Afghan news executive says 'we thought we'd be shut down by now' and predicts imminent press restrictions by the Taliban

• Tolo News is one of several Afghan outlets that have kept women on TV amid the Taliban takeover.
• "We thought we'd be shut down by now," Saad Mohseni, the chairman of Moby Media Group, told Politico.
• The Taliban has "constituencies that will demand changes" to existing press freedoms, he added.

Saad Mohseni, the chairman and CEO of Moby Media Group, said in an interview with Politico that he was surprised that Afghanistan's Tolo News, one of the channels his company operates, hasn't already been shut down amid the Taliban's takeover.

"We thought we'd be shut down by now. We're surprised we're still operating, and we're trying to figure out what we do next," Mohseni said. "Like most things in Afghanistan, we're sort of making it up as we go along."

As the Taliban has assumed control of Afghanistan, Tolo News is one of a few Afghan outlets that are continuing to work with female TV presenters and journalists despite uncertainty over the future of women's rights.

Mohseni said that there are "essentially three phases" to the Taliban's takeover of the country: the consolidation of power, a transition period, and then the establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. He said that the country is currently in the first phase, and that the Taliban will have a "laissez-faire approach to media" for now.

"I think the media is going to be relatively OK, unless you put something out that's very controversial," he told Politico. "I think the pain threshold will be pretty high."

The changes, he said, would likely come in the second phase. "They have constituencies that will demand changes, whether it's media or social behavior and so forth. So we will probably have some restrictions," he said.

Mohseni also discussed how Tolo News set up an interview with female presenter, Beheshta Arghand, and a member of the Taliban following the Taliban's takeover of Kabul.

"We asked them to come for an interview and [this official] said yes," Mohseni told Politico of the interview that he touted on Twitter. "He came in and we said this reporter will interview you, he said fine and he sat down, we did the interview. Simple as that."

"This is the new Afghanistan and it's been new for 20 years," Mohseni added, referring to the Taliban's fall in 2001. "The younger generation of Afghans have never lived under the Taliban rule."

He also suggested that the Taliban themselves may have changed with regards to women's rights, given that social media has exposed their members to women working as journalists on TV.

"They've watched women on TV, whether it's in Pakistan or Afghanistan. So it's not alien to them. It shouldn't be alien to them," he told Politico. "You can't go back once you've been exposed to something. You cannot unlearn what you've learned. When you realize that the earth is not flat, you can't just reprogram your brain to believe it is flat."