Female journalists in Afghanistan share their fears of Taliban rule: 'We have been confined to our homes, and death threatens us at every moment'

• Female journalists in Afghanistan fear for their safety as the Taliban takes over.
• The Taliban is highly hostile to the free press and to women's equality, directly threatening women reporters.
• "We have been confined to our homes, and death threatens us at every moment," one journalist told the Guardian.

Female journalists in Afghanistan are fearing for their lives and safety as the Taliban takes over the country following the withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the US-backed Afghan government, the Guardian reports.

The Taliban, which is highly hostile to a free press and to women serving in public-facing roles, has ramped up its attacks on the media in recent months, and its retaking of Afghanistan will undo much of the progress of the last 20 years on press freedom and women's equality in the country.

"For many years, I worked as a journalist..to raise the voice of Afghans, especially Afghan women, but now our identity is being destroyed and nothing has been done by us to deserve this," one journalist, identified as Aaisha to protect her privacy, told the Guardian.

"In the last 24 hours, our lives have changed and we have been confined to our homes, and death threatens us at every moment," she added.

Another, identified as Ferebya, recalled the terror she felt as the Taliban overtook Kabul and the fear of being killed, raped, or kidnapped.

"Firstly I am worried about myself because I am a girl, and also a woman journalist," she said.

The Guardian reported that another woman identified as Zeyba, who works for a large outlet, said she and her colleagues "were frantically trying to send their identity documentation and work to embassies before destroying any trace of their existence, physically and online."

A United Nations report from February 2021 found that the rise in civilian casualties in Afghanistan has included 30 cases of journalists and other media workers killed since 2018, making the country one of the more perilous places in the world to be a journalist.

Just last month, award-winning Reuters photographer Danish Siddiqui was killed at the hands of the Taliban while reporting on clashes between Afghan forces and the Taliban in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

In addition to the journalists killed while on the job, dozens of female journalists, in particular, have faced attacks or left the country altogether in the past year, a Human Rights Watch report from April found. Women journalists outside of major cities face particular risk.

In March of 2021, three young women were gunned down outside the television station where they worked in Jalalabad.

An Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility for the attack, highlighting the danger women journalists face on all sides in addition to that from the Taliban. The targeted killing of the three women follows the assassination of Malalai Maiwand, a television journalist, outside of the same station in December 2020.

Another longtime broadcast journalist formerly based in Kabul, Farahnaz Forotan, left the country in November 2020 after finding she was on a Taliban "hit list." She wrote in a New York Times op-ed that one of her last assignments as a journalist, interviewing Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen in Qatar in October 2020, filled her with "terror" for the future.

"When he finally answered one of my questions, his eyes moved in every direction but mine: He examined the walls, the carpet on the floor, the chairs, the door," she wrote. "He couldn't look at me, even while I stood in front of him. It was as if he saw me as an embodiment of sin and evil. I felt unsafe, even in a room full of people, thousands of miles away from Afghanistan."