KABUL, 30 September 2003 — Two years ago, Massood Sanjer was reading the news in English for the Taleban’s Radio Shariat. Today he is one of Kabul’s hippest disc jockeys, broadcasting from a studio adorned with posters of Shakira and Destiny’s Child.
Sanjer works for Arman FM, the nearest thing the Afghan capital has to MTV, with a mix of music, chat and jokes. For a country starved of entertainment through years of war and repressive Taliban rule, Arman FM is like a breath of fresh air.
“Once a colleague of mine on Radio Shariat made a mistake translating something,” Sanjer recalled. “They locked him up in a container for three days with just one piece of bread and a boiled potato.”
Sanjer, who put up the posters himself, cannot begin to compare his old and new lives. These days, he says, he can say anything he wants on air.
But what makes Arman FM even more exceptional in this conservative Muslim land is that half its presenters are women — Sanjer shares his morning show with Zarlasht Madad, a soft-spoken young woman recently voted the station’s most popular.
Arman FM was the brainchild of Afghan-Australian brothers Saad, Jahid and Zaid Mohseni and their cousin Najib Thamas.
But its success since its launch in April has surpassed their wildest dreams.
The presenters get 500 letters a day from Kabulis, 100 e-mails and — when the lines are working — 1,500 phone calls, says Saad Mohseni, a former investment banker from Melbourne. “We just wanted to give people what they want,” he said. “But the response has been phenomenal, beyond our belief.”
What people want is mostly Indian music, songs from their favorite Bollywood movies, according to the requests which pour in every day, Sanjer says.
Western music also gets a look in, especially Shakira’s Arabic-influenced pop. Madonna goes down well too. But Mohseni cannot resist a plug for Australian culture. “We play a lot of Kylie Minogue,” he said. “She is very popular, and given that she’s also from Melbourne we like her.”
The Mohsenis put up half of the $500,000 to launch Arman — the name means Hope in the Dari language. The other half was supplied by USAID, the development arm of the US government.
But Saad Mohseni, who plans to expand to other parts of the country when funding allows, insists the station is run like a business and is already making a profit from advertising.
But it also aims to put something back by stimulating Afghans to start recording music again. Auditions are already being held for the 2003 Arman awards for local groups and singers — the winners will get the chance to cut their own CD.
One of Arman’s strengths is that it allows people to escape their problems and entertains rather than lectures.
“Most people believe they don’t have to hear about religion on the radio,” Mohseni said. “I’m sure on other outlets they can hear more politics and religion, so we concentrate on general information and music.”
Sometimes though, problems of an entirely different nature do crop up. The station will soon start a kind of “agony aunt” advice show, after a young couple wrote in threatening suicide because the woman’s parents were planning to marry her off to someone else.
In the early days, Arman was criticized because some of its presenters used the slang Dari of the streets rather than the formal language used by broadcasters in the past. Its irreverent attitude and jocular manner also alienated some people.
“The criticism is like a drop in the ocean,” Sanjer insists. “It was the first time Afghans listened to a radio station with men and women chatting and laughing, but now they have got used to it. We don’t get criticized any more.”
Judging by the reaction in the streets of Kabul, Arman FM has got it just about right for most people. White-bearded shopkeeper Farouq danced among the bolts of brightly colored cloth in his store as he told Reuters of his love of music.
“Arman is very good music radio, without much news, so we can forget our problems while listening to it,” he said. “You can see I look old, but I enjoy my life like a teenager.”