CANADALAND

Dear Taliban: Part Three

In our final episode, Investigative Reporter Molly Thomas showcases the hopes and frustrations of three Afghan girls, many years after the Taliban takeover.

In the spring of 2023, The Michener-Deacon Fellowship for Investigative Reporting was awarded to then CTV W5 correspondent, Molly Thomas, for her special project on education in Afghanistan.

Then, as part of a series of nation-wide cuts from Bell Media, Molly was laid off and the story was shelved.

That’s where Canadaland stepped in.

We’ve teamed up with Molly and the Michener-Deacon Fellowship to produce Dear Taliban, a new three-part investigation. Today we share episode two.

Dear Taliban spans three continents, taking listeners from the vice-regal pomp and ceremony of Rideau Hall, to one of the toughest hostile-training programs in the world — all to prepare her for a complex and volatile area of South Asia.

Host: Karyn Pugliese

Credits: Molly Thomas (Reporter), Riley Nimens (Associate Producer), Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Caleb Thompson (Audio Editor) Max Collins (Production Manager), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), Karyn Pugliese (Editor-in-Chief)

Additional music by Audio Network

This series was made possible by the generous support of the Michener-Deacon awards

If you value this podcast, support us! You’ll get premium access to all our shows ad free, including early releases and bonus content. You’ll also get our exclusive newsletter, discounts on merch at our store, tickets to our live and virtual events, and more than anything, you’ll be a part of the solution to Canada’s journalism crisis, you’ll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody.

You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music—included with Prime.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 09 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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At mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up front for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time, unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month, so full turns at mintmobile.com. Today, we continue with part three of Dear Taliban. Next week, you met Marwa, trapped in Pakistan, and a room barely the size of a closet. She is desperately losing hope that she'll ever be reunited with her family. In this episode, we'll introduce you to two more young women who represent the diversity that was Afghanistan before the fall of Kabul. Even now, as both live as refugees in Pakistan, they're separated by class, by ethnic backgrounds, and world views. What they share is the loss of who they could have become, and how they might have shaped their country. Wait for it. Before we begin, this episode mentions the Journalist for Human Rights program. JHR is one of the press freedom organizations I volunteered with in 2021 as part of an effort to help journalists and human rights workers escape Afghanistan and relocate to Canada. I did not edit any of Mollie Thomas' reporting of those events for this episode. [MUSIC] I feel like a press that's my shade, or someone that deals with journalists. Sure. Or which one are you working on? We're freelancers from Canada, and we're doing some stories. Yeah, yes. As we follow this young man into the building, it feels like we're stepping into the building into a whole new world. The corridor is quiet and serene. I notice the elegantly high ceilings. There's white and gold accents on the marble-textured walls. I quickly unzip my bag to peek at my recorder. I've hidden it as a precaution. I don't want anyone telling me, "Don't record here." We're being moved into a private room and told to sit on a love seat in a small office. I wonder what the Taliban would call a love seat. Where we are is interesting. Afghanistan's embassy in Islamabad is not parts of the giant diplomatic enclave where many countries, like Canada, set up shop. It's at least 15 blocks away. It stands alone, much like in the real world. Still, it's a far cry from the dark caves the Taliban used to fight from. Oh, here comes that young man again. How old? How old? I'm 37. You? 35. Wait. Thank you. Well, that question feels patronizing. Would he have asked us that if we were men? And that voice you just heard? That's Riley. You first heard her in episode two. If you haven't listened to episode two, go back and do that. Anyways, Riley is a producer from Canada who jumped at the chance to join me on this trip. Do you have any who are on-chain that is on? I see answers I work for in multiple places, so if you look at my name, you'll find a lot of them. Yeah. I won't be taken. Sure. Go ahead. I'm finding it a bit hot in here. Riley and I are dressed very conservatively, long tunics that extend past our knees, loose pants, and tightly wound headscarves. But by the Taliban's own standards, we're scandalous, by their own laws in Afghanistan. We would not be able to walk the streets without our face covered, too. As I greet another boss, I'm thinking. Just being in this space proves the West failed, right? And it's supposed peace deal. The U.S. trusted a group they had fought in the trenches for 20 years. My thoughts are interrupted, where handed forms to fill out, to enter Afghanistan. They tell us we'd be granted permission in just a few days. What the hell? I can get into Afghanistan this way? After trying with no luck for months from Canada? Oh, well that pisses me off. I'm tempted. But I can't. My mother, Mary, would kill me. Anyways, we sat there so long, the battery in my recorder died. There it goes. We were sent packing with an email address to formally request an interview with the Afghan ambassador. I'm not holding my breath, though. The Taliban has refused me before. Remember my letter? It didn't lead to anything. As we head back out into the crowd, I shove new batteries into my recorder. It's like... There's not a lot of sound over here, you can't hear it. So we just got kicked back a little from the embassy itself. We were just trying to take some sound and get some video, and they pushed us back. They said that we're not allowed to do that. Whether that's true or not, I don't really know, but we just didn't want to cause any problems, so we're down the street. We emailed the embassy, aka the Taliban. Remember, my dear Taliban letter was a rejection. This one. No one answered. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. 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That's BetterHelp, BetterHELP.com/CanadaLan. Good morning. Sammy? Hey! You're welcome. Welcome. Welcome to Pakistan. How are you doing? Good. Good to see you after so many months of talking and hoping that we would get here. Meet Sammy, another fixer and trend later on the ground in Islamabad. He's driving. Perfect. Hi. I'm Molly. Hi. Thank you. Thanks for shade. That's great. Okay. Let's get going, huh? So, we're just driving and my fixer, Sammy, told us about a spot where a lot of Afghans have congregated in recent years and so we're going to go and check out and see if there's anybody there still. So we're just walking outside the press club, actually in Islamabad and across the street. There are kind of makeshift settlements. This is not by mistake. The national media is just steps away. Poor Afghan and Pakistani communities set up here, hoping their cases get coverage. We're just chatting with this one woman who said she worked for NATO with Australia and she's showing us her papers. That's Leila, a single mother of five. Her youngest is just a toddler. They're your documents and you sent this to the Australian government. She's showing me all the documentation she has. She says she has applied to Australia and the U.S. for immigration. She says we didn't have computers, so we filled with hints and all that. These are not acceptance letters, they're a mishmash of forms. That's a petition for special immigrant classification, which might be, but I don't know, I don't see it necessarily. It's not clear to me if her application is in. She finally shows me an email on her phone from the Australian Embassy. The relevant embassy can legally organize Australian public documents. Yeah, it's like they've received your information, but they need you to authenticate your documents. So it's a process. It's a process, yeah. Leila's story is not unique. Thousands of Afghans are waiting in limbo for third countries like Canada. Some of them worked closely with our forces, but they're stuck with nowhere to go. If they return back to Afghanistan, they fear retaliation for working with the West. If they stay, they need to find work. Many families like Leila's are running out of money. Well, I have actually come to know that she doesn't know much about these things. She thinks that this is the undocumented visa, but it's not the visa. She's still waiting though to hear something. No waiting. She's still waiting. I noticed her teenage daughter listening in. I learned her name is Mina, and she's the oldest of five. Her clothes are tattered and her hair looks unwashed. She looks like she's been wearing the same shawl for weeks by pull her aside. When you left Afghanistan, how old were you? I was born in Afghanistan, and now I'm working with her. I was 12 years old. 12 years old? Okay. So were you going to school in your city? We were so happy schooling my whole family, my extended family, my friends, we were playing in school. I was a good athlete, so I used to have the first position in racing and all those things. I'm missing my classmates, cheers. But it's on a field where Mina feels most free. So you were a runner? You were an athlete? You used to do track and field? I used to play football, I used to have fun and everything was gone. Your face lights up when you talk about sports, so I know that you love sports. You know what's going on? Sports triggers something in her. The memories start flooding back. She tells me she used to live in a big house with a family car. All happiness has gone no more, so only we just, in the tears, I don't know what happened to us. The big house and the family car are gone. The entire family now lives in a makeshift tent, barely held together by a few plastic tarps and tree branches. A small stream behind the tent must be where they bathe. A handful of garments hang on a dilapidated clothesline. There's garbage and plastic bottles everywhere. It's a miracle, no one is sick. I can't even imagine, Mina, it's difficult to talk about. Your life has changed so drastically. By the time Mina was born, Canadian soldiers had been in her country for eight years. Many argue a Western push for human rights paved the way for little girls to go to school. UNESCO says 2.5 million girls like Mina started attending primary classes for the first time. Do you remember, because you were still in school when the Taliban took over, do you remember being taken out of school? When Taliban took over, we knew that they're not going to allow us to school, so we didn't go to school, we stopped going, so we were so afraid, we were so angry and at the same time unhappy. After leaving the school, she stayed another one year in Afghanistan after that she left. And what was that one year like, without school and without going to the classroom, without doing the normal things that you love? Just doing home, washing clothes, washing dishes, cooking, we became like housewives. Washing dishes and making babies, it's all a woman is good for, right? Playing sports, well, that's off limits, Mina can't even run outside in a national park in Afghanistan. How wild is that? The harsh reality is that Afghan women are confined to their homes. By law, they technically need a male chaperone to even leave the house. Mina thought the move to Pakistan would set her free, but she can't seem to find her stride here either. Have you tried here in Pakistan to try to get any kind of education, to try to go to school? Her mother tried a lot in different schools. She neither had the ID card nor the money, so there's two requirements she didn't have. In Pakistan itself, it's not a rich country, you know, so even we pay quite a good money to private schools and public schools are here, this is a public school. Right next door? This is what we're looking at right now? That's a public school? Yeah, so I don't know whether they get admission or not, that's the problem. In the race of life, Mina can't seem to get past the starting line. Mina, thank you. We pack up and leave the camp. It feels wrong, leaving a teenager behind. Going back to our safe and luxurious hotel, picked purposely for security reasons. But Mina's words stick with both Riley and I. That's tough to watch, like, especially young people, when their dreams have no reality or no place to live. I find that very hard. There's things that crush the human spirit, and you just have to think like we got to hear their experience, but we leave that they're living their experience still. They're doing it day in and day out, 24/7. Do you see who gets me? Remember Haya, our guide and translator? I told you, I was keeping a secret from you, that she's actually really well-known. Haya's not her real name, but we're disguising her for her safety. This was the second show I was hosting. This is like a co-host with me, two. Let me tell you what Haya looks like today. Probably not what you're thinking. It's funny, I look more South Asian than her. She's wearing a Canadian tuxedo, denim from head to toe, while I'm in a traditional salvar chemise, a long tunic and loose pants. She's pulled out her phone to show me some old videos, like 12, 13, perhaps no teleprompter. No. Did you ever use a teleprompter? No, no. We didn't have teleprompter. We didn't have teleprompter in TV shows, it only for news shows, so it's like all memorized. Haya is pretty tiny, maybe half my size. Her positive personality is contagious. She's a former children's TV host from Kabul. This is like the trailer, like the promo. From children's shows to cultural segments, even political panels, people know her face and name in Afghanistan. It was like where we sent two years ago. This is like a special show for Eid, Eid Time. It's all female hosts. Yeah, it's all female hosts, so like, is any of this allowed now? No, no. It's not at all. If a female host is hosting in TV again, she has to cover her face now and it won't. Haya's life can literally be divided into two parts, before and after August 15, 2021. We slept one night and then we woke up and then boom, Kabul fell to the hands of these people and then you don't know what you're going to do with your life anymore. And the first thing that was coming to my mind, just leave the country, leave the country and leave it with your family because, you know, if you're at risk, you're a family's at risk. Before the Taliban takeover, Haya was a fierce advocate for education. This was for women, we hosted this show, like this conference. This is the manager of education, and this is the executive of UNICEF. They received a call that was directed to me in threatening my life. They said they know my whereabouts and what I'm doing and what I'm doing is wrong because I was outspoken because I was speaking about education and how it's important for girls and how girls should go to school and how girls should get educated. There's always been a power struggle over education in Afghanistan. In '96, when the Taliban first formed government, they also banned women and girls from the classroom. Canada was part of the coalition to defeat the Taliban and reopen schools. But Afghanistan is still a country of 42 million, and literacy rates remained low for girls in rural regions. Haya would volunteer as a teenager with UNICEF to try and change people's minds, but that is difficult in a war toward country, where even walking to school can be dangerous, particularly for a young girl, and as it turns out, her father. It was a very risky country, security-wise, safety-wise. Men in our country, they used to create obstacles and challenges for you as a girl every now and then. So as a father, of course, you want the best for your daughter, for your girl to be safe, to be within your reach, within your proximity. Maybe they're doing this because they feel like they need to protect their daughter, because they need to feel like they need to protect their wives, or they need to protect their sisters, it's not okay, but you would feel like, you know, I understand why they're thinking this way. I think that that might go over the heads of a lot of Canadians. They may not think of that, that there might be a security risk, and that the dads might want to protect their daughters, but at the end of the day, the daughter still lose that on education. It's always us. It's always women. It's always girls that are losing. One way or another in this life, as a woman, you always going to lose. Men always lose. It's striking to think a 21-year-old only knows this life, especially when in her good moments, she burns with passion for a better future. I have to get educated. I have to pursue a career. I have to get stronger, stronger one day, so I could return back home and back to Kabul, and I could help other women, other girls, and my people, and my country, and my language, and my native, and this culture. It's a very beautiful culture, it's a beautiful country, it's a diverse country, but just needs open-minded people, it needs education, education, education. There is a Canadian connection to Haya's story. Haya and her family were sponsored into Pakistan by Journalists for Human Rights, or JHR, a Canadian NGO that has helped 570 Afghans relocate and resettle into safe countries like Canada since the fall of Kabul. Haya is the last journalist on their list. She has been dreaming about touching down in Toronto. The first thing I would do is, you know, various Tim Hardins, I would say, just get me to Tim Hardins because I love coffee myself too, and of course, I love to walk around Toronto downtown in the CN Tower because it's beautiful, of course. I know a great deal of things about Canada. But that golden ticket to Canada has never come. She's watched Journalists after Journalists get approvals and take off. For whatever reason, her file is still in process and her family is stuck in Pakistan. It's been more than two and a half years. It's very, very challenging thinking about, you know, my life is how it used to look like and how it is at the moment. You see your peers and other people of your age and days, they're like happy, they're partying, they live a good life, they're going to schools and you're like, oh my God, we're the same age, but my life is very different from them. So yeah, you kind of sometimes pity yourself, but, you know, you have to take yourself out of that place in your mind because it gets very dark sometimes mentally. How do you cope with that? Well sometimes it gets very loud inside my mind. It gets very, very loud. It starts from self-loaning and then it's full circle moment and it goes through, you know, how we have, I haven't done much and how I'm stuck and how I don't have an idea of what I'm doing with my life and I can basically lost like, you know, someone with a gun in their hand to my mind. So yeah, that's how it is. Hayah may have physically escaped the Taliban, but who do you think is holding that gun to her head? This is a far cry from the woman who joyfully led me around the streets of Islamabad. It doesn't feel like the same 12-year-old who didn't need a teleprompter on TV. Let's be clear, this young woman now filled with self-loathing is putting on a brave face, but is struggling. Sometimes you feel like you two young for it and your shoulders are too small for it, but you know, you kind of have to go through it. You know, I'm sitting in front of you and I can see, I can see your eyes welling out. I'm sure it's not easy to talk about. Yeah, it's hard to talk about it sometimes, yeah. Sorry. Dear Taliban, I haven't written to you in a while. It's been a few months since I've seen those three girls. Girls like Marwa forced into child marriage because of barbaric traditions. Girls like Hayah, who had her dream career working in television. Girls like Mina, who can't run and play football anymore. I don't blame you entirely. The West turned their back on these women too. Many of our own military members tell me we naively went to war to try and fix this without a clear and compassionate exit plan. We left, our partners left, and here we are. I would very much like to make it together after this winter season is over because I also know about the weather in Canada. Hayah, once hopeful to come to Canada and drink Tim Hortons coffee, recently had her food and accommodation funding cut off. She was the last one, the last of 570 reporters supported by journalists for human rights, or JHR. Can you imagine watching the door open 570 times, knowing you are number 571? Hayah's family has not been accepted into Canada yet. That makes every month more expensive. JHR says it can't foot that bill anymore. It's already invested $2 million towards helping Afghan journalists. But now Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, they dominate the headlines. For Afghanistan, attention and donations have dried up. The world has moved on, yet 21-year-old Hayah can't. Mina is still in that tent, about to face the scorching heat of another Pakistani summer. She's taking care of her younger siblings and watching girls that look just like her go to school. I just need to join my family and to go because my family. And Marwa, idols in that closet-like room, wondering if she'll make it another day. I check on her regularly, but worry that one day I won't get a text back. The only hope in these difficult stories is that every Afghan female I've talked to over the past year is passing knowledge onto someone younger than themselves. A sister, a cousin, a friend, in person, online, or even on the phone. And so while you can try to silence these voices, you can't silence these minds. Maybe all the West offered was a new way of thinking, a new paradigm where the dreams of females were possible. Or was it the West? Don't make me remind you of your own history, dear Taliban. In the early 1900s, Afghanistan's queen, Saraya Tarzi, played a major role in opening the first school for girls in the country. She fiercely advocated for women's rights, ushering females from the kitchen to the classroom. Since then, women have continuously fought for their place in the public square. Joining large-scale literacy programs during the Soviet invasion, to secret schools that ran during your '90s education ban. Then just showing up to class during a war with the West was a giant screw you. You didn't win. Despite all odds, many Afghan women wrote their own future. And today's next generation is defiantly doing the same, learning through technology. It will take years, likely decades for any large societal change. But watch out. Beware. Because one day, despite all the obstacles, I believe these young women will rise. Why? Because somehow, dear Taliban, Afghan women have done it before. Warm regards. Molly. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] That's your Canada land. If you value this podcast, please support us. We rely on listeners like you to keep paying for journalism. As a supporter, you'll get premium access to all of our shows ad-free, including early releases and bonus content. You'll also get our exclusive newsletter. Discounts on Candleland merch, invites and tickets to our live and virtual events, and more than anything, you'll be part of the solution to Canada's journalism crisis. And you'll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody. Come join us now. Click the link in your show notes or go to Candleland.com/join. You can email Jesse@candaland.com. He really does read them all. Our website is Candleland.com. Molly Thomas reported this episode. Our senior producer is Bruce Thorsen. Digital production and editing from Tristan Kapakioni and Caleb Thompson. I'm the editor-in-chief, Karen Pulleze. And our theme music is by so-called syndication is handled by CFUV 101.9 FM in Victoria. Visit them online at CFUV.ca. You can listen to Candleland add free on Amazon music included with Prime. This story was made possible by the generous support of the Mitchner Deacon Awards. If you want to see more about Molly Thomas' coverage, go to our website, Candleland.com. We have bonus audio, videos, and behind the scene footage.