Freedom strikes a chord

Under the Taliban’s harsh rule just five years ago, Afghans were forbidden from singing, dancing or listening to popular music. Today, they are eagerly tuning in to TV shows like “Afghan Star,” a local version of “American Idol” in which aspiring stars perform for a national audience.

Pop music and edgy call-in talk shows are staples of a growing private sector media empire that has rushed into the political space created by the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

The most popular television and radio stations in the country are Arman FM and Tolo TV, owned and operated by the independent media firm Moby Capital Partners.

The stations’ programming is largely geared toward a youthful audience — more than 60 percent of its viewers and listeners are under age 20.

Entertainment is a relatively new concept in Afghanistan. Under the mujahedeen government established after Soviet forces were driven from the country in 1989, television shows consisted almost exclusively of news and patriotic songs. When the Taliban regime took over, television was banned entirely.

“Democracy is about freedom of choice,” said Saad Mohseni, the director of Moby Capital Partners, during a recent visit to Washington. “Arman FM and Tolo TV are dedicated to continuing the spread of freedom of speech and the press” in Afghanistan, he said.

Don Ritter, a former Republican member of Congress from Pennsylvania and senior adviser in Washington to the Afghan International Chamber of Commerce, said Mr. Mohseni is “the lead protagonist for modernity and electronic media” in Afghanistan.

Tolo TV claims to have made groundbreaking innovations in Afghan independent media. The station boasts 24-hour programming that reaches up to 15 million people and broadcasts not just in Afghanistan, but in a wide region that includes Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Iraq, according to the station’s Web site.

Much of the programming would be familiar to Americans — at least in format if not in language. It ranges from the “6:30 Report” — a nightly newsmagazine hosted by Massood Qiam — to “Hop” — Tolo’s music video and comedy hour — to “Moments” — a knockoff of “Candid Camera.”

The “6:30 Report,” a program on the model of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” has pioneered investigative journalism in the country. Mr. Qiam has interviewed international and Afghan notables including President Hamid Karzai and opposition leaders, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns.

Tolo TV also has ventured to deal with such touchy issues as pedophilia and women’s rights in what is still a harshly fundamentalist country.

“Tolo and Arman are offering new formats and new genres” to the citizens of Afghanistan, Mr. Mohseni said.

Kazim Ahang, a former dean of journalism at Kabul University, said Afghanistan’s journalism pioneers are learning by following the example of others.

“We are imitating science, we are imitating medicine, we are imitating journalism,” he said in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor last year. “Imitation can be defined as the cleverest way of learning.”

In 2002, Mr. Mohseni and his partners received a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to build up independent Afghan media outlets. Since then, he has invested his own funds in the project.

In a recent interview with The Washington Times, Mr. Mohseni said independent media in Afghanistan face unique problems. After U.S. forces invaded to overthrow the Taliban in the fall of 2001, he said, “the environment was unclear, and sponsors weren’t willing to invest capital in an unstable economy.”

Investors have slowly overcome their initial hesitation, Mr. Mohseni said, and the nation’s advertising market has grown rapidly in the past two years.

“Companies are now allocating particular advertising budgets,” he said. “Pepsi, Coke, Western Union, and Unilever are all entering the Afghan market in 2006.”

However, there are still fundamentalist groups that would like nothing more than to shut down Mr. Mohseni’s stations. In October, Sheik Mohammad Asef Mohseni, a former Islamist mujahedeen leader, told the British Broadcasting Corp. radio that new media were bringing offensive Western influences into Afghanistan.

“We are under attack from foreign tradition and cultures. We must not lose our Islamic identity to these. … Otherwise we will lose our liberty,” he said.

Mr. Mohseni of Moby Capital Partners rejected the complaint. “We would never stray from what is acceptable to the Afghan population,” he said. “These groups are labeling what Afghan culture is. I think that, ultimately, we all have the same values.”