Meena Habib answers questions from this newspaper hours after images of female mannequins with their faces covered in shop windows in Afghanistan went around the world.
“I am surprised that you are surprised.
We already knew it would be like that.
The Taliban make us disappear little by little from all spheres of society: from politics, education, journalism... And the worst thing is that women no longer protest because they are afraid of dying, ”she considers.
It is early morning in Kabul, but there is not a trace of tiredness.
Meena Habib is one of the few reporters who continue to go to work on the streets in Afghanistan, where, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), more than 76% of journalists have left the country or have abandoned the profession since August 2021. , when the Taliban retook power.
“You can write that I am the only one”,
When the Taliban returned, the women locked themselves up at home.
I could not bear the idea of losing 10 years of work and effort at the stroke of a pen.
Meena Habib, Afghan journalist
This journalist doesn't mind showing her face, but she prefers not to say her age.
He has been working for different Afghan media for more than a decade, focusing on issues that raise eyebrows, such as women's rights, child protection or corruption, which has caused him to have problems with the authorities long before the Taliban they will return.
In 2020, she created the Roidadha news page, which she continues to feed every day on her own, because the two reporters and the photographer she worked with fled or decided to do something else.
Afghan journalist Meena Habib covers a press conference in Kabul.Courtesy of Meena Habib
“When the Taliban came back, the women locked themselves up at home.
I couldn't bear the idea of losing 10 years of work and effort at the stroke of a pen and I started working again, covering protests and describing that chaos.
And I'm still here, even if I don't receive any money.
I have sold furniture and jewelry so that I can continue doing journalism,” she explains.
Meena Habib recounts her life from a complicated district of the Afghan capital, where many Taliban live and there have been attacks for years.
“I leave home every day without fear to tell what is happening.
I go to press conferences and demonstrations.
I get around by car and I walk a lot because I don't have money for taxis, ”she explains.
In her neighborhood, for a woman to work outside the home is frowned upon and, if she is also a journalist, criticism and suspicion from the neighbors multiply.
She is single and lives with her parents, who have never supported her and feel that "they must have done something very wrong" when they see that her daughter insists on continuing to be a reporter.
Inside and outside the home, Meena Habib has not had it easy in recent months: the Taliban broke his camera when he was recording a demonstration of women, they have prevented him from entering public places, they have beaten him and in an attempted arrest he fled and fled. he wounded his leg with an iron.
Working secretly and under a pseudonym
According to RSF, of the 11,857 journalists working in Afghanistan in August 2021, only 4,759 remained twelve months later.
In total, 219 of the 547 Afghan media outlets had disappeared within a year of the Taliban's return.
Rukhshana is one of the survivors.
Zahra Joya, who founded this news page especially aimed at Afghan women in 2021, continues to live with Kabul schedules and gets up at four in the morning in London to edit and organize the daily meeting with her team in Afghanistan .
The first theme of the videoconference is always the same: “There is news that we may not be able to tell, but nothing happens.
You are more important."
They work in secret, many times not even their relatives know what they do
Zahra Joya, founder of Rukhshana
Eight nameless faces, six of them female, listen on the other side of the computer.
Currently, they are the engine of Rukhshana.
Of the promoters of the page in 2021, all young journalists who spent their money and time to get the project afloat, there are none left in the country.
"I had no choice," Joya sadly says, a well-known face in the country after a decade working in various media.
The 30-year-old woman left Kabul with four members of her family, thanks to British diplomacy.
Salma Niazi edits texts for The Afghan Times from her home, in a country neighboring Afghanistan. On loan from Salma Niazi
“Now we have had to include a man in the newsroom due to the situation.
They are all journalists and have a contract.
But they work in secret, many times not even their relatives know what they do”, explains the reporter.
None of the editors agrees to speak with this newspaper.
Not even preserving his identity.
They are very afraid and do not want an imprudence to destroy the precarious balance that they have built during these months.
Joya, who in the 1990s dressed up as a boy to go to primary school in an Afghanistan then also ruled by the Taliban, has managed to raise almost $300,000 in a crowdfunding campaign, which is used to pay employees and register Rukhshana as a company in the UK.
In 2022, the journalist was elected woman of the year by Time magazine and she received, among others, the Llibertat d'Expressió award from the Unió de Periodistes Valencians.
“They are recognitions for the whole team.
To motivate us, because our responsibility is to keep counting ”, she assures.
Keep counting is what also motivates Salma Niazi, founder of The Afghan Times, a news page launched last September, a year after the return of the Taliban, every day, seeing that "women were expelled one by one from the media Communication".
Ten reporters, some of them under a pseudonym, write daily information in which the protagonists are Afghans.
Niazi, who continues to work on the project from a neighboring country that she wishes to keep secret, has spent all of her savings to continue supporting this outlet because it is the only way she knows "to continue supporting the country."
“Right now there is no safe woman in Afghanistan.
I don't know where we're headed, but it's certainly a terrible place,” she says.
The Afghan journalist Zahra Joya, photographed in Valencia in 2022 after receiving the Unió Periodistes Valencians Award. Mònica Torres
Guarded, but tolerated
For Hamida Aman, founder and director of Radio Begum, that terrible place is glimpsed in the dozens of telephone calls from anonymous women that the journalists of her station answer every day in a live program and to which they respond with psychological support, health advice and spiritual assistance.
We know that at any moment the Taliban can come and tell us 'enough'
Hamida Aman, founder of Radio Begum
“These broadcasts are a perfect barometer to measure the mood of women, their problems and their discouragement.
We see that the tone of these calls is increasingly desperate and that the women are younger, they are teenagers who can't take it anymore and prefer suicide to continue living like this.
Depression and lack of hope have plagued society and have hit the new generations of Afghans,” Aman details.
15 women work at Radio Begum who say they are not threatened.
“We are watched, but tolerated”, sums up the director.
“The authorities listen to us carefully without intervening.
But we know that at any moment the Taliban can come and tell us 'enough'”, she adds.
Aman assumed all the station's salaries and expenses for over a year and since March 2022, she has been supported by UNWomen, a UN agency for gender equality and women's empowerment.
“We do not work in secret, everything is very official and we do not have any political content either.
That's probably what saved us."
In addition to the live calls, the radio spends six hours a day giving classes, in Dari and Pashto, of different subjects and levels, aimed at women, since the Islamists have closed the doors of educational centers to all Afghans older than 12 years.
Journalist Fawzia Sayedzada during a public event in Kabul, before going into exile.Courtesy of Fawzia Sayedzada
Fawzia Sayedzada, 30, has never known fearless journalism.
Since she began to practice, she has not minced words to criticize the authorities, Taliban or not, and she has suffered threats, kidnapping attempts and arrests.
Days before the Islamists took power again, she openly criticized them on Afghan television.
A month later, she broke into her Kabul home, coinciding with protests by women in the streets, and searched room by room for evidence that she was collaborating with "enemies of the regime."
This well-known radio and television journalist and former candidate for deputy ended up being detained along with her son, then 12 years old, and, after being released, they felt like a cornered animal.
We have fought for 20 years to have our place, so that the light of freedom of expression does not go out, but now it is totally in danger
Meena Habib, Afghan journalist
She moved house several times, changed regions and lived in hiding, but she was still in danger and putting her family in trouble.
“I held out as long as I could and on April 13, 2022 I went to Pakistan.
Three months later I came to Germany, ”she recalls.
A sister and two brothers remained in her country, one of them imprisoned.
“It is my fault, because of the comments I made publicly against the Taliban when I left the country.
They have no mercy on anyone and they returned to take revenge, not to govern, ”she explains, anguished.
Now, Fawzia lives with her son and three other relatives in a prefab house in a Berlin refugee camp.
She is unable to overcome fear or overcome sadness for not continuing to exercise.
"The world has left us alone, we have fought for 20 years to have our place and so that the light of freedom of expression does not go out, but now it is totally in danger," laments Meena Habib from Kabul.
Because for these journalists, the images of the mannequins with their heads covered by order of the Taliban can go around the world, but the news is different.
“The Government does not care about its dying people and prefers to cover those doll faces.
I admit that as an Afghan I feel ashamed and sad that this is happening, but it is also true that the media pays attention to these things, when there are so many more important things happening in Afghanistan...", sighs Hamida Aman.
You can follow PLANETA FUTURO on
,
and
, and subscribe
here
to our 'newsletter'
.