Live from Kabul.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The war in Afghanistan has provided Americans some unforgettable images: ragged Northern Alliance troops charging Taliban trenches on horseback as state-of-the-art fighter planes zoom overhead; Afghan women sheathed in the head-to-toe burkas that look like azure sails drifting across the moonscape countryside.

This week brought yet another image when an unveiled 16-year-old woman named Shekeba Mariam introduced the first television programs in Afghanistan since the puritanical Taliban regime pulled the plug on TV - and every other form of entertainment - five years ago.

Her raven hair partially covered by a green scarf, Shekeba spoke for only a couple of minutes, informing viewers that she had performed on children's programs before the Taliban. "For the past five years, I've been sitting at home, doing nothing," she said in a demure voice.

Sweeps week it wasn't. The first night of programming included some humdrum videos by male Afghan singers, a Russian's children's cartoon and the news read by a man in a rumpled suit that looked as if it had just been pulled from its hiding hole in the announcer's garden. Then there was the station manager, looking like a Hollywood gangster in sunglasses and three days of chin stubble. "Greetings viewers," he said, staring into the camera. "We are glad to have destroyed terrorism. Now we bring you tonight's programming."

Elsewhere in the capital, hundreds of people lined up to attend the opening of a cinema showing an old Afghan film called "Ascension." A new video rental store offered selections ranging from "Gladiator" to "Police Story" - and everywhere in the city could be the heard tinny tunes playing on cheap transistor radios.

Kabul's sudden entertainment explosion suggests that humans, whether they live in Kabul or a world away in Eugene, Ore., share the same craving for entertainment - and all its color, clash and mixed blessings. It also indicates that the grim, puritanical Taliban was less than successful in its efforts to keep Afghanistan shrouded in medieval darkness.

Yes, the Taliban confiscated and destroyed thousands of televisions, hanging the shattered sets from light poles, and gutted cinemas, shredding movie screens. But it appears that many resourceful, defiant Afghans hid their TV sets, some even daring to watch broadcasts from neighboring countries at night.

Although the Taliban tried to destroy the former government television station in Kabul, it took innovative engineers only a few days to cobble together enough Cold War-era equipment to go back on the air. It turned out that the station's former maintenance staff had managed to hide most of the station's 9,000 movies, documentaries and newsreels from the authorities.

It's heartening - and revealing - that even morality police as menacing and violent as the Taliban failed to destroy the Afghan people's desire for entertainment and all the freedoms that go with it. Granted, the restoration of television, cinema and music may prove to be a mixed blessing for the Afghan people - but it's a mixed blessing they can now choose to savor or reject. And with reports emerging that the hottest-selling item in Kabul these days is hand-made satellite dishes hammered out of tin cans, it's safe to assume that it's only a matter of time until Afghans are tuning in to watch the latest episode of "West Wing."