By: Elyas Ahmadi
Shamsia Karimi* is a popular face and familiar name in the social media platforms of Afghanistan. She gained fame through her own channel on YouTube.
Before the Taliban took over, Shamsia’s YouTube channel provided her with both an income – and fame. “Everywhere I went, people cheered for me,” she says. “They’d say, ‘Well done girl, you are doing a wonderful job!’ They showed me my videos on their mobile phones.”
But the fame became problematic once the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, causing her such distress that she felt forced to leave the country. Smuggled across the border of a neighboring country under a burqa, alone and separated from her family, Shamsia wishes she’d never had the fame. “I wish I didn’t start the YouTube channel at all,” she says. “I wish I was like a girl who didn’t know anything about political developments.”
In interviews with Rukhshana Media, a number of female YouTubers in Afghanistan say they have been targeted and harassed by the Taliban, even receiving marriage proposals and threats from Taliban commanders. The only solution they’ve found is to stop doing what they love.
Shamsia, who does not want her location to be named in the report for security reasons, says that while still in Afghanistan, Taliban guards twice threatened her if she didn’t promise to stop making videos.
On the first occasion, a Talib commander in Bamyan called Shamsia come to his office. “He scolded and cursed me a lot. I apologized and he told me not to work anymore,” she says. “He took all my details – my phone number, home address, fingerprints, and everything.”
Shamsia says that for a few months she did comply because of the threats. Then when the university semester began last year, she went to Balkh province to finish her last semester of engineering at Balkh University.
But although she had stopped posting on YouTube and she was busy with her studies, the harassment of the Taliban did not stop.
The same Taliban commander texted her – with a marriage proposal, and pictures of her family. Rukhshana Media has seen the commander’s messages.
“It was the night before my exam that he sent me my family’s pictures,” she says. “He wanted to get close to me. He was talking about proposing marriage somehow. I was so scared.”
As soon as she finished her semester, Shamsia went to Kabul quietly. But another problem began.
On December 5, she attended a party at the house of a YouTuber named Hatam Selahshor in Kabul who was celebrating having hit 20,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. The Taliban raided the gathering, arresting Hatam and several of his friends. They are still in Taliban custody.
Shamsia was among the guests interrogated by the Taliban and was forced to promise again that she would not post on the social media platforms. “The Taliban forces were hitting everyone,” she says. “When they entered the room where Mr. Selahshor was celebrating his 20-thousand subscribers, they were filming everyone.”
“They got everyone’s fingerprints, phone numbers, and home addresses and then let us go,” she adds.
Shamsia says that the Taliban also made people sign a piece of paper but she was not clear about what was written on it.
After the incident, Shamsia was stuck at home. “My mental condition really deteriorated and I was depressed,” she says. “Like the days after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban again.”
Since taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban has imposed a growing number of restrictions on the activities of women and girls, including their presence in traditional media and on social media. They have banned women acting in movies and TV shows and have decreed female TV anchors to cover their faces except for their eyes while on television.
In the past sixteen months, several YouTubers and social media influencers have been arrested and imprisoned. Ajmal Haqiqi, a model and YouTuber, and his colleagues were arrested in June last year and their forced confession was published on social media.
Farid Farahmand*, 25, a YouTuber based in Jaghori district of Ghazni province, told Rukhshana Media that three of female YouTubers in Jaghori were arrested by the Taliban while in Kabul. According to him, the women – Arezo, Fereshta, and Farzana – were arrested in December last year and their fate is still unknown.
Shukria Rahimi* used to post on YouTube with some of her videos receiving up to 90,000 views. The 23-year-old and her colleagues also used to record and publish information about aid programs and report on living conditions in Kabul.
“We were taking aid to people one day, and a Taliban guard with his four or five guys stopped us to ask what we were doing,” Shukria says. “When I said that we are helping out with aid, he said, ‘Help someone else’. He got my phone number and then I think he saw my dramas on my YouTube channel. He said ‘Your work is against Sharia law’ and turned off my phone.”
Somaiya Shadab, 19, started her career as a YouTuber in Jaghori district of Ghazni. She had overcome her family’s opposition to it, but the Taliban pressure ultimately forced her to stop.
“Some girls who work on their YouTube channels were arrested in Kabul with Selahshor,” she says. “Their arrest caused many to shut down their channels, I quit it before anything else happens.”
YouTube was a window of hope for financial independence
Shamsia Karimi and Somaiya Shadab both managed to achieve financial independence through their social media work.
“I wanted to become independent,” Shamsia says. “The income was good, I used to receive about 9,000 afghanis, an amount equal to $100 USD a month.”
It meant Shamsia could also help her family. “In short, I didn’t have to reach out to anyone. It was good.”
Earning incomes through YouTube was a growing industry in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover. A substantial number of influencers were girls and women.
Homaira Helen*, a YouTuber, helped her family financially through her channel. She studied education management at Bamyan University and was a school teacher in Kabul before the Taliban. But because of the restrictions imposed since their control of the country, she has been staying at home. She says that YouTube had been a source of hope for her and family’s economic situation. “We are very worried. Our channel is focused on Hazaragi cultural activities,” she says. “But due the fear of the Taliban, we can’t even hold a program that includes playing Damboora. And we can’t shoot the programs outside our homes anymore,” she says.
The Taliban have banned many women from working outside homes by banning them from certain professions and industries. The Taliban’s minister of higher education Mawlawi Neda Mohammad Nadim has justified the prohibition saying that, based on population numbers, if all the men in Afghanistan get educated and work, there should be no need for women to do so.
“Women do not have access to any rights,” Homaira says. “Women are not counted as human beings.”
Breaking taboos
The YouTubers mentioned in this report were all dealing with cultural and social issues.
Shamsia gained popularity in sharing aspects of Hazaragi culture, whispering folkloric poems and documenting major parts of the Hazaragi traditions. “It was my dream to introduce this culture in the form of seminars in addition to posting them on YouTube in the future,” she says.
These women say that even before the Taliban, sharing widely on social media platforms was not easy for them, and they faced many obstacles due to more conservative elements in society and traditional views on women.
Somaiya says that at the beginning of her work, some of her relatives were against her. “People were talking behind my back a lot, but I didn’t care what people said,” she says, adding that the same was true for many female YouTubers. However, now, with the Taliban threats of imprisonment against them and their families, these courageous women are all homebound.
*Note: The names of the interviewees have been chosen as pseudonyms.
