Molly Thomas BAJ'10 has spent the bulk of her career as TV host and correspondent working on flagship shows for such prominent news outlets as CBC and CTV. When sweeping newsroom cutbacks left her unemployed, she was in midst of preparing to travel overseas to cover a developing story about Afghan women and girls pursuing eduction against all odds under Taliban rule. Currently the host of educational broadcaster TVO's new series 'Big (if True)', she shares her experience of reporting without a safety net, and how her time at the University of Regina's School of Journalism armed her with the tools needed to navigate unanticipated roadblocks.
I may have grown up on the cold, flat prairies but I’ve always dreamt of seeing the ice capped mountains of Afghanistan. As a teenager, the book that vividly captured my imagination was The Kite Runner, the story of a young Afghan boy who recalls the fall of his country’s monarchy, the Soviet takeover, and the mass exodus of Afghan refugees around the world. The best-selling novel also details the rise of the Taliban. While I was a student at the University of Regina’s School of Journalism, the war in Afghanistan made headlines almost everyday. Canada deployed more than 40,000 troops to fight the Taliban; I’ll never forget the draped caskets of fallen soldiers, honoured along our Highway of Heroes. 158 Canadian men and women lost their lives fighting for a new Afghanistan, one with basic freedoms, like simply going to school. I have been fascinated by this foreign land ever since.
Today, the Taliban is again in control of Afghanistan and it is now the only country in the world where women and girls are banned from the classroom. Since its dramatic takeover in 2021, this draconian regime has been trying to systematically erase women from public life. Considering our countries’ shared history, I figured we would hear a lot more about the plight of Afghan women over the past few years, but sadly, we haven’t. That’s why in early 2022, I applied for the Michener-Deacon Fellowship, our country’s most prestigious journalism award, to get into Afghanistan and bring these stories back to Canadians. At the time, I was working for Canada’s largest private network and longest running investigative show, CTV’s W5.
Little did I know that after receiving that esteemed fellowship, my own network would dump me and my entire project. W5 as viewers knew it, would be dismantled eight months later, and this expensive, international project was clearly not in CTV’s cutback plans. And so there I was, accepting the award from Canada’s Governor General, yet trying not to cry. I was alone as a freelancer, trying to get on the ground in what many call the most complex and dangerous country in the world for women.
Broadcast media is going through a reckoning right now; every station is struggling to compete for eyeballs and ad dollars. The world is inundated with unsubstantiated opinions and misinformation, and amidst that noise, mainstream networks, who are generally held to a higher standard of reporting, are trying to stay relevant. Layoffs of journalists everywhere are so normalized, they ironically feel like a rite of passage. Mid-level and veteran journalists are also throwing in the towel, because they can’t find enough work as freelancers or aren’t getting paid what they’re worth. And it’s sad, because this ultimately affects the depth of reporting we’re exposed to.
I detail my own personal frustrations in my three-part podcast series, ‘Dear Taliban’; in it, you’ll hear the raw realities of what it’s like to get these types of stories on the air. The barriers put up by the Taliban were somewhat predictable, but it was the roadblocks that I faced in Canada that shocked me. In our current media landscape, stories of the most vulnerable are often left behind. Afghan women tell me they feel forgotten and I don’t blame them.
We’re talking about a country where women and girls must now cover themselves completely from head to toe in long dark burkas whenever they leave their homes; even their eyes are completely hidden by a mesh screen. If they don’t comply they are often beaten in the streets. It’s a country where women that are brown like me, are not allowed to speak or recite poetry in public; a place where women can’t walk or run in the country’s national park without a male chaperone or stand near a kitchen window in case they might ‘tempt’ someone. It reads like a dystopian horror novel, but this is real life for women in Afghanistan. Long-term, the loss of school for 1.4 million women and girls is perhaps the most debilitating blow, taking away any hope of a better future.
It’s hard for me to imagine that kind of restricted life. University has always been in the cards for me. My parents, ‘Class A nerds’ I like to joke, deeply value education. My father has a doctorate, and my mother didn’t think one master’s degree was enough, so she polished off two more after her undergraduate degrees. They married late within their own East Indian tradition, because they were so steadily focused on school. Inevitably, higher education was built into my DNA, and I’m grateful.
Molly Thomas BAJ’10 learning to use a camera at the University of Regina School of Journalism. Photo Credit: Eric Anderson
Education has forced me to critically engage with the world around me. It has given me a voice in circles of influence and opened doors well beyond my own backyard. Perhaps most importantly, it has prompted me to challenge my own biases. I don’t know how I would navigate life without it, especially as a woman and a visible minority. And so when education is violently taken away from women and girls that look just like me, simply based on where they happen to be born, I get fired up as a journalist but also as a human being.
“I haven’t left my house in months… because I’m afraid of the Taliban” says 24-year-old Farhunda who lives in Kabul, Afghanistan. She’s one of many Afghan women I spoke to who feel like they’re prisoners in their own country. It’s a drastic change from the vibrant life Farhunda once knew. She was one of the first women in her family to go to university; studying public policy, she dreamt of becoming a diplomat. That all changed on November 2, 2020 when a group of terrorists stormed into Kabul University and started shooting.
“We were on the second floor and on the first floor were all the terrorists, and we were not able to escape from the building,” she says. Some of Farhunda’s classmates started frantically jumping out the window to escape. As she considered making the leap herself, someone accidentally pushed her from behind, and she fell a full two stories down to the pavement below.
“When I fell to the ground, I felt unbearable pain in my spine and my left leg,” she says. She soon realized her left leg was bent out of place, and she couldn’t walk. Farhunda used all her strength to pull herself to safety while gunshots rang out around her. Two of her close friends were gunned down not far from her; 22 people lost their lives that day.
When Farhunda finally made it to the hospital she was not able to talk, walk, sit up or stand. She had to undergo several major surgeries, and the incident left her in a wheelchair for more than a year. Her extended family made the situation worse, blaming her educational ambition for her lot in life. “If [you] didn't go to university, [you] would never become paralyzed, [you] would be a healthy girl,” they would tell her.
But Farhunda refused to give up on her dreams. Even in a wheelchair and despite grave warnings from her family, she returned to Kabul University to finish her studies. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy and Administration just before the Taliban banned women from universities.
How many of us would be as brave as this young Afghan woman?
A school run by Afghan refugees for fellow refugees in Islamabad, Pakistan, financially supported by Right to Learn Afghanistan. Photo: Molly Thomas
Today, the only way women in Afghanistan can be educated is through secret schools. A hodgepodge of Canadian programs try to support from afar, like the Daricha School which keeps 4,000 Afghan girls in the classroom both underground and online in Afghanistan. Right to Learn Afghanistan (formerly Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan) struck a partnership with Arizona State University to provide free online classes where thousands have already enrolled. The 30 Birds Foundation has worked to bring more than 400 at-risk Afghan school girls, family members, and education activists to safety, a portion of which are in Saskatchewan universities.
In Afghanistan, secret schools often disguise themselves as ‘madrassas’ or religious schools, but it’s still a major risk for both teachers and students. Internet access remains a massive barrier for those trying to learn online. And yet, these women persist.
The strength of these women inspired me to keep going on my own fellowship. A project that should’ve taken 4 months, took a year and a half to complete. The Taliban eventually rejected my entrance to Afghanistan; I had to pivot multiple times to somehow tell these important stories. On a very miniscule level, I have experienced some of the barriers to information and stonewalling from men Afghan women face everyday. Can you imagine living like that your entire life?
It’s why we must unashamedly amplify these Afghan voices and defiantly push back against a way of life that threatens basic freedoms for women across the world. As the courageous leaders of the civil rights movement proclaimed: ‘No one is free, until we’re all free’.
First Person essays express the views and opinions of the author and to not necessary reflect those of the University of Regina.
Banner photo: Molly interviews five Afghan sisters in Pakistan, who have all had to flee their country and leave school. Faces are concealed to protect their identities.
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