RFE/RL’s Afghan Service: Radio Azadi
Despite significant pressure from the Taliban, Radio Azadi is one of the most popular and trusted media outlets in Afghanistan.
About
- Operating out of Prague, broadcasts 24/7 in Dari and Pashto- languages on short- and medium-wave and digitally.
- Azadi covers the changes to Afghans' lives since the Taliban returned.
- 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, 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 on their rights.
- Azadi regularly receives supportive messages from listeners. The Voices from Afghanistan exhibit at the Library of Congress showcased handwritten scrolls and letters Afghans
Impact
January – December 2022
- Website: 6.4 million; 11.5 million page views
- Facebook: 36.3 million video views; 28.9 million engaged users
- YouTube: 2.9 million views; 195,000 subscribers
- Instagram: 2.5 million video views; 502,000 followers
Radio Azadi has been a staple of daily life in Afghanistan for over 20 years, commonly heard in public settings from marketplace to taxis.
Updated: April 2023
Media Climate
- Closed Kabul bureau and evacuated journalists (August 2021); taken off airways (November 2022); websites blocked (February 2023).
- Journalists Maharram Durrani, Abadullah Hananzai, and Sabawoon Kakar were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Kabul (2018). Mohammad Ilyas Dayee was killed in a targeted bomb attack (2020).
- Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index ranks Afghanistan 156th out of 180 countries.