the Taliban no longer felt like they were being watched." When she pulled out her camera, it only took a few minutes for a Taliban informer to check on her.

“They have followed us again and again.

I was mostly worried about my local staff like the translator or our driver.

I might have been expelled from the country – the Afghans face far worse penalties.”

In the past six months, the Taliban have become increasingly rabid

In the past six months, says Schlesier, the Taliban have become increasingly violent.

“They had absolutely no idea how to govern their country: every second person is starving, there are no jobs or food.

The Taliban are only pursuing a single plan: to further restrict women's rights.” Women should no longer only leave the house when accompanied by a man, but preferably not at all, says the journalist.

A Taliban fighter sits in the back of a vehicle with a machine gun in Kabul.

© -/AP/dpa

She herself no longer wants to go to Afghanistan.

Your documentary has now appeared on ARD.

"I don't know if the Taliban check foreign reports - and since I can't assess that, I'm not going back for the time being."

also read

"If Putin dies or falls ill, everything in Russia will falter"

Ex-intelligence chief: Vladimir Putin will experience an 'unpleasant end'

Catherine Brown

The four-part documentary series "Mission Kabul Airlift" is available in the ARD media library.

The journalist Natalie Amiri also reported from Afghanistan for IPPEN.MEDIA.

Her “Afghan Diary” has meanwhile won an award.