[HCDX] The other "air war" over Afghanistan
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[HCDX] The other "air war" over Afghanistan



I've been reading with great interest all the recent news on this list about the West's use of radio in its war on terrorism. So I thought subscribers to this list might be interested in this news story that ran in last Friday's National Journal, a nonpartisan Washington-based weekly magazine (with a Web site, where I got this version) that offers news and analysis of U.S. public policy and politics. This story preceded a couple of more narrowly focused stories on the Voice of America that ran in the Washington Post earlier this week. Not all of its contents would be new to readers of this list, but it may be of general interest anyway.

Richard Sia (who uses a Sony ICF-SW100)
Washington, DC
 

  10-06-2001

  TECOMMUNICATIONS: Shortwave Soldiers

  While President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are threatening
  the Taliban with war, broadcasters from the Voice of America and the
  British Broadcasting Corp. are using shortwave radio to woo the Afghan
  citizenry.

  Radio is the only form of unfettered mass communications left in
  Afghanistan. The ruling Taliban has banned both television and the
  Internet, and severely restricted press freedom, but the regime loves
  radio and uses it to communicate with its public.

  The Taliban's radio station in the nation's capital, Kabul, typically
  broadcasts between three and six hours each day in that city, the VOA
  says. The regime's radio stations in the provinces broadcast for less than
  two hours a day. Most Taliban programming consists of news reports and
  religious instruction.

  But the Taliban lacks the technical ability to jam foreign radio signals,
  thereby allowing enemies of the regime to bombard Afghanistan's airwaves
  with Western-style news and entertainment.

  Since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the
  VOA and BBC-two of the largest broadcasters in the region-have expanded
  their daily transmissions to Afghanistan. The VOA now broadcasts about 25
  hours of programming a week in Dari and Pashto, the country's two major
  languages. That's an increase of an hour a day. The BBC broadcasts almost
  50 hours a week, up from 32 hours. They also split their time between Dari
  and Pashto.

  The other major foreign radio agencies broadcasting into Afghanistan
  include Radio Pakistan, Deutsche Welle, and the Voice of the Islamic
  Republic of Iran.

  Both the VOA and BBC claim to be extremely popular with the media-starved
  people of Afghanistan. Citing their own and United Nations-sponsored
  surveys, the BBC says that between 60 percent and 70 percent of
  Afghanistan's population tunes in to its programming; the VOA says its
  reaches 80 percent of the country's male population.

  Their broadcasts rely on Western news accounts, and the producers have no
  qualms about calling Osama bin Laden a terrorist. "We make no
  compromises," says Baqer Moin, head of the BBC's Persian and Pashto
  language divisions.

  The VOA, however, recently came under fire for broadcasting part of an
  interview with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, in which he explained
  why his government would not turn over accused terrorist leader bin Laden
  to the United States. The State Department objected publicly to the
  broadcast, complaining that it contained little news and that the VOA
  simply gave the Afghan leader a soapbox. And New York Times columnist
  William Safire later penned a column titled "Equal Time for
  Hitler," in which he suggested that the VOA ought to be vigorously
  defending U.S. positions.

  Moazzam Siddiqi, VOA's regional division chief, rejected those criticisms,
  saying the agency follows accepted journalistic standards and that such
  comments often arise in times of "crisis." He might have added
  that even the agency's public service and entertainment
  programming-designed to attract a larger audience-are implicitly critical
  of the Taliban's views and values.

  The VOA, for example, broadcasts Afghan music banned by the Taliban. It
  also transmits a show that emphasizes women's achievements.

  Another show tells about the lives of Afghans living in the United States.
  And a telephone call-in show encourages listeners to discuss the issues of
  the day.

  One of the most-popular shows in Afghanistan is a BBC-produced soap opera
  called New Home, New Life. Set in central Afghanistan, the drama considers
  a variety of social issues, Moin says, through its depiction of life in
  two small villages.

  The show's writers, Moin adds, meet regularly with officials from the
  International Red Cross, UNICEF, and other UN agencies to discuss how to
  weave discussions of land mines, opium use, and other topics into the
  script.

  The BBC recently aired the 1,000th episode of the show, which debuted in
  1994.

  Brian Faler is a correspondent with National Journal News Service.