Wajiha Wahidi, a 25-year-old Afghan journalist, retouches her makeup before recording her first broadcast from the Begum TV studio in Paris. The premises, located in a northern neighborhood of the French capital, include a small newsroom, a recording studio and a meeting room, currently being fitted out with a green screen so that two programs can be filmed simultaneously. This expansion reflects the growth the Afghan television station-in-exile is experiencing, one year after its creation. Like the rest of her fellow journalists, Wahidi does not wear a veil and appears on-screen in street clothes, her face uncovered. She looks quite different from her audience of Afghan women. They watch her broadcasts via satellite television, which reaches one in two households in Afghanistan, a country ravaged by poverty where more than half of its 42 million inhabitants depend on humanitarian aid for their survival.

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