By Rupert Wingfield Hayes BBC correspondent in Kabul

Just four months after the fall of the Taleban, Afghanistan has created its first mobile phone network.

It's ringing

Hamid Karzai

The first user was the interim leader, Hamid Karzai, who called a friend in Germany.

So far, the network covers only the capital, Kabul, but it is hoped that, by the end of the summer, mobile phones will work in every major city in the country.

A bearded mullah chanted a prayer for Afghanistan's new mobile phone network: the most traditional blessing the most modern.

First caller

There are few places in the world where half the cabinet turns out for the launch of something as mundane as a phone system, but this is Afghanistan.

Karzai made the first call to a friend

And in this war-ravaged country, a state-of-the-art mobile phone network is hardly mundane.

Mr Karzai had the honour of placing the first call - a nervous moment as it waited to connect.

This network has been built with amazing speed, up and running from scratch in only three months.

Morale booster

The government hopes it will give the country a tremendous morale boost.

The cost of calls is being kept deliberately low.

A call from Kabul to London, for example, will be little more than 50 US cents a minute.

But do not expect to see thousands of people wandering the streets of Kabul with a mobile phone stuck to their ear any time soon.

With handsets costing $350 each, most Afghans will have to make do with using public phones to access the new system.