Sadiqa Shirazi knew what the Taliban thought about her journalism well before their takeover of Afghanistan. From 2008, as Shirazi, then running a TV and radio station in Kunduz, focussed on stories about domestic violence, women’s rights and their education, she and her husband started getting death threats. In 2015, during the five brief days that Taliban entered Kunduz, her television and radio station was destroyed, and stripped of all equipment.
Shirazi, who had fled to the Afghanistan capital at the time, decided to fight back. With funding help from donors, and a mostly women team of 15, she restarted Roshani radio, broadcasting programmes from 6 am to 2 am, including live Q&As with listeners.
In 2021, Shirazi, her husband and eight-year-old daughter had already left for Kabul when the Taliban took over Kunduz. “They were calling my husband repeatedly, asking us to…
