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Good morning Afghanistan!

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Today radio listeners in Afghanistan were treated to a new station and a new program — Good Morning Afghanistan! The radio station is for the British armed forces in Afghanistan. We speak with Dusty Miller, the station manager and morning host.

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ROBIN WILLIAMS:  Good morning, Vietnam!  Hey, this is not a test.  This is real–

JEB SHARP: You may well remember Robin Williams’ portrayal of an American DJ for the Armed Forces Radio Service in South Vietnam.  Today, radio listeners in Afghanistan were treated to a new station and a new program.

DUSTY MILLER: Good morning, Afghanistan.

SHARP: Dusty Miller greeted his listeners in Helmand province this morning on the first British forces radio station in Afghanistan.

MILLER:  It’s a music station with music and chat and interviews and features about the British and the US forces, the international forces and the work they do in Afghanistan, interspersed with pop music.

SHARP: What’s your biggest challenge?

MILLER: Our biggest challenge is the fact that we’re based in Camp Bastion and outside of Bastion, certainly in southern Helmand and further in the north, in the Kabul area, it is very dangerous getting to and from any bases.  So although we would love to get out and about and see a lot of the troops who are outside of Bastion, the military here can certainly get us to a location.  They cannot guarantee to get us back in the timeframe that requires us to be back.  So we can’t be away from the station more than 24 hours, because we have a daily commitment on air.

SHARP: Now today, for instance, was not a good day for troops.  A number of soldiers killed in helicopter accidents, and I wonder how you deal with that as a broadcaster.

MILLER: Well, we have a new service that comes in on the hour.  We have a half hourly headlines and sport and we’re in constant touch with the media operations people on the ground.  And we are informed before anybody else that there has been an incident.  In that respect, we are very mindful and very respectful of what’s going on.  We don’t get into the politics of the thing.  We don’t go somber every time there is an incident.  There is a mission, there is a job to be done here, and I think our British and international forces, and of course US forces, who we are right alongside here at Camp Bastion there and Camp Leatherneck.  I think they appreciate that.

SHARP: Dusty Miller, tell us a bit more about what it took to get this thing going, given the harsh conditions and the security precautions you’re operating under. I mean, what was it like getting the infrastructure set up?  How much of a roll out was there, and how difficult was it?

MILLER: Well, we’ve actually been doing this for many years now.  We had the operation in Iraq up until July when it was all handed over to the Iraqi authorities and the British forces pulled out, as did the American– some of the American forces, and so our radio station moved.  And all we’ve done is effectively moved our operation from Iraq, where we were broadcasting via satellite into Afghanistan anyway, to actually come here on the ground.  The biggest problem is the supply chain, getting stuff here in the timeframe that you want it here.  The military move heaven and earth to aid us and assist us and get us here on the ground.  We’ve effectively started building this studio from scratch, on the ground here, since end of May, beginning of June.  So it’s taken four to five months to get to where we were this morning at 6:30 when we opened up our faders and said, “Good morning, Afghanistan.”

SHARP: And what song was the first one played on your station this morning?

MILLER: Well, we put it out to our audience to choose over the last two or three weeks, and I said, “Look, you come up with the title of the track that you actually would like to hear as the very first track and we’ll play it.”  And the number one song at 6:30 this morning, just ahead of “Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits was the Boo Radleys and “Wake Up Boo!”
["Wake Up Boo!" starts playing]

SHARP: We spoke with Dusty Miller.  He’s the station manager and morning host of the new British Forces Broadcasting Service radio station in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

["Wake Up Boo!" continues]

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