KABUL, — After four years of watching television programs test the boundaries of decorum and build devoted audiences in the process, conservatives are striking back.
Nihan is a young woman who lives in a part of the Istanbul city with her rich family. Nihan meets Kemal, a young man who lives in a poor neighborhood of Istanbul. On her birthday party, Nihan suddenly falls into the water from her boat. Kemal tries to rescue her and this is where their relationship starts. Stay tuned on TOLO TV.
In the latest battle of the long-simmering war between cultural conservatives and liberals, the minister for information and culture ordered television networks to stop broadcasting five soap operas on Tuesday, saying they were not in keeping with “Afghan religion and culture.”
The minister, Abdul Karim Khurram, said last week that he had made the decision in consultation with the Council of Clerics, made up of the country’s most influential religious leaders.
The private television companies initially refused to obey the order and said they would plead their case to Afghanistan’s president. The television shows, all soap operas produced in , continued to be broadcast every evening and have much of the urban population hooked.
As the deadline approached, however, one network, Ariana TV, buckled and pulled one of the soap operas, “Kumkum,” on Sunday. The network was immediately deluged with calls from viewers, said Abdul Qadir Mirzai, Ariana’s chief news editor.
Continue reading the main story
Control of television and its content has been a hotly debated issue here for decades. The strictly conservative government banned it outright, and the government before that, run by mujahedeen leaders, banned female singers and presenters.
But under President Hamid Karzai, who is backed by the West, television has flourished, with 17 private television companies starting in the past six years, 11 of them based in Kabul, the capital. Numerous cable television companies also provide a wide selection of foreign films and television shows.
The Afghan networks present a mix of news, popular-music programs and imported serials and soap operas, and are hugely popular, drawing crowds in teahouses and ice cream parlors. Call-in shows, including an Afghan version of “,” also have large followings, as do news programs.
Many viewers in this struggling country are so absorbed by the soap operas that they rush home in the evening to find out what happens next. Will Prina on “Life’s Test” convince her husband that she is not having an affair with a tycoon, Mr. Bajaj? Can Tulsi, the heroine of “Because the Mother-in-Law Was Once the Daughter-in-Law,” ward off the schemes of her husband’s former mistress? Both shows are among the five banned by Mr. Khurram, the minister of culture.
The television companies have also made themselves felt on the political front, not only by broadcasting probing news reports but also by taking sides in ethnic and language debates, which reflect political divisions in Afghanistan.
As Afghanistan prepares for a presidential election next year, some station owners and journalists contend that the ban on television programs is part of a political tussle for control of the airwaves. Political party leaders have opened their own television stations, which are already challenging the Karzai government.
President Karzai has signaled that he sides with the conservatives in the controversy over the serials. Although he said that he would ensure the freedom of the media while he was in power, he has said several times that programs that go against Afghan culture should not be allowed.
Despite his liberal leanings, Mr. Karzai has been swayed before by conservatives on cultural issues. After complaints in Parliament two years ago, Mr. Karzai appointed the more conservative Mr. Khurram as minister of culture, replacing Sayed Makhdoom Raheen, who oversaw the expansion of free media after the fall of the Taliban.
Mr. Khurram ordered the ban of the five shows after strong protests in Parliament over a recent televised awards ceremony on a private station, Tolo TV, that showed Afghan men and women dancing together, an activity that is virtually taboo in this country.
Mr. Khurram has defended his action, saying he did less than the Council of Clerics, or Ulema, had asked.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main storyThank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
- Opt out or contact us anytime
“The Ulema wanted to ban all TV serials,” Mr. Khurram said in an interview. “But I tried hard to ban only those serials that caused the most upset.”
Describing one of the soap operas broadcast by Tolo TV, he said, “There are scenes that are difficult for an Afghan family to watch, such as that of a woman with more than one husband.”
A member of the Council of Clerics, Said Enayatullah Baligh, who is the imam of Kabul’s large Khishti mosque, confirmed the council’s opposition to the television programs. “These are not acceptable to our faith and culture, and we will campaign to ban them,” he said.
Abdul Hamid Mubariz, director of the National Association of Journalists, an independent group that supports Afghan journalists and media organizations, called the ban “unjustifiable.”
“Our position is clear, and we defend the freedom of speech,” said Mr. Mubariz, who is a former deputy minister of information and culture. Under the law, complaints about media content should be first considered by a media commission and programs cannot be banned outright by the minister, he and others said.
Ehsanullah Arianzai, director of Ariana TV, the network that acceded to the order to drop “Kumkum,” suggested that some of the politicians calling for the ban were motivated less by beliefs than by business concerns. He said they had started rival television stations and that they were having difficulty competing with the established ones.
The ban would hurt Ariana TV financially, Mr. Arianzai said. “From a commercial perspective, it would put pressure on us as we receive a lot of advertising for these serials,” he said.
The television companies defend the shows largely on the basis of their popularity. The companies said they had already edited out culturally offensive scenes, like those in which actors exposed too much flesh.
Masoud Qeyam, a senior reporter and editor for Tolo TV, said his station used the revenue from the popular soap operas to finance its highly regarded news programs. “These programs have the largest number of people watching them,” he said. “It is through them that we are able to broadcast other programs, such as the news.”
Tolo’s executives said Monday that they were resisting the ban but that they had not decided what to do beyond the deadline.