Afghanistan Unveiled

Reporter: Channel 4
Broadcast: 24/09/2007
The pictures were shocking. A woman swathed in a blue burqa, stumbling across the ground, barely able to see. Forced to her knees, then shot in the head. Publicly executed in a soccer stadium. Punishment, Taliban style.
This chilling footage, shown in the Channel 4 program Beneath the Veil, graphically illustrated the brutality of the Taliban. Under their oppressive rule Afghanistan was a place of fear for women. Every aspect of their lives was controlled. Denied employment and education, they were virtual prisoners in their homes. The burqa, that enveloping blue tent, became a symbol of their repression.
Four Corners broadcast the program in September 2001, the night before Al Qaeda attacked the United States.
Six years on, Channel 4 has returned to Afghanistan to see what has changed since the fundamentalist regime was toppled. Afghanistan Unveiled sets out to discover if girls are going to school, if women are allowed to work and whether they have freedom to dress as they please.
Reporter Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy travels across the country and finds a society still struggling to define what role women should play. Despite being "liberated" from the Taliban many are still trapped by poverty and fear.
She talks to teachers and students who risk their lives to attend school, but they are in the minority. Only one in five Afghani girls receives some form of education. She meets a war widow forced to beg on the streets of Kabul and a child bride sold by her father when she was just seven years of age. Neither seems to have a way out. For some women this powerlessness has turned to despair. As the report shows, the rate of female suicide in Afghanistan is shocking.
This thought provoking program provides an insight into the lives of women in the new Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan Unveiled" on Four Corners at 8.30 pm Monday 24 September, on ABC TV.
This program wil be repeated about 11.35 pm Tuesday 25 September; also on ABC2 at 9.30 pm Wednesday and 8 am Thursday.
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