[Peace] Afghani Radio Diary Sat. 1pm WILL-AM 580

[Kranich, Kimberlie]

Sounds like what the UCIMC does. See below and tune-in.
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What happens when an American teenager moves from his Bay Area house to
the governor's compound in rural Afghanistan? Hyder Akbar, an
eighteen-year-old                             Afghan-American who grew up in
California, spent the summer of 2003 in Kunar,
one of Afghanistan's most volatile regions. He took a minidisc recorder with
him to document his experiences, recording even as he ducked for cover on
the                                floor of a U.S. Special Forces Humvee
during a 20-minute ambush. 
The public radio program "This American Life" will broadcast a full hour of
his extraordinary recordings on Satruday, December 13 at 1pm and repeated at
6pm on Sunday, December 14th on WILL-AM 580. The dates coincide with the
convention at which Afghans will ratify their new constitution. 

Hyder sees the interactions of the new Afghan government and the
U.S.military with a detail and access few reporters ever get. 
He sees challenges to the Afghan government that haven't been reported on
elsewhere,                              and records U.S. Special Forces at
work in remote regions. Hyder's powerful work                             of
first-person journalism also includes an eyewitness account of a secret U.S.
military interrogation of a suspected terrorist. The suspect, Abdul Wali,
later                               dies while in the hands of U.S. forces,
and Hyder becomes personally involved in
the aftermath of his mysterious death. 
Wali remains one of only three prisoners to die while being held by the U.S.
in Afghanistan. Last spring, Hyder's father was appointed the governor of
Kunar, a                            rural province with a lingering Al Qaeda
presence that borders the tribal regions                              of
Pakistan. Hyder joined his father and his uncle, a one-eyed war-hero, in
Kunar                                in June. Because Hyder speaks fluent
Pashto, he became a teenage embed
(unofficially, of course), sometimes traveling with the U.S. Special Forces
in                               their convoy and translating for them,
while recording their awkward interactions                           with
the Afghan villagers they are meant to liberate and protect. 
In addition to providing an unusual glimpse of the U.S. military at work,
Hyder                            discovers that the reality of Afghanistan
is much different than what has been                               reported
about it.  He witnesses Afghanistan's newest challenge, something barely
noted in the American media's assessment of the country's growing unrest:
the                                   return to power of Afghan Communists. 
To illustrate how their rising profile is devastating rural villagers,
Hyder interviews survivors of a little-known 1979 massacre during which
Afghan                          Communists gunned down 1,200 people in, it's
said, a half- hour. Standing atop                                   the mass
grave, a survivor bursts into tears and explains to Hyder how the
ground underneath shook with people buried alive, trying to get out. 
Before September 11th, Hyder lived the life of a regular American high
school kid: he hung out with his buddies, listened to U2, shopped at Banana
Republic. But then, everything changed. Hyder's father, a scion of an Afghan
political family, sold the family business--a hip-hop clothing store in
Oakland--and left for Afghanistan, where he became President Hamid Karzai's
chief spokesman. 
Hyder joined his father in Kabul for several months during the summer of
2002.                            (Recordings he made in Kabul were turned
into an award-winning documentary,                                     "Come
Back to Afghanistan," that aired on "This American Life" in February 2003.) 
Hyder is the first American teenager to spend significant time in
Afghanistan as                                      a civilian. He provides
a personal and accessible perspective into a country that
many Americans still think of as backwards, full of caves and bearded holy
warriors.                            He is also one of few people to have
witnessed the reconstruction of Afghanistan
(or lack thereof) from both Kabul and the countryside. He has sat with
President                               Hamid Karzai in his office and with
jailed Al Qaeda suspects in one of Afghanistan's
most remote regions.