5. The advocate

09/29/21 • 26 min

1 Listener

Forced to flee the Taliban - human rights advocate, former government advisor, feminist, Shaharzad Akbar, who knows the transformative power of education, now a refugee again. Shaharzad Akbar was the first Afghan woman to do post graduate studies at Oxford University in Britain, a student of Smith College in the US, a schoolgirl whose studies were stopped the last time the Taliban were in power, forcing her family to leave Afghanistan when she was a teeanger. Now she's had to leave again, abandoning the life she'd built in Kabul. But Shaharzad Akbar tells Lyse Doucet she won’t give up pushing for what she believes in.

Previous Episode

4. The negotiator

1 Recommendations

The woman face to face with the Taliban - peacemaker, women’s rights advocate and negotiator, Fatima Gailani is the nearest Afghanistan has to aristocracy. Now in her late 60s, she was the female face of Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, the Mujahideen. She returned to Afghanistan after 24 years in exile following the US-led invasion of 2001. And in 2020 she became one of four female peace negotiators to sit down with the Taliban. She tells Lyse Doucet, talking is the only way and she and all Afghans deserve peace.

Next Episode

6. The journalist

1 Recommendations

Holding the Taliban to account - Afghanistan’s top TV journalist was offered an interview with Taliban leaders within hours of them taking Kabul. But the editor of Afghanistan’s most popular private TV network, TOLO News, was already out of the country. Aged 33, Lotfullah Najfizada now hopes to return to carry on his work as the most successful interviewer and journalist of his generation.

A vibrant media is one of the great successes of the 20 years since the Taliban were last in power. But Lotfullah Najafizada tells Lyse Doucet the challenge now will be to maintain media freedoms and independence under Afghanistan’s new government.