Kabul marketplace

Harley: Kabul has a new buzz in the air. A weary people have re-encountered hope. I have never seen the kites fly so high and the streets so full of purpose. There's a new kid in town -- the Northern Alliance has come with fresh promises of a new beginning, but they're not loved by everyone.

20:00

Their previous rule, from 1992 to 1996, was anarchic and bloody. History has taught this city to always look over its shoulder. This place is caught between optimism and apprehension, while it revels in simple pleasures we take for granted.

20:22

Bakhtar cinema

Gone With The Wind it's not, but the patrons at the reopened Bakhtar cinema aren't picky. A scratchy re-run of an anti-Soviet Mujaheddin flick keeps them on the edge of their seat. Not everyone's life has gone back to the way it was. Fida Mohammed used to be an usher, till the Taliban closed the cinemas and a land mine claimed his leg. Now, he greets people in the foyer, not to collect their tickets but their spare change.

20:43

Fida

Fida: People have always gone to cinema. They liked it very much as there was no other form of entertainment. The cinema shows them happiness, experience, humanity and goodness.

21:08

Harley: But the cinema can't keep pace with demand, but the really big business is in the small screen.

21:24

Harley in Pashtunistan street

Some parts of Kabul are almost unrecognisable. This is Pashtunistan Street, which is where, under the Taliban, you could always pick up a television quietly. Then, it was a somewhat eerie, tense place, with the religious police always close to hand. Now, TV culture is out in the open, the secrecy and hypocrisy have gone, and this place is bustling.

21:31

From TV antennas to the latest DVD releases, Kabul seems just a step away from cable. This consumer explosion in one of the poorest countries in the world, and less than a fortnight after the fall of one of the world's most restrictive regimes.

21:56

Farooq Ishaqzay

Farooq Ishaqzay: I cannot believe how dramatically, how fast, life changed, because I feel very free, I'm not afraid of anything.

22:13

Harley: I met Mohammed Farooq Ishaqzay three months ago, a cocky guy running a risky TV business. Now, it's legitimate and he's even more cocky, sales have soared from a few sets a month to 30 a week.

22:25

Farooq Ishaqzay: And a few times I was in jail for selling TVs, videos, a few things.

22:38

Harley: But now you can sell freely?

Farooq Ishaqzay: Yes, selling freely, feels so comfortable.

22:46

Harley: Kabul's new TV generation is wasting no time. Wajma and Shabir are too young to remember the family TV, which had been hidden away, just like this entire society. Their father, Abdul Rahim Khurram is a friend, who, under the Taliban, I was never allowed to visit at home, a home furnished in another time- when Kabul was peaceful and prosperous.

22:57

Khurram

Khurram: I remember peace. It was very interesting.

23:22

Harley: This family meal is extraordinary for the simple fact that it's shared with a foreigner. The veil is slowly lifting on this secret society.

23:27

Harley: The Taliban's iron fist banned me from meeting Khuram's wife and daughters, and who themselves could not leave the house without wearing the top-to-toe Burqa.

23:36

Rona

Rona: I have problems if I am sick. If I walk under Burqa for long I get a bad headache as I have weak eyesight and especially I would not like it for this daughter of mine.

23:46

Streets of Kabul

Harley: But Rona, like all the women of Kabul, remains shrouded. The Taliban may be gone, but the habit they imposed lingers on. Times are too uncertain to be careless.

24:04

Rona

Rona has never worked outside her home. To the Taliban, she's the perfect wife, dutiful and housebound.

24:16

Rona: When I first heard about the Taliban going, I got upset because they are also our compatriots. But on the other hand, I was happy because there was no education, no entertainment or higher training opportunities for our children.

Khurram

Khurram: My wife is very happy, because now she is sure that in the future her daughters could become doctors, engineers. My daughters are intelligent. Why should they not be engineers or doctors just because they're girls. I do not say that Taliban were bad. They were very nice people, very nice people, but the system was this way.

24:41

Hanafi

Harley: But sections of the system are showing surprising resilience. Hanafi is a transformed man. As a Foreign Ministry bureaucrat, he'd been an official Taliban translator, a job which really meant stopping me from filming. It was a soul-destroying job for a former Afghan TV cameraman.

25:09

But Hanafi was a public servant in fear of the regime and desperate for work. Today, he's had a dramatic make over, swapping the Taliban turban for a suit, even though his office still bears the hallmarks of his previous bosses.

Harley: You were a cameraman for Afghan Television and then under the Taliban your job was to stop us filming. How do you feel about that now?

25:51

Hanafi: That was the policy of the Government. Nobody will today stop you filming.

25:85

Harley: And a new suit, no turban, a more comfortable uniform?

26:05

Hanafi: Yes, this is the way it is.

Kabul

Harley: But how Afghanistan will be in the future remains a mystery. Kabul's new rulers are conducting a makeshift facelift, but the cosmetic changes can't mask the enormity of the task or inspire anything more than anxious optimism.

26:14

Khurram

Khurram: These small changes -- cinema, television, music, turban, beard, these things may make happy a lot of people, but I am nervous. We do not have a government yet and when we have a government we will be watching. I am hopeful, but I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure yet.

26:31

Credits:

Kabul

Reporter: Jonathan Harley

27:04