Radio Kabul is the official radio station of Afghanistan. Since the installation of the first radio transmitter in Kabul in the 1920's, the name of the state-run radio station has been changed to Radio Kabul. In 1925, King Amanullah Khan installed a 200 watt Russian transmitter transmitting AM 633 kHz in Kabul Palace. The transmitter was destroyed during the 1929 uprising against the king. The transmitter was replaced by the new King Mohammad Nadir Shah in 1931 and was improved by installing a new 20 kW transmitter in 1940 , where the program was broadcast at 600 kHz. This is generally considered to be the official birth of Radio Kabul. The program is broadcast in Pashto , Dari-Persian , Hindi , English and French. Throughout Afghanistan's modern history, radio has been controlled (and renamed) by the ruling party. As King Mohammad Zahir Shah sought to strengthen his goal of all-Afghan unity, the station was renamed the Afghan Broadcasting System in 1953 and again in 1970 in Radio Afghanistan. During a relatively peaceful period in the 1960's and 70's, Radio Kabul introduced a whole generation of traditional and modern Afghan artists, such as Ustad Mohammad Hussein Sarahang , Ustad Farida Mahbash and Ustad Mohammad Hashem Chishti. These master musicians are revered not only in Afghanistan but also in India and other countries. After the change of government in the 1980s, all the new leaders were announced on the radio station. After the Soviet Union established a puppet government in 1989, Radio Kabul was controlled by the pro-Soviet government and was used to propagate pro-Soviet views and policies directly from the Soviet Union. During the civil war in the 1990s , the radio station was damaged several times during the war , with various factions gaining control of Kabul. When the Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996, the radio station changed its name to Shariat Ghagh , meaning Voice of Shariah or Voice of Shariah. As the Taliban consolidated their power across the country , the radio station was used to rally Taliban supporters and broadcast new instructions to the ruling mullahs. The Taliban banned music in the new station and ordered the destruction of the radio archives , which contained irreplaceable ribbons of Radio Kabul music, and the political program went back more than forty years. The ribbons were thought to be lost forever , but the BBC reported in 2002 that , miraculously, not only the Taliban , but the archive survived the destruction of Radio Kabul by an American bomb during the US invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. The tapes were hidden from the Taliban by Mohammad Siddique, or "Mr. Computer," in charge of the archives. The Taliban thought they had destroyed the archives , but instead had tapes of Indian and Iranian music. Siddique claims that there are 50,000 radio tapes. Radio Kabul resumed its music and political programs after the Taliban were ousted from power. It is claimed that the first song aired on Radio Kabul in 2001 was Abdul Wahab Madadi's famous patriotic song "Watan" (Homeland).