Taliban threat cancels TV soap in Jordan

After a week-long advertising blitz, Jordan abruptly cancelled plans to broadcast a soap opera about Afghanistan after an internet threat to ”strike” everyone from actors to TV executives if the show portrayed the Taliban in a negative light.

The Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, however, went ahead with its scheduled programming and aired the soap opera’s second episode on Saturday night.

The series, “al-Tareeq ila Kabul” – Arabic for “the Road to Kabul” - chronicles life under Afghanistan’s former Taliban rulers, and was to be aired during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began on Friday in most Muslim countries.

As reported in the Turkish press:

DOHA, Oct 16 (AFP) - Television stations in Qatar and Jordan said they would not broadcast a love story set in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after Islamist threats against the soap -- but both insisted their reasons for doing so were purely technical.

The head of Qatar's state television, Mohammed Abderrahman al-Kawari, was quoted Saturday by the local press as saying "The Road to Kabul" series, which had been due to kick off with the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Friday, "was not technically ready".

The Jordanian-made series, featuring Jordanian and Syrian actors, recounts the relationship between a young Afghan woman and an Arab man who meet in London and then go to live in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Their story is told against the backdrop of recent Afghan history, from the Soviet occupation of the 1980s through the emergence of the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban to the US-led invasion in October 2001 which toppled the Taliban.

Jordanian state television also failed to air the first episode on the first night of Ramadan, which is supposed to be a month of piety and giving but during which television audiences also reach record highs as people spend more time with their families. "Jordanian television received a call from the head of Qatari television, which finances the series, saying that only eight episodes could be delivered," an official with the channel said.

"Jordanian television therefore decided not to broadcast anything until it receives all 30 episodes," the official said.

A previously unknown group calling itself the Mujahedeen Brigades of Iraq and Syria said in an Internet statement Friday: "This is a warning for all those who contributed to making this soap opera, actors, producers, cameramen, if it contains insults to the Taliban."

"We will strike, God willing, satellite channels showing this soap opera and their correspondents as well as their offices in Iraq and Syria," the statement said.

Ramadan television features cover a wide range of topics and their popularity has attracted the region's top acting stars and big advertising campaigns.

The Taliban, ousted in 2001, continues to wage a guerrilla campaign in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Under the Taliban's five-year iron-fist rule, Afghan women were completely banned from public life, while photography and film were outlawed as un-Islamic.

An official from Qatar's state television station denied having yielded to the threat. "The decision to suspend the programming has nothing to do with these threats," he told AFP.

"The decision was made two days before the threats were even posted because (the channel) has only received eight of the series' 30 episodes," he added.

"According to the contract, the producer was supposed to deliver the full series long before the start of Ramadan, which he did not do."

Talal al-Awamila, director of the Arab Audio-Visual Centre which produced the soap, said that "because the series treats a politically-sensitive problem, its owners wanted to see all the episodes before showing them."

Qatar television has the rights to the series after backing the production to the tune of two million dollars.

"Broadcasting of this series has not been cancelled but postponed," said Awamila. "The final episodes have been shot and these have been sent to Qatar television."

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Of course, the thing about "internet statements" is that the alleged "previously unknown" terrorist group could consist of one pimply-faced teenager sitting at his Dell, and who would know?

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