She stood up to the Taliban as a TV presenter. Now they've come for her family

As a leading TV presenter championing women's rights, Shabnam Khan Dawran is no stranger to death threats.

- HOLLY BANCROFT

The latest one-received on Twitter/X just an hour before our interview - says if she doesn't stop speaking out against the Taliban on her London-based show “you know what will happen to your family”.

The threats are not abstract. Her father has already been arrested three times in Afghanistan.

On one occasion he was beaten and left for dead – his head bleeding, arm and leg broken as a message to Shabnam. More recently, the Taliban tracked her family to the country where they have been forced into hiding.

Having fled Afghanistan in 2021 after an online clip of her challenging the Taliban went viral, she recently received messages with the address and photo of her family’s new safe house. The implication was clear: stop challenging us or we will kill your parents.

The pressure on the 26-year-old journalist would be too much if it was not for her father’s resilience in the face of persecution, she says. Wearing a traditional Afghan embroidered black blouse, she speaks clearly in the English she has been rapidly improving during her three years living here.

As she searches for the words to express herself, the impact of the constant danger that her family is facing is clear from her tone of voice: “He told me I cannot stop.”

Recalling her father's words to her after his brutal attack, she said: "Now I am older I can sacrifice myself for Afghanistan, for human rights for women and girls, but don’t stop just for me. If you are my friend, my daughter, a member of my family, promise me you have to carry on.”

“I made that promise,” she said. Tears come to her eyes as she describes the cost of doing so: “Now my father cannot stand by his own feet. He has to hold something to help him up. He used to be in good health but now his leg is broken, his arm broken. He is an unwell man, just for supporting his daughter.”