<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1659977227148,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017f-e2f4-de00-a7ff-e7fff8030000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1659977227148,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017f-e2f4-de00-a7ff-e7fff8030000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_59713046", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1069652"} }); ","_id":"00000182-7e5a-df9f-abca-fedb50f60001","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedIn Afghanistan Undercover, a PBS FRONTLINE documentary airing Tuesday at 10/9c, correspondent Ramita Navai presents damning evidence of the erosion of women’s rights under the Taliban.
In an interview in advance of the premiere, Navai told me that her exposé, which will also be available via streaming online, is already ruffling the Taliban’s feathers. “We’ve had message back that the [Taliban are] pretty pissed off by the film,” she explained.
In her tight, detailed, and emotionally gripping documentary, Navai shows viewers the Afghanistan that the Taliban are desperate to hide. In one hospital ward, she speaks with three women who turned to suicide while forced to remain in their homes with cruel husbands. Two women set themselves on fire. One consumed bleach. Off-camera, while walking through the hospital, Navai told me that multiple doctors pulled her aside to tell her that “suicide cases are rocketing and [the Taliban] don’t want the world to know.”
The evidence Navai presents of local girls being forced to marry Talibs is heart-wrenching. Navai interviews one man whose 19-year-old cousin was taken. “She is living under serious cruelty. It would have been better to kill the girl,” he tells Navai, his darkened figure facing away from the camera. Navai said her team gathered far more video evidence and testimony during travels through the country in November 2021 and March 2022 than could fit into the stunning one-hour film. Navai told me about another family in Takhar province whose story was not included in the documentary. The family told Navai that their 14-year-old daughter was taken as a bride by the Taliban. When the family complained, they said the Taliban returned and beat the bride’s father. Navai told me the family has now been told to hand over their 15-year-old daughter.
By sneaking a hidden camera into a Herat prison, Navai films a group of female prisoners who say they are held for “moral crimes,” such as leaving their homes without a male relative. One young woman responds to Navai’s questions in English: “They don’t let us speak to journalists, they … big punches, OK?” When a stern female prison guard directs the young woman to stop talking, she continues in an Afghan dialect, “They treat us really well and thank God everything is great.” After being released from prison, the young woman and her friends meet with Navai. The cameraman avoids their faces as they tell of being tasered and beaten while in custody. They also say they were promised release if they married Taliban fighters.
The Taliban’s penchant for lying and misogyny is best displayed when Navai separately interviews two senior Talibs. One Talib refuses to speak to Navai until she pushes several locks of hair back under her head covering. Another calls Navai’s claims of forced marriages and the tasering of prisoners “baseless.” Prior to the interview, he tells the cameraman, “Please don’t film this lady and me in the same shot.” While speaking with Navai, both Talibs pointedly avoided meeting her gaze. I asked Navai if she perceived this as a sign of respect. On the contrary, she said, “I know that they feel disdain [for me], and I know in their eyes I’m a second-class citizen because they tell me I am. They tell other women they are.”
Illustrating the point, Navai told me of an off-camera interaction with an armed, teenaged Taliban guard who “went crazy” at a Taliban checkpoint because Navai’s jeans were visible beneath her all-covering chador. The Talib “had to be calmed down by our driver and our local producer,” she added. “You can imagine what it’s like for young Afghan women.”
Navai told me that exposing the Taliban’s oppression of women is likely to bar her from returning to film in Afghanistan in the future because the Taliban know “the world is using the way they treat women as a litmus test on their governance.” Navai hopes the diverse evidence her team assembled can be a tool to help the United Nations and Western governments pursue negotiations with the Taliban. “While [the Taliban] still need the West, this is when we must act,” she explained.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
