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‘Afghan Oprah’ set to hit airwaves

Tolo Television was launched in October 2004 and has become the nation’s most popular station

KABUL: Afghanistan is to get its own Oprah Winfrey-style chat show touching on taboo women’s issues, a television station said Monday, in a move likely to anger hardliners in the conservative Islamic nation.

Called Bonu, the Persian word for women, the show will be launched by privately-run Tolo Television, which has drawn condemnation from mullahs for airing music videos of scantily clad women and for accepting large US grants.

Tolo was the subject of international attention in May when the female host of its most popular music programme was found dead with gunshot wounds in a mysterious killing, for which no one has been charged.

The station said in a statement that the new chat show would examine topics such as education, changing social norms, marriage, leadership, motherhood and physical and mental health

Female host Farzana Samimi will be joined by psychiatrist Dr Yassin Babrak to talk about issues affecting women, it said.

“Our aim is to drive social change through open and frank discussions regarding the issues facing women in Afghanistan today,” Samini was quoted as saying. Tolo Television was launched in October 2004 and has become the nation’s most popular station, reaching an estimated 15 million Afghans in Afghanistan alone as well as others across the region by satellite.

Director Saad Mohseni said: “Our programming is about building Afghanistan’s future, that is why we have Bonu as well as our news and current affairs programmes examining the way forward.”

After years of heavily regulated broadcasting under communist and then Islamic fundamentalist rule, the station’s mix of news, music and current affairs programmes has proved popular.

Less than four years ago, under the repressive Taliban regime, women were virtually banned from appearing in public without all-enshrouding garments known as burqas.

The Taliban were ousted by US-led forces and local warlords in late 2001 after refusing to surrender Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

However the country remains deeply conservative.

In May a group of radical Afghan religious scholars unveiled plans to launch the country’s first Islamic television channel since the fall of the Taliban.

The Ulema Council said the station would counter what it sees as immoral and un-Islamic programmes on other channels.

The Taliban themselves launched a pirate radio station in April operating from a secret mobile transmitter, broadcasting religious material as well as tirades against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. afp

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