Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime has launched a pirate radio station which pumps out broadsides against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, officials and reports said on Monday. Operating from a mobile transmitter to avoid being shut down by US and Afghan forces, Voice of Shariat, or Islamic law, apparently uses the same name as the Taliban's radio station during the militia's 1996-2001 rule. It can be heard across a number of provinces in southern Afghanistan, the area where Taliban have recently stepped up a bloody rebellion, an Afghan intelligence source said. "We've heard intelligence reports from several districts in Kandahar province that the Taliban have launched a radio station," the source said. "People in Arghastan, Atghar and Maroof districts have heard it," he added, referring to the three districts in southern Kandahar, once the powerbase of the Taliban movement.
Abdul Latif Hakimi, a purported Taliban spokesman, said the broadcasts began early on Monday and there would be two hours of programmes a day between 6:00am and 7:00am and at the same hour in the evening. "The radios of the world which are apparently free, are in fact slaves of others. That is why we have launched the radio, to make people aware about the Taliban's thoughts and objectives," Hakimi told the Afghan Islamic Press news agency.
"And what're your thoughts and objectives?"
"To take power and kill anybody that gets in our way!" |
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