“Life never changed them | Teresa Bo, correspondent for Al Jazeera, and the return of the Taliban

Journalist Teresa bo has just arrived in Buenos Aires from the dangerous The Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama, where he signed up – as a correspondent for Al Jazeera TV channel – the tragedy experienced by thousands of Haitian, Cuban and Venezuelan migrants, who escape the economic crisis generated by the pandemic in Chile and Brazil – where they lived – and seek to reach the United States, whoever it is. Along the way, women are raped, as part of the landscape. “I would put mud on my body so that men wouldn’t look at me, many would say to me”, tells Teresa Bo, via zoom, from her home where she fulfills compulsory isolation on her return home. He says he can’t get these painful stories out of his head, that they don’t cover newspapers all over the world. This week’s international agenda focused on Afghanistan, after the brutal withdrawal of the United States, after twenty years of occupation, and the victory of the Taliban. The news focuses – in addition to the humiliating imperialist failure, one more – on the future that can be held for Afghan women. “I am not very optimistic. Very difficult situations are happening for the Afghan people, especially for women and girls. But it was also difficult before: I want to mark that. that the night was not before ”, underlines Bo, in dialogue with Page 12.

He was a war correspondent and For 14 years he worked for the Al Jazzera channel, the main news channel in the Arab world. She is perhaps one of the Argentinian journalists who was in Afghanistan most often. Not just in Kabul, the capital; also in rural areas: traveled more than half a dozen times. “I have seen women with acid-burnt faces going out to study, or locked in the kitchen without being able to participate in a dinner in the main living room of a house, where I could sit with the men.”. These images have also returned to his memory these days.

America’s failure

“When the United States was invaded, the big goal was to democratize these societies, which have tribal organization, but it ended up being a big failure,” he says. However, it saves the changes that have taken place in recent years with regard to the situation of women in Afghanistan.

– I have seen indiscriminate bombing by the armies of the United States and NATO on the civilian population. It all warmed the atmosphere, generated a lot of rejection towards the United States, but what I have to save is that for women, there was a flourishing in those years. At Herāt University, 60 percent of the students are women, and they have the best grades; there are lawyers, judges, doctors. Before, under the Taliban regime, women could not claim any title or office.

In recent years, she says, “women have empowered themselves” and “a number of women’s organizations have sprung up which did not exist before.”

She remembers another woman, during one of her last trips, after 2010, to cover the legislative elections: “I wore a burqa and the Taliban were no longer in power because there are a lot of women – says – her – who continued to use it as protection. or because they are conservative. He lifts his burqa and shows me his document and tells me he was going to vote for the first time in his life. Like her, there were many people who before were not even registered to participate in the future of their country, ”says Bo.

Another time, he interviewed a woman who had been imprisoned for fifteen years for practicing prostitution and “in prison she had been beaten, injured, had no teeth, had lived through situations of terrible suffering. “.

The threat to women and girls

Q: How did you feel when you heard that the Taliban had arrived in Kabul?

-I was very sad because all these faces came to my head. And I know how difficult it is for everyone now, but especially for girls and women. They are trying to show that they are going to be more open… On Tuesday, I saw one of the Afghan journalists who said: “We are going to take to the streets, we are going to continue to report. At a press conference, the Taliban asked a woman the first question. But I think it’s happening because all the lights are there. You have to see what happens in the future.

Q: Do you think the Taliban has changed their stance towards girls and women or is this a diplomatic screen?

“ I don’t think they have changed. What has changed is the world. Today you have Twitter, a medium that did not previously exist in Afghanistan; Afghan women have changed, they are not the same as they were twenty years ago, there is a civil society that is ready to put pressure, there is an international community which, with all the mistakes that have been made, with all the huge loopholes that existed with any kind of assistance Afghanistan has somehow empowered women in international organizations and that has changed. I think all this is what is urgent today so that it is not the same as before.

Part of the culture

He also points out that the subjugation of women, in some parts of the country, “is also part of Afghan culture”. “The Taliban are not aliens who came to Earth suddenly to impose a version of radical Islam: they are Afghans, they represent the Pashtuns and their customs.

He says that on one occasion he must have interviewed one of the so-called warlords, caudillos from the interior of the country. “I remember being in the last place in the line of an entourage following him, in Kandahar: my translator went first, I shouted the questions to him because they speak Pashtun, he answered the translator, my translator shouted the answers to me and while for me they smashed oranges in the back, in this case because they are not used to seeing a woman working, in action “.

“Who was attacking him with the oranges?”

–Groups of boys and adolescents. Among the Pashtuns, in parts of Afghanistan where the Taliban are from, it is normal to insult a woman. The woman is not part of a society. In rural areas, these beliefs still persist. The same thing happens in Argentina one way or another, for example, when we talk about abortion in Tucumán or Salta, there is more resistance and these are much more traditional places.

The journalist specifies that she was “very critical” throughout the American occupation and of NATO: “I remember a report in which it was shown that they were building a police station but that they had broken water pipes and then they brought mineral water with American labels To give to local people, and people said to me, “The Taliban see me with this and I’m dead tomorrow.” Other For example, in a territory where there must be ten schools, there were five. trillion was spent on contractors or sub-contractors of the Department of Defense, 500 million dollars in debt that the United States contracted to pay for the war, while the Afghans continue to live on two dollars a day. Life has never changed them. improved.

From Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia

– Is it not a trap to underline the living conditions which are announced for the women and the girls, whereas these same conditions were a pretext for the North American invasion?

– Obviously I think this has been used a lot and the situation of women in Saudi Arabia has never been discussed, where there are female prisoners fighting for women’s rights and until recently they couldn’t drive car. The concept of freedom is always at stake. I have a friend in Jordan, a brilliant lawyer, human rights specialist, who wears a hijab – she covers her head. Once, during a discussion about wearing the veil, she said to me: “Do you think you are freer because you can wear a bikini? There are many women who choose to wear the veil. Our Western conception of claiming that freedom is to be able to go out and show your ass on the beach is also questionable, because freedom is also respect for all cultures. And the message to force change always comes a lot. The West has this vision that “I will bring them democracy”, “I will bring them women’s rights” and where they have tried, all of this has failed. The great example for me is Iran. Before the revolution, the wearing of the veil was badly classified, it was a progressive country. The Islamic revolution came, among other reasons, to prohibit the use of the veil. Many times these impositions from the West end up going against women. Change must come from within: women must be empowered, so that they have the tools and can lead this fight. It will be difficult for them and can have huge costs, but any message coming from abroad is counterproductive, because it is understood as an imperialist imposition.