Afghan journalist living his dream

ATHENS — Omid Marzban is 20 years old and he's covering the Olympics for Afghanistan.

That's not just part of the Olympics for part of Afghanistan. Omid is filing reports for three radio stations and six newspapers, which amounts to almost all of the media in a country slowly extricating itself from years of strict Taliban rule.

Under the ultraorthodox Muslim ways of the Taliban, there was only government-controlled media. There certainly were no sports reporters. "I am one of the new breed," says a smiling Omid, whose English is not only very good but very American, an influence from the U.S. troops that have occupied Afghanistan since ousting the Taliban regime in the aftermath of 9/11.

Omid states emphatically that the majority of people in his country are glad for what America did and continues to do as peacekeeper.

"There are two views in Afghanistan," he says. "But it is a small minority that holds the view that America should not be there. Most Afghans are happy with what has happened."

That includes Omid, who finds himself the eyes and ears of a nation here in Athens. Whatever Afghans learn of these Olympics, Omid tells them.

His voice is on the airwaves and his stories are in the newspapers. He is the power of the press. Heady times for a boy from Kabul who wasn't yet out of school three years ago when the American invasion took place.

A budding journalist, he caught freedom of speech and freedom of sport just as the dual wave was forming in his country. He became a specialist, concentrating on sports journalism, an unheard-of pursuit in the days of the Taliban when conformity ruled and specializing simply did not exist.

While Afghanistan remains a Muslim land, and a conservative one at that, Omid paints a stark contrast between the then and the now. Under the Taliban, the state restricted sports as much as it did speech. People could still participate in sports but only as hobbies. They could not wear shorts, and they had to take appropriate breaks for prayers. Some sports had more restrictions. Boxers, for instance, had to wear beards and could not hit each other in the face. Bodybuilders had to wear long pants. Chess was outlawed altogether.

And these rules applied only to men. Women, who had to wear burkas to cover them in public and were prohibited from going to school and otherwise educating themselves, were also outlawed from sports activity altogether.