Saad Mohseni

And of course, this was after the fall of the government.

And then, you know, you ask yourself, was it for naught?

Was it worthwhile?

But nonetheless, it had the sort of desired impact in terms of shaking this very young country, reconnecting it to the rest of the world, helping develop music, culture, and so forth.

But it never stops.

Well, I mean, of course, because the country had no music for five or six years, we felt...

Let's have a reality talent show.

And we called it Afghan Star.

And it became very quickly the most successful program on our network in the country, as a matter of fact.

And people voted using texting, basically, in the early days.

and eventually WhatsApp and so forth.

But it really, because all of a sudden everyone felt that they could become a superstar.

So we used to have perhaps some of the least talented people show up in the studios wanting to perform.

This whole idea of role models, of heroes, of superstars was sort of alien to people in Afghanistan in 2002 or 2003.

Is that what it is?

Okay.

So it was a show that we used to go around this country and identify young, talented Afghans.

And the judges would go, the musicians would go, the production people would go.

And this very well-known cleric,

who had a huge following, was adamant that this was not going to happen in the city of Herat, which borders Iran on the western side of the country.