Aussie media mogul stands firm against Taliban menace

Australian media mogul Saad Mohseni is chief executive and director of the Moby Group, which owns media outlets in Afghanistan. Picture: Andrew Quilty

Saad Mohseni is staring down the barrel of a Taliban gun.

He’s done it many times before.

But now the Australian media mogul stands on the verge of losing the television empire he’s spent 18 years building in Afghanistan as his sworn foe once more sweeps across the country.

It would make sense for a man in his position to offer an olive branch to his enemy.

Not Mohseni.

“These animals are killing our children,” he wrote recently.

The owner of TOLO TV had just had to help identify the body of a colleague’s 22-year-old daughter, slaughtered with 20 other students in a terrorist attack on Kabul University.

“This is a day in Afghanistan, post peace-talks,” he wrote, still shaking with anger.

Today Afghanistan faces the prospect of a complete takeover by the same fanatics, their reward for sitting at the table to play out the farce of a betrayal dressed up as a negotiated withdrawal.

The US military has all but gone, leaving behind thousands of tonnes of weapons, a bewildered Afghan populace, and the soiled remains of its dignity. Australia got out earlier, not even leaving a functioning embassy.

“It’s like a fire and they’re pushing everyone out of the way to escape,” says Mohseni.

The CIA gives Kabul just six months to fall to the Taliban. Maybe less.

No one left in the city has any doubt the mullahs’ first target will be the TOLO TV studios.

The Taliban will come for Mohseni long before they occupy the power station, before they shut down the university, and even before they begin burning the books; for in still-largely illiterate Afghanistan, the power of television has been immense.

When I first met this cheerful entrepreneur in Kabul 10 years ago, the first buds of his passion project were already starting to bloom: news programs, game shows, soap operas, cop dramas and best of all, a cheesy talent show, Afghan Star. It was a rip-off of American Idol, but in Afghanistan it was revolutionary – men and women singing love songs. Sometimes to each other. Twelve million people tuned in every night.

The young stars shrugged off the death threats from the Taliban; they could sense change coming and they wanted to be part of it, no matter the risk.

I watched a concert Mohseni had organised where 8000 young Afghan women danced along to a rock band. Separate from the men, but dancing. Unheard of.

Back then, I thought the most important thing Mohseni was doing was to introduce the concept of independent, hard-hitting news and current affairs programs, often highly critical not just of the Taliban but of Afghanistan’s often corrupt politicians.

That was a journalist’s bias.

What this lone Australian entrepreneur was already doing was something the world’s most powerful armies were failing at: changing hearts and minds.

The war was going badly. Even in Kabul there were daily assassinations, suicide bombings, rocket attacks. But Mohseni was optimistic about the future.

“Afghanistan is going forward regardless: the young people are just dragging it forward,” he told me one day as we sat in a blast-protected courtyard restaurant buzzing with the conversation of exuberant Afghan youth. “It has a natural momentum not even the Taliban can stop.”

Besides which, he added, the international community would never allow the Taliban to return.

He was wrong about the Taliban, but not about the kids.

We don’t yet know how this will end, but we can guess.

Mohseni’s legacy will be giving Afghans the chance to glimpse the outside world, think critically and have a more open mind. It may be the one thing the Taliban can’t kill.