Afghan newsreader left in the dark

The director of Afghanistan's sole TV station is about to explain why he has banned films of women in swimsuits, or singing, or dancing, when he realises the screen-saver of his officer computer is still on.

It is a picture of a tanned woman in a tiny skin-coloured swimsuit. "Excuse me," he says, and skates across the floor to turn the machine off. Welcome to the madcap world of Afghan TV.

TV Badakhshan is probably the leastwatched television station on the planet. First because the Taliban regime, which controls nine-tenths of Afghanistan, has banned television, along with radios, music, dancing, kites, neckties and high-heeled shoes.

Second, because the remaining ten per cent have no electricity. "People find a way," says the director, Mohamed Din. "Some people have generators. Some hook their TVs to car batteries."

But the Feyzabad station's power is so feeble its signal carries just 15 kilometers. The Betamax video player has broken, rendering useless the library of 1,200 films and documentaries. All that is left is a handful of American VHS cassettes. "First Blood is the favourite," says Din. "But people are getting pretty sick of it. They see each film twenty or thirty times."

The station is heavily controlled by the Northern Alliance.

Screening war films packed with gore, torture and blood is fine, but pictures of naked women or women in swimsuits is banned, under pressure from fundamentalists in the Northern Alliance.

The censorship extends to the station's lone female presenter, 28-year-old news anchor Monesua Rosolu. She has to read the 7pm news wearing dark glasses. Outside the TV station, she must wear the all-covering burqa.