00:00When people hear the words Taliban run Afghanistan, the first thought many people might have is chaos and fear.
00:10We spent months trying to get into the country and while securing visas was frankly the easy part of this whole process,
00:20once we were in the country, it was extremely challenging operating here as a journalist.
00:26You know, these images that we saw from four years ago in 2021 with the sudden withdrawal of the US two decades of war later
00:34and the sort of the sudden sweep of Taliban coming back into power.
00:39You know, the world was shocked seeing, you know, thousands and thousands of Afghans, you know,
00:43climbing over fences, trying to get out of the country on these evacuation planes at the airport.
00:49You know, now come four years later, I'm flying, you know, straight back into that airport.
00:53But now, you know, it was quiet. It was sort of eerily quiet.
00:58You know, when I came out of the airport, you know, I sort of was faced with this, I love Afghanistan sign.
01:05So it was kind of just like this bizarre experience of what you think the country is going to be and what it's like on the ground.
01:12And, you know, many of the people I spoke to over my nine days, you know,
01:16a lot of what I heard was actually that people felt secure.
01:21You know, they were they were glad that the war is over.
01:25You know, this this optimism might surprise a lot of people.
01:28And it certainly surprised me.
01:30But it's important to remember that this country, you know, has come out of some four decades of war.
01:36You know, and the life, you know, it seemed as as if everything was normal.
01:43But of course, nothing is.
01:45This is, you know, the most repressive place on earth for women.
01:49And being in the country as a female journalist was a challenge.
01:53You know, we had to navigate a labyrinth of, you know, permissions.
01:57And the Taliban, who is the de facto authority there, you know,
02:01they wanted to know where we were going, who we were speaking to, you know, how long we were going to be there.
02:07And, you know, there was a mere blanket sort of ban on speaking to women.
02:12So it was, you know, a very difficult place to operate in.
02:15You got an interview with the chief spokesperson for the Taliban.
02:20How did you get that interview and how did it play out?
02:25Yeah, look, that that was a process of, you know, many, many weeks of negotiations.
02:30I ended up securing an interview with Zabiullah Mujahid, who is the chief spokesman of the Taliban.
02:38And, you know, but there was conditions that came with that interview.
02:42The first was that we were not to be seen in the same frame because I'm a woman.
02:47So even though he agreed to sit in front of me and give me the interview,
02:51he did not want any images of us to be broadcast.
02:55You know, and while he was sitting there, he refused to make eye contact with me.
02:59But he did, you know, the Taliban wants to be heard on a global stage and by Western media.
03:05He gave me an hour of his time in which, you know, I put to him a range of sweeping questions
03:11about regional stability, you know, the repressive sort of regime against women,
03:18which the UN has actually, you know, described as gender apartheid.
03:23We spoke about, you know, the economy, the shrinking economy.
03:28And he did answer all those questions.
03:30But, you know, there was this sort of interesting experience where there was a lot of deflection
03:34and there was a lack of accountability.
03:37And while the Taliban, you know, claims that the country is now prospering after the U.S.
03:44forces had left, you know, the reality outside is quite different.
03:47You know, women cannot go outside without covering their faces.
03:51They're not allowed, you know, girls are not allowed to go to school post the age of 12 to secondary school.
03:58You know, women's voices can't be heard in public.
04:00They're not allowed to go into parks.
04:02And, you know, there was sort of this sense of, you know, there was no real answer for that from the Taliban,
04:08which you'll hear now in this clip.
04:09Do you acknowledge that young girls, young women are suffering because of this ban on education?
04:19No, we have faith that the problem will be solved when the time is appropriate.
04:24Meghna, on top of all of that and all of those challenges, the country also faces humanitarian crisis,
04:31the most recent being an earthquake that killed 2,000 people.
04:35You went to those communities.
04:37What did they have to say?
04:38Yeah, this was really devastating, Catherine.
04:43The whole reason we went into Afghanistan in the first place was to cover the aftermath
04:48of a devastating earthquake from last August, which killed more than 2,000 people
04:53in the east of the country in Kuniru province.
04:57You know, we went to relief camps there where we just saw these remote villages completely decimated.
05:04People, you know, some thousands and thousands of families living in tents under canvas.
05:09And, you know, this is peak winter.
05:11They are struggling.
05:12We saw children suffering from measles and diarrhoea and a whole range of different infections.
05:18And, you know, what the context here is, you know, last year, you know, most of the Western world,
05:24but especially the U.S. really has cut aid funding since the Taliban has come into power.
05:29And that's had devastating consequences for the country, especially in light of, you know,
05:34cascading natural disasters.
05:36It's not just this earthquake.
05:37It's been floods and droughts, you know, an economic crisis.
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