Palisadian Sajia Kamrany describes her weekly satellite TV program, “Afghanistan TV,” as a Larry King-type show. But the chatter is far from light and airy’it recently turned to the plight of a 9-year-old Afghan girl who was being forced by her mother to get married. As writer, producer and director, Kamrany sits in front of a camera every Saturday morning at a studio in the San Fernando Valley and talks live to people in Afghanistan, her native country, as well as to fellow Afghans living in India, Pakistan, Iran and everywhere else in the world. She funds the hour-long program herself, paying $2,000 for airtime each month, an expense she says she can bear for only a few more months. Her goal is nothing short of heroic: to empower women and promote women’s rights in a place notoriously repressive in the treatment of its female population. From forced child marriages entailing physical and sexual abuse to the public execution by stoning last April of a woman accused of adultery, violence against women in Afghanistan persists, despite the ousting of the Taliban regime by U.S.-led forces four years ago. “When you marry in Afghanistan, you’re a maid, a homemaker, a nobody,” says Kamrany, who came to the U.S. from Afghanistan as a college student in 1977 and never returned. “You have to just cook, bear children and be a sex machine. Women in Afghanistan are miserable, absolutely miserable.” While women ostensibly have more opportunities since the fall of the Taliban’they can go to school, receive health care and gain employment’the reality is that few can take advantage of these new freedoms. Most women, through fear of attack and social pressure, still wear the all-enveloping burqa, a third of the women in Kabul do not leave the house, forbidden to do so by the male members of the family, and it is still almost impossible for women to get a divorce. One of the most egregious acts is the widespread practice of forcing girls, sometimes as young as 8, to marry. “It’s all over Afghanistan,” Kamrany says. “They even sell their daughters.” In October, Kamrany opened her e-mail and found this message: “Salaam, I am Jan Mohammad from Mazar-Sharif [a city northwest of Kabul]. My mother is going to have my sister get married. But my sister is 9 years old. Please tell my mother not to do this deed. Otherwise, my sister will commit suicide. My mother watches your TV program. Thank you.” A distraught Kamrany announced the news on her show, admonishing the mother while also trying to persuade her to cancel the wedding and let the “little girl go to school and learn about life.” “My God, my daughter is 16, and I don’t even want her to date,” says Kamrany, who is a divorced mother of two. Her daughter, Michelle, attends Palisades High and her son, Tony, is a graduate of USC. “I was so mad,” says Kamrany, who devoted two one-hour shows to the topic. Two weeks after receiving the brother’s e-mail, another e-mail arrived from Farida, the elder sister of Shyma, the 9-year-old: “Everyone in our city is watching your TV show every Saturday and just yesterday my mom told everyone that she will not give her dokhtar (daughter) for marry, as Sajia insisted.” She went on to say that her mother told the prospective groom “now the whole world knows about this arranged marriage and how it is not good.” An elated Kamrany hopes this saga will be the beginning of a social change in Afghanistan through modern technology (her show also can be seen via the Internet at www.afghanistantv.org). She is especially intent on getting Afghans to disband the custom of forced and arranged marriage. But people reach out to her with many desperate needs. A 20-year-old from Parwan, a remote northern village, sent an e-mail to Kamrany just two weeks ago. He is the oldest of five children, his parents were killed by the Taliban, and he and his siblings are literally freezing to death, with no warm clothes or electricity. “I get all these e-mails and it breaks my heart,” Kamrany says. “There’s only so much I can do.” Kamrany’s first Afghanistan TV program ran from 1993 to 1996 on KSCI, Channel 18. It was a variety show featuring popular entertainers, interviews and a news segment. When Kamrany was persuaded to relaunch her program last May, she envisioned a similar format. “I thought I was simply going to entertain these poor people in Afghanistan,” says Kamrany, whose own background as a singer includes producing two CDs. A call from Moscow six months ago changed her focus. The Afghan man told Kamrany how he had been imprisoned during the Russian invasion and when he was released, his wife and kids had vanished. He has spent years trying to find them. Kamrany promptly announced the name of the family and conducted a search on her show, urging anyone with information to call a number posted on the screen. “He called me yelling and screaming and crying,” recalls Kamrany. “He found his kids, who were living in Virginia with a relative. Unfortunately, his wife had died.” She says that changed everything for her, describing her current broadcast as the “ultimate reality show.” Future shows will focus on female hygiene, birth control, education and artistic expression. Kamrany’s grant proposal to create a 24-hour satellite show devoted to education was turned down by the U.S. Agency for International Development. “I had a huge list of young Afghan-American girls and women willing to contribute,” she says. Nonetheless, she hopes to create a nonprofit organization to aid Afghanistan and eventually wants to travel back to her native land for the first time to make a documentary. In the meantime, she continues to use the power of technology to improve the lives of Afghans. “If I help one person, it makes a big difference.” Sajia Kamrany can be reached at sajiakam5@hotmail.com or visit afghanistantv.org for more information.
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