Examination of Witnesses (Questions 22
- 31)
THURSDAY 24 OCTOBER 2002
MR SHIRAZUDDIN
SIDDIQI AND
MR STEPHEN
KING
Chairman
22. Sadly Sima Simar, the head of the Human
Rights Commission, was not able to make it. We now move on to
our friends from the BBC World Service Trust who are of course
entirely independent and not part of the Government of Afghanistan,
but are an independent development charity that is a part of the
BBC World Service. Perhaps you could start by giving us something
of your impressions of the present situation in Afghanistan, as
seen by the BBC World Service Trust and just tell the Committee
a little about what you have been doing in Afghanistan.
(Mr Siddiqi) Thank you very much. I am really grateful
for this opportunity and honoured to be here to talk to the Committee
about our work in Afghanistan. We started our activities in Peshawar
in the North West Frontier province of Pakistan in 1994 by launching
an Afghan soap opera modelled on the Archers. This soap
opera has been going out for eight years in the two main languages
of Afghanistan, Pashto and Dari. The soap was like the Archers,
delivering lifeline information to Afghans to help them to cope
with the difficulties of everyday life. Initially in 1993-94,
we were thinking that the soap opera would help Afghans to go
back to their country and rebuild the country and reconstruct,
start a new life and build a new home for themselves. Unfortunately,
because of the civil war, it did not happen and a massive number
of people left Afghanistan and became refugees in the neighbouring
countries again. The soap turned its attention and its focus to
help them cope with the difficulties of everyday life. It has
become quite popular, it has become part of the Afghan culture,
it has become part of the everyday lives of the ordinary people.
It has chosen to use the language of the countryside, which is
equally and universally accessible to all Afghans across the country
and in the region, in Pakistan, central Asia and Iran. At one
stage during the Taliban it became almost the only means which
connected Afghans with each other and gave them something they
all shared and all had in common. We expanded our activities when
the Taliban imposed restrictions on education and specially on
female education. We started a new series of programmes called
REACH, Radio Education for Afghan Children, and through
that we have been trying to provide whatever possible by radio
in terms of educational opportunities so the children can use
the natural resources in their own local environment in order
to learn. After the interim government took over in December last
year, the Government of Afghanistan and the United Nations asked
the BBC World Service Trust to go and conduct a needs assessment
into the reconstruction of media in Afghanistan and come up with
recommendations which were incorporated into the "Preliminary
Needs Assessment for Recovery and Reconstruction in Afghanistan"
which was presented by the World Bank, UNDP and the Asian Development
Bank at the donor's conference in Tokyo earlier this year. We
did that and as a result of that the interim government of Afghanistan
issued a declaration of intention, a set of policy directions
which has been sent to this Committee, which was probably one
of the most important and significant steps towards turning the
Afghan media into a public service entity. The Afghan Interim
Government committed themselves to hold an international seminar
which happened in September this year and at this international
seminar experts from other countries came and sat with Afghans
and worked on a media strategy to build the media infrastructure.
The government has asked us to provide an adviser who will help
them in the implementation and further development of this strategy.
That is where we are at the moment. I would like to ask my colleagues,
Stephen King, Director of the Trust, to add a little.
(Mr King) In addition, as a result of the earlier
needs assessment, the BBC World Service Trust have received a
grant from DFID to implement a number of media reconstruction
activities. From February this year we did four main things. First
we delivered training to about 350 Afghan journalists, of whom
about one third were women, and we took care to ensure that they
were drawn from both Radio/TV Afghanistan, the national broadcaster,
plus also from independent media as well and as much as possible
from around the country, so reflecting the different provincial
interests as well as Kabul. The other thing we did was to provide
two digital self-operating studios to Radio/TV Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly,
after 20 years of war, and the latest military campaign, most
of the equipment had either been destroyed or become obsolete.
Two radio studios allowed them to continue production of programmes
and news broadcasts. The other thing we did was to provide them
with some advice and support. We found through the needs assessment
that the level of knowledge of the modern media environment unsurprisingly
was quite low, so we were really providing a range of options
for the future reconstruction. We also produced a number of radio
programmes as well to help provide people with information about
the Loya Jirga process, to educate people about the process, about
elections and what is going to happen. Radio is really the principal
medium for Afghanistan; television is not really in operation
outside Kabul and radio, through both the BBC plus Radio Afghanistan
and a number of other international broadcasters is the way that
people get their information where illiteracy rates are very high.
23. There are still a lot of areas which are
completely without electricity at all; whether television or radio
you simply cannot get them. I was slightly surprised that no-one
seems to have heard of wind-up radios. Do you seem a potential
for someone to distribute wind-up radios in Afghanistan? They
seem to be very successful in large parts of Africa nowadays.
(Mr Siddiqi) We did distribute a number of wind-up
radios in the Jalalabad area a few years ago just for testing.
We did an evaluation at the time of the distribution of those
radios and then we went back about three or four months later
to find out what had happened to these radios. Quite a number
of them were actually broken or converted into conventional radios
and they had actually connected them to car batteries to use them.
I was also surprised. I was born there, I have lived there, I
was brought up in Afghanistan, but I always thought Afghanistan
was a very poor country and could not afford many radio sets across
the country. However, I was really surprised to see how high the
ownership of radios was. The United Nations did a massive evaluation
in 1997 aiming mainly to study the impact of our programmes. They
found out that out of 60,000 households they interviewed, 50 per
cent of them owned a radio and the listenership, given the pattern
of the family relationships in Afghanistan, is much higher than
that.[4]
In most cases people were actually using batteries which created
a cycle of employment for people to travel outside the country
and import batteries and take them to different areas in the country
and sell them. The dominant pattern is using batteries rather
than mains electricity or the wind-up radios. Recently people
have become interested in testing it further and they have brought
in some wind-up radios. Recently I saw that UNESCO had brought
in a new model of lantern radio which has a device on top of the
lamp and the heat produces electricity which is fed into the radio.
That is quite an interesting thing to explore to see whether it
works in the countryside. It should work, given the fact that
it produces light as well as operating a radio.
Tony Worthington
24. I remember going to Sierra Leone and being
asked what the most effective thing would be to support the return
to democracy and we came to the conclusion that it was ensuring
radio transmitters were in place. What is the position in Afghanistan
about nationwide coverage from Kabul, but also in terms of regional
coverage, regional radio stations, transmitting facilities?
(Mr Siddiqi) The transmission capacity was quite badly
damaged unfortunately because of the 23 years of war. Afghanistan
used to have nationwide coverage on medium wave, but that was
quite badly damaged during the war. Initially they did not have
the necessary fuel to generate so much electricity to run that
transmitter and achieve that nationwide coverage, and later on,
because of the bombing, the transmitters were actually destroyed.
At the moment work is under way on a medium wave transmitter which
will restore that nationwide coverage of Radio Afghanistan. There
are radio stations in different provinces. I am not sure about
the figure, I can confirm this figure later, but in at least 19
provinces of Afghanistan there were radio stations; some of them
were partly damaged, some of them were totally destroyed. Some
of them have been restored, but the most important element in
the role of media in Afghanistan, especially the Afghan radio
and television, is the credibility. That credibility was actually
affected quite badly because radio and television and the media
in general in Afghanistan were used by different groups and different
governments as their own mouthpiece. That is precisely the reason
why Afghans turned to international broadcasters and that is why
the BBC became one of the major broadcasters to that region. One
of the most important broadcasting activities has been taking
place through the BBC World Service Trust in a very in-depth way.
The BBC World Service has not only been providing Afghans with
quality information and impartial information on what was happening
on the political ground in Afghanistan, but also helping people
to deal with the difficulties of their lives and helping them
find solutions to those problems in the absence of quite a lot
of social infrastructures in these 23 years or so.
Ann Clwyd
25. I was interested to read that you produced
something a bit like the Archers. Can you tell us a bit
about the message in that soap? Does it run every day, once a
week? Is there any interaction with the listeners? Do they tap
into you in some way and let you know what they are thinking about
the series? Can you talk a bit about that?
(Mr Siddiqi) The soap opera is called New Home,
New Life. It is based in three fictional villages somewhere
in central Afghanistan (the reason for that being that both Dari
and Pashto are spoken with different accents, so we wanted to
go for the accepted accent which used to be used by Radio Afghanistan
for a very long time) covering the life of the village communities.
We have male characters, female characters. They have their own
problems and we have a small evaluation team. The team visits
different parts of Afghanistan, different provinces, talking to
the members of the audiences and identifying their needs, their
problems. Then we use those needs and their priorities to make
storylines for the soap opera. The soap opera is being broadcast
three times a week in one language and three times a week in another
language and then like the Archers we have an omnibus for
one language on Thursday, for another language on Friday; Friday
is the holiday in Afghanistan. One of the most interesting things
that recently happened in the soap opera was that we were running
a story line on the Loya Jirga in Afghanistan, highlighting some
of the problems within the process of the election leading up
to the Loya Jirga. The reaction was very, very interesting. First
of all, the special representative of the Secretary General offered
to appear in that storyline and play his own role and meet the
characters who were selected for the Loya Jirga , which was quite
a big milestone for us. Secondly, his message basically was to
Afghans to keep up their voice and stay involved in the election
for the simple reason that if they choose their leaders, the leaders
will have to listen to them. After that message was aired, we
had quite a lot of Afghans from different parts of Afghanistan,
illiterate people, coming to the BBC World Service Trust buildings
and saying they would like to give an interview, they had been
denied their rights or giving their point of view on how they
could stay involved. It has had a huge impact on Afghans so far.
26. That is very interesting, thank you. Are
the writers Afghans, or are they brought in by the BBC to write
and then it is translated?
(Mr Siddiqi) In 1992 quite a large number of Afghan
writers and media professionals came to Pakistan and at that time
the BBC World Service Trust was running a recruitment campaign.
They brought in a couple of trainers to train these people. Now
we have 12 Afghan writers writing the soap opera and three editors
and we have a pool of over 100 actors and actresses because everything
is being done in two languages simultaneously. So six of the writers
write in Pashto and six of the writers write in Dari and we have
a team of Pashto actors and actresses and a team of Dari actors
and actresses. They are all Afghans.
Chris McCafferty
27. Something completely different. Whilst we
were in Kabul we visited the Afghan Family Planning Service, which
was newly re-opened. The head of the service told us most women
are illiterate and a lot of the men are illiterate too and they
want to advertise the fact that they are now openly up and running
again. The way they are going to do that is through radio and
TV broadcasts which I understand have been agreed with the Minister
of Health. I am aware of the Sexwise programmes which the
BBC World Service do and I know that they are broadcast to Pakistan.
Are those programmes also broadcast to Afghanistan? If they are
not, perhaps they could be. Is there a way the World Service could
help broadcast something like the fact that the Family Planning
Service is now open and available for people?
(Mr King) The BBC World Service Trusts Sexwise
project has actually now finished unfortunately but during the
time when it was on, which was for about three years, it did broadcast
to Afghanistan as well. There are plans to launch another series
on sexual reproductive health, which would be a global series
and we would certainly prioritise broadcasting that in Pashto
and Persian. These are also issues which we might cover through
the storylines of New Home, New Life.
(Mr Siddiqi) In addition to the soap
opera which covers family planning, safe motherhood and reproductive
health related issues, we are also running a number of weekly
feature programmes which are basically factual. We go to people,
we interview them and then we make a feature programme about any
particular issue which becomes a problem for Afghans. One of those
features is called Health in Life which focuses heavily
on the health-related needs of our female listeners in Afghanistan.
Although the Sexwise series came to an end, we have been
covering the issue on an ongoing basis, especially with quite
a lot of input from those NGOs and UN agencies which are actually
working on the ground in this area in Afghanistan.
Chairman
28. Could you just help us on this? I have just
been reading John Simpson's most recent book, a lot of which is
about Afghanistan and the BBC in Afghanistan. It is quite clear
that the BBC has a very considerable international reputation
for objectivity, impartiality and generally getting there. You
have clearly demonstrated that in Afghanistan, although the imagination
boggles a bit at what the Afghan equivalent of Eddie Grundy might
be. The World Service Trust is clearly something different from
the BBC World Service. How are you funded and is DFID supporting
you in other parts of the world and are there other parts of the
world where you feel you could do more public service broadcasting?
For example, prior to being in Afghanistan I was in Ethiopia where
they told me they had one of the highest infection rates for HIV/AIDS
in Africa, where, simply as a consequence of very high illiteracy
rates, it is almost impossible to have a decent public education
campaign on HIV/AIDS. We used to have a BBC World Service in Amharic;
we no longer have. Does the BBC World Service Trust and all the
BBC World Service have a kind of bid list of other parts of the
world where you feel you could make a contribution either to post-conflict
resolution or to development policies.
(Mr King) The World Service Trust was set up by the
World Service as a separate and independent NGO with really two
considerations: firstly, taking account of the very wide audiences
the World Service (with a 150 million listeners a week world wide);
secondly, the ability to reach communities in developing countries
through a very popular medium, radio, and also through a trusted
voice. With that combination of targeted programmes with development
messages and reach, it represents a very powerful force. The Trust
has worked worldwide in 23 countries to date, not only in Afghanistan
but in sub-Saharan African, South and South-East Asia and the
Balkans and our main focus is on health and educational messages
to the poorest communities and that is really the main purpose
of the organisation. On the HIV/AIDS issue, earlier this year,
in conjunction with Doordarshan, the national broadcaster in India
and All India Radio, we launched the world's largest campaign
on HIV/AIDS which is a mass media campaign. That was supported
by DFID, but is a very good partnership between the BBC World
Service Trust, the national broadcasters in India which have a
huge reach, plus also the Ministry of Health in India as well.
There are plans now and we are talking with DFID at a very early
stage about extending those similar kinds of campaigns in Africa
as well and Ethiopia is indeed one of the places we shall be considering
doing that.
Ann Clwyd
29. Do you do any sort of political broadcasting
at all? Is there the equivalent of Yesterday in Parliament
or Yesterday in. . . whatever equivalent organisation they
have in Afghanistan?
(Mr King) We have not done that as the Trust. Our
remit is focused very much on development programming, on education
and health programming to reduce poverty.
30. Political development is also important.
(Mr Siddiqi) That is being done through the Persian
and Pashto services of the World Service, so they do have quite
a number of series on serious issues, political issues. Our basic
mandate is to provide educational or development oriented information
and knowledge to the people of Afghanistan.
31. Political education is also important.
(Mr Siddiqi) Yes; yes, it is. However, the BBC World
Service Trusts remit is to reduce poverty in developing countries
through the innovative use and reach of the media. In answer to
the earlier question, the equivalent of Eddie Grundy in the Archers
is called Nazarim in New Home, New Life.
Chairman: Thank you very much and thank
you very much for that insight into what I think has been an important
part of UK PLC's contribution to the post-conflict situation in
Afghanistan. Thank you very much for that and for coming to give
evidence.
4 72 per cent of Pashto language speakers and some
62 per cent of Persian speakers in Afghanistan listen daily to
the BBC World Service (Source: BBC World Service Trust). Back
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