Sunday, March 23, 2008

 
KABUL -- In the end, the 2,000 protesters denouncing Denmark and chanting "death to America" proved no match for the euphoric, youthful enthusiasm bursting from the sweltering hotel ballroom high atop the scenic hillside above them.

The demonstrators were expressing their anger at Danish newspaper drawings depicting the Prophet Mohammed, and a Dutch film that criticizes Islam. They burned effigies of the filmmakers, and they burned the flags of the Netherlands and Denmark. They created some tense moments for the security details of the foreign VIPs and diplomats that also packed the ballroom of the Intercontinental Hotel on this past holiday Friday.

But in the end, the angry crowd burned itself out. No one was hurt, but more important, very few in Afghanistan really seemed to care. No one, it seems - not even in a country that has endured a generation of heartache - was going to be allowed to spoil the grand finale of "Afghan Star."

Boasting a television audience of 11 million viewers in a country of 30 million, this is Afghanistan's version of Canadian or American Idol.

"I love Afghan Star and I tried a lot to come here," said economics student Veda Khalid, 19, from the top balcony of the glitzy ballroom outfitted with two large video screens, booming music and flashing lights. Young people wearing coloured glowsticks mingled with foreign diplomats, who were invited to take in the event.

The boyish-looking, Canadian-born Chris Alexander, now the United Nations' number two in Kabul and Canada's former ambassador here, surveyed the scene with a wide smile.

"The biggest event since Alexander came the first time," he grinned, referring to the legendary conqueror's tear through the region 2,300 years ago.

On Friday, 300,000 Afghans voted for the winner via text messages on their cellphones.
A dapper Tajik Rafi Nabzada, 19, clad in a shimmering suit with a slick black mane of hair, became Afghanistan's version of Carrie Underwood or Kelly Clarkson.

"He is a young boy, very beautiful, a great voice," observed Karim Haidary, 20, decked out in a beige, three-piece, pinstripe suit that paid a definite fashion homage to the most popular young man in Afghanistan.

"In my opinion, it shows the development of our country," said Haidary, who waited in a line 100 deep to see the big show, while pick-up trucks filled with police reinforcements circled the hotel parking lot before the performance.

The clash of competing cultural forces that played out Friday was obvious: The young new Afghanistan - 60 per cent of the population is under 20 - contrasted with protesters objecting to the portrayal of Islam in European film and print media.

But in its three-year incarnation, Afghan Star has also become an unlikely political and cultural battleground in its own right.

Some Islamic clerics have denounced the show, particularly because, in a country that was once governed by the Taliban - which banned music and barred women from just about everything - women have been featured as star contestants.

Lema Sahar, an 18-year-old Pashtun woman from Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and the front line of the current insurgency facing Canadian soldiers, placed third. She was eliminated before Friday's final, but not before she was denounced for shedding her burka and performing in nothing but a blue scarf around her head.

Another young woman from the western city of Herat came in eighth and received death threats.

Saad Mohseni, the slick Afghan-Australian whose TOLO TV debuted Afghan Star three years ago, remains defiant against his critics.

"Our job is to reflect people's views and sometimes this differs with the government and certain people in power," Mohseni said in a weekend interview.

Mohseni and his brothers - the children of an Afghan diplomat forced into exile after the 1979 Soviet Union invasion - have clashed with factions in the Afghan government since their independently owned television station started doing hard-hitting reports on corrupt warlords and social taboos such as pedophilia, forced marriage and female self-immolation.

"In the most conservative parts of the country, we dominate," said Mohseni, whose family business has opened radio stations and magazines since returning here six years ago.

Their radio station drew criticism at home and gained international praise abroad a few years ago for putting the first female broadcasters on the air in Kabul.

Mohseni and his brothers know full well that they have the means to flee Afghanistan if things get too hot for them, but they say they aren't going anywhere, despite the risks.

They believe they are waging an important battle for freedom of speech and cultural diversity that will prove transformative for Afghanistan.

"We're in almost too deep now. It's a very exciting period. It's a struggle. Things are not meant to be easy."

Ottawa Citizen