LTR/RTL switch not changing text direction

Using MENA version of InDesign 20.2. All the RTL features are visibly there, but whenever I click the button to switch the text direction to RTL, it just flips the paragraph orientation and leaves the text direction completely unchanged. New text typed into "RTL" paragraphs is also still LTR. Have found no way around this and no one posting about this specific problem.

It's required to install a whole other regional version of the app to even get access to the extremely basic feature that is RTL text, and now that I've jumped through that hoop, the feature simply isn't working. (Baffled that a "professional-level" software is designed like this.) Thanks in advance for any help.