US Radio launches in Pakistan’s tribal zones

[LahoreEstate]

PRAGUE: The Czech-based US-funded station Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Friday said it had launched a new service in Pakistan in an attempt to help undermine militants there, reported AFP.
In a statement RFE/RL said that its Pakistan-based Radio Mashaal “will offer an alternative to the growing number of extremist radio stations in the region.”

Mashaal means “torch” in the Pashto dialects spoken in Pakistan's conflict-ravaged tribal zones as well as over the border in Afghanistan.

The new station offers local and international news with in-depth reports on terrorism, politics, women's issues, and health care, RFE/RL said.

It will also feature roundtable discussions and interviews with tribal leaders and local policymakers, plus phone-in shows. Online, Radio Mashaal's website will provide a live stream of its broadcasts.

“There is an urgent need for accurate, objective news and information in Pakistan's tribal areas,” Richard Holbrooke, Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was quoted as saying.

“Radio Mashaal's commitment to professional journalism in the local language will be an important contribution towards peace, reconciliation and democracy in the region,” added Holbrooke.

RFE/RL, which broadcasts in 28 languages, was founded in the 1950s at the height of the Cold War to beam programmes into the communist bloc.

In 1995 it moved across the old Iron Curtain to Prague from Munich, Germany, six years after the collapse of the communist regime in former Czechoslovakia.

It gradually shifted its focus to broadcasting to countries such as Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the ex-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia, and more recently to Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

The radio station will act as a comeback platform for popular Pashtun singer Haroon Bacha, who fled the region last year amid death threats from the Taliban.

The 36-year-old recording artist — whose dozens of albums, music videos and television appearances made him one of the most famous entertainers in the region — will be hosting a cultural affairs show for Radio Mashaal.


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