Begum TV, a satellite school for young Afghan girls deprived of education

Wajiha Wahidi, a 25-year-old Afghan journalist, touches up her makeup before recording her next broadcast at the Begum TV studio in Paris. The studio, located in the north of the French capital, consists of a small newsroom, a recording room, and a meeting room. These rooms are being adapted with green screens for chroma key recording and thus be able to film two programs in parallel, a reflection of the growth of this Afghan television station in exile a year after its creation. Like the rest of her fellow journalists, Wahidi does not wear a veil and appears on screen in street clothes, barefaced. A very different appearance from that of her target audience today: Afghan women , who receive her broadcasts thanks to satellite television, which reaches one in two homes in Afghanistan , a country plagued by poverty, where more than half of its 42 million inhabitants need humanitarian aid to survive.

Wahidi was already working as a journalist for national television and radio before leaving Afghanistan in 2022, nine months after the Taliban retook power . After passing through Pakistan, she arrived in Paris as a refugee at the end of 2023 with the support of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as did the dozen journalists who now work for this television station, all of them refugees. Her mission is crucial so that some of the 1.4 million girls who, according to UNESCO data, have been forced to stop going to school on the orders of the fundamentalists , can continue to have some form of access to education. And equally important so that millions of women, expelled from university and public-facing jobs, can find in Begum information, psychological support, and entertainment .

Since their return to power, the fundamentalists have issued more than 100 decrees that progressively erase women's presence in society and the workplace, deprive them of leisure activities, and severely restrict their movements. The UN has emphasized that the deprivation of education for girls over 12 is unprecedented worldwide and believes the Taliban regime has established gender apartheid and persecution against Afghan women.

Wahidi's sisters are a clear example of this violation of rights: her older sister had to drop out of university one year before graduating to become a doctor and is now married with two children. "She has psychological problems. It wasn't easy for her to become a mother. She wasn't ready to be a housewife," says the presenter, who is struggling to bring two of her three younger sisters, all of whom dropped out of school two years ago , to France. The third is already engaged and has assumed she will follow in her eldest sister's footsteps.

“At Begum TV, I've found a family again, and I feel like I'm doing something useful for Afghan women,” explains this journalist. Her work is pulling her out of the depressive hole that has been exile, but it also puts her family at risk: her father has been detained by the Taliban on several occasions and interrogated about his daughter's appearances, unveiled, on foreign television.

Begum TV, launched in Paris by Afghan journalist Hamida Aman in March 2024, with financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United Nations, and other private and individual donations , has become an escape route for millions of women in Afghanistan.

The international community is more concerned with security, immigration, and drugs than with human rights. Any pressure or intervention over the past four years has been ineffective; there is a pervasive laxity.

Hamida Aman, founder of Begum TV

In just over a year, Begum TV has made 8,500 videos available to Afghan women in Pashto and Dari, covering the entire school curriculum. This mission they previously initiated with Begum Radio, which broadcasts from Kabul, but which they have been able to expand thanks to television, because for subjects like science and math, image is essential. “Eighty percent of our content is educational. From 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. we broadcast courses, in the afternoon there are entertainment programs, and starting at 6 p.m., a prime-time program we produced in Paris includes psychological support, health advice, music, and entertainment,” explains Aman, who also makes these courses available on the Begum Academy website and on a mobile app. “The goal is to reach as many women as possible,” she says. They also broadcast some dubbed reports, provided by French television, music, and series that are not authorized in the country.

Many women are depressed due to the lack of prospects for their children and themselves. They all report the same problems: lack of sleep, loss of appetite, depression, and suicide, especially among the younger women.

Hamida Aman, founder of Begum TV

"If radio ceases to exist, our fight on TV will be essential."

Hamida Aman seems to have anticipated the Taliban's logic. Perhaps because she knows them well. Her family fled to Switzerland when she was eight, in the 1980s. She returned in 2001 as a journalist to cover what was happening after the 9/11 attacks and the US invasion. She decided to stay to reconnect with her roots and work for her country until she settled in France in 2015. In March 2021, months before the Taliban took power, Aman had founded Radio Begum in Kabul. "I thought we had to prepare for the arrival of the Taliban by creating a radio station just for women, defending the rights we worked so hard to win, and having a radio station we could manage if we were banned from working, which became a reality," she explains.

According to RSF, "80% of female journalists in Afghanistan have been forced to abandon the profession, and the few who remain do so under constant threats, fear, and censorship." In most regions of the country, female reporters are not allowed to attend press conferences, interview men, or show their faces in public. One of the fundamentalists' most recent directives even prohibits a woman's voice from being heard in public places. The enforcement of these rules, according to Afghan reporters who are still working, often depends on the interpretation and disposition of local authorities, but their work is subject to strict rules and dominated by fear.

"My fear is that this will spread throughout Afghanistan, which is why I think the presence of television is even more justified," Aman predicts.

Until last December, Aman traveled regularly to Afghanistan to understand the situation on the ground. She was due to travel back to Kabul in February, but a week before boarding, Radio Begum's headquarters were raided and closed by local authorities. Paradoxically, on March 15, the government reauthorized the radio station, which continues to broadcast from Kabul, but under severe restrictions. "There's a lot of pressure on media outlets targeting women," Aman notes.

For the women who drive Begum TV every day, the hardest part is normalizing Afghanistan's new reality. "Many people already assume that girls should be at home from the age of 12," laments journalist Saira Akakhil, who for seven months has hosted a health program, featuring consultations with medical specialists who discuss breast cancer, menstruation, and other taboo topics. They also receive live psychological consultations and calls from those simply looking to vent.

I know I'm putting my family, who are still there, at risk, but why should I remain silent? As a person, as an actress, and as a woman, I can't remain silent.

Marina Gulbahari, actress and presenter of Begum TV

The internet and satellite television, impossible to control by the authorities, have become the main form of resistance for the women who remain in the country. “We are gradually going to increase the number of live calls and questions from viewers, just as we do on the radio. Many women are depressed due to the lack of prospects for their children and themselves. They all talk about the same problems: lack of sleep, loss of appetite, depression, and suicide, especially among the younger ones,” explains Aman, who, like the other journalists interviewed, is pessimistic about the future. “The international community is more concerned with security, immigration, or drugs than with human rights. Any pressure or intervention in the last four years has been useless; there is a laxity,” she says. Aman hopes, however, that the international community will not take the decision to isolate Kabul, an attitude that, in her opinion, would turn the population into hostages to the situation.

Marina Gulbahari spent years mired in depression, which she has overcome thanks in large part to her work on Begum TV. In Afghanistan, she was a film star since she was a child, but her appearance without a veil at a Korean festival earned her serious threats, and she decided not to return to her country. She has been living in France for a decade, a country that offered her asylum. “I love what I do. I feel like my show brings happiness to those who remain in Afghanistan and changes their minds,” she says, referring to the music program she hosts, as well as the interviews she conducts with other Afghan women, which aim to remind young women who follow the country that there are other models of life different from the one preached by ultraconservatives. “I know I'm putting my family, who are still there, at risk, but why should I remain silent? As a person, as an actress, and as a woman, I can't remain silent,” she concludes.