Back on the road- North of Kabul-Jabal Seraj

Mahbouba and I are working with Equal Access Radio this week to finish up an evaluation and monitoring project we started a year and one half ago....Radio is an excellent tool to access the provinces and from our survey we are discovering that the Afghan communities are very engaged in the programming and interested in giving us feedback. This is Radio Peace at Jabal Seraj, North of Kabul. They say that they have an audience of 1,000,000 in three provinces. Their comments: The programming training people in their rights is going well with one exception-the country doesn't quite have the infrastructure to support these rights. An example given is that Afghans are now entitled to an required to have ID cards....should take twenty minutes -at the most 2 hours....The call-in radio shows are full of callers complaining about it taking a month to two months-and bribes to get what is their right and obligation as a citizen. (See closet of letters from readers) This station is doing a great job of setting up conversations between the citizens and elected political leaders. The journalist describes being "set up" by a group of religious leaders and sent to jail for a year for an unpopular article...but he is back and undeterred....this country is full of people with these stories of perseverance and wisdom as democracy begins to take shape.