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- A female news reporter made history by interviewing a Taliban spokesman on live TV.
- TOLO News host Beheshta Arghand has now fled Afghanistan, CNN reported.
- Arghand said she was concerned about her safety.
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A female reporter who interviewed the Taliban spokesman after the group took over Kabul has fled Afghanistan, CNN reported.
On August 17, TOLO News host Beheshta Arghand interviewed senior Taliban representative Mawlawi Abdulhaq Hemad in a live broadcast. It was the first broadcast by a female reporter in the country since the group took over Kabul on August 15.
-Miraqa Popal (@MiraqaPopal) August 17, 2021
Arghand, 24, told CNN she still felt it was dangerous for her in Afghanistan. She left on a Qatari flight on Tuesday with other members of her family.
"I left the country because, like millions of people, I fear the Taliban," she told the outlet.
TOLO owner Saad Mohseni told CNN that most of the independent outlet's well-known reporters have fled over safety concerns.
"We have the twin challenge of getting people out [because they feel unsafe] and keeping the operation going," Mohseni told CNN.
The Taliban has said it's rebranding itself as more moderate. They've said they won't go after people who worked with the former government or the US and that women's rights will be protected.
"I am still astonished that people are afraid of Taliban," Hemad told Arghand during their interview.
When the group ruled Afghanistan, women were barred from work and school and were not allowed to leave their homes without a male relative.
It's not clear if the Taliban will revert back to the way they previously ruled Afghanistan.
Arghand told CNN she did the interview with Hemad "for Afghan women," but that it was difficult.
"I told myself, 'One of us must start ... If we stay in our houses or don't go to our offices, they will say the ladies don't want to work,' but I said to myself, 'Start working,'" Arghand told CNN. "And I said to the Taliban member, 'We want our rights. We want to work. We want - we must -be in society. This is our right.'"
She reached out to activist Malala Yousafzai, who she had previously interviewed, for help leaving the country. Yousafzai survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban in Pakistan in 2012.
Arghand said she hoped to return to her home country someday, as long as the Taliban keep their promise.