Afghanistan's last TV outpost

The evening news in Afghanistan

By the BBC's Roger Hearing

From a crag halfway up a mountain behind the town of Faizabad, news, entertainment, cultural programmes and films are broadcast every night to a uniquely privileged audience. This is the only television station still operating inside Afghanistan.

Faizabad is the capital of the enclave of north-eastern Afghanistan still controlled by the Northern Alliance.

Members of the Northern Alliance stand guard in Faizabad

The Taleban, who hold the rest of the country, have made their opposition to TV very plain. TV sets have been hung from trees and lamp-posts, and, even before the current crisis, TV cameras were generally unwelcome.

But in Faizabad, a town of perhaps 20,000 people, Abdul Wazir and his staff of six put together a programme two to three hours long each day. They have two cameras, and one has to be back in time to film the news bulletin.

Local footage

The studio is at one end of a room in a dilapidated bungalow beside the city's main freshwater spring. The paint peeling off the walls is covered by a bright green curtain, and the newsreader reads from two or three handwritten notepad sheets, with the camera that is filming him balanced on top of one of the video-editing machines.

The news is usually the latest reports from the frontline, and hastily written commentary on whatever the station's reporter has managed to film.

The day I watched the broadcast, there was footage from a food distribution at a displaced persons' camp just outside the town. The reporter cannot go much further because there is little transport and no facilities for an outside broadcast.

The station's output usually begins with readings from the Koran and, apart from the news, Abdul Wazir is proud of a programme of viewers' questions - answered by a local expert - and of a series of Afghan poetry readings.

Dusty archives

The station has been running for a long time. Abdul Wazir showed me a dusty room full of archive videos dating back to 1986, though changes in technology mean many of them are unplayable on their current machines.

The station has only two cameras

Even the newer video players are showing their age. While I was there they had to open the insides to try to get rid of the damp that comes from the studio walls before the machines could be used for broadcast.

In Faizabad, the TV station transmitter is a local landmark and the engineers usually make sure the intermittent power supply is on in time for the broadcast.

The mountains mean the signal cannot be picked up much beyond the town boundaries but within them there is a remarkably clear picture.

'Certain pride'

TV sets seem to be plentiful in what is otherwise an almost medieval town, with rough, mud-strewn streets, and donkeys as the only transport.

Afghan refugees in a makeshift camp in Faizabad in May

The programmes are avidly watched and analysed. Very few people have satellite dishes, so Faizabad TV is the only station they see.

There is a certain pride in the town, that they alone among their countrymen are able to see their own TV broadcasts.

It is not clear exactly where the money is coming from to pay for all this but the Northern Alliance government is keen that it should keep going - being one of the few effective ways the movement can communicate with its own people.