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Karzai takes Afghan Cabinet out of Kabul
Mon Feb 25, 6:41 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai took his ministers to eastern Afghanistan on Monday for the first of a series of mobile Cabinet meetings to be held in a different province each month.
Taliban threaten Afghan mobile phones companies
Mon Feb 25, 9:54 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb 25, 2008 (AFP) - The Taliban threatened Monday to attack mobile phone facilities in Afghanistan, alleging that the technology was being used at night to pin-point the Islamic rebels' hideouts.
Afghan reporter shocked by trial
Monday, 25 February 2008, 15:31 GMT BBC News
An Afghan reporter sentenced to death after downloading an article from the internet on women's rights has said his trial lasted just four minutes.
Blast in Afghanistan's Kandahar was controlled
Mon Feb 25, 7:08 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A blast that shook Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar on Monday, was a controlled explosion carried out by the Afghan army, officials said.
US Marines prepare for 'different kind of fight' in Afghanistan
by Daphne Benoit Sun Feb 24, 3:30 PM ET
CAMP LEJEUNE, North Carolina (AFP) - For the 2,200 US Marines being deployed to southern Afghanistan next month, training for a mission fighting Taliban insurgents has meant adapting to a different type of enemy.
Afghanistan says needs stable and democratic Pakistan
By Wojciech Moskwa Reuters - Monday, February 25 01:05 pm
OSLO (Reuters) - Afghanistan needs a stable and democratic Pakistan to help it fight off Taliban militants, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said on Monday.
Afghan police officers graduate training
Feb. 25, 2008 at 9:51 AM
HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Afghanistan's focused district development initiative graduated its first class of Afghan National Police in Herat Thursday.
'We must persevere' in Afghanistan, MacKay says
Mon Feb 25, 5:45 AM
OTTAWA (CBC) - Defence Minister Peter MacKay opened the House of Commons debate on Monday on the future of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan by urging the opposition to support extending a mission that "matters to Canadians,
Afghan drug body hit by UK funding reversal
By Jon Boone in Kapisa province February 25 2008 The Financial Times
The Afghan ministry set up to tackle the drugs trade is facing a staffing crisisafter the UK, on the instructions of the Kabul government, withdrew funding for salaries.
NZ likely to extend troops' stay in Afghanistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WELLINGTON, N.Z. - There is "a strong likelihood" New Zealand will extend its commitment of troops in Afghanistan until September 2010, the defence minister said Monday.
Post-war Afghanistan sees more local-made products
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- "I am proud to sell products of our own country," said Mohammad Zalgai, a shopkeeper at a small market of Kabul, the Afghan capital.
'Afghanistan can govern itself soon'
Press TV (Iran) / Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:20:16
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Spanta who has started a visit of Nordic capitals says his country will govern itself "in a few years."
Afghan Foreign Minister visits Norway
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta has begun a two-day visit to Norway. He will have talks with his Norwegian counterpart, Jonas Gahr Stoere.
Afghanistan's Pop Idol breaks barriers
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Kabul Monday, 25 February 2008
In the corner of the kebab shop a small television with a crackly picture draws everyone's eye as they plunge their Afghan nan bread into oily sauce and slurp up a chunk of meat.
Afghan women 'remain in danger'
Monday, 25 February 2008, 19:09 GMT BBC News
A new report from an international rights group says that Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be female.
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Karzai takes Afghan Cabinet out of Kabul
Mon Feb 25, 6:41 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai took his ministers to eastern Afghanistan on Monday for the first of a series of mobile Cabinet meetings to be held in a different province each month.
Karzai chaired the meeting in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, said government spokesman Asif Nang.
"This is the first time in decades that a regular Cabinet meeting has been held in a province," Nang said, adding that similar meetings will be held monthly in one of the country's 34 provinces.
Security was tight in Jalalabad as Karzai and his ministers met with more than 100 tribal leaders and provincial council members in the governor's office. Hundreds of Afghan security forces conducted patrols and set up roadblocks around the city.
The decision to take the entire Cabinet outside Kabul signals Karzai's attempt to reach out to the provincial governors and authorities, who help to extend the reach of his government in the provinces.
The meeting also comes ahead of the country's next presidential election. Karzai's five-year term ends in 2009. He has yet to announce whether he will run again but is widely perceived by Kabul's diplomatic community as preparing for a campaign.
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Taliban threaten Afghan mobile phones companies
Mon Feb 25, 9:54 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb 25, 2008 (AFP) - The Taliban threatened Monday to attack mobile phone facilities in Afghanistan, alleging that the technology was being used at night to pin-point the Islamic rebels' hideouts.
Zabihullah Mujahed, a rebel spokesman, said that several phone companies had been given three days to respond to militants' demands that they cut night time operations or face attacks, notably on antennas erected across the country.
"The invading forces are using mobile phones for military purposes," Mujahed told AFP, referring to about 60,000 foreign personnel deployed in Afghanistan to hunt down Taliban militants who are waging a deadly insurgency.
"Usually during the nights the mobile phones are being used to spy on the Taliban to track down their footpaths. Here we ask the (mobile) companies to halt their operations from five o'clock in the evening to seven in the morning," he said.
Mujahed read out a statement which he said was from the Taliban leadership.
"We give them three days to halt their operations during night time or we will target their facilities," he told AFP by phone from an unknown location.
With 700 million dollars of investment, the burgeoning communications industry is one of the biggest development projects in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in a US-led invasion in late 2001.
According to the country's telecommunications ministry, over five million Afghans are currently using mobile phones, provided by five mainly foreign companies.
Abdul Hadi Hadi, a spokesman for the ministry, told AFP that the Taliban would be hampering their own operations if they carried out their threat.
"The Taliban themselves are using mobile phone for communications," he said.
Several Taliban spokesmen contact media by mobile phone to get their messages out or to claim responsibility for attacks.
The Taliban is the main insurgent group behind a bloody insurgency aimed at toppling the US-backed government in Kabul and ousting Western troops.
The rebels have targeted Afghan and Western security forces, foreign investments and aid workers.
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Afghan reporter shocked by trial
Monday, 25 February 2008, 15:31 GMT BBC News
An Afghan reporter sentenced to death after downloading an article from the internet on women's rights has said his trial lasted just four minutes.
Pervez Kambaksh, 23, told the UK's Independent newspaper from his prison cell he was denied access to a lawyer and not allowed to defend himself.
Mr Kambaksh was convicted of distributing an article insulting to Islam, which he denies.
His appeal against the death sentence is pending.
Mr Kambaksh has been held in a small, overcrowded cell in the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif since his arrest in October, the Independent said.
He shares his cell with 34 others, described by the Independent as terrorists, murderers and robbers.
He said he had been attacked by fellow inmates who believed him to be a heretic, but that this intimidation had eased off.
Arrest and charges
His ordeal began when he was questioned by some religious teachers at his university last October.
They said some other students claimed he had written a blasphemous article.
Mr Kambaksh says he merely downloaded from an Iranian website an article which questioned why polygamy was all right for men but not women.
Some days later he was told the Afghan intelligence services wanted to see him.
In the police station he was put under arrest, he said, and told it was for his own protection as otherwise he might be killed.
After a month in jail Mr Kambaksh was charged in court with blasphemy and other crimes against Islam.
In late January he expected the trial to start but instead was taken into the courtroom just before it was due to shut.
He says the judges and prosecutor repeated some details of the case and then declared him guilty and announced the sentence was death.
"The judges had made up their mind about the case without me," he told the Independent.
"The way they talked to me, looked at me, was the way they look at a condemned man.
"I wanted to say: 'This is wrong, please listen to me,' but I was given no chance to explain."
'Kabul appeal'
At no point in the closed-door proceedings did Mr Kambaksh have a lawyer and he says he was not allowed to defend himself either.
The Afghan Senate confirmed the sentence on 30 January, but backed down a day later after an international outcry.
The jailed reporter's appeal is expected to be heard in an open court in Kabul, the Independent said.
President Hamid Karzai would have to approve the death sentence for it to be carried out.
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Blast in Afghanistan's Kandahar was controlled
Mon Feb 25, 7:08 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A blast that shook Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar on Monday, was a controlled explosion carried out by the Afghan army, officials said.
The blast occurred to the west of the city of Kandahar, where more than 100 people, most of them civilians, were killed in a suspected suicide attack last week.
(Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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US Marines prepare for 'different kind of fight' in Afghanistan
by Daphne Benoit Sun Feb 24, 3:30 PM ET
CAMP LEJEUNE, North Carolina (AFP) - For the 2,200 US Marines being deployed to southern Afghanistan next month, training for a mission fighting Taliban insurgents has meant adapting to a different type of enemy.
Having tried but failed to convince its allies to commit more troops to Afghanistan, the Pentagon last month ordered the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to deploy in March.
They are due to arrive ahead of an expected spring offensive by the Taliban, who make use of very different tactics and terrain to the insurgents in Iraq.
"We are expecting a different kind of fight" than the type of attacks combat troops are used to dealing with in Iraq, said Captain David Lee, part of a reconnaissance unit attached to the Marines.
"In Iraq, the enemy was engaging us through IEDs (improvised explosive devices), they would run and hide," said Lee. "In Afghanistan, the Taliban will come and shoot at us, get into a gunfight. We didn't get a lot of that last time I was in Iraq."
He said that basic training for patrolling and shooting was the same for both theaters but that the Afghan deployment had required some fine-tuning.
"In the past two months, we focused more on the use of close air support, cover fire and supporting arms," he said, while supervising shooting practice for around 15 Marines firing assault rifles at targets 500 meters (yards) away.
Besides combat training, the soldiers have been taking language lessons, to help them be better understood among the Pashto and Dari-speaking Afghans.
"We've got language classes where we learn to say things like 'we are going to search your houses,'" explained one young Marine.
"Regarding training, you always wish you had more time. But we are absolutely ready," said the unit's commander, Colonel Peter Petronzio, sitting in an office surrounded by bags packed and ready to go.
"You have to be ready to go anywhere. Could be in Lebanon, could be in Iraq, could be in Afghanistan," said the commander, a veteran with 24-years in the Marines.
His troops could be deployed in the violence-torn south or the east, where they would be used to support the 50,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, with stability, security, and development duties.
"Everything we do focuses on counter-insurgency: we realized that in the last four or five years. That's the fight we are in now," he said.
The deployment will be backed up by around 20 helicopters, including combat, assault, transport and heavy-lift choppers.
The Marines' arrival is a major boost for NATO troops who have for months been asking for helicopter reinforcements. Afghanistan has in the last year seen its most violent period since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The Marines will be supporting Canadian, British and Dutch troops deployed in the troublesome south, a hotspot for violence where the most deadly skirmishes have occurred and where opium cultivation is flourishing.
While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates upset US allies in January by saying troops in the south, mainly from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, were not properly trained to fight an insurgency, Petronzio was at pains to reach out.
"I can't wait to get over there and see what we can do collectively. We are not going over there to show everybody how to do it, we are going over there to help," he said.
"I am sure we will work fine together. These countries have great troops."
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Afghanistan says needs stable and democratic Pakistan
By Wojciech Moskwa Reuters - Monday, February 25 01:05 pm
OSLO (Reuters) - Afghanistan needs a stable and democratic Pakistan to help it fight off Taliban militants, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said on Monday.
Asked about the impact of last week's election in Pakistan on Kabul's struggle against al Qaeda-linked insurgents, Spanta said: "A stable Pakistan is very important for Afghanistan."
"I hope they will form a government that will strengthen democracy ... and that we will continue our cooperation with Pakistan in anti-terror (activities)," he told reporters.
Pakistani politicians are in talks to form a coalition seen as weakening Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally who seized power in a military coup in 1999.
Pakistani militants linked to al Qaeda warned any incoming government on Sunday that they would increase attacks if Musharraf's U.S.-backed war on terror continued in tribal areas.
The mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is a stronghold of the Taliban, analysts say.
Spanta said the Taliban in Afghanistan has in past months switched to attacking soft civilian targets instead of military ones, which he said was a sign of their weakness and inability to battle head on against NATO forces there.
NATO NEEDED
On a tour of Nordic countries to drum up support and aid for Afghanistan's democracy, Spanta said NATO forces would be needed "for a few years" more while Afghan police and securities forces gain training and equipment.
Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said that Norway sought greater involvement of the United Nations in Afghanistan's nation-building programmes and more clarity from Kabul about where international aid efforts should focus.
"We share the analysis and the ambition that we need a clearer formulation of Afghan priorities and a clearer formulation of how we, as supporters of this process, coordinate our assistance," Stoere said after meeting Spanta.
"NATO is the only organisation that can provide this type of security (in Afghanistan) ... but it is not NATO's speciality to build states, that is more of a U.N. expertise -- that's why we need a stronger U.N. and a stronger mandate," he said.
Norway has about 500 soldiers in Afghanistan and this month the defence minister said Norway could remain there, along with other NATO countries, possibly until 2015.
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Afghan police officers graduate training
Feb. 25, 2008 at 9:51 AM
HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Afghanistan's focused district development initiative graduated its first class of Afghan National Police in Herat Thursday.
The Afghan government's district development project is an effort to improve policing in the country district by district. The reform initiative was developed by the Afghan Interior Ministry. Officials say 143 newly trained Afghan police graduated Thursday, marking the first class to graduate in Herat, the Combined Joint Task Force-82 reported.
Designed to address issues of inadequate training, poor equipment and corruption, the Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan developed the district-focused program taught by civilian police instructors at eight regional training centers throughout the country, to make it easier for the police to provide public safety and security for local Afghan communities.
Officials say the officers from the western Afghanistan district of Bala-Beluk graduated Thursday from the program's phase three, in which "their entire district was reorganized, re-equipped and retrained during an eight-week course," the release said.
The final stage of the program, phase four, involves re-inserting the newly trained police officers back into their districts.
"The real test will be this next week, when the police go back to their districts and we see how the people perceive them," Army Col. Peter Foreman, deputy to the commanding general for police development for Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan, said in a statement.
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'We must persevere' in Afghanistan, MacKay says
Mon Feb 25, 5:45 AM
OTTAWA (CBC) - Defence Minister Peter MacKay opened the House of Commons debate on Monday on the future of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan by urging the opposition to support extending a mission that "matters to Canadians, our soldiers and the international community."
"We must persevere," he said. "The consequences of abandoning Afghanistan are grave and as members consider the future of the Afghan mission, they should bear in mind that the world is watching, friends and allies alike, and the decisions of this House will reverberate around the globe and far-reaching into Canadian history."
MacKay also said he wished to "express appreciation and respect" to the Opposition for working with his party to achieve a consensus on the mission's future.
The members, returning to Ottawa after a short break, are debating a Conservative motion, which will be a confidence vote, that calls for the mission to be renewed past 2009, but with a focus on reconstruction and training of Afghan troops. It also includes a firm pull-out date, calling for Canadian troops to leave Afghanistan by December 2011.
This motion was revised following consultations with the Liberal party. Previously, the Conservative government had put forward a motion that left the mission open to renewal in 2011 and would have seen the military continue in a combat role.
The latest motion is still contingent on whether NATO allies provide 1,000 extra troops, and Ottawa secures access to unmanned surveillance drones and large helicopters to ferry Canadian troops around the region.
Urging support for the Conservative motion, MacKay stressed that the mission is non-partisan. "Afghanistan is a Canadian mission. It's not a Conservative or Liberal mission," he said.
"By helping the Afghans, we're helping ourselves too," he said. "In a world that seems increasingly small, no country is immune to terrorism."
No date has been set for the vote.
Progress has been made, Dion says
While not saying whether he will back the new motion, Liberal Leader St?phane Dion said the government has moved closer to his party's position and that much progress has been made since the Tories unveiled their first motion on the mission.
Both the NDP and Bloc Qu?b?cois have rejected any extension of the mission. But Liberal support would ensure the motion passes and avoid triggering an election.
The debate comes on the heels of a warning issued Friday by Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier, who urged Parliament to come to a quick decision on the country's role in Afghanistan.
Hillier said the longer the Canadian Forces go without clarity about the mission, the more difficult it will be to protect the soldiers.
He said that if the Taliban sense weakness, they may try to take advantage of it and attack Canadian soldiers to prevent a cohesive mission.
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Afghan drug body hit by UK funding reversal
By Jon Boone in Kapisa province February 25 2008 The Financial Times
The Afghan ministry set up to tackle the drugs trade is facing a staffing crisisafter the UK, on the instructions of the Kabul government, withdrew funding for salaries.
The best-educated workers at the fledgling ministry of counter-narcotics, which is intended to play a key role in reducing the country's poppy crop, have been looking for other jobs after pay for senior staff dropped from $1,500 (€1,011, £762) to $200 a month.
The ministry said 30 senior workers had left since November when pay was cut.
One official, a senior aide to counter-narcotics minister General Khodaidad, said he could no longer afford the rent on his Kabul flat and was trying to find an information technology job in one of the NGOs in Kabul, which pay far more than government jobs.
Other staff members claim to have received no pay since November.
Britain, "lead sponsor" of anti-drugs efforts in Afghanistan, withdrew its subsidy as part of a process designed to bring pay into line with other ministries. Gen Khodaidad said the move would "obviously affect the work of the ministry" and called for greater international funds to be made available.
An official at the British embassy in Kabul accepted that the changes had created difficulties for the ministry but said the UK was committed to supporting Kabul's efforts to create a sustainable public pay structure.
The reform process, which was intended to increase public sector pay overall and reduce government corruption, has proceeded so slowly that senior staff have suffered big pay cuts.
Speaking in Kapisa province, Gen Khodaidad said Afghanistan's efforts to reduce opium and heroin production were also hampered by the web of ministries and agencies involved in tackling the issue.
The country's narcotics economy has grown in strength in the six years since the overthrow of the Taliban regime, which had successfully banned poppy cultivation in 2000.
Last year Afghanistan produced its biggest harvest, with output up 17 per cent on 2006. It has also moved into the lucrative business of refining raw opium into heroin inside its own borders.
This week the International Monetary Fund said poppy production was worth $1bn to farmers. The value to the drug refiners and traffickers is far greater.
Counter-narcotics ministry officials said better news was expected this year, with more provinces set to be declared "poppy free".
However, they said choking cultivation in the province of Helmand, where the Taliban insurgency is at its most violent and production is at its highest, would be hard.
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NZ likely to extend troops' stay in Afghanistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WELLINGTON, N.Z. - There is "a strong likelihood" New Zealand will extend its commitment of troops in Afghanistan until September 2010, the defence minister said Monday.
Defence Minister Phil Goff said he told Habiba Sarabi, the governor of Afghanistan's central Bamiyan province, New Zealand has no immediate plans to pull out of the region.
"We are currently committed through to September 2009 with a strong likelihood that later this year that commitment will again be rolled over" for an additional year, Goff said after talks with Sarabi.
New Zealand troops, which have deployed periodically in southern Afghanistan since 2001, are carrying out reconstruction projects in Bamiyan. The mission has no combat role and soldiers are armed only to patrol and protect themselves from ambush or attacks.
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Post-war Afghanistan sees more local-made products
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- "I am proud to sell products of our own country," said Mohammad Zalgai, a shopkeeper at a small market of Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Busy piling up tins of cooking oil and ghee of different brands in front of his small shop, Zalgai said he prefers to sell those with "Made in Afghanistan" mark.
Afghanistan, devoured by nearly three decades of war and civil strife, has made progress in several fields over the past few years, with international support, though it takes time for it stand on its own feet.
Zalgai said he also sells Afghan-made soft drink and mineral water, including the popular Coca Cola, which was unthinkable during Taliban reign in 1996-2001.
"Producing these products inside Afghanistan is a good omen forthe nation's future," the 39-year old noted.
Established four years ago with initial capital of 15 million U.S. dollars, the local company Spinghar Gholi, meaning "White Mountain", came to be the first ghee and cooking oil producing firm in Afghanistan, said Hamid Akmal, an official with Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA).
After a suspension of around 15 years, the world-popular soft drink Coco Cola hit Kabul streets again in 2006 as a producing plant set up with initial investment of 25 million U.S. dollars was officially inaugurated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. According to Akmal, the plant run by a local company has got another 12 million U.S. dollars more to expand its capability andsupply its product across the country.
The past six years saw a growing number of small to medium size factories in Afghanistan, which produce ball point pens, soap, car battery, plug, sockets and dairy, etc.
The dust-color barren land in the outskirts of Kabul has increasingly been the scene of dotted chimneys and lines of containers of unnamed plants.
Though new and young, the growing manufacturing industry isreducing the country's dependence on foreign aid.Afghanistan's export in the first nine months of 2007 hadregistered 326 million U.S. dollars, a 15 percent year-on-yearincrease from previous 282 million dollars, Afghanistan ExportPromotion Bureau said.
Moving towards reconstruction despite challenges of militancy,unemployment and poverty, Afghanistan has attracted over fivebillion U.S. dollar investment in six years, mostly from privatesector in construction field, said Omar Zakhilwal, director of thegovernment-backed AISA.
Booming construction of star hotels and residential apartmentsin Kabul, among other key Afghan cities, with local orinternational money, changed the face of the war-wrecked land.
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'Afghanistan can govern itself soon'
Press TV (Iran) / Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:20:16
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Spanta who has started a visit of Nordic capitals says his country will govern itself "in a few years."
Afghanistan should manage to stand on its own feet "when we can (further) the building and rebuilding of the Afghan national army, when we can give better training and equip" troops, police and border guards, Spanta told reporters on Monday.
"I think we will have success in a few years," he said after meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere in Oslo.
On the first leg of a Nordic visit Spanta added that Kabul was prepared to talk with 'all parties' that respect the Afghan constitution.
In mid-January, Stoere survived a bomb attack on the Hotel Serena in Kabul where seven people died, including a Norwegian newspaper reporter.
Oslo has said it would allocate 138 million dollars to civilian programs in Afghanistan this year.
Norway has some 500 soldiers in Afghanistan, including a rapid reaction force that will be replaced by German troops on July 1.
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Afghan Foreign Minister visits Norway
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta has begun a two-day visit to Norway. He will have talks with his Norwegian counterpart, Jonas Gahr Stoere.
The Norway Post - Feb 24 11:42 PM
He will also be meeting Prime Minster Jens Stoltenberg and have discussions with Defence Minister Anne-Grete Stroem-Erichsen.
In an interview with Aftenposten, Spanta says that the Norwegian soldiers deployed in Afghanistan are needed in order to prevent terrorists from using Afghanistan as a base.
- We are fighting a common enemy, he says.
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Afghanistan's Pop Idol breaks barriers
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Kabul Monday, 25 February 2008
In the corner of the kebab shop a small television with a crackly picture draws everyone's eye as they plunge their Afghan nan bread into oily sauce and slurp up a chunk of meat.
The cross-legged diners lean to one side as they peer around a sheep's carcass that momentarily blocks the screen as it's passed from the freezer to the hook from which it then hangs in the window.
It's nine o'clock on Friday night and Afghan Star is on the TV, with just a handful of wannabe singers left, competing for fame and fortune in the glitzy and glamorous Afghan version of the talent show Pop Idol.
It's a huge hit on one of the national private stations, Tolo TV, but it's controversial in a country that's still very conservative.
Liberal stance
Most of the contestants who've not yet been voted out are men, but there is still one woman left.
Lima Sahaar is from the southern province of Kandahar and each week she travels up to the studios in Kabul for the show with her mother.
Her hair is usually covered with a scarf, her face not. The fact that a young woman from the birthplace of the Taleban is on stage performing each week says a lot about the way Afghanistan has changed in six years.
Taking such an obvious liberal stance can be dangerous, and although she explained she had the support of her family, there are many people opposed to her.
"I'm not afraid," she told me. "Afghan people don't care about risks or dangers.
"I think all of Afghanistan is in danger, but if we worry about those dangers we can't move on and the country's not going to develop."
She's already got the precocious traits of a young star - the dismissive attitude, the mobile phone texting while we talk - and the hallmarks of a manager looming large in the shape of her forceful mother.
She's not just the only woman left, she's also the only Pashtun, and in a country where ethnicity still means so much, she's almost guaranteed to stay in the show a little longer at least.
Modern beat
At the rehearsals the night before the weekly studio recording it was good to see the mix of young Afghans, their sights set on a better future for themselves.
They each stand up and perform this week's traditional song in front of their competitors - a modern beat accompanying them on the keyboard.
The presenter, Daud Sediqi, was a medical student when the Taleban were in power, but he also used to be an underground television and video repair man when TV was banned by the oppressive government.
"I always wanted to be in the music industry and now my life has totally turned around," he said.
And indeed it has - he's now one of the most famous people in Afghanistan with a huge crowd clamouring to get in to see his programme every week.
There's barbed wire around the entrance to the Afghan wedding hall that has been temporarily converted into a TV studio.
That, and the armed guards clutching their AK-47s and patting down those holding a golden ticket to the show, indicates how much further the country still has to go.
'Sleeping talent'
The women go straight upstairs and take their seats first and then the male majority push and shove, whistling and shouting excitedly and the men with guns and bodyguard style earpieces let them through one by one.
"Afghan Star is very good as it shows all the sleeping talent across Afghanistan," one young man in the crowd told me in good English.
"The young generation before, during the decades of war, could not stand up and show what they had, but now all the young generation can show their talents. Their talent is therefore very important for everyone."
And another laughed when I asked if this would have been possible under the Taleban.
"Back then we couldn't even listen to music in our own homes," he said.
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Afghan women 'remain in danger'
Monday, 25 February 2008, 19:09 GMT BBC News
A new report from an international rights group says that Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be female.
The report, compiled by Womankind Worldwide, says that the country has one of the highest rates of domestic violence and maternal mortality.
It is one of the few countries where more women kill themselves than men.
The report says that many of the laws introduced to protect women are not being properly enforced.
And it says that the process of including females in the country's social and political life has been unacceptably slow, seven years after the fall of the Taleban.
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