The Canadian military will begin radio broadcasts in Kandahar this weekend with an Afghan audience in mind.
 
Canada's RANA-FM, 88.5 on the radio dial, will spin modern Bollywood and Afghan hits considered "on edge" by Afghan residents, aiming for the 15- to 25-year-old audience.

Other programming includes news on international sporting events and features on Afghans living in other countries.

The Canadian studio of RANA-FM, a Canadian military-run radio station for Kandahar City, is shown in this DND handout photo from late December 2006. It will broadcast using Afghan-Canadian presenters.
(DND/Capt. R. Thibault/Canadian Press)

"[We] want to give them pretty much a progressive station that plays a lot of music and promotes the Afghan way of life," said Capt. Robin Thibault, 32, of Montreal.

"It allows us to demystify what we're trying to do and accomplish in their area and help us to explain to people, better, who we are."

The station will also provide the commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan, Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, a means to talk to the people of Kandahar, although officials insist the station will not be a propaganda tool.

'Safe back home'

In a bit of a twist, the radio station itself is located in an unidentified city in Canada.

"We're located in Canada but linked into Afghanistan by satellite and basically we just rebroadcast the transmission," said Thibault.

Basing the radio station in Canada is simply part of security measures.

"The station is safe back home. It's because of the security threat that we're facing right now," said Thibault, who notes BBC Pashto already broadcasts into Afghanistan from London, while Voice of America comes from Washington, D.C.

"As you know, I think it was in April or May that an interpreters' bus was blown up on the way to Kandahar Airfield and that's what we're trying to prevent," he said.

The 300-watt radio station will have limited reach by Canadian standards but should be strong enough to hit all of Kandahar City since it is "half the size of west island of Montreal but with a greater populace."

The call letters, RANA, is a Pashtun-Dari word that means light.

"Our slogan is 'Light in your Life,' " Thibault said.

"We want to be a factual, unbiased radio station so we need to be credible, … we cannot be Western or push Western views or values," Thibault said.