Spectator's Journal/Radio Free Kabul
McGurn, William
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL Radio Free Kabul It is 8:00 p.m. in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In the capital city, Kabul, the streets are patrolled by nervous Soviet Army regulars and their...
...You can't just mail these things in—they have to be secretly delivered, not always an easy job...
...but his clinical experience has recently been exiguous...
...In this age of mass hypochondria surely every thinking American is aware of the prevalence of obesity...
...He performs badly...
...Vivid is my melancholy memory of a rich friend whose daily drive to the office was always shrouded in the fear that some fortune hunter would fling a household pet into the path of his Cadillac as he drove through an impoverished neighborhood...
...Adding to the Kremlin's annoyance over the taped broadcasts made by Russian dissidents like Bukovsky and Vladimir Maximov are the daring plans to establish and operate a Russian-language station on Afghan soil manned by Soviet exiles, all of which serves to demoralize the soldiers occupying the country...
...The rich businessman can only get an admiring press when he makes an expensive fool of himself at some fashionable dump like New York City's Xenon...
...But the mujahedeen have their own problems...
...clearly are not amused by such broadcasts, denouncing Radio Free Kabul alternately as a CIA or Zionist front, as well as confiscating radios...
...This is the voice of the Afghan mujahedeen," begins the local-language broadcast, taped against the background of traditional Afghan music...
...RFK committees in Europe have attempted to alleviate this somewhat with the purchase of about 2,000 cheap pocket-sized FM radios in Singapore, but many more are needed...
...In addition to well-known leaders like LeVy and the Polish-born Halter, president of the Paris Human Rights Committee, various French volunteers have journeyed into Afghanistan to train the mujahedeen on the technical aspects in this war of ideas...
...Indeed it isn't...
...They preach that affluence is the root of all evil, but they urge that the rich make the poor affluent...
...Then the ambulance chaser wouTd move in...
...They oppose their own prescriptions for sainthood...
...more help is needed...
...Andropov and Co...
...what shoddy merchandise is being produced...
...In Afghanistan," says Halter, "you have to understand that they have almost no help from the outside...
...The most scandalous treatment of the rich comes from the clergy...
...It is when he gets back to his desk and starts working that the press again grows suspicious: what deals are being cut...
...With the spread of affluence or at least profligacy, Cadillacs and furs turn up in the meanest neighborhood...
...When he peers onto the recumbent body of some mogul, often he is overawed...
...Today, as a result of their efforts and the assistance of others-=rncluding the Soviet exile Vladimir Bukovsky—there are some 11 portable transmitters scattered throughout the Afghan countryside, with programs broadcast in the two main languages of Afghanistan, Dari and Pushto...
...With characteristic restraint, TASS refers to the resistance members as "cutthroats and bandits...
...The learned Ben Stein in his book about Hollywood, The View from Sunset Boulevard, tells us" that screenwriters and their bosses purposely portray the rich as contemptible and vicious...
...The truth, of course, is that it is as senseless today for us to scorn the rich as it was in times past to scorn the poor...
...It owes its existence primarily to two Frenchmen, writer Marek Halter and philosopher Bernard-Henri Le"vy...
...For Bukovsky, Levy, Halter, and others, however, the work continues...
...he has virtually no escape since Pakistan returns Soviet deserters...
...All insist on seeing only the most eminent specialists...
...All the great churches are beholden to the rich, yet what man of the cloth ever has a good word for them...
...Checks should be clearly earmarked "Radio Free Kabul...
...Furthermore, having listened attentively to the liberal Demo-crats' harangues for years, I have come to the conclusion that by rich they mean anyone earning the median income for the standard family of four who has avoided a stretch in Attica.ded a stretch in Attica...
...This is not all that difficult: the Russian soldier is fighting a war he does not believe in...
...In the capital city, Kabul, the streets are patrolled by nervous Soviet Army regulars and their puppets in the ever-diminishing ranks of the Afghan Army...
...Of the other features, one of the more popular is the 15-minute "letter box," during which letters smuggled out of Kabul and various Pakistani refugee camps are read aloud and answered on the air...
...Of the 11 clandestine stations currently transmitting, one operates on shortwave and the other ten are on the FM band...
...What is often ignored is that America has a higher percentage of skinny rich people than any other country on earth.' Many look ghastly...
...Even a dangerously high percentage of our poor are fat...
...how about those mergers...
...At the urging of Bukovsky, each of the 30- to 60-minute broadcasts also includes at the end a 10-minute Russian-language program, designed to bring some uncensored news reporting to the hapless Soviet troops stationed there, many of whom are also Muslims...
...Finally, forget not the rich person's tendency to resort to arrant quacks...
...The press shows them in the same light as often as possible...
...Then too there are the outright icriminals who prey upon the rich, some with violent deeds, others with shameless swindles...
...There is a selection from the Koran with some appropriate commentary, followed by the evening's news feature, which might be anything from an interview with some Solidarity leaders to reports on the deportation of Afghan students to the Soviet Union...
...For many, that is the most important thing...
...EDITORIAL (continued from page 6) some lives, jogging, playing tennis, walking their thoroughbred horses, maintaining careful diets...
...Such con men as worried my friend (now deceased) are as likely as not to fall upon a radically impecunious Cadillac driver, defended by a savage Legal Services lawyer, and without clear title to his Cadillac anyway...
...Futhermore few rich people ever employ a simple family doc to oversee the swarms of specialists, and soon the patient is as full of drugs as a corner pharmacy or a rock star...
...What kind of spiritual advice is this...
...though they ooh and ah over the riches of entertainers and professional athletes, and they adore celebrity...
...As members of the Paris-based Human Rights Committee, both were acutely aware of the problem of unity among the Afghan mujahedeen, or freedom fighters...
...So far, RFK committees in France, England, and the United States have raised $50,000, $7,000, and $32,000 respectively...
...The object of this subversive action, of these broadcasts," said Izvestia, "is to consolidate the counterrevolution, to bring disrepute on the political help of the Soviet Union to the Afghan people...
...But out in the rugged countryside—up to 90 percent of which is still in the hands of the resistance, according to an estimate cited by Kevin Lynch in a recent National Review—Radio Free Kabul is warming up for another night of uncen-sored news...
...The super rich arguably receive the worst medical care in the Republic...
...Fortunately in recent years the rich have been able to display their wealth more nonchalantly...
...He is a genius at research, lecturing, and collecting awards...
...Extraneous concerns distract him, for instance: the enormous malpractice suit that awaits one false move...
...William McGurn Contributions to Radio Free Kabul may be sent in care of Freedom House, 20 West 40th Street, New York, N. Y. 10018...
...You must remember," said one RFK committee member, "this is total cost...
...Enormous hypocrisy informs our treatment of the rich...
...All this, however, costs money— money the mujahedeen do not have...
...Simply put, there are not enough FM radios in Afghanistan...
...Similar to the Radio London programs used with such success by the resistance movements of World War II, Radio Free Kabul has been broadcasting in Afghanistan since October 1981...
...They tell us that Jesus loved the poor best, and insist that America end the poor's poverty...
...We are the first group to come in and say to the Afghans, 'we are with you.' And the mujahedeen need to know this, that they are not alone in their struggle...
...Our help is primarily psychological, and is of great importance...
...The specialist knows about the disease in question...
...and the Afghan guerrillas prefer not to take prisoners...
...According to Bukovsky, Radio Free Kabul needs at least 36 transmitters to cover all of Afghanistan, at a cost of $250,000...
...And this war has its costs: during a Soviet attack on the guerrillas in the Panjshir Valley, two French-trained Afghan technicians were killed, and another was captured...
...Under the slogan "one Afghan, one radio" they hope to dot the countryside with these receivers...
Vol. 16 • March 1983 • No. 3
