Afghans enjoy "Freedom"

[Guest guest]

'After the 'liberation' of Afghanistan the people can now enjoy

Pornography, Abortion and Drugs. Thank you America.Freedom...what a

great way to enslave the masses...use degradation so that they

willingly give up their spiritual values and culture.'

 

'100 per cent hardcore'! Welcome to Kandahar

Kabul, Feb 15

 

Satellite television has come to the conservative southern Afghan

city of Kandahar with a bang and the city's inhabitants can now

watch, round the clock, on their television sets pornography.

 

Following the fall of the Taliban, satellite dishes are springing up

on rooftops across the staid city. Private homes, restaurants and

guesthouses are tuning in to 170 channels from all over the world,

reports Reuters. Four of them show nothing but porn in a city where

women were once asked to stay indoors and even beaten if their shoes

made too much noise when walking.

 

"Despite their lurid names -- one is called "100 per cent hardcore" --

the porn channels are mild by Western standards, showing topless

women gyrating around poles or reclining languorously as telephone

numbers for sex chat-lines and mail-order videos scroll across the

screen."

 

But most Kandahar men, cut off from the outside world by decades of

conflict and warlordism and then by the harsh rules of the Taliban,

have never seen anything like it.

 

"This is not good for our society," a 26-year-old man who works for

an educational foundation told Reuters. "People should not be

watching such things. It's not right."

 

But there is no shortage of viewers, says the report. In one

guesthouse a group of bearded Afghan men sit glued to the screen, one

of them frantically stabbing at the remote control to change the

channel when a female Western aid worker walks into the room.

 

Abdul Wasi runs one of the many satellite television shops that have

emerged in Kandahar since the Taliban left.

 

He sells six-foot dishes for about $100 and eight-foot dishes with a

digital receiver for about $250, importing the equipment from

Pakistan.

 

The small brick shop is surrounded by dozens of dishes littering the

pavement. "I've been in business a month, and I have sold nearly 400

dishes," Wasi told Reuters. "My shop is always busy. Everybody wants

to watch satellite television."