Mumbai, Dec. 29 :    Mumbai, Dec. 29:  First Aruna Irani, now Feroz Khan. Bollywood has begun zooming in on Afghanistan, though the mushroom clouds of war have yet to fade from the country's horizon. Khan has sought permission from Afghan authorities to shoot a film on its blood-splattered soil, hoping to get the cameras rolling in the war-ravaged country for the first time in five years. 'I have been to Afghanistan. I love its mountains, its people. I want to go back there,' Khan said. The film, Janasheen (Close to My Heart), will also mark the return of Khan to Bollywood after one-and-a-half decades. Afghanistan was one of Bollywood's biggest markets in Asia till the Taliban swept in five years ago and shut down all movie theatres. Hindi films are so popular with Afghans that young men danced in the streets of Kabul holding aloft pictures of Bollywood stars soon after the student-militia fled. Khan's Janasheen, a home production, is a romantic thriller centred on an Afghan tycoon traumatised by the loss of his family in the wake of the Russian invasion. With Fardeen Khan and Celina Jaitley in the lead, Khan plays a villain in the film, high on Hollywood-like special effects and short on Bollywood-like songs and dances. The shooting, which started on December 17 in Bangalore, Khan's hometown, will take the cast through Spain and Australia, before ending in Afghanistan. Khan said he needed to shoot the film in Afghanistan to stay true to the plot. 'It's necessary.' The producer-actor, who has stayed in Kunduz, Mazar-e-Sharif and even Bamiyan while shooting for an earlier film, rued that the picturesque areas were in the news for the wrong reasons. Along with the barren beauty of Afghanistan's bald mountains, his film will capture the racy excitement of a popular local sport, buzkashi. Players on horseback battle for the carcass of a goat or sheep in a game not meant for the faint-hearted. Jaitley, the lead actress, said she was 'very very excited' about the film, especially the prospect of working with Khan, who was making a comeback as an actor. 'He is one of the greatest actors and I was so keen to work with him. Afghanistan is certainly another big draw. I would love to go there,' Jaitley, shooting for a film in Lucknow, said by phone. Not everybody in Bollywood, however, is sure whether the cast will be able to make it to Afghanistan, given the current situation. 'War if far from over. There is no way you can shoot there,' a trade analyst said. Jaitley said if the situation did not improve, the Afghan bit would take place towards the end of the next year after the film was shot on other locations abroad. The producer hoped he would not have to wait that long. 'I am hopeful that things would return to normal in Afghanistan earlier than expected.' Irani is trying hard to get her film, Yeh Dil Aashiqanaa, released in Kabul next month. If the permission, which she sought from the new dispensation last month, comes through, it will be the first Hindi movie to hit cinemas in the Afghan capital since the Taliban took over and banned all sorts of entertainment, including films.