Guest we found out that many young girls and women were going missing and being in for socalled moral crimes, leaving her husband, running away from home, being in a car with someone you are not related to. The most important part of the story was that none of these imprisonment were being recorded , registered by the taliban so the taliban are keeping these stories quiet. We have found out in the western part of the country that suicide rates have rocketed since the taliban took over. This is another story they do not want out. We spoke to doctors who tell me that they were told that they are not allowed to register certain suicide cases and most of these cases were women killing themselves. In the north of the country, we realize there is very little news coming from the provinces. My director wore local clothes so we could access a lot of the points of the country that were hard to get to. We found that in northern provinces, there was forced marriages where parents forced their children to get married. This is teleand fighters abducting girls and young women and taking them for marriage. They usually turn up at families homes. Parents do not grant permission for marriage. Host what did the taliban promise when they took over . Guest well, they promised to protect womens 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. In the provinces theres nothing. Theres very Little Network there. Very little safety. This is like an underground railroad system. They end up in kabul and are in touch with this secret underground network. These women running it were young. Early to mid 20s. Every single one of these women had fled the taliban themselves, either forced marriage, or Domestic Abuse 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 operated around the city because they had to visit all of their safehouses, 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 werent being monitored. They are in constant touch with each other on a messaging app. Someone always knew where they were. They had location devices. There are checkpoints now throughout the city and throughout the country. This is an interesting thing because on one hand afghanistan is the safest it has ever been. 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 theyll 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. They were 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 is often carved 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 cant 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 living in hiding but they were hopeful they would 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. Its 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. [video clip] a wealthy businessman met with her secretly. He said a few weeks earlier his 19yearold 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 girls home with some of his men and demanded her fathers 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 taking a girl for forced marriage. [speaking a foreign language] [end video clip] host the documentary is called afghanistan undercover. It airs tonight, tuesday, this evening. August 9 at 10 00, 9 00 central time on pbs and will be available to stream on frontlines website, youtube, and the pbs video app. Pbss 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 was 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 didnt hear that part about the pattern. Explain. Guest the pattern is that taliban fighters will spot pretty girls in markets. At the bazaar. And also hear about them, where they live, which neighborhood. And thats where they go down the official route. So they will officially ask the parent for hand in marriage. When the parents say no, thats when they abduct the girls and the women. They tear up the familys houses and they put a gun to familys 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, youll 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, im a little nervous. I have been sitting here listening to what is going on in my country. I never voted in a president ial election. Host all right. I apologize. Im going to move on. Hes 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. Governments policy on afghanistan supports a shutdown of the Banking System in afghanistan. Also the withholding of 9 billion of afghan assets. This policy is having a devastating impact on the afghan population, including the deaths of tens of thousands of infants 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 wont 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 thats a really good question. And youre 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 standstill. And the people who suffer are ordinary afghans ultimately. Its rarely the ruling classes. Host here is a text from a viewer. Id 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 thats also an interesting question because there are parts of afghanistan where the taliban changeover hasnt changed much for women. Thats 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 patriarchal 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 an absolute desperation and loss of hope. How long has this culture been going on . It doesnt 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 its in major cities, there is always a trickledown 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 it was late ministry for it was the ministry for women affairs. It protected the rights of women because of course, in patriarchal societies undergoing change women are always at the bottom. Bottom of the pyramid. And especially in patriarchal 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. Youll see all across the city there are posters telling women how to dress. Telling women how to behave. Although of course ministry of vice and virtue should be giving advice not just to women but both men and women. Its 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 , any 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 dont think there is really a viable Resistance Movement going. At the moment its very grassroots and its the accident tivists on the ground rather than armed resistance. Host you spoke about that earlier. The secret lengths that an underground grassroots moment is going to, the lengths they go to try to challenge the taliban. I want to show another clip from the documentary where you meet, in secret, with afghan women. [video clip] 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 00 eastern, 9 00 central time on pbs. It will be available on frontlines 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 i said to them several times, are you sure . Are you sure its going to be safe showing your faces . They looked me straight in the eye and say to me, we dont 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 death threats. Regular death threats. By the time we went back to afghanistan 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 shes 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. Im curious, i was surprised and disappointed im going to refer to it as the fall of afghanistan, im surprised that there wasnt 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. Its really interesting, the taliban when they were taking territory, when they were sweeping across the country, were on a 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 wasnt 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 thats why the main reason why there wasnt as much support as we imagined. As for the women issue, well, this is a very patriarchal. 80, but it is also a very poor 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 dont believe in them or their ideology, but at least you think they are going to help you put bread on the table, thats what is your priority. Thats what happened in afghanistan. Its 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 im originally iranian. So i can pass as an afghan. I look like an afghan. I cover up. Wear a hijab. I speak the language. I speak it with an iranian accent. The difference between prussian and afghanistan, we speak 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, its 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. We posed as a couple. He was my mute husband. I would do the talking if we needed to. Of course when it wasnt appropriate for a woman to do the talking, we had an afghan team. Our 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 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 ill be imprisoned. If an afghan gets caught, its a different ballgame. That was really the priority is the safety of everyone working for us and the contributors. We had to use middlemen. We have to use safe houses. We have to make sure we werent 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. Thats when we had to make sure that is one we went through checkpoints far northern countries. Host do you believe that the taliban were instructed to keep an eye on you, were you able to get away from that oversight . Guest in kabul, i do not get a feeling that we were being monitored. You have to be careful. We were extremely cautious. Certainly when we left kabul and in the provinces, that is when you have to be careful. You are an outsider in a really small town. The taliban is absolutely everywhere. So when we were in the provinces in the north, we have to announce our presence at the taliban office. How we operated, we made sure before we announced our presence, we were giving a reminder, which was really useful. We used the in most cases in afghanistan youll get questioned and he will have to show and it takes a long time. To make sure we slipped under the radar. We operated this way and that is when we were making sure there was no links between our contributors who would not be killed for some of the information they were giving us. Host do you think you can return to afghanistan . Guest i would love to return to afghanistan. I do not think the revelation from what we have exposed have gone down really well from the taliban government. Host have you heard from the taliban government . Guest not personally. Host did you confront them with what you found . Guest i did. We were careful, our afghan team advise we lead our interviews with taliban officials. We had a big interview with a Deputy Government spokesperson. We did on the way to the airport. That was my chance of saying i had evidence of this this is what we have been doing for the time we have been here and what we have been investigating. If it was in denial, we were told, they picked up the lingo. Fake news. Host mike in virginia. Good morning to you. Caller good morning. I just want to say from the beginning, it does not matter if stayed in afghanistan or not. For us, nothing would change. This has been going on for far too many years. Nothing would change. Host ok. You made your point. Guest so, i would say that is not the case in our country. It is not the traditional marriage where parents, usually because of poverty that their children to be married off. In this case, it is forced marriage, which is of duction. Host frank, bayside, new york. Caller good morning. My comment is, change has to come within. In the United States, we had our own problems. We have a Vice President that is a woman. Women on the supreme court. Even black women. You cant force them to change. Really you are doing some good work there, but if i was you i would really be careful because you are playing around with a lit match. Host ramita. Guest you cant force change but education brings about change. Society in afghanistan had changed. Women were after first rule of the taliban had been banished, had not been allowed an education, had not been allowed to work. In 20 years the advance was remarkable. It was amazing. You would see young women living on their own, living with their friends, going to cafes, as i said there is a trickledown there is a trickledown effect. , education is everything. That changes. Womens mindset and most importantly mens mindset. So if we just give up and say you cant change people, we are giving up on half the population of afghanistan. And we are giving up on basic human rights and access to human rights. I cant do that. Host ramita navai, who is marian . Guest shes a young woman from the west of the country who went missing. We heard that many young girls and women were going missing in this western city. We wanted to investigate. We found out about her case. And we spoke to her family. Now it took a while for the family to figure out what had happened to her. And she had been imprisoned. She had been taken by taliban intelligence agents and put into prison for socalled immorality, moral crimes. For being in a taxi with a man good she was unrelated to. And most worryingly, there was absolutely no official record of her in prison. Who host she was in a taxi with a man not related to her, but it was her friends father. What were they doing . Guest they had found out that all of her friends had also gone missing and had been taken by taliban intelligence officers. They said if they turned up at the Police Station they would be able to help them. And they turned up to try to help them and were taken. Charged with the same crime. Immorality. Host her family went to that prison. What were they told . Guest it took it took a long time for her family to find out what had happened to her, where she was. They found out that she was in the prison. There was absolute denial. They went allowed to see her. Thats when we realized to get evidence of what was happening this is happening on a big scale. It wasnt just her and her friends. We needed to get evidence from inside the prison. We need to visit this prison. Host you did so. What did you find . Guest yes. We were told we would allowed to have access to the main wing. Of course we needed to get into the womens wing. We got lucky. The prison chief decided he would let us visit the womens wing while we were there. But we were told under no circumstances were we allowed to talk to any of the women. I was secretly filming. We werent allowed to film the women and we werent allowed to talk to them. But i had secret filming equipment on me and i managed to slip away. We had an entourage of about 15 armed taliban official the officials with us everywhere we went in the prison. Of course being a woman, which meant they didnt pay any attention to me and didnt address me and instead they addressed kareem, male director. I managed to slip away and because i could speak the language i was careful not to speak the language in front of them. The taliban officials up to that point didnt know i could speak the language. I slipped away and started talking to the women. There were about 40 women in the prison courtyard and they all told me they had been imprisoned since the taliban had taken over all for moral crime. I would like to say that under the previous government a lot of these socalled crimes were crimes. You could get arrested for being in a car with someone you are not related to. Kind of antiquated rules that were still part of the system. However, the difference was that it was overlooked. It rarely happened. If it did happen, if you happened to be unlucky and end up in prison, there was a judicial system that would help you. But the women that i saw in this prison there was no record of them. The taliban wanted to keep quiet from the world what it was doing and hadnt registered any of their cases. Host you spotted marian at that prison. Guest i really didnt think i was going to see her. Not all of the female prisoners were allowed out into the courtyard. There were many more in the prison in the cells themselves. In the prison itself. Now i had spent time with her family telling me what happened to her about her case, about these girls going missing. They showed me a photograph of her. And i spoke to some women and the prison chief spotted me and told me to stop speaking to the women and get back to them. In no Uncertain Terms so i went back to the group to draw minders to these taliban entourage and knew i had one shot of finding her. And one shot slipping away. Our director distracted all the taliban officials and i managed to slip away one last time and thats when i saw her. Host you spoke to her in english, why . Guest she was standing next to a prison guard and she immediately started talking english. She wanted to get her message out. Her message was tell the world nobody knows whats happening here. Tell the world what is really going on. And we are getting beaten. That was it. The prison guard demanded she stopped speaking english and start speaking in the language. She then of course praised the taliban. Host i want to show a part from the documentary when shes reunited, i believe, with her family. Take a look. [video clip] finally, marian and her mother were reunited. Her friend had also been released and were with her. She told us when she was detained the taliban officer took her phone. [speaking a foreign language] [speaking a foreign language] the other girls said they were tasered and beaten, too. [speaking a foreign language] miriam route was released and said she traded one prison for another or is she now . Guest because she has been accused of immorality, she has brought shame on her community and her family. It doesnt matter if she has committed a crime. Simply because of being accused of being immoral you bring shame on the family. It was an impossible situation. They told her they had no hopes of ever getting married. Women in her early 20s and the family was embarrassed and ashamed. It was a dangerous situation. Every single one of those young women who, not long ago, had Bright Futures and were all educated, no going to university, none had hope in the community. Host it premieres tonight on pbs at 10 00 eastern 9 00 central time. It is also available on streaming frontlines website, youtube, and the pbs bbf vi a conversation with Foreign Committee chairs and gregory meeks. He will be speaking to the Washington Post about u. S. Economic and in the indo pacific region. You can watch both of these events live on cspan, on the free cspan now video app, or online at cspan. Org. Now available at the cspan shop, 2022 congressional directory, go there today to order a copy of the directory. This is your guide to the federal government with Contact Information for every member of congress, including bios and committee assignments. Order your copy today at cspanshop. Org, or scan the code with your smartphone. Every cspan shop purchase help support cspan nonprofit operation. To talk about the media and her political views as a conservative action conference in dallas