KABUL, Afghanistan - A female television anchor interviewed a Taliban official for an on-camera interview on Tuesday that was broadcast in Afghanistan, an interaction that once would have been unthinkable and seemingly part of the insurgents’ efforts to portray a new image.Beheshta Arghand, a host for the private broadcaster Tolo News, sat a few feet away from Mawlawi Abdulhaq Hemad, a member of the Taliban’s media team.
Arghand asked him about Kabul’s situation and house-to-house searches in the Afghan capital after being overtaken on Sunday. "The entire world now recognizes that the Taliban are the real rulers of the country," Hemad said in the interview, according to a translation by the New York Times.