New York, August 14, 2026—Five years on from the Taliban’s seizure of Afghanistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the group to halt its brutal repression of the press — particularly women journalists — and lift sweeping restrictions that have cut access to independent information and allowed a propaganda ecosystem to flourish.
After capturing Kabul on August 15, 2021, Taliban authorities immediately began their attack on the media,
barring
female journalists from working at the public broadcaster,
beating
reporters while they
covered protests
, and, by 2022, using arbitrary detention and imprisonment as a tool to censor news outlets.
Khalid Qaderi,
a Radio Nawruz reporter and producer in Herat, was the first case CPJ documented of a journalist convicted and sentenced for his work after the Taliban takeover.
“Since taking over Afghanistan five years ago, the Taliban have made Afghanistan one of the world’s hardest places for journalists to report,” said Waliullah Rahmani, CPJ’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Representative. “Journalists are surveilled, detained, beaten, censored, or driven into exile. Women journalists face additional discrimination, and people are increasingly terrified to speak. Internet and mobile restrictions have deepened the press freedom crisis and cemented the Taliban’s control over Afghanistan’s information space.”
Women in the media face particularly
severe
and escalating discrimination. Taliban authorities have
banned
women’s voices from radio and TV in Helmand, prevented them from attending
press conferences
, and mandated that they
cover their faces
when appearing on TV. In February 2025, Taliban intelligence agents raided and suspended the
women-led Radio Begum
.
Censorship has expanded from pressure on individual journalists to
systematic control
over what reporters can cover. In 2024, Taliban authorities
banned live political broadcasts
, prohibited criticism of the group, and restricted interviews to a
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