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- ZAN TV was founded as a symbol of challenge in Afghanistan, where women’s freedoms have long been hampered.
- But it stopped broadcasting after the Taliban regained control of the country in mid-August.
- Insider has spoken to its founder and another reporter, who fear for their colleagues but are committed to continuing.
Hamid Samar founded Afghanistan’s first all-female news channel in 2017, after his mother said there should be a TV channel run by and for women.
He hoped ZAN TV would empower women, and staff saw it as a symbol of a changing Afghanistan.
It has grown to a maximum of 72 employees, training women journalists while covering news and women’s issues. Men worked there too, but all the presenters and reporters were women.
When the Taliban seized the country in mid-August, the station suspended its work and Samar fled the country, fearing the group’s long and violent opposition to women in public life. At this point, ZAN TV had around 30 employees, some of whom were already based outside the country.
The Taliban said they would protect women, but the last time they were in power they severely restricted women’s rights and movements, and violators of the rules punished with beatings and death.
After the Taliban takeover, ZAN TV stopped broadcasting via satellite, although some staff in Kabul and outside Afghanistan continued to publish rarely on social media, said Samar.
Samar worries about his colleagues still in Afghanistan, but is determined to help them continue their work.
“No one thought there would be TV channels run only by women”
Insider also spoke with Fariah Saidi, who has worked for ZAN TV from Canada since 2017, directing the channel’s programs and presenting political shows.
She said she was inspired to join ZAN TV because “media is still a male-dominated space, not just in Afghanistan but around the world.”
ZAN TV, on the other hand, is “for women and is run by women, and the goal is to empower Afghan women around the world,” she said.
Fariah Saïdi.
Fariah Saïdi
This empowerment was to be achieved in two ways: by covering women’s issues, but also by showing women in roles that people were not used to seeing.
She said she believed the power of television could change mentalities and “normalize a lot of things about women that are taboo in some societies.”
ZAN TV was launched 16 years after the last Taliban overthrow – the group controlled Afghanistan from the late 1990s to 2001. Saidi said the launch showed how much the country has changed.
“No one thought there would be TV channels run only by women,” Saidi said. “It was a different idea… It was a great thing for the company.”
Taliban fighters stand outside the Afghan Interior Ministry in Kabul on August 15, 2021, after militants surrounded and took control of the city.
Stringer / Reuters
She said she could see how ZAN TV managed to help empower women – at least until the Taliban took power in the country.
Flee Afghanistan with just the clothes on your back
Samar told Insider that the Taliban’s rapid takeover prompted him to flee in a hurry.
He said he left Kabul days after the Taliban took the city – he cannot remember the exact day – with his family on a US military plane. He was taken to Qatar, then to Germany and finally to Wisconsin.
“I was just able to take the shoes and clothes that I was wearing,” he said.
He said he deleted everything from his phone in case it was searched by the Taliban during the escape.
He said he was grateful to be in the United States, but sad to be leaving: “I feel really good to be here. Of course, it was not easy to leave his country.” But the most important thing, he said, was “the safety of my children and my family.”
Hamid Samar |
Hamid Samar |
But Samar knows that some of his employees – from women journalists to men who worked behind the cameras – are still there and are in danger.
“In the blink of an eye, their world was turned upside down”
Saidi said she is still talking to the female ZAN TV reporters who are stranded in Afghanistan. Her parents are both from Afghanistan, but she was raised overseas.
“Everyone I speak to feels a heartbreaking sense of loss,” she said. She said a colleague described being “physically safe, but mentally unsafe.”
Saidi said: “My heart goes out to all the girls who have worked there. I have known for a very long time the problems they went through in order to be able to find a job, to be able to work on all of this – and in the blink of an eye, their world was upside down. So for most of them their lives are in danger and the lives of their families in danger. “
The Zan TV editing room in Kabul, Afghanistan, in May 2017.
AP Photo / Rahmat Gul
Regarding Samar’s escape, Saïdi said: “His life was in danger. His family, the lives of his children were in danger.”
She said ZAN TV management is still trying to figure out how workers in the field can be protected: “Everyone is like, right now, let’s make sure everyone is safe, that they survive. and that they are alive. “
Samar said around ten of his local employees had left Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, but around 20 more were still there.
He said some stayed because they didn’t want to leave their families behind and ZAN TV was “doing its best to keep them safe.”
Taliban Badri Special Forces fighters arrive at Kabul airport on August 31, 2021, after the United States withdrew all of its troops from the country.
VICE KOHSAR / AFP via Getty Images
Saidi said many employees “feel guilty” for putting their families in danger.
“But I let them know it was not their fault. Once we make sure they are safe, we will continue our fight for Afghan women.”
Wishes to make ZAN TV stronger than before
Samar said he wanted ZAN TV to continue, and even expand, despite the Taliban.
“Zan TV is not a project that should just end. The people who worked on it want to continue ZAN TV more firmly than we were in the past,” he said.
He hopes the female channel staff in Afghanistan can continue working on it: “Of course, they want to continue their work.”
Saidi said she was not sure what would happen next, but hopes the work continues: “For me, I think it’s a whole different story than the girls who were born and raised in Afghanistan. “
She said that compared to them, “I don’t have much to lose. Physically, I’m not in a place where most of these girls are. But when I think about it, do I? want to give up? I don’t want to give up. “
She declared that she would not stop her work whether ZAN TV could continue or not: “Personally, I will not give up my work for women … if it is on TV or any other platform. form. My work for women in Afghanistan will continue. “
“In 1996, the first time the Taliban took power, I was only one year old. I wasn’t even living in Afghanistan at the time. I obviously wasn’t able to do anything. at this moment.”
“Now it’s like history repeats itself. But I’m 25 now… And if there’s anything I can do, I’ll just keep going.”
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