Observers considered these new controls an attempt by the Taliban to establish a political, social and cultural system of government, subject to the movement’s ideology and vision, and likened them to what the Iranian regime did in the wake of the 1979 revolution, until it completely subjugated public life.
The new instructions distributed by the movement to various media outlets included a ban on showing any drama programs, television series or films that include video clips of actresses. The local government should not display any material that “contradicts Islamic and Afghan values.”
The new directives revealed by the movement confirmed that it is forbidden to broadcast films that promote foreign cultures and traditions in Afghan society, or what it called “spreading immorality,” but the movement confirmed that female journalists and broadcasters are allowed to appear on television programs and reports, provided they adhere to Islamic dress, especially the hijab. .
The movement did not specify what it means in detail by “Islamic dress”, but what appeared from it in the Afghan street during the last period, which the movement allowed for women in public places, is related to covering the entire body, including hair, face and hands, and the movement did not impose the “Jadore” uniform. “The traditional Afghan as it did in the 1990s in the movement’s early rule.
The Afghan media, Saadat Kharmadi, who used to work for the Afghan “Ariana” channel before and is currently residing in Paris, explained in an interview to “Sky News Arabia” the movement’s goals from such new directives, and said: “The movement has a complete program to remove women from public space. From schools, the labor market, civic activities, and now from the media, dramatic and cultural products. Women and their freedom are the biggest challenges facing the movement that wants to subjugate them.”
Kharmadi continues: “By reviewing the history of media and culture in Iran, it seems clear that everything is repeated in detail. In both cases, there is an attempt to subjugate cultural institutions and media platforms to spread the ideology of the ruling current, and consequently the symbolic domination of the country along with military and security control.”
Despite the pledges made by the Taliban movement to respect women’s rights and public freedoms in the country, the set of decisions taken over the past three months completely contradicted those pledges, and in various areas of life.
Thousands of Afghan media professionals and artists have left the country during the past months, along with hundreds of production and artistic companies and institutions working in the media, film and cultural sectors, after the work of those sectors in Afghanistan had completely stopped.
Researcher Aras Faeq expected that hundreds of Afghan media and artistic institutions will grow abroad in the coming years, with a trend similar to what is happening in Iran, where the number of Iranian followers of these external platforms is more than following the channels, institutions and internal platforms, as the researcher explains in an interview with “Sky News Arabia”. .
Faeq said, “It is impossible to sever the connection of nearly 40 million Afghans with the outside world again, and because there is a very rich Afghan artistic, cultural and knowledge elite abroad, especially from the tens of thousands who have been displaced during the past months, and because everything that will be inside Afghanistan will be less attractive and influential, Afghans abroad will provide alternative media and artistic production institutions abroad, and they will be closely watched by Afghans inside.”
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