Taliban makes a return to Afghan air waves

Afghanistan’s Taliban guerrillas launched a clandestine radio station on Monday, broadcasting anti-government commentaries and Islamic ...

Afghanistan’s Taliban guerrillas launched a clandestine radio station on Monday, broadcasting anti-government commentaries and Islamic hymns from a mobile transmitter.

Called “Shariat Shagh”, or Voice of Shariat, after the station Taliban ran while in power, the broadcast can be heard in five southern provinces, including the former regime’s old power base of Kandahar. “We launched the broadcast today through a mobile facility,” said Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi. “It goes on air between 6-7 a.m. and at the same time in the evenings,” he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Hakimi said the Taliban needed their own voice because the world’s media was pro-American. Many Afghans listen to the BBC and Voice of America which broadcast in the country’s two main languages, Pashto and Dari. In addition to government-run radio, numerous small, private stations have sprung up, many funded by aid donors.

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As well as Islamic hymns and anti-government commentaries, the Taliban station also criticised US and other foreign troops in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s ouster.

Asked what the Taliban would do if US forces detected and destroyed their transmitter, Hakimi said they would set up another. —Reuters

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