Afghan Service
Despite significant pressure from the Taliban, Radio Azadi is one of the most popular and trusted media outlets in Afghanistan.
Website page views
(January–December 2022)
Facebook video views
(January–December 2022)
YouTube video views
(January–December 2022)
Instagram video views
(January–December 2022)
About the Service
Operating out of Prague, Radio Azadi broadcasts 24/7 in Dari and Pashto on short- and medium-wave radio and digitally.
Radio Azadi covers the changes to Afghans’ lives since the Taliban returned to power.
Provides a platform for the most vulnerable — women and girls, victims of violent extremism, the LGBTQI+ community, and youth — to share their experiences.
In cooperation with Learn Afghanistan, Radio Azadi launched radio classrooms (2022), offering lessons in history, geography, chemistry, and biology for girls in grades 7-12 who are now barred from attending school.
Radio Azadi provided groundbreaking coverage through user-generated content of Afghan women’s protests in Kabul against the Taliban’s restrictions of their rights.
Radio Azadi regularly receives supportive messages from listeners. The Voices from Afghanistan exhibit at the Library of Congress displayed handwritten scrolls and letters from Afghans.
Reaching Audiences
Media Climate
Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index ranks Afghanistan 152nd out of 180 countries.
RFE/RL closed Radio Azadi’s Kabul bureau and evacuated journalists in August 2021. Radio Azadi was then taken off the airwaves in December 2022 and had its websites blocked in February 2023.
Journalists Maharram Durrani, Abadullah Hananzai, and Sabawoon Kakar were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Kabul in 2018. Mohammad Ilyas Dayee was killed in a targeted bomb attack in 2020.
Latest Updates
RFE/RL Expands Broadcasts to Afghanistan Despite Taliban Ban
RFE/RL’s award-winning programming is now available 24/7 for millions of Afghan listeners.
RFE/RL Condemns Taliban Move to Further Silence Independent Media
Today, the Taliban removed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) award-winning programming from AM and FM radio transmission networks in Afghanistan.
RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi Marks Two Decades Of Service
Twenty years ago, on January 30, 2002, RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi relaunched broadcasting to Afghanistan in the Dari and Pashto languages.
Service Director
Qadir Habib
Qadir Habib is the Service Director of RFE/RL’s Afghan Service, known locally as Radio Azadi. Previously, he was the Service’s managing editor, supervising 12 hours of daily broadcasts to millions of listeners inside the country and among the Afghan diaspora worldwide. He was one of the first journalists to join the Service in 2002 and has worked at its bureau in Kabul and RFE/RL’s headquarters in Prague. In his various roles, he has reported groundbreaking stories, conducted exclusive interviews with policymakers and leaders, and hosted popular talk shows on Afghanistan’s security, political, economic, and social issues. Habib holds a master’s degree in strategic communication from La Salle University in Philadelphia, and a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Cairo University in Egypt.
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