Afghan Actresses Decry Taliban Ban on Women in Entertainment: ‘An Artist Without Art is Basically Dead’

Leena Alam, one of Afghanistan’s best-known actresses, is in character as she explains facing an unthinkable choice.

“Who would know better than me how dangerous it is to be a woman actress with the Taliban? You cannot inflict me with one more drop of fear than I already have,” says the California-based Alam as part of a virtual performance of a monologue for the LA Writers Center.

“You offer me death and my children, or life without them? What would you do? I will go home.” Tearfully, Alam, who starred in popular shows such as feminist drama “Shereen,” rocks back and forth on Zoom in front of a backdrop of an airport waiting room with signs for Paris.

The monologue was spun from an interview with her close friend and former co-star Sabera Sadat, another of Afghanistan’s top thespians. Earlier this month, in Kabul, Sadat was offered a rare ticket to France, but declined when it turned out there were no seats for her two young boys.

She and hundreds of other female artists and journalists are still awaiting evacuation, or else risk a lifetime of fear for their lives “wearing a hijab and lying to strangers who know [their] face” as figures in the arts and media.

Though the Taliban have told the world they are no longer the same brutal terrorists who reigned decades ago, a new list of eight religious guidelines issued to local media this week shows that their dehumanizing view of women has not changed.

Women may no longer appear in dramas and soap operas on television and newswomen must wear the hijab, says the first missive of its kind from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Under pressure from the Taliban, Afghan TV stations have self-censored and blurred out cleavage and other female body parts since around 2010, but a ban on the female figure altogether would set the country back decades.

Afghan director Tarique Qayumi (“Black Kite”) doesn’t believe the Taliban will be able to entirely quash modern day desires for entertainment.

“I don’t think they’re going to ban music or TV series altogether — just women,” he assesses. “They’ll start with moralistic arguments about how we have to protect our wives and sisters from appearing on screen, and once women slowly go to the background, people will start to think this is normal, and they can roll out more directives.”

Without full control over the internet, the Taliban can’t totally turn off the entertainment tap, since people can still watch what they please on their smartphones. They can, however, “stop Afghans from telling their own stories, completely,” says Qayumi.

It may be a moot concern. As the Afghan economy implodes, the country’s vibrant media ecosystem of what was once nearly 50 TV channels and 20 newspapers is grinding to a halt without outside funding or ad revenues. Press freedom has already been entirely quashed, with Taliban fighters dictating the editorial strategy for all remaining stations. Production has halted since the August takeover, leaving actors and crew to confront the coming winter jobless.

When broadcast journalist Zahra Nabi heard news of the religious directives, she felt a sense of relief. In her view, they serve to make an impossible situation for Afghan media more visible on a global stage.

“The Taliban we’re facing on the street is completely different from the Taliban you see on the media or at Doha,” she explains. “They always capture journalists, beat them, arrest them for so many hours. They take cameras, break them and don’t allow us to report.

“We’re already having very tough times. At least now they announced their intentions, so that the international press and community can see,” continues Nabi.

The founder of Afghanistan’s entirely female-staffed Baano TV station, Nabi isn’t going down without a fight. “We are working under the burqa to create our reports, then just keeping them because we cannot publish,” she says, describing her recent travels under the garment to investigate the terrible fates of women at domestic violence shelters.

Baano was once profitable but can no longer pay salaries and is weeks away from folding, she says. Those on the 50-person staff who are still in the country are mostly too scared to work outside their homes, but they continue to broadcast old material and Islamic programs out of fear that the Taliban may seize the station and use it to their own ends if they shutter.

“At least we have very good memories, because our dreams came true,” says Nabi, recalling how male attitudes towards her staff had changed since their start in 2017. “Before, everyone thought an all-women station was very funny, but we had technicians, camerawomen, directors, producers, everything — all without receiving any outside support.”