Al Jazeera :
In the days leading up to the Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15, Sama (not her real name), a 27-year-old female journalist, says she tried to stay positive, hoping things will be different this time and that the Taliban might have changed its ways since the 1990s.
“I have interviewed them. I have interacted with them,” she said of her travels across the nation’s provinces, during which she interviewed many Taliban members.
Comforted by the group’s fighters treating her “well” during those reporting trips, Sama decided to make a film on life in Taliban-controlled Kabul.
At first, she says, there was “no problem”, that armed Taliban fighters greeted her by calling her “Mor Jana” (mother dear in Pashto). Within days, however, the tide turned. She started receiving “strange” emails and phone calls, telling her to stay inside.
But Sama decided to continue filming and was soon faced with a harsh reality. In a span of days, she says the demeanour of Taliban fighters changed.
“Go home, why are you even out?” she was told.
Worse, her driver, who would wait for her and her crew in a parked car, was beaten by the Taliban. She says he likely came under suspicion for three reasons.
“He was in a car full of camera equipment, he was wearing jeans and he was a Hazara,” she said.
During its five-year rule in the 1990s, the Taliban banned all recordings, forced men to dress in traditional clothes, and was accused of massacring the Hazara minority.
Sama was grief-stricken that her work put her driver, a longtime friend, in such a position.
