From WNYC Studios, it's Brian Lair, a daily politics podcast.

It's Wednesday, April 20th.

You know, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has taken our eyes and a lot of American media outlets' eyes off other things

going on internationally. And we want to come back to Afghanistan right now for a segment about

some really troubling developments there since the U.S. withdrawal. It was eight months ago,

over half a year ago, that the Taliban rushed back in to take

control of the country after U.S. troops pulled out. And even though Putin's aggression continues in

Ukraine, and of course we'll continue to talk about that, we wanted to take a look at how the

situation in Afghanistan has been changing now. One thing is that initially the Taliban

said that girls would be allowed to return to schools. A few weeks ago, however, they

appeared to have reneged on that promise when principals turned away girls until they had gotten,

quote, official permission. There are also reports of journalists being targeted,

and according to a pair of NGOs, non-governmental organizations that monitor this kind of thing,

journalists imprisoned, intimidated, and in some cases tortured, and with over 300 media outlets

reportedly closed since the Taliban take over, that's

according to the intercept, there's a lot of information about the situation on the ground in

Afghanistan that's just not filtering out to the rest of the world. So let's learn what we can

now with Karen DeYoung, Associate Editor and Senior National Security Correspondent for the Washington Post,

who's on this story. Karen, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. And maybe we should start a little meta with the quality of the

information we're even able to get about the situation

there. The Intercept reported last week that journalists have been especially targeted by the Taliban,

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