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anywhere that matters. america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. >> we are joined this morning nh iranian investigative journalists, documentary filmmaker and author. she is the pbs frontline correspondent for their new documentary, "afghanistan undercover." ramita navai, let's begin with what you found out when you did this investigation. guest: well, yeah. we found out that there's a lot going on that the taliban does not want out and that is not being reported. i think one of the biggest stories we uncovered was that in the province in the west of the country many young girls and women were going missing or being taken from the streets by taliban intelligence agents.

and they were being impliesonned for so-called moral crimes. so leaving a husband, run away from home, being in a car with someone you are not related to. and the most important part of that story was that none of these imprisonments were being recorded, officially recorded, registered by the taliban. the taliban were keeping these stories quiet. we also found out again this is in the province in the west of the country that suicide rates have rocketed. this is another story they don't want out. so we spoke to doctors who told me that they are -- told that they are not allowed to register certain suicide cases. most of these suicide cases are women killing themselves. in the north of the country, we realized there is very little news coming out from the provinces. i can pass as an afghan and my

director, she wore local clothes, it went ph*epbt we could access loot of the country pretty hard to get. to we could easily get through checkpoints and i speak one of the languages. we found in northern provinces there is forced marriage. this is where parents force their children to get married. this is taliban fighters abducting girls and young women and taking them for marriage. and they usually turn up at the family's home, the parents don't grant permission, they take the girls and beat the family up. host: what did the taliban promise when they took over? guest: well, they promised to protect women's rights. they promised education. they promised that women would be allowed to continue to work. and it was in the very first

press conference that they said all of this. and they knew the world was watching. and of course they know that the world uses their treatment of women as a litmus test on their governance and human rights. host: are there women and men in afghanistan that are fighting back? what is that like? guest: yes, there are. i have been doing this job 20 years now and i met some of the bravest people i have ever met. they were women. so we met one underground network of women who run secret safe houses. and these safe houses are for women and families who are fleeing the taliban. often from the provinces. the provinces there's nothing. there's very little network there. very little safety. this is like an underground railroad says tell -- system. they end up in kabul and are in touch with this secret underground network.

these women running it were young. earley to mid 20's. every single one of these women had fled the taliban themselves either forced marriage, or retribution as a blood feud. and these women were in danger constantly yet were running this network helping to save others. host: talk about the tactics that they would use to keep themselves and the people that they were helping safe. guest: when they are around the city, they have to visit all their base houses, especially when they were taking families to them and they were housing them, they would distribute food. people who flee danger are left destitute often. they leave with nothing. they would take taxies, change cars many times to make sure they weren't being monitored. they are in constant touch with

each other. on a messaging app. someone always knew where they were. they had location devices. checkpoints now throughout the city and throughout the country. this is an interesting thing because on one hand afghanistan is -- i reported from afghanistan a couple of times in the last 20 years. and you can drive -- for the first time in 20 years you can drive everywhere because there are no i.e.d.'s, there are no bombs going off, there are no battle lines. but there are taliban checkpoints. these taliban checkpoints do stop cars and they do take telephones, check telephones. not so in the city. but in the city they still have to get through them. while we were there, one of the young women working with a male colleague, sometimes they'll take male colleagues for security and safety, they were

stopped at a checkpoint and arrested for simply being in a taxi with each other because they were unrelated. taken to a police station and the young man was badly beaten. host: what happens to the families that these women leave behind? guest: well, if a young woman has been accused of immorality and moral crime, the tragedy is that she often carve out of her community and sometimes from her family. so it depends what has happened and why these women have fled. other times their families are supportive. but usually for safety reasons and security reasons, they can't have contact with their families for a long time. host: do these women ultimately leave afghanistan? is that the goal? if so, are other countries, like the united states helping them?

guest: well, when we were there, within november, march, we were there 30 days in november, december. second trip was in march. the first trip people were still hopeful that they would be evacuated. and these people who have worked with the american military, have worked with the brits, have worked with the west. all the previous government. and they are being hunted. we know that the taliban is executing many of these afghans. they were hopeful and manage to get out of the country. by the time we returned in march, of course russia invaded ukraine. the world eyes were on ukraine and a lot of afghans had absolutely lost hope of being able to leave the country and getting any help and assistance from the west. what we saw certainly is the

evacuation list there were thousands and thousands of names on this list. i know that being six months, some people are still waiting to be evacuated. it's pretty hopeless situation. host: ramita navai is our guest here this morning. she will take your questions and your comments about what you have heard so far. we have divided the lines regionally. begin calling in this morning so we can get to your thoughts on what you are hearing. i want to show our viewers a little bit from this documentary. "afghanistan undercover." >> wealthy businessmen met with a secretly. he said a few weeks earlier his 19-year-old cousin had been forced to marry a powerful taliban commander, 40 years older than her. >> [speaking a foreign language]

>> the taliban commander, he said, had arrived at the girl's home with some of his men and demanded her father's consent. [speaking a foreign language] >> those who witnessed such forced marriages and abductions say they follow a pattern. [speaking a foreign language]

>> they agreed to talk to us if we concealed his identity. he, himself, had a confrontation with a group of taliban who were take ago girl ed marriage. taking a girl ed marriage. [speaking a foreign language] host: the documentary is called "afghanistan undercover." it airs tonight, tuesday, this evening. august 9 at 10, 9 central time on pbs and will be available to stream on frontline's website, youtube, and the pbs video app. pbs's frontline correspondent

ramita navai here with us this morning to talk about her work in the country. ramita navai, the radio listeners, i want them -- there is no translation there. i want them who are listening to this understand a little bit, if you can talk about what these men told you about the forced marriages. guns to head. beatings. and that there is a pattern. they didn't hear that part about the pattern. explain. guest: the pattern is taliban fighters will spot pretty girls in markets. at the bazaar. and also hear about them, where they live, which neighborhood. and that's where they go down the official route. so they will officially ask the parent for hand in marriage. when the parents say no, that's when they abduct the girls and the women.

they tear up the family's houses and they put a gun to family's heads and they take these young women. and the families protest. they end up beating the families. the men you were hearing in that clip were saying this is happening a lot. and if you speak out, you'll get into trouble. the clip you were showing what we were seeing was a man who witnessed such an abduction, tied to a tree, and beaten by a mob of taliban fighters with rifle butts. he was pretty seriously injured. and there are lots of stories like this. host: roger is our first phone call. in virginia. go ahead. caller: yes. pardon me i'm a little nervous. a lot going on in my country. i never voted in a presidential

election. host: all right. i apologize. i'm going to move on. he's talking about the last subject we were talking about. let me hear from bob in sterling, virginia. bob, are you there? do you have a question about this documentary? caller: yeah. i have a brief comment and question. my comment is the u.s. government's policy on afghanistan supports a shoutdown of the banking system in afghanistan. also the withholding of $9 billion of afghan assets. this policy having a devastating impact on the afghan population, including the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents through malnutrition just in the first three months of this year. that was reported in the associated press. it is illogical and murderous to maintain a policy that results in the starvation of infant girls, infant girls in order to attempt to get them access to the school system that they won't live long enough to enter.

my question is how can anyone support the u.s. policy of economic strangulation in light of its horrific impact on innocent children and the afghan people? thank you. guest: that's a really good question. and you're right as we are seeing in so many countries around the world over time sanctions rarely work. i think what america needs to do is use the taliban need, the billions of dollars, and aid money, as leverage to negotiate with the taliban. but they need to be negotiating. and they need to negotiate for the women of afghanistan and for basic fundamental human rights. but you are absolutely right. the country is coming to a stand still. and the people who suffer are ordinary afghans ultimately.

it's rarely the ruling classes. host: here is a text from a viewer. i'd like to know how far back does this afghan culture go? hundreds of years? thousands of years? what can the world do to change their culture if anything? guest: that's also an interesting question because there are parts of afghanistan where the taliban changeover hasn't changed much for women. that's a reality in really conservative rural areas of the country where not much has changed. one thing has dramatically changed and that is hope. there is now a loss of hope. even in these areas where you have this entrenched pay tree arcual culture, that stretches back a very long time. women were hopeful. even in these areas because they could see the changes, as small as they were, slowly as they

were happening, they could see them happening. and now that all stops. and there is absolutely desperation and loss of hope. how long has this culture been going on? it doesn't matter. what matters is things were starting to change. women were being educated. women were going back to the workplace. when you have that, even if it's in major cities, there is always a trickle-down effect. host: you visited and showed viewers in this documentary that the government before the taliban took over had an agency for women, for promoting women. talk about what this agency did and what it looks like now. guest: ministry for women affairs. it protected the rights of women because of course, in pay tree arcual societies undergoing change women are always at the bottom. bottom of the pyramid. and especially in societies like

afghanistan women need protecting. now that ministry, the first thing the taliban did, was to turn that ministry, rename it make it ministry of vice and virtue. now that ministry is responsible for policing the moral behavior of afghan citizens. mostly women, of course. you'll see all across the city there are posters telling women how to dress. telling women how to behave. although of course ministry of vice should be giving advice not just to women but both men and women. it's very telling that they are concentrating on women. host: bill in florida. hi. caller: hi. how are you this morning? wondering is there any resistance to the taliban in the organized resistance to the taliban?

i think of the northern alliance, what happened to them? are they still a viable unit? guest: gosh. not a viable unit in my opinion. there are pockets of resistance in the north, the area you were talking about, but the taliban has been really good at cracking down on them. so at the moment i don't think there is really a viable resistance movement going on. at the moment it's very grassroots and it's the accident on the ground rather than armed resistance. host: you spoke about that earlier. this secret lengths that an underground grassroots moment is going to, the lengths they go to to try to challenge the taliban. i want to show another clip from the documentary where you meet,

in secret, with afghan women. >> in the past few months this group had organized many protests. demanding that the taliban keep its promise to allow girls to attend schools. they were the first women we met willing to show their faces on camera. before the taliban took over, lena was a lawyer. [speaking a foreign language] >> rahida was a librarian. [speaking a foreign language] >> this one had been about to open a restaurant. [speaking a foreign language]

>> the group was meeting to decide whether to continue with the street protests. just that week the taliban had been warning women to stop protesting or face arrest. host: again, the documentary is called "afghanistan undercover." it premieres tonight at 10 eastern, 9 central time on pbs. it will be available on frontline's website, youtube, and the pbs video app. pbs frontline correspondent ramita navai here with us to talk about her work in the country.

those women there, they disclosed their faces. guest: i know. and i really was astounded by their bravery. and said to them several times are you sure? are you sure it's going to be safe showing your faces? they looked me straight in the eye and say to me, we don't care what happens to us. we have younger sisters. we are doing this for them. now, we spent time with them in november, december when we were there on our first trip last year. and they were very active. they were taking to the streets. and they were protesting. they knew they were being monitored by the taliban. they were getting desperate -- death threats. regular death threats. by the time we went back to aflg in march this year, several had been arrested and imprisoned. they had been released but they were absolutely terrified. one young woman who had still

not been arrested, she just got lucky, she was in the right place at the right time when the taliban was making the arrests. she was being very closely monitored. she insisted on showing us what she was doing. showing us how she was still protesting. how she was still arranging protests. and thankfully she has managed to flee the country. so she's now in europe. she got help from a european country. host: we are going to dayton, ohio. lewis, question or comment here. caller: long time viewer. this is only my second time getting through. i am just so excited. my thoughts are similar to bill a few minutes ago. i'm curious, i was surprised and

disappointed-tkeurpbl' going to refer to it as the fall of afghanistan, i'm surprised that there wasn't more resistance from fathers, brothers, uncles knowing the threat that faced their daughters, sisters, nieces, so forth. i was just surprised by that. could you speak to the attitude of men who have daughters, sisters, whatever. host: we understand the question. guest: thanks for the question. it's really interesting the taliban when they were taking territory, when they were sweeping across the country, were good p.r. campaign. so they were trying hard to win people over.

and this is before kabul fell. before the takeover. and what was happening is people were so ground down and fed up with the corruption that preceded them, the corruption of the previous government that actually there wasn't the resistance we imagined there would be because the taliban showed that they had strong measures for justice, for example, where people felt the judicial system was weak. and that's why the main reason why there wasn't as much support as we imagined. as for the women issue, well, this isn't very -- this is a very patrichal society. when you are worrying about bread on the table and you think that a corrupt government ruling you and you think that this lot, the taliban, even though you don't believe in them or their

ideology, but at least you think they are going to help you put bread on the table, that's what is your priority. that's what happened in afghanistan. it's a really simple explanation. host: ramita navai, explain the planning that went into you doing the work that you did under cover, how it is you -- that you were able to pass as an afghanistan woman, and what did do you to keep yourself and your crew safe? guest: i'm originally iranian. so i can pass as an afghan. i look like an afghan. i cover up. hair a he jab. i speak -- wear a hijab. i speak it with an iranian accent. the version we speak and -- the same language but the difference between french and quebec. so many afghans, returnees from

afghans who fled iran or migrated there for work who returned to afghanistan, it's really not unusual to speak to somebody with my accent. which meant i could pass unnoticed as a local. like i said, my brilliant director, is half pakistani, half english, but he also can pass as an afghan and wore local clothes. so he posed -- we posed as a couple. he was my mute husband. i would do the talking if we needed to. of course when it wasn't appropriate for a woman to do the talking, we had an afghan team. afghan team were absolutely as you can imagine brave and brilliant. they kept us safe. there was a member of the team who was also our security advisor who i have known for nearly 20 years. so i trusted this person with my life.

and i followed his intruckses to the letter -- instructions to the letter. i knew he was going to keep me safe and all the afghans around us safe which is the most important thing because if i get caught, probably the worst thing that can happen is i'll be imprisoned. if an afghan gets caught, it's a different ballgame. that was really the priority is the safety of everyone working for us and contributed. so that made -- we have to use middle men. we have to use safe houses. we have to make sure we weren't being monitored. we were there by the way officially, we had afghan visas. we got through afghanistan, we announced our presence to the ministry of foreign affairs. we were not under cover. on one hand we stayed in a nice big hotel in kabul. however, to cover the stories we needed to cover and keep people safe we had to move under the radar. that's when we had to make sure

we were not being detected. that's when we flipped through checkpoints to far northern corners of the country. and in the west. host: were you able to -- do you believe that you were -- that taliban were instructed to keep an eye on you, and were you able to get away from that oversight? guest: i think in kabul i didn't get a feeling that we were being monitored. you have to be careful, of course, because you never know if you are or you're not. but we were extremely cautious. i know that germans have been arrested and monitored. certainly when we left kabul and we were in the province, that's when you have to be careful because you are an outsider. and really small towns and

villages. and the taliban has eyes everywhere. that's when it helped looking like a local. of course as soon as they see foreigners, or people who are white, obviously not from afghanistan, they start making phone calls. when we were in the province in the north we had to announce our presence. at the taliban office. so how we operated we made sure that before we announced our presence, when we did announce our presence we were given a reminder. which was useful. we used that to film our general shops in the streets because if you are filming in the streets in most places in afghanistan you'll get stopped. and you'll get questioned, and you have to show your papers and accreditation. it takes a long time. it's hard to get work done. what we did before we got our

taliban minder, we had to make sure we slipped under the radar before the taliban knew of our presence anywhere because we were local. we could operate this way. that's when we did our interviews. making sure there was no link between our contributors, who would be killed for some of the information they were giving us, us, and the taliban. that's how we did it. host: do you think you could return to afghanistan? guest: i would love to return to afghanistan but i don't think these revelations and what we have exposed have gone down very well with the taliban government. host: have you heard from the government? guest: not personally. but i have heard that they are very unhappy. host: did you confront them with what you found? guest: i did. and again we were careful our afghan team adviced us to leave all our intersraoups with

taliban officials. giving them a right to it put our allegations to them until the last minute. so we had a big interview with the deputy government spokesperson. we did it on the way to the airport. to stay really safe. make sure -- our footage was safe because that was my chance of saying i have evidence of this. this is what we have been doing all this time we have been here. and this is what we have been investigating. of course blanket denial usually. if it wasn't denial, we were told you are being fed fake news. they picked up the linko -- lingo, you are being fed fake news. all these people you have spoken to this is part after big conspiracy against us and they are being paid by the west. >> c-span's washington journal,

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