Chronicling the History of Their Afghan Sisters
By NANCY RAMSEY
Published: November 16, 2004
In the summer of 2002, Brigitte Brault, a French television journalist working in Kabul, began training 14 Afghan women to be video journalists. It was less than a year after 9/11, little more than six months after the Taliban had been officially defeated, driven into the mountains of Tora Bora, in eastern Afghanistan.
At the time, ''it was deeply provocative to teach women to make films,'' said Ms. Brault, the director of ''Afghanistan Unveiled.'' The one-hour documentary, to be broadcast tonight on PBS's ''Independent Lens,'' follows seven of the journalists as they travel outside Kabul, in teams of two and three, into the various provinces to collect oral histories from women.
The film, crisply edited, is a sort of road movie that paints a collective portrait of the women of Afghanistan. The Kabul journalists in training ''were young,'' said Ms. Brault, 44. ''Some were 17, 18, 20 years old.'' When classes began, many arrived in their chadors, floor-length veils. Classes were conducted at Aina, an internationally financed, independent media organization based in Kabul. ''We worked in the garden, and we never went out on the streets with the camera,'' continued Ms. Brault, speaking by telephone from Kabul.
Mehria Azizi was one of the students. Now 20, she is a native of Kabul, from a family of six brothers and two sisters. When she was 8, her mother was killed. That was in 1992, after the Soviet Union had withdrawn from Afghanistan and before the Taliban took over, when the various mujahedeen factions were fighting for power.
''It was the Ramadan month; my mother was martyred during prayer time,'' said Ms. Azizi, speaking by cell phone from Kabul, in English, which she began learning when she was 6. Her mother was in the family's home, when a stray bullet from fighting in the streets entered a window and struck her. Ms. Azizi, as the oldest girl, became responsible for taking care of the younger children.
''Afghanistan Unveiled'' begins in the winter in Kabul, with the trainees heading out to the countryside in all-terrain vehicles. Before starting, Ms. Brault and others spent many hours trying to convince the women's families that traveling in the country would be not only safe but respectable. The father of one, Jamila Emami, is a mullah. ''He was afraid for his daughter, as all fathers are, but in Afghanistan people take care about reputation,'' Ms. Brault said. ''It would have been very difficult to hear someone tell him, 'You have a bad girl because she's a camerawoman.'''
So permission was granted under one condition: that the father accompany the team on their first foray outside the capital. Ms. Brault now laughs at the memory, but all went well. ''He is educated,'' she said. ''He is not a fundamentalist.''
''Afghanistan Unveiled'' unfolds as the teams visit the provinces to talk with women, many of whom are reluctant to appear on camera for fear of retaliation from the men in their communities. The first stop is Bamiyan, a region that made headlines in the spring of 2001, when the Taliban blew up giant Buddha statues carved into the mountain there. The team moves on to Herat, a city rich in cultural heritage but very restrictive in women's freedoms, and Jalalabad. The last stop is Badakshan, where a big source of income is cultivating opium poppies. But it is also a province long known for its hospitality and buzkashi, a variation of polo.
In Bamiyan, they discover families living in caves burrowed in the mountain. Zainab, a woman whose thin, weathered face makes her age difficult to determine, recounts the horror of the Taliban years: they burned her house, killed her husband and sons, stole her cows. ''If you call yourself journalists,'' Zainab tells the young women, ''you should go to see the places where everything was burned down.''
Such give and take continues throughout the hour. ''This is not an outsider's point of view,'' said Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive of PBS. ''Afghanistan Unveiled'' ''is the only film I've seen that has been done by women who lived through the Taliban, who have turned their lives around by a project they share. You experience it with them. The tone is very inviting. It's not a Western journalist going into the provinces to talk to the poor, downtrodden women of Afghanistan.''
The women interviewed often speak to the young journalists with a candor they cannot show in their own families or communities. In Badakshan, a forthright young woman tells how she was threatened with rape, mutilation and death if she refused to enter into an arranged marriage. As she talks, she looks directly into the camera.
''Every single woman in Afghanistan has a story, worthy of Steven Spielberg,'' said Reza, a freelance war photographer whose work appears in National Geographic and who uses only his first name. In summer 2001, he helped found the media organization Aina ( ''mirror'' in Farsi) as a nonprofit organization dedicated not to repairing ''the physical destruction from war,'' he said -- like rebuilding hospitals, schools and roads -- but to the ''mental and cultural destruction.'' Crucial to that reconstruction was developing an independent media.
''Afghanistan Unveiled'' was financed by the United States Department of State; additional support came from the Asia Foundation, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Unesco. Several of the young journalists have traveled to Washington; Jamila Emami and Gul Makai Rangebar spent a week at PBS and met with Laura Bush. Paula Dobriansky, the under secretary of state for global affairs, said the film is ''a calling card for the good we can do in Afghanistan.''
When the young women first went to Aina, ''some were afraid,'' Ms. Brault recalled. ''But they told me, 'I am brave, this is my duty, I have to show foreigners our country.''' For Ms. Brault, the moment that stands out most was the day in Faizabad, the capital of Badakshan, when Mehria Azizi confronted a group of men, some of whom carried weapons.
''Can anyone tell me why your women generally wear white chadri?'' she asks them in the film.
An answer about how women who wear the white chador are devout fails to satisfy her.
''Is it written in the holy Koran that a woman cannot show her face?'' she continues. ''No, that is not true. Any person who is that ignorant is beyond comprehension.''
Ms. Brault was holding the camera, and ''suddenly Mehria begins to speak with this man about women wearing the chadri.'' she said. ''I was afraid because all these men were around us, and this young girl is so brave, telling them, 'This is not Islam.'''
Ms. Azizi said she had wanted to be a journalist from a very young age, when she first saw foreign journalists in Kabul. Her mother encouraged her. ''Many times she told me, 'My daughter, I hope that everything you want you will arrive at,''' Ms. Azizi said. ''If she was alive, I think she would be very happy.''
Photo: Jamila Emami, filming in a clinic in Kandahar, is one of seven Afghan women training to be journalists in the film ''Afghanistan Unveiled.'' (Photo by Polly Hyman and Aina Women's Filming Group)