Ramita Navai is a British-Iranian documentary producer. She is the producer of a newly released documentary, Afghanistan Undercover, which aired on PBS’s flagship program Frontline on Tuesday, August 9. It documents the Taliban abuses against women, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, and forced marriages. She visits a Taliban women’s prison and uses a hidden camera to talk to the detainees. The women tell Navai they are being held captive for so-called “moral crimes,” without due process. The documentary also explores how the Taliban is forcing women inside and outside the prison to marry their members and commanders. Zan Timesinterviewed Ramita Navai and asked about her findings and her undercover work in Afghanistan under the Taliban. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Zan Times: Thank you Ramita, for giving Zan Times this opportunity for an interview. First, I want to know about your trip to Afghanistan — what did you see, what did you witness, how was the environment, how did everything look to you?
Ramita Navai: So, I actually started researching the story in about January 2021, half a year before the Taliban took Kabul. So I was following what the Taliban was doing, how they were taking territory, gradually sweeping across the country, and I wanted to know what was happening in the territory they were taking, and what was happening to women. That did not look good. And of course, that could serve as a warning for what would happen if the Taliban took the whole country. Now, by the time this got commissioned, the Taliban did take the whole country, and so it became [about] what life is like now for women in Afghanistan, rather just women in parts of the country that the Taliban have taken over. So we got a 30-day visa; we spent 30 days in Afghanistan from November to December 2021, and we went back in March 2022 and spent two weeks there.
I noticed a change between the trip in November and December and the trip in March. So [during] the trip in November and December, people were much freer, people were still kind of relaxed, and the Taliban were still careful when dealing with foreign journalists. Now, in between [trips] there was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and, of course, that meant all the world’s attention was on Ukraine, and you could really feel that when we went back in March. Afghans almost felt forgotten; they felt that they did not have the protection of the world’s eyes on them anymore. They were much more fearful. And they were also more fearful because the Taliban was getting more and more relaxed about being their true selves. And I think the Taliban realized that the world’s attention was no longer on them, and you could see just in the way they treated foreign journalists, and in the way they dealt with us — they were not so careful.
ZT: So both interviews you did with the two Taliban spokesmen took place in March?
Navai: Yes, we made sure that [all the interviews] happened right at the end of the trip. We made sure that we had all our material just in case they got suspicious or they got annoyed. So we left them for the last moment.
ZT: This question is very important to us, because our newsroom is a women-led newsroom and we want to empower more women journalists in Afghanistan to continue their work and report on their community, and the lives of women in Afghanistan: how was the Taliban’s treatment of you as a woman journalist? I have seen some male journalists have posted selfies with the Taliban, but I am very interested to know how the Taliban behaved with you as a woman journalist?
Navai: Well, as you yourself know, we are overlooked, we are not taken seriously, they don’t want to engage with us, they don’t see us as equals.
So, it is great because it means that there is less attention on me. Whenever I work and wherever I travel for work, I like to be below the radar, I don’t like to have attention, I don’t like to be noticed — that is the easiest way to work. So, by dint of being a woman, I was overlooked, which made it much easier for me to work, especially as I can look like an Afghan. I can wear a hijab and all the clothes so for me it was great.
So, when we walked into offices — you know government offices — most of the time I would not be addressed. They would address my director, Karim, who is a guy.
ZT: They do not consider women as autonomous human beings.
Navai: I tell you something, Karim was sort of very cheeky. So a few times, Karim enjoyed saying to them, talk to her. She is the boss.”
ZT: You interviewed so many vulnerable populations: survivors, women activists, women who are working on the ground, and who are constantly being followed by the Taliban. For the journalists it is also very difficult, because the Taliban is on their backs. The Taliban wants to know where they are going and where they are visiting to suppress the flow of information, so I am wondering what precautions you were taking when you were contacting these groups and when you were setting up the interviews?
Navai: We were very, very careful. We were working undercover even though the Taliban knew we were there. We were there with visas, with official accreditation. We were staying at a big hotel. Whenever we travelled, we were very careful. Though we would change routes, we would meet people in safe locations. Often we met a middle person, who would then take us somewhere else. We would find safe houses to talk in. We would never walk anywhere with a camera showing. We did not go anywhere as a big group.
Often I would go first and would wait, sometimes a long time. And then Karim would come in. We were very careful. We always took advice from the Afghans around us. We had an amazing team working for us who would tell us exactly how to operate, and the people whom we were meeting. Obviously their lives were at risk, so there is no point in covering any story if you put anyone in danger or risk their lives; it’s just not worth it. So we would always listen to them. And often they would give us instructions on how to do it and how to be safe.
ZT: Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Because I have also been covering these stories for a long time, I am aware of the ways that the Taliban are suppressing people and using spy and informant networks. I talk to victims who say that my daughter or my sister have been killed but I can’t talk to you and I can’t tell you my story, because the Taliban is on my back and I don’t want the rest of my family to be killed, just one is enough. I am wondering: how did you approach them and get their consent to talk to you?
Navai: It is kind of a chain of trust. They are all known to somebody who knew somebody whom I knew. So, once you are in that circle of trust, once you are part of that chain, it is that much easier.
People were very wary of speaking to us until they would meet me. When you can meet somebody; you can look them in the eye and forge a connection. Then you can talk about how you are going to keep them safe.
When they realized that we take them seriously, when they felt comfortable, Karim would flip the camera around and show them how they were going to look in the footage so they wouldn’t get scared when we were filming them. For example, when we were not filming their faces, Karim would say, “We are filming your hand,” or “I am filming the side of your face, and this is what it looks like.” So they would look and they would feel better. And we would ask them, “Do you want your voices changed?” Some people did not want their voices changed, so they said, “No, it is OK, just that you do not show my face is enough, you don’t have to change my voice.” Some people did want their voices changed.
It was really a thorough system; for every interview we would go through exactly the steps [needed] to protect people and keep them safe.
ZT: Thank you for sharing this with us, we can use these examples in our work.
Navai: To you fellow journalists, Zahra, the advice I would give is: make sure your journalists don’t have anything on their phones, because phones are being checked. So, we noticed that the journalists we worked with had nothing on their phones. They were very, very careful with where they were hiding their laptops, for example. And never let your guards down. Always be on alert.
ZT: Thank you very much, it is quite useful.
I wanted to ask about how, in Herat, you first got permission to visit the men’s prison and then you got permission to visit the women’s prison. How did you do that? The Taliban is very wary of allowing journalists access to those places.
Navai: We just got lucky. They were not going to let us go to the female section, but, in the end, I think they thought if they did not take us to the female section that we would be more suspicious. So that is why.
ZT: I was wondering if you have information on the 90 women who were in prison in Herat, because we saw that some of them were released. Maryam, the woman featured in the documentary, was released.
Did they tell that they were tortured in that prison? I am wondering if you get any information about what happened to the rest of those women. For example, one said I had a seven-month-old baby waiting at home for me.
Navai: I don’t know, and Maryam does not know, and her four friends don’t know. There is another woman I was speaking to on the phone and she does not know. And none of them were in touch with the female prisoners. I think they were so scared; they did not want to be in touch anymore.
ZT: A last question, what do you want this story to tell? You started with a question about how the Taliban are treating women. You have done amazing work uncovering a very powerful story. I want to have your perspective on how you feel now and how you are able to include all things that you witnessed or it is only part of what you witnessed in Afghanistan?
Navai: This was only part of what we saw in Afghanistan. The situation is much worse than I imagined, and there was very little and almost no reporting coming from the provinces. So that is the key. I want to tell you, Zahra, that nobody knows what is happening in the provinces, and the provinces are like the Wild West. Kabul cannot control the commanders in the provinces.
The stories that we could not cover: we heard a lot about public flogging and corporal punishments, so it is happening a lot but nobody has video footage. People are too scared. We are hearing that when people have taken videos are caught, they are very badly beaten and they are tortured.
We heard of many, many incidents of people getting publicly flogged. It is widely happening in the provinces. Obviously in the big cities, they know there are big crowds, and people have phones, so the Taliban are clever and don’t do it [in public]. So people are getting flogged and punished physically, but in private, and we realized these were happening in government buildings. I came across this story in Faizabad that they were using the basement of a government building for torturing people.
The Taliban is not going to change its policies, but, right now, the Taliban still needs America more than America needs the Taliban. It still needs money. So I hope this film will be used by the UN or by governments as evidence to negotiate with the Taliban and to use it as leverage. Because there is pressure on them to behave to get money. And they need money.
ZT: Thank you very much. We really appreciate your work.
