Leading the Charge with Farahnaz Forotan

At only 28, Farahnaz Forotan has worked at three of Afghanistan’s largest television broadcasters since 2012, hosting flagship talk shows at two of them, including 1TV’s hugely popular weekly program, Kabul Debate, which she's headed since 2019.

Forotan is also the founder of My Red Line, an online advocacy campaign allowing Afghans to voice the rights they enjoy now and which they refuse to forfeit or negotiate on as peace negotiations proceed in Doha.

We began by talking about Forotan’s earliest years, during the late 1990s after the Taliban had taken control of Kabul and about the conflicts that arose in her family when she started working in the media, later on, in 2012, and how her family’s perception of her work changed since then. We also go into some of the problems she’s had working in the media industry itself, including about the time she volunteered to report from arguably the most dangerous district in the country.

She tells me what annoys her about the way foreign reporters cover Afghanistan and about the lack of basic safety protections Afghan journalists have.

Forotan talks about My Red Line and how the desires of people in rural areas differ from those living in urban areas. She also goes into how she felt the U.N. agency that offered support tried to take undue ownership of the campaign.

Forotan tells me about how she sees the Taliban misusing Islam by rewriting the rules as it suits them, especially when it comes to issues like corporal and capital punishment.

I ask Forotan about the criticisms she receives on social media about being a member of the so-called Kabul elite and about the photo taken of her, in which she's without a headscarf, while interviewing a member of the Taliban’s negotiating team in Doha recently.

Farhad Darya's Salaam Afghanistan.