Afghanistan's battle of the airwaves
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When the US led invasion of Afghanistan ousted the repressive Taliban regime in 2001, it was no longer illegal to listen to music or news on the radio. Afghan businessman Saad Mohseni returned to his home town of Kabul to launch Arman FM, a new radio station which played modern music and comedy programmes amongst other things which had been banned under the Taliban. He tells Rebecca Kesby why he wanted to help rebuild the cultural life of Afghanistan, how one radio station expanded into a multimedia company, and how persistent security problems have impacted his staff.
(Photo: Afghan radio DJ, Seema Safa, talks on Arman FM radio station in Kabul in 2014. WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:31.1 | Hello and welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service |
| 0:38.1 | with me Rebecca Kebbe. Today we head to Afghanistan and revisit the war of the airwaves. |
| 0:45.0 | When the Taliban came to power in 1996, they took over the radio stations, |
| 0:50.0 | banned all that |
| 0:55.0 | that changed. |
| 0:58.0 | that changed. |
| 0:59.0 | I've been speaking to the man who set up Carbol's first private radio station. |
| 1:04.2 | The United States has begun military strikes against the Taliban. |
| 1:08.0 | Reports from the Afghan capital Kabul speak of heavy explosions in the city. |
| 1:11.7 | There were reports of similar explosions in the Taliban spiritual home, Kandahar. |
| 1:16.2 | These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan |
| 1:20.6 | as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the |
| 1:25.1 | Taliban regime. Watching from a distance in Australia was former banker |
| 1:29.4 | Saad Moseni. He was the son of an Afghan diplomat whose family had left Kabul more than a decade before. |
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