Balkh has local TV again since Taliban Fall
April 4, 2002
The Frontier Post

MAZAR-E-SHARIF (Agencies): Blurry picture, broken sound and all, local television went back on the air this week in northern Afghanistan’s largest city for the first time since the fall of the Taliban regime nearly five months ago. From a control room with a mishmash of equipment and a few dust-covered monitors, Balkh TV named for the province of which Mazar-e-Sharif is the capital has been broadcasting a mix of news and music each evening since it started broadcasting Sunday.

And there’s also a first on the station: women newsreaders. Since the Taliban banned television as “un-Islamic,” Afghans had to watch TV in secret in their basements with concealed satellite dishes.

Since Taliban rule ended in the north in November, a brisk trade has blossomed in televisions and every kind of video equipment.

Without local stations in their own language, locals used makeshift satellite dishes from hammered-out sheets of metal to receive foreign broadcasts.

Radio broadcasts under the new regime started the day after the Taliban left. However, television has been unable to get back on the air here sooner because of a lack of equipment and problems with electricity in Mazar-e-Sharif.

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