Hollie Mckay Shines Light In Dark Places While Living Under Taliban Rule

War correspondent and author of “Only Cry for the Living: Memos From Inside the Isis Battlefield," Hollie McKay has documented war stories from the frontlines covering humanitarian and diplomatic crises in some of the world's most dangerous war zones for over 14 years with Fox News. She has won numerous foreign press and humanitarian awards for her work and is acclaimed by her peers as one of the most diligent reports in her field.

Her globally-spanned coverage has included exclusive and detailed interviews with numerous captured terrorists, as well as high-ranking government, military, and intelligence officials and leaders from all sides. Today, she lives under Taliban rule, and shares firsthand real war stories during the Taliban takeover following the U.S. departure from Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan is an embattled nation in limbo – nobody quite knows yet just how far the Taliban will plunder the country of 38 million back into a dark time of the past."

"...as a foreign journalist, I understand that I am far safer than that of my Afghan colleagues. Considered a guest in the country, I have greater liberty to condemn and criticize than local journalists. Nevertheless, it is becoming an increasingly challenging place to operate – the Taliban endeavor to follow you, control you, and often spin a bevy of untruths while not acknowledging my presence as a woman. In addition, we are also faced with the growing threat of ISIS-K and the notion that something sinister could erupt at any moment."

Female journalists in Afghanistan are being forced out of jobs and told to stay at home despite Taliban promises to allow them to keep working and to respect press freedom. By shutting down female voices in the media, the Taliban are in the process of silencing all women. In September, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) says it believes fewer than 100 of Kabul’s 700 female journalists are still working.

Hollie Mckay shares her day-to-day experiences in her blog series, The World of War, Crimes + Crises with Hollie Mckay. She writes in the series, "Weeks and weeks of being invisible almost every time I walked into an interview or waited outside a Ministry checkpoint takes a strange toll. I had, regrettably in many ways, somewhat accepted my place as a woman not to be seen under the deeply conservative Taliban rule."

"But those accumulated moments indeed festered into my subconscious, and I can only begin to scratch the surface of what Afghan women still here must be feeling. Such absence from the world is the future that lies ahead of them."

Despite the dangerous environment and uncertainty of her future there, Hollie is dedicated to "shining a light in the darkest of places" and sharing real war stories that expose truths about life in Afghanistan, destroying fabricated ideas painted by the mainstream media. "Every voice, every person has a war story – although the vast majority never wanted anything to do with the war."

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