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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has taken our eyes and a lot of American media outlet's eyes off other things going on internationally. We want to come back to Afghanistan right now for a segment about some really troubling developments there since the US withdrawal. It was eight months ago, over half a year ago that the Taliban rush back in to take control of the country after US troops pulled out. Even though Putin's aggression continues in Ukraine. Of course, we'll continue to talk about that.

We wanted to take a look at how the situation in Afghanistan has been changing now. One thing is that initially, the Taliban said that girls would be allowed to return to schools. A few weeks ago, however, they appeared to have reneged on that promise when principals turned away girls until they had gotten "official permission." There are also reports of journalists being targeted. According to a pair of NGOs nongovernment organizations that monitor this thing, journalists imprisoned intimidated, and in some cases tortured.

With 300 media outlets reportedly closed since the Taliban takeover, that's according to the intercept, there's a lot of information about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan that's just not filtering out to the rest of the world. Let's learn what we can now with Karen De Young Associate Editor and Senior National Security Correspondent for the Washington Post who's on this story. Karen, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Karen De Young: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: maybe we should start a little meta with the quality of the information we're even able to get about the situation there. The Intercept reported last week that journalists have been especially targeted by the Taliban. As I mentioned they have the stat of over 300 news outlets having been shut down and they quote the research director of the arm conflict location and event data project, who said journalists that do risk reporting anything that contradicts the Taliban narrative have faced threats, intimidation. Even beyond that, some have been jailed, some have been tortured. Is the Washington Post able to report from or on Afghanistan?

Karen De Young: Yes. This has primarily affected, Afghan journalists. We have people there, we have a bureau in Kabul as do a number of other US and international outlets and we've worked very closely with Afghan journalists. It's the secret of foreign correspondents. If you didn't have local journalists helping you, you'd be in bad shape. Afghan outlets and Afghan journalists have encountered a lot of difficulties. As you said, a lot of outlets have closed down both broadcast radio and print.

TOLOnews, which is the biggest broadcast outlet there, still operates and pretty much works as it did before, but they've had to be very, very careful about how they operate. I think that women on the air are a problem. As you said, a number of local journalists have been arrested or have disappeared. It is a problem, a big problem with Afghan journalists. So far, they have not cracked down on foreigners. Our bureau seems to be operating fairly as normal there.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if we have anybody in the audience right now with ties to Afghanistan, we would really love your help to report this story with on the ground journalism under tight restrictions, at least among Afghan journalists, as we just heard. Call in and tell us what you've been hearing from your loved ones over there. If you're in touch with them, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or a tweet @BrianLehrer.

Either way help the world hear what you've been hearing personally about the situation in Afghanistan with Karen De Young, from the Washington Post. Karen, the Taliban had said that girls would be able to return to school up to sixth grade, or at least they wouldn't be removed from school as they had been able to return largely during the American presence. Here's what that looked like a few weeks ago when classes were set to start up again.

A teacher in Kabul told NPR that as girls entered the classroom, the principal told them, "Don't come in here until we've got official permission. When you come back, you have to wear a black face veil, a black chador, and a black scarf." "A Taliban spokesman has said that it's just that they haven't made a final decision about school uniforms for girls." That was for an NPR story. What's the situation now, as you understand it, weeks after those reports, are girls still being kept out of school?

Karen De Young: Yes, this affects girls above sixth grade. Girls up to sixth grade are still allowed to go to public schools. These are girls sixth grade and above what they call secondary school there. The Taliban had indicated last fall that they were working this all out and girls would be allowed to go. Then the education ministry said in mid-March that yes all grades and all schools would be open for girls.

Their school break is in the winter and so schools were closed from January until the 23rd of March. On the 23rd of March, girls above sixth grade showed up for school and were told in the morning when they got there to go back home. The Taliban subsequently made an announcement and said, "Oh, we're just still working this out." That we've had a problem with facilities. They did say there was a problem with uniforms that they hadn't decided yet.

What happened, what we've learned is that there was a meeting of the Taliban leadership the previous weekend in Kandahar where they have their headquarters. There was a split between the leadership. There were a few who decided that this was not a good idea for girls to go back to school in these upper grades. The supreme leader agreed with them and said, "No, can't go back." They put out this wishy-washy announcement saying, "Well, we're still working on this, tune in later." As far as I know, nothing has happened yet.

Brian Lehrer: Now the US is in a awkward position here having just withdrawn. Obviously, not approving of this kind of thing. The US had been attempting to engage with the Taliban government on some economic issue but called off those talks when girls weren't allowed to return to school. I see that on an Al Jazeera report, you can confirm that if you have it.

How has the international community's stance toward the Taliban changed? How is the US assessing its policy toward Afghanistan when there's such a humanitarian food crisis there as well? We don't want to do things that seem to empower Taliban repression. What kind of decision-making is taking place as far as you know?

Karen De Young: This is a real dilemma for the international community and certainly for the United States, which was always the biggest donor to Afghanistan. After the Taliban took over last August, everybody, every country in the world broke relations with Afghanistan. All foreign assistance was stopped. At the time this was 75% of all the money coming into Afghanistan, 45% of Afghan GDP. Not only foreign Aid was stopped, but all reconstruction projects and support for the government which no one recognized the Taliban government.

You had basically, just as winter was approaching, then the harsh winter in Afghanistan, you had no money circulating at all, banks closed down. There were no imports. There was no way to heat homes-

Brian Lehrer: Bless you.

Karen De Young: -no one was making a salary. Thank you. You had teachers, healthcare workers, all of whom are government employees there, sanitation workers were not getting paid. Still haven't gotten paid most of them. The economy just completely shut down. The international community, as I said, was faced with a dilemma. They had said recognition on the Taliban will depend on several things, whether they form an inclusive government that is to allow other groups, minority groups and women inside the government, which so far they have not done still in all Taliban, technically what they

call an interim government, but they haven't done anything permanent that they would stop all relations with terrorist groups operating there. That includes the Islamic State, and Al-Qaeda, and several others, and that they would at all levels respect the rights of minorities and in particular women and girls.

Since none of these things have been done, but there was very high concern that basically a huge percentage of the population was going to starve to death over the winter. They came up with some mechanisms to send humanitarian assistance there that would not go to the Taliban. It would just go directly through non-government aid organizations supervised by the United Nations and would go directly to the Afghan people, and that's been going on all winter and spring but still, the banks aren't open and the economy just does not function at all.

The infrastructure is collapsing, and in the absence of any other recognizable progress by the Taliban to achieve the goals or the objectives of the international community set out to reinstate this aid, the sending girls back to school was a big test. It was the one thing that they could do and they said they were going to do it. There were lots of things arranged.

President Biden said he was going to unfreeze at least a portion of Afghan government assets that were frozen here. The World Bank, which has a multi-billion dollar reconstruction, a trust fund for Afghanistan said it was going to release part of it. Various governments said that they would do other things, so everyone was anxiously awaiting this decision and girls going back to school and of course, it didn't happen.

Now the international community is trying to decide what to do about it, and they haven't decided yet. Now the World Bank and the international monetary funds start this week, their annual meetings here in Washington. One of the decisions that's going to have to be made is this World Bank trust fund, are they going to go ahead with any of these programs, or are they still going to keep them frozen?

Brian Lehrer: What's the standard that they'll use to decide?

Karen De Young: I think they're waiting for the Taliban to make a decision on girls in school. Even though that seems to be, I think it's highly unlikely that the Taliban is going to come up with a new government anytime in the near future. The whole situation with support for, or tolerance of terrorist groups there, I think the Taliban has been trying, but they haven't gotten very far.

There was in fact this week, a huge explosion in two boy schools in Kabul. There's trouble with Pakistan over a kind of [unintelligible 00:13:08] group of Pakistani Taliban that Pakistan says have been attacking inside Pakistan. I don't think that's not going to have any time soon.

Again, sending girls to school is the quickest and easiest way for the Taliban to demonstrate that they actually are moving toward making some progress on these commitments because they're the ones that made the commitments in the first place that they would allow girls to go to school. I think everyone's just waiting for something to happen and that is the most obvious thing that could happen, but it hasn't yet.

Brian Lehrer: Karen De Young with us, if you're just joining us, yourself, national security correspondent for the Washington Post, and I'm glad you feel so comfortable on in the show kindly you could just sneeze. If you have to sneeze, it's a good thing.

Karen De Young: I'm sorry.

Brian Lehrer: Other people would go, "Oh, excuse me, wait, I have to go away for a minute," and all listeners can handle it. It's real-life here we are. We're two people. We're having a conversation. You have to sneeze.

Karen De Young: I forgot about the mute button.

Brian Lehrer: Just cover your mouth, Ruth in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Karen De Young from the Washington Post. Hi Ruth.

Ruth Messinger: Hi, Brian, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What's up?

Ruth Messinger: I'm part of Karen's presentation.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, your Ruth Messinger, aren't you? Is this Ruth Messinger?

Ruth Messinger: I am.

Brian Lehrer: I recognize your voice. I didn't get that from the screener. Listener some of Ruth Messinger was the borough president of Manhattan. She ran for mayor. She was the Democratic nominee against Rudy Giuliani in 1997. Some people probably put license plates on cars that said, "Don't blame me. I voted for Ruth Messinger," once upon a time.

Ruth Messinger: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Now you're involved in work related to this. Why don't you tell people what you're doing basically well?

Ruth Messinger: Okay. First of all, since I left the city government, I've spent most of the last 20 years doing international human rights work, but I called specifically because there was a self-organized delegation, a women's peace, and an education delegation. Seven women from mostly from the New York and Washington area, a range of faiths, literally, two Muslims, a Hindu, a Jew, an Episcopalian priest, a [unintelligible 00:15:42] Catholic and an atheist. In any event, we have just come back from five days in Kabul.

We went there initially, Brian to welcome girls going back to school. Two days before we were to leave, the Taliban delayed, that school opening, and we went anyway. We'd love to all be on the show to talk about what we learned because we talked to NGOs that are providing non-governmental organizations, that are providing services for girls. We met with the Taliban. We sat and met with the education ministry.

In fact, this morning, we had a follow-up phone call with the education ministry. Again, pushing them on taking all of the steps necessary to get girls back in school, but also Brian, we have a second issue. The second issue is that the United States needs to unfreeze some of the $7 billion of Afghan money that we're holding in the US federal reserve because the country is sinking into despair, higher levels of unemployment, higher problems with starvation. That's the way you get a failed state, which nobody needs.

Brian Lehrer: Ruth that's the dilemma. That's the dilemma that Karen was just laying out. Do we give money to a government that is doing these repressive oppressive things like not letting girls go to school?

Ruth Messinger: I think the real issue, which Karen was just touching on is you can't get any quest if you don't talk to people. We're in the middle of Passover. I know that's not everybody's holiday, but I would point out that Moses went to negotiate with Pharaoh. Pharoah was a tyrant of his own sort, terrorist of his own sort but negotiating and conversation and diplomacy help.

Talking to the Taliban education ministry and saying, "This is inexcusable. These girls need to be in school." There's lots of Western interest in pressure, and then hearing from them, which we did today, how many girls are in school that some women teachers are still being paid and that there's pressure within their own organization, for girls going to school and against girls going to school, so you have to support their people who are pushing on the right side.

You have to also look at the fact that they are right now, whatever you'd like to call it a regime, a government, the people in power, we are sitting on $7 billion of their money. No, Brian, I'm not in favor. Although some people might be of saying, "Here's your $7 billion," but I'm certainly in favor of thinking about what would happen, if we said, "Pick a number. Here's $2 million, we are counting on your spending on healthcare, food for those who have nothing to eat, and education, and we're going to watch," and either they do the right thing or they don't, because it's their money.

Brian Lehrer: Ruth, can you take us a step deeper into something you said a minute ago, if you know, and that is that there are people within the Taliban leadership who are for girls being able to go to school and those who are against it. What's the nature of those internal debates as far as you can tell.

Ruth Messinger: Telling is listening to them, Brian. You, and I know, and really all your listeners know, you're talking to people in power you're never sure exactly whether you're being told the whole truth, but we talked to a lot of people who said, "This is a decision being made at the top levels of our Emirate. There are many of us who are more than ready to get rolling." We actually were told to meet the education ministry. If the top Amir said, "Girls should go to school at 11:00, then at 11:01," these people said, "we would be ready to roll."

I have every reason to believe that there are some differences of opinion. One of the reasons I believe that Brian is that a lot of these people have daughters, and girls are unhappy. Women are unhappy. These girls have no future. One of the saddest things that happened to us while we were there was by accident. Right near our hotel, there was a graduation party from a private medical school elsewhere in the country. They came to Kabul for their graduation. All these young men and women in equal members dressed in graduation robes being graduated from a private medical school. When we asked these women, what were their work prospects? They said,

"Right now there are none." This is in a country that needs these women as doctors. These are women who have studied for whatever, four or five, six years after high school, maybe eight years, nine years, in order to become doctors, and the country needs them. The constant message to the Taliban, up to the top, has to be not only is this immoral and inequitable, but you are depriving your country of half of its future, because you're not letting the women shine and take positions in the way they ought to.

Brian Lehrer: Karen, you want to get in on this, or is there anything even that you want to ask Ruth Messinger?

Karen De Young: With anything that was said, I think, that as I mentioned before, there are disagreements in the Taliban leadership. You have some very powerful people who want girls to go to school. You look at the interior minister Haqqani, who's a designated terrorist by the American government, he's all for women going to school.

Certainly, as we said, the education ministry, the foreign ministry, they have all in their conversations with NGOs and with foreigners have all said, "Yes, this is going to happen," but as I said, I think, there are people in the top leadership who don't want it to happen and have made their case to the top leader and he agreed with them, at least for now.

They're all very well aware that-- It's not that they haven't gotten the message that they need women for the country to progress. It's not that they haven't gotten the message that their, excuse me, that their future in terms of the economy and their re-entering the world depends on this. They know that. Again, it's just waiting for this decision. Again, there are private schools that are educating girls. That is true. It's the public schools.

There are programs to pay teachers that are being funded by the international community to go directly to the teachers, not all of them, and to healthcare workers, including women. You talk to anybody in the NGO community, those are stopgap measures. They say humanitarian aid, this funneling money for direct payments to certain workers in the public sector it's just not going to be enough. Until you get the banking system.

Brian Lehrer: Ruth, you want to last thought before you go?

Ruth Messinger: [unintelligible 00:22:49] Karen and I are shared in our perspective. I just think having her on, having what we'd love for The Washington Post to consider an op-ed from one of our group. Brian three, four, five, six of us would love to be on with you for a segment and just talk about the people we met. Some of what we heard, I think, we're entirely in sync with Karen. I just believe that continued pressure and every opportunity to talk directly to people in the government is what's going to open the door eventually. I think it's critical that that happens [crosstalk].

Karen De Young: I can just say there are a lot of conversations going on with people in the government. Certainly, from representatives from this country, Europeans, the UN. I think it's not for lack of conversations. There are a lot of conversations going on and they all know what the problem is.

Brian Lehrer: Ruth Messinger, thank you for your call.

Ruth Messinger: [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, you can finish that thought.

Ruth Messinger: Well, [crosstalk]. We'd love for you to pursue this issue because I think it's on a lot of people's minds. Although, as you know, people are concerned with Afghanistan and then switch and get concerned with Ukraine and Afghanistan disappears from the news. It's great that you're doing this and that Karen is doing it and we would just look for more opportunities to report on what we saw and heard and our continuing efforts, including today speaking with the education ministry by phone.

Brian Lehrer: I love the fact that you use the segment to pitch another segment and to pitch the Washington Post reporter on placing an op-ed. We hear you.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Ruth, thank you for your call, and thank you for your work really.

Ruth Messinger: Thank you, Bian.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM, HD, and AM New York. WNJT-FM 88.1, Trenton, WNJP 88.5, Sussex, WNJY 89.3, Netcong, WNJO 90.3, Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. Karen De Young from the Washington Post, I want to finish up with one final question that's really a follow-up on an exchange that you and Ruth Messinger were just having.

There was also an opinion piece in The Guardian from Dr. Aisha Jahangir, which notes the different degrees of coverage that the Western press has given to the situation in Afghanistan compared to the situation in Ukraine lately, at least. She wrote, "Journalists may not be propagating war but through inconsistent and infrequent coverage, they are also not prioritizing peace." How do you think, at a policy level, that coverage or lack of coverage has shaped or enabled what the Taliban is doing in Afghanistan, maybe even under direct cover explicitly, in their heads cover of Ukraine taking the front row?

Karen De Young: Well, go back to August, September, October. We were all Afghanistan all the time. I think that there's a reason why it's called the news. [laughs].

Brian Lehrer: Things that are new.

Karen De Young: We certainly gave equally as much attention to Afghanistan then as we're getting to Ukraine now. Those of us who cover Afghanistan, we still have our bureau there, we are still writing stories. I'm still writing stories, even though I'm also covering Ukraine pretty much every day. The fact is, that since this school thing happened, not much has happened to change the situation. It's just gotten worse. I think there is coverage of that. It may not be on the front page every day, but I think there is coverage of it.

Brian Lehrer: Karen De Young is Associate Editor and senior national security correspondent for The Washington Post. Thanks so much for coming on with us. We really appreciate it.

Karen De Young: You're welcome. Good to talk to you again, Brian.

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