You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today left

Afghanistan when she was a child. She went into exile in Europe, and yet

she is one of her native country's biggest stars. Ariana Saeed's expressive voice, glamorous stage

presence and defiant songs have a huge following amongst Afghans, desperate for relief from the protracted

misery of war. Her music is also a challenge to the conservative religious cultural establishment,

which still wields immense power in Afghanistan long after the toppling of the Taliban government. The mullahs rail against

Ariana Saeed's public performances. She's received a host of death threats and she travels with

armed guards. But her message of female empowerment will not be silenced. If anything,

it's gaining ground. So could Ariana Saeed be the face and the voice

of genuine change in Afghanistan? Well, she joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. It's nerve wracking to be on your show.

Well, it's a pleasure to have you in our London studio.

I just wonder, how intimately connected do you feel to your homeland, Afghanistan today?

I know you go there a great deal, to work, to perform.

But is that connection looser today?

I still feel very connected to my country and to my roots, of course,

and I feel for my people in Afghanistan back home. I left Afghanistan when I was eight years old.

Yeah, you were a child. And I was away. I was a child and I was away from many, many years.

But then I went back to Afghanistan in 2010.

And that's when I really made that connection with Afghanistan and the people and what I felt and what I saw there.

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