More than the US and UK, the Taliban has an issue with Australia
SOURCE:ABC Australia|BY:Meghna Bali
The Taliban's chief spokesman agreed to an unscripted, sit-down interview with me, there was just one non-negotiable condition, writes Meghna Bali.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban's chief spokesman, is rarely seen sitting across from a woman, let alone agreeing to a long, unscripted interview.
But on a recent cold morning in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, he and I sat down in the Taliban's Media and Information Center for one of the group's few interviews with a Western journalist since taking over the country four years ago.
He allowed the ABC to broadcast our conversation on one non-negotiable condition: we could not appear in the same frame on camera.
Sitting opposite me, rarely meeting my eyes, he spent an hour answering questions about life in Taliban-run Afghanistan, the economy, the ban on girls' education, rising child malnutrition, tensions with Pakistan, and the country's deepening isolation from much of the world since the US-Afghanistan war ended in 2021.
That tightly managed compromise offers a revealing snapshot of where the Taliban finds itself four years on: eager to be heard, suspicious of the West, deeply resistant to scrutiny, and unwilling to shift on its core ideology.
I travelled from New Delhi to Kabul for nine days in late November, months after a powerful earthquake devastated parts of eastern Afghanistan.
It was the ABC's first reporting trip on the ground in eight years, and the first since the fall of Kabul. We had hoped to go sooner, but visa delays and competing crises elsewhere in South Asia pushed the trip back.
Inside Afghanistan, the message from the Taliban is women should not be seen, and certainly not heard. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)
Taliban officials made it clear they wanted Western media attention, particularly after the quake, and some expressed frustration that we had not arrived earlier. Yet access came layered with control.
Reporting in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is unlike anywhere else I've worked in the region. Journalists have to register with both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Information and Culture.
Permissions are layered and complex. You need one to operate in Kabul, others to cross provincial lines. You must declare where you are going, who you will meet and what you intend to cover.
The Taliban wants international coverage, but only within boundaries it sets.
Throughout the interview, Mujahid framed the Taliban's rule as an unqualified success. He pointed to the end of war as its defining achievement, insisting Afghans now "live like brothers."
He claimed economic progress, citing thousands of new factories, a stable national currency, major infrastructure projects and falling unemployment.
The reality is Afghanistan's economy has contracted sharply since 2021. Half a million jobs have disappeared. More than half the population is food insecure. Yet when asked about the worsening economic crisis, Mujahid returned repeatedly to a single explanation: 40 years of war. Recovery, he said, would simply take time.
The same pattern emerged on the most contentious issue of all: girls' education. Four years after secondary schools were closed to girls, Mujahid wouldn't offer a timeline or even acknowledge that girls were suffering.
The decision, he says, rests with the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada.
There was no recognition that this policy sits at the heart of Afghanistan's diplomatic isolation.
Mujahid dismissed the lack of international recognition as a failure of Western policy, particularly that of the United States, rather than a consequence of Taliban decisions.
He argued Afghanistan had strong ties with China, Russia and the Islamic world, suggesting countries like Australia were simply following Washington's lead.
Australia continues to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan but refuses to recognise the Taliban amid mounting concern over women's rights, governance and security.
That stance clearly frustrates Taliban officials.
"What problem does Australia have with us?" one senior official asked me when I introduced myself as an Australian journalist.
The Taliban sees Australia as unusually rigid. While countries like the United States and the United Kingdom maintain limited engagement, Australia has drawn a firmer line, sanctioning senior Taliban leaders over the treatment of women and girls.
For most Afghans, the economy has never been something they could rely on. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)
Taliban officials also view Australia's Afghan diaspora, vocal and politically active, as hostile to their interests. And they reject the idea that their policies, particularly towards women, should be subject to international scrutiny.
Across the interview, a clear governing philosophy emerged. On issue after issue, Mujahid denied the scale of the problem, shifted responsibility elsewhere, and argued that time, and the lifting of international sanctions, would resolve what governance has not.
That approach was evident on security and regional tensions. Mujahid rejected claims that the Taliban provides shelter or support to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an armed group responsible for deadly attacks inside Pakistan, dismissing those accusations as baseless.
Any Pakistani military strike inside Afghanistan, he warned, would be met with a response, though he insisted the Taliban would not initiate conflict.
It resurfaced again in his account of mass deportations from neighbouring countries. More than 1.5 million Afghans have been forced back from Iran and Pakistan in recent months, many of them families who had been sending money home from abroad.
Afghanistan's economy has contracted sharply since 2021. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)
Mujahid described the returns as voluntary and orderly, saying people were being housed, employed and supported, and rejected the idea their sudden return could further strain an economy already under severe pressure.
That optimism obscures a deeper reality. For most Afghans, the economy has never been something they could rely on.
For decades, daily life was sustained by foreign money, from international military spending to aid programs that paid salaries and kept cities running. When those dollars disappeared after 2021, so did much of the work that depended on them.
In their place, humanitarian agencies stepped in, providing just enough cash to keep clinics open and families fed, but not enough to rebuild livelihoods or offer a path out of poverty.
Beyond the cities, the picture is even starker. In many villages, there is no reliable electricity, no paved roads, and little formal employment. Survival depends on subsistence farming, small-scale livestock rearing or informal trade.
For years, a critical pressure valve has been labour migration. Millions of Afghans worked in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan, sending money home to support families with few other sources of income. That safety net is now fraying.
Mass deportations from both countries have forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans back into an economy with limited capacity to absorb them.
UN agencies estimate 3.7 million Afghan children are malnourished. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)
On the ground, families also told a different story to the Taliban, of debt, shrinking opportunities and growing dependence on aid.
Nowhere was the gap between official narrative and lived reality more apparent than on child malnutrition.
Asked about rising rates of acute malnutrition, which health workers say are contributing to preventable child deaths, Mujahid downplayed the scale of the crisis.
He claimed only "two or three children out of a hundred" were affected, describing this as normal and primarily a humanitarian issue rather than a failure of governance. Sanctions were to blame, according to him.
UN agencies estimate 3.7 million Afghan children are malnourished — far more than Mujahid's estimate — with 1.7 million at risk of dying.
In a Kabul malnutrition ward, children lay listless and dangerously underweight, some battling life-threatening infections. In earthquake camps and flattened villages in Kunar province, families spoke of hunger, debt and an inability to cope.
Beneath the surface calm of post-war Afghanistan, the country is struggling under the weight of overlapping crises: economic collapse, shrinking aid, natural disasters and the return of millions with nowhere to go.
And throughout it all, women remain largely unseen.
In Afghanistan, girls are not permitted to go to school beyond grade 6. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)
Restrictions on women are imposed not only by Taliban edicts, but reinforced by deeply conservative social norms that predate the group's return to power. Outside major cities, women are rarely allowed to speak to outsiders without male relatives present. In many places, they are effectively invisible.
That reality played out repeatedly during our reporting. At a relief camp, a family initially agreed to let the women of the household speak on camera. Hours later, the permission was withdrawn. Male relatives explained they were worried about the family's honour, not because of any explicit Taliban order, but because of how the women might be perceived by others in the community.
Even where the Taliban was not physically present, men on the ground, neighbours, elders and passers-by, regularly intervened, reminding us not to film women, not to approach them, not to ask questions.
The message was constant and unmistakable: women should not be seen, and certainly not heard.
This social conservatism helps explain why the Taliban's worldview finds broader acceptance in many rural areas. Its rules do not exist in a vacuum; they align closely with long-standing customs that already restrict women's public lives. That alignment makes resistance harder, and silence easier.
Many of the women most able to openly challenge Taliban rule — such as judges, lawyers and activists — have left the country, though recent deportations have forced some back to the very place they once fled.
Afghanistan's social conservatism helps explain why the Taliban's worldview finds broader acceptance in many rural areas. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)
For most Afghans, the debate over recognition, sanctions and diplomacy is distant. What shapes daily life is survival.
Across the country, people are enduring overlapping crises, poverty, hunger, displacement and loss, with little sense that relief is imminent. Parents ration food. Families take on debt. Women withdraw further from public life. The future, for now, feels narrow and uncertain.
And yet, resilience persists. In markets, in villages and in overcrowded hospital wards, people adapt because they must.
Four years after the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan is quieter, but not at peace. The war has ended, yet the stability that followed, especially for women, remains conditional, constrained and profoundly unequal.