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While this is not directly or completely related to shortwave radio, the bit about radio is an interesting and creative take on the medium, and the article as a whole is worth a read.
Afghanistan's press
Thriving yet threatened
Jun 14th 2007 | KABUL
From The Economist print edition
Legal and illegal attacks on Afghanistan's press
RADIO WATANDA is broadcast from a basement in a suburb of Kabul. It has no presenters; just music and a jingle that counts out a phone number. When Watanda went on air in 2004, listeners were baffled. Those who rang had their confused calls broadcast. Those who asked for songs found their requests ignored. But the first person to realise he could use the station as a platform rang in to harangue the authorities about the capital's crippling electricity shortage. Thousands followed, expressing any view they wished.
Three years later, unstructured on-air debates have become Afghanistan's talk radio. A caller recently complained that the dress of Kabuli women was too revealing. For days callers, including many anonymous women, talked of little else. “In Afghanistan the media has always been controlled by the literate,” says Mirwais Social, the station's youthful manager. “On Watanda there is no presenter to intimidate people. We have removed everything to prevent them talking.”
Freedom of expression is intoxicating in a conservative country where the government and religious establishment have long kept a tight rein and where the Taliban regime banned music and television. Since its overthrow in 2001 more than 60 FM radio stations, hundreds of magazines and newspapers and eight independent television channels have been founded. Young Kabulis devour satellite television and the unrestricted internet. The media, say many Western commentators, have been one of Afghanistan's few clear-cut success stories of the past six years.
But many government members think the freedoms have gone too far. They argue that journalists are often poorly trained, biased and prone to defame institutions and individuals. The government of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, has supported a free press, but has been hurt by press criticism at a time when it wants to counter Taliban propaganda.
Episodes of press intimidation and harassment have been on the rise. On April 17th, staff at Tolo TV, the country's leading independent broadcaster, were beaten by police. The attorney-general, Abdul Jabar Sabet, had ordered their arrest because he objected to the editing of an interview he had given. Tolo hit back by airing footage of the raid. Then this month a prominent female journalist, Zakia Zaki, was murdered by unknown gunmen. Her murder, following the Taliban's beheading of two pressmen in April, has rattled nerves.
No less worrying to local journalists and Western governments is debate over a new media law. Freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution and the existing media law is the most liberal in the region. But the lower house of parliament has just finished discussing a law that includes ill-defined bans on “discussion that would ridicule, offend or defame an individual” and, more vaguely still, on anything that has an impact on “the manners and psychology of people, especially children”. Even so, it is less the wording of the law than the spirit in which it will be interpreted that worries Afghan journalists. Saad Mohseni, Tolo TV's founder, is one who argues that the press can expect little protection from harassment by government officials and other bigwigs.
The new law still has to win approval in the upper house of parliament. But there it is not likely to become more liberal. A bill put forward by the upper house's National Reconciliation Commission suggests censoring “trite movies and those TV programmes that are contrary to Afghan beliefs...and harm the feelings of our people”. It proposes an increase in religious programming instead.
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