i kind of wanted to explore my own identity a little bit, and that identity is very complicated. you want to see a show, but it was at 1st for me, it was a 1st hand experience of how different that that that the, the differences in the people who make up this country ah, the letter to. but i don't think it's unique to the people being british. i think it's just um, something that people aren't familiar with and that's to be expected. and so my job is to bridge that gap and to, to sort of say, hey guys, come, come on this journey with me. i know it's an unfamiliar. i know it's a big difference, but come on this journey with me, it'll be worth it. oh joe, to hold l 20, edinburgh ah, without his era, these are our top stories. at least 41 people have been killed in

a fire inside a church in the egyptian city of keesa, south of cairo. the place broke out as around $5000.00 worshippers were inside the abu staffing church, causing a stampede. were him can i conveyed the president's condolences and my condolences to the religious leaders of the church, the families of the dead and injured people. we need them to know that we're standing with them and standing by them. an explosion at a market in armenia is capsule caravan has killed at least one person. more than 20 others were injured. a blast occurred in a building where fireworks were being stored. i do everything shattered in a 2nd. there are warehouses, technical rooms. it's like fireworks fireworks, fireworks. everything happened in one minute. people could not get out of the store . grain is being loaded onto the 1st united nations chartered vessel in the port of p n. e and ukraine. a shipment of food aid to drought affected east africa is the 1st

since russia invasion in february. a man suspected of opening fire on people and vehicles and occupied east jerusalem as handed himself over to police. 8 people were injured in the attack on sunday morning. water is being restricted across most of france as the country experience is the dry of summer in recorded history. rivers are running dry. crops are dying and wildfires. a burning out of control collaborations are being held in sierra leone to remember those who died and a mudslide 5 years ago. my flies and flooding struck the capitol free town after days of torrential rains in august 2017. while the 1100 people died, thousands more lost their homes. more than 2000 times long, the time in mar, border have been submerged by flash floods. heavy rains from tropical depression, moorland caused a breach of the dam and men, while shan state relief workers waded through flooded streets to distribute food to people. her stranded and pakistan is marking 75 years of independence. in karachi,

a ceremony is being held at the memorial for the countries founder mohammed ali, gena, which is colonial rule, ended in 1947 with the partition of india and formation of pakistan. those are your headlines. i'll be back with more news on the inside story. ah ah, it's been nearly a year since the taliban returned to power in afghanistan. the group says the nation is moving forward. millions of people are hungry. many. gov onto pool and few countries recognize the taliban leadership. so what's needed to turn things around. this is inside story.

ah, how are there and welcome to the program? i miss darcy. attain the taliban to swift returned to power in afghanistan a year ago. quote, many by surprise, the group captured a string of cities as us lead foreign forces left the country after 20 years. and when its fighters took over the presidential palace on august 15th president asher kani went into exile. conceding the taliban has won tens of thousands of afghans and foreigners scramble to cobble app or to board those last flights out taliban leaders promised to be more moderate and said they were committed to respecting women's rights. but 12 months on most girls are still banned from school female to have limited rights to work or travel without a male guardian. and afghanistan's economy has nearly collapsed with foreign aid drying up. speaking exclusively to al jazeera and senior taliban leader called for

more international support. but we're under the allow new to the senate, whether it has been only one year since we assume power and the world should not expect us to achieve all our goals overnight. it is next to impossible, especially when the international community has not fulfilled promises, including the recognition of our rule and foreign. despite the delay on their part, we by the grace of god, achieved huge progress on many fronts. off canister, economic crisis has worse, and it's already di, humanitarian situation. nearly 1000000 afghans have lost open force from their jobs since the taliban took over. according to the wild food program, 90 percent of afghans has faced food shortages over the past year. the well bank says the prices of consumer products such as diesel flower, rice and sugar have increased 50 percent since last year and ask honest on has $9000000000.00 and reserves, but they held in the us and europe. not because the international community refuses to recognize the taliban government. ah,

well, let's not bring in our guests in trouble. we have moscow guy, lonnie. she's the acting director of the afghanistan woman council and in london is graham smith. he's a senior consultant and i've got a stones international crisis group. he's also the author of the dogs are eating them now are war and ask honest on a warm welcome to both. let's go. i want to stop with you because you're sitting in couple at the moment after what we heard from the taliban a year ago. all those promises, are you surprised by what life is like there? now? for the fall, i would like say hello to our panel member. and when you asked me find surprised. absolutely not. i am not surprised the way the situation of the country is right now. the past years experience has shown that the thought on have not only remained unchanged, but they also act with far more extreme ideology base to deprive freedoms and

sabotage, the foundations of national unity and the guy, son. there is open oppression against women, depriving them from their rights, taking away their the rights from children and youth of the country of education and along with it, helping you to all help with ethnic discrimination. they had promised far more different things, but they have not at all come across and fulfilling any of those promises unfortunately, and it just feels like all those promises were, were lies. i mean, these, all that we see or have seen in the past one year are all examples of their for not taken radical thinking. which is truly, according to me, bizarre and looked at one of the big promises that they made with obviously around women's rights about allowing women to continue working, going to school especially. and obviously back in march,

they stopped most skulls from being allowed to go to secondary school. graham, i'm curious because at the beginning of the taliban taking power, they were very keen to reassure the international community and they wanted legitimacy. they wanted aid. why did they make the decision and launch? well yeah, i was, i was there and don't on the sidelines of the negotiations where the taliban were trying to reassure the national community as you say. but i think it's worth going back and looking at what exactly they promised. because even though they were trying to indicate that they are ready to have peaceful relations with the outside world and, and even sort of courting foreign investments, they were always very careful to say that what they call a domestic issues. you know, issues of social policy, for example, in which they're extremely conservative. these are things to the outside world to

not interfere with. and so i, i feel, you know, i've never myself, you know, use this phrase taliban to point out that you sometimes hear because in my view the taliban have always been the taliban. and so there is actually a fair bit of consistency between what they said earlier and what they're doing now . you're right though that there was a kind of turning point in march when the taliban decided to officially bar girls from secondary schools. now of course, in about half the provinces are so girls are actually attending secondary schools, but, but officially across the country, that band remains in place. and you know, i think that was a moment where you saw the amir and circles around be near the supreme leader done in kandahar really trying to assert themselves within the movement. and so one year into the evolution of the taliban regime, it's still very much work in progress in terms of who's in control and how it all works. well, given the splits, then we're seeing within the taliban themselves. muska, let me ask you, is this causing division on the ground within communities role

within communities? no, because when you look at it as, as communities, they all want the same thing in the end of the day. i think there are different ideas and there are different ideologies or, or different decisions is only putting them among themselves, like in trouble and making them not get along among each other, which is again, really surprising to like, it does not make sense to any of us. be fought for 20 years and then they come back and all their focus is on being just strict towards women and that's all that they have been doing. and they have paid absolutely no attention to the economic crisis. that's been that this country has been doing with the so i think if you look at it like from a sub, by the entire community, all the communities and i've, honest on they all want the same thing. so no,

it does not really divide them. it just puts them in a lot of concert. so i want to get to the economic concerns and the situation that in a moment. but this whole situation with girls going to school and the ban on going to secondary school. this is had huge implications for aid. so muska as someone who works with women and i kind of on, i'm curious about your personal opinion. do you think foreign donors should be withholding aid until the taliban changes? it's policy on women and girl i, i personally think no because it is not, it's not helping the government is not breaking. the health is not coming. the only people suffering in the middle are the woman that we personally have been working with. or all the women of matter of fact. i mean, which part of women being on the road begging is better than, like getting no aid like it makes no sense. so i think no,

i think the international community should actually send, send in their donation, but maybe not through the government because honestly, in my opinion, the government should not be recognized. graham and here as well because i know you has called for aid to be released and obviously western governments don't want to look like they are supporting the taliban. how is this now being discussed in western capital? yeah, my organization, the international crisis group was one of the sort of earliest to come up publicly last fall and say, look, this is not going to work. you know, there are a lot of hungry people in afghanistan. and so it's probably time to start thinking about unfreezes, the frozen assets about lifting some of the western economic restrictions, especially easing the effects of sanctions and to their credit. actually, western doctors, especially united states, have been taking steps in that direction. i mean, the spring we saw something called general license 20 from the us treasury

department. that's actually the most sweeping set of exemptions from us sanctions anywhere in the world. so there have been the, this kind of effort to the ease, the blow a little bit, but it's still very much work in progress. those assets remain frozen. as you mentioned, at the top of the show. and those negotiations are continuing between united states and the taliban. about the future of central banking, which sounds like a boring topic, but it's just vital to how afghans eat there needs to the cash liquidity on the street so that the import deals can get done. so the daily bread can reach african bakeries. so let's talk about what that looks like on the streets of cobble, unless you alluded to the economic crisis, that what does the regular day look like at the moment? the regular day it it's disappointing, it's painful and it's hard breaking those. those are all that i can say, but behind every bread they create that you see there are 20 to

2530 room and just sitting there waiting for someone to give them a piece of bread. that's what's happening. children are out on the street begging all day long. most of these women were the only breadwinners of their family, since their husbands are brothers, their father's been killed or died, or during these 20 years of war. so they were the main breadwinners and now a daily normal day and couple are in a one on overall looks like this side tried to be where women are out with their hands out begging for 1020 and the piece of bread, a little bit of food so they could go back home and feed their children. that's what it looks like. well, we keep talking about food security and i recall last winter we were talking very much about the possibility of, of famine enough kind of stuff going into the lean season. it does seem that

somehow that was saved off grand. how. how did that actually happen? and obviously this, there's winter coming again this year. what is the situation like at the moment? bit it was saved off, just barely. united nation says that upwards of 20000 people in the central highlands are now and they call them, unlike conditions that sort of the very worst kind of starvation like category. and there's or think there's a real fear that that could spread as we get towards winter. again, it's done of course produces a lot of its own food in the harvest seasons. and then when you get towards winter, it depends a lot more and importance. imports are now more expensive, globally, partly because of the war and ukraine. and partly because of the paralysis in the banking sector. it's very hard for food in orders to bring food into the country like they did before. and some of the blockages to,

to tray are resulting in higher prices for, for ordinary africans, as you noted, you know, just terrible inflation, not just in the prices, but price of fuel prices of medicine. and so there really does have to be some greater action in terms of reaching some agreement between the west and the taliban . on how economic revival is going to be achieved. let's get correct me if i'm wrong. i understand that there is food to be bought in the market, so it is available. it's just that people don't have the money to buy it. and i know there have been some issues about salaries being paid. so can you give us an idea of just how big that gap is between the price of food and what people can actually afford? well, the price of food has got, has gone really high, of course. and but the thing is that currency happened to the, the people or women that were working after i come and i am basically we presenting

the, the women right now. but the women use the work and now they have been fired from their job. so they're not really getting salaries and they were the breadwinners, it's really hard for the gap is like really, really, really big. so, i mean, i really don't know how this is gonna, this is going to change. because also the, the donations that so far have come in to help the people who are dealing with, with such issues, it has only made of want to phone look like a charity case. and that's not what we want. we want something stable. we want something for everyone to have their right right to work, right. education right, to just equal rights for men and women. currently, most men are not being paid. most of their salaries are not given. so, i mean, people who truly don't have money to go and buy and enough for their families. so they're dealing with quite a hard time. right now. some of the most extreme needs that we've been seeing in

rural areas as well. so many people the outside couple just wanted the fighting to start. so now we're seeing this relative piece at the same time as economic challenges, the mounting grand, how people outside couple viewing the taliban. now, given this kind of dichotomous situation, aaron, well, you know, as you mentioned, shutting millions of girls out of high schools really hasn't helped the telegrams reputation. i think the discovery of ohio liter i'm and i was over here living in the heart of, of cripple also damaged the tolerance reputation globally. and so it gets harder under those conditions for the taliban to reach any kind of agreements about how to get beyond just short term emergency relief, which is neither sustainable nor sufficient to deal with. the 10s of millions of africans who are now in great starvation. you know what the world bank has said is

that we need to start investing in development. for example, there is less area under effective irrigation, today's and there was an election seventies is a primarily agricultural economy. so, you know, there needs to be help with getting water to crops. but you know, who is going to come in and build a large scale irrigation system under a taliban regime that is not recognized by the international community. and, you know, with the political distance growing and so it's, it really is a difficult situation. gram i, i really want to focus on how people in rural area, particularly feeling as well. because i know you've traveled around the country in the last few months or so. and i'm curious about how people who were really just wanting the fighting to stop how they're feeling now that they're faced with the taliban regime. even though there is a now relative security. yeah, i just finished working with colleagues on a report about the security situation based on interviews. in 13 out of the 34

provinces. a lot of people in rural areas are benefiting from the end of the war century. there are 2 small insurgencies remaining, one against the remnants of the former republican, the north and one against the local version of islam states in the east. but these are really small scale conflicts, and you know, this had been the deadliest war in the planet earth. we had 30240000 people dying annually and the conflict hundreds of thousands displaced. and so yeah, in a lot of the, the rural villages people are putting their lives back together. they're picking up the pieces. literally. some of the biggest threats to civilians in those areas are when children pick up the explosive remnants of war or their, their forging for scrap metal or they're playing with the shiny bits of metal and something explodes. and so far too many children, unfortunately, are dying in the remnants of this terrible conflict unless you're sitting in cobble

. do you feel like there's still a huge, huge difference between how people feel in the capital versus in the rural areas particularly now that the security situation has changed? honestly, i think right now everyone the starving b, it's the capital b at the rural areas. everyone's focus is to have their time, you filled food on their table security. i mean, oh, what i mean, it does not feel secure. so what's the point of this kind of security? okay. yes, we're not having explosions the way we used to, but they are, they were the ones that were doing big from south. so i mean, that is not the biggest good news that o explosions or insecurity has gotten better. but right now, as a whole, the whole nation right now is starving. and that's their biggest, biggest issue right now, i'd hunt. i mean, if you really think about it,

what good does the security bring if they're all starving and are dealing with depression or anxiety or a 100 other issues that they faced on daily basis? well, middle, the criticism that the taliban received, they've said that their big focus has been on security and graham, as you alluded to that they are still fighting a number of groups including i. so what do you think their focus is now? are they being distracted by, by military operations? are they wanting to focus on the economic situation? the taliban are in the middle of consolidating control both militarily and economically. yes. as you say, they are still struggling against some you could call them in certain groups. they are actually gaining the upper hand against these pockets of resistance, but they do continue. economically. they have dismantled some of those checkpoints. when you drive around the highways,

some of the places where the police used to shake down truck drivers. those places simply don't exist anymore and some very careful suddenly based work examining flows through customs. houses has shown that the taliban and cleaned up more than a $1000000000.00 a year of corruption that occurred during the last government. and so there is now today a greater percentage of the money being handed over a customs points is going to the central treasury. so that helps the taliban to mitigate some of the, the economic damage. what we're talking about an economy that has shrunk considerably. and so overall, even though the taliban are consolidating some of their power economically, militarily, it is just a situation of molar demand. and so it's very difficult for them to navigate. you are thinking about consolidating power. there are still splits within the taliban,

and obviously you looted also to the previous government. i wonder whether there have been revenge killings. but one of the biggest promises that they made in august was that there would be an amnesty for people from the previous government that these revenge killings wouldn't take place, that they would be freedom of the media as well. let's go, can you give us a sense of the sentiment now? you're obviously comfortable speaking to us opening. now, what does that say about the situation? maybe i'm just a little brave and i like taking wrists. that's why i am saying the way or speaking rather the way that i am but media is extremely controlled. they're not allowed to they're, it's very restrictive for them. they cannot say everything on the news that everything is monitored by the bar. so a lot of what you see on the news, it's probably filtered and unfortunately, and that's just how it is me speaking the way that i am is just that my heart

a way too much to, to care about anything happening to me because my country is falling apart and it breaks my heart, i cannot, i cannot just sit here and say, i wish this top and i wish that hard, but i'm going to say it as it is. this is barbaric cru, looking behavior towards that and the people of this nation as a whole. so gram, let me bring you in briefly on that. how would you assess how genuine not nasty offer was and the spaces of the freedom of the press there now? well, the embassy offer was a great propaganda who by the taliban, because that was partly i think why their enemies were willing to put down their guns in many provinces because the taliban promised not to kill them. it's been enforced unevenly. the united nations and human rights watch and other organizations have identified a dozens, in some cases,

more than one hundreds of violations of the misty people having killed people who dragged on their homes. it's worth noting though, that really this is been one of the most peaceful changes of regime in the recent tribune, decades of african history. i mean, the last time there was the taliban were swept out of power. you know, the mass killings, you know, people mass graves in the desert and we just have not seen that kind of thing. although, you know, it's difficult to tell from a distance because exactly as you say, media reporting has been more restricted, you know, as to is falling down the rankings of media freedom. and just, you know, in the last 24 hours i was receiving messages about colleagues who were jailed, well, trying to photograph in on women's protesters in the streets. now, you know, they were eventually released, but i was very worried about them for

a few hours and you know, it's something that you would have seen under the previous government unless you're sitting in cobble and i want to give you the last say as a young woman, enough kind of stuff right now, knowing the context of what's going on, what is your personal message to the taliban? my personal message would be that we are not demanding anything extraordinary. we just want our basic rights given to us, both to women and men. we just want that humanity or, or the basic rights given to us and for it to be restored were currently the only country where girls are not going to school. and i think that's crazy. and the 21st century. basic rights. just give us the basic rights to education, health care, and just be nice to, to your people and the end of the day we're all done. we, we all just want to live in a peaceful country where we all work together to build it into better,

better place to be. that's all i can ask for. well, thank you for your message, muska. and thank you for joining us. muska guy, lonnie, and graham smith, and thank you to for watching. you can see this program again anytime by visiting our website that's out there a dot com for further discussion. do go to my facebook page. that's facebook dot com, forward slash ha inside story for them. but you can also join the conversation on twitter. we are at a inside story. for me, the sounds you pay the whole team here in doha bye for now. the me ah and a examining the impact of today's

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