2023-11-12 18:00:04
There is no journalist in Spain who knows Afghanistan like Mónica Bernabé, but that enormous commitment to such a difficult country has taken a high toll on her personal life: the collapse of Afghanistan and, in parallel, her own fall into hell, is discussed in the new book by the Barcelona reporter (1972), ‘Time.news of a failure’, published by Debate, a long report in which she denounces the abandonment to which this State has been subjected, shaken by history and by its leaders.
“In Afghanistan I found that, although it may seem impossible, human beings adapt to everything,” says Bernabé, who lived eight years in Kabul, the last of which, he recalls, was a daily attack. «I was afraid many times, of course, of being mutilated in an attack, as happened to the photographer Emilio Morenatti in 2009, or above all, of being a victim of sexual abuse, because I was a woman who traveled alone through the country and “I found only men,” explains the journalist.
At the same time, the Afghan population “is very hospitable” and “very sexist”, which, paradoxically, opened doors for his work. «Being a female reporter was an advantage: they think you are weaker and many times, they did not ask me what she did in certain places. After an attack, they were shocked that there was a woman, and they could yell at me. But I only had a problem once, with a member of Parliament, who refused to answer me because I was a woman.
In such a complicated context, Bernabé could even feel privileged, since at home she had electricity, water or internet, luxuries that most families did not have, “although at any moment you could run out of them and you had to arm yourself.” of patience: the most important thing was to stay calm. But seeing how, starting in 2014, when he left, the country for which he had sacrificed so much collapsed, seeing the “cynicism” of the international community towards the people and, even more so, towards the Afghan women, and sharing the miseries of the refugees ended up undermining the correspondent’s mental health, a drama that she narrates in the rawest pages of the book.
The journalist opens up to describe her “emotional shock”, which, in some way, is similar to what the Afghans suffered in their own territory and when they fled trying to find understanding of a West that “fed and provided weapons for years.” to the mujahideen (radical Islamists) who fought against the Soviet Union and then devastated the country in the 90s.
«The Taliban emerged in response to the atrocities of those mujahideen and when they came to power, the international community did not condemn them either, until they gave asylum to Osama Bin Laden and it was considered that our integrity was in danger, and then we again allied ourselves with the mujahideen, although we already knew that they were characters who only looked out for their own interests and that the country, with them, was not going anywhere. The proof is that when the United States left permanently in 2021, its police did nothing to defend the situation. And now it is the Taliban who have all the weapons that were given to those radical Islamists,” he summarizes.
In addition to dedicating himself to journalism, Barnabas founded an NGO, the Association for Human Rights in Afghanistan (ASDHA). “It gave me a lot of work and allowed me to learn more things, and also, with it, it eased my conscience,” he asserts. He presided over it, from 2000, for 16 years, until it was dissolved.
But does Afghanistan have a solution? «In 2001, I may have had it. There was a pro-democratic mass that wanted to promote change in that sense, but they were not counted on. An agreement was made with the warlords to bring down the regime, but a golden opportunity was lost, at a time when Afghanistan was totally dependent on the international community. A monster was created. Is there a solution now? “I have no idea,” she concludes.
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