Disembodied Voices
Radio Roshani, the women led Afghan radio echoing through the country’s silenced hopes.
20 September 2021
With the crisis currently unfolding in Afghanistan, the forecasts about women’s rights within the country became justly a main concern. The oppressive policies enforced in the past left a vivid mark over the local population imagery. But, while hoping for a confirmation of a more liberal prospect the Afghans, it is important to remember that not all forms of violence are sadly visible and immediately tangible. Some can strike in silence, lingering over time and becoming repressive practices dangerously accustomed within people’s life.
For Sediqa Sherzai, the founder of Radio Roshani, an independent radio station that used to operate in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz (1), the silence was literal. Only persisting as a dream during her youth, the perspective of practicing as a journalist became real after the 2001 Taliban’s regime collapse. Following the first years as a local radio journalist, Sediqa eventually decided to set up of her own an all-women radio station in 2004. Combining the past of educator with her passion for journalism, she successfully brought to the on-air programs a revolutionary perspective which focussed on promoting women’s rights and on discussing, what considered, highly controversial subjects. From advertisements that encouraged women to participate more in the civic life, to debates about cultural and political problems in the everyday life of women, the station’s attitude generated a wave of empowerment for the local community. Not however, as much as it diffused resentment among the most conservative line of thoughts, first of many the Talebans’. Despite difficulties, death threats, attempted and successful attacks, the station kept broadcasting.Already in 2015, when the territory of Kunduz fell again under the Taliban’s control, the radio station was set on fire and Sediqa, along with other activists and co-workers, were forced to silence. Her response then was nothing but an admirable act of courage. Seeking support and financial aid - yet possibly not enough protection – from the Western countries, the radio was restored, keeping its highly symbolic on-air standpoint of fair source of information and hope for the country’s future. However, if till few months ago Radio Roshani finally appeared to have established a less troubled existence, the international decision of evacuating the military troops from the Afghanistan territory seemed to have hindered once again any positive upcoming prospects.
This July (2021), following the advance of the Taliban’s forces into the northern region, she decided to move to Kabul with her family seeking safety (2). Maybe dictated from an instinct of survival, her concerns grew beyond an immediate need of sheltering as she is already finding contacts with organisation outside the Afghanistan borders prone to help reinstating the radio station and to fund its programs.
“We don’t want the voices of women to be shut down,” she said. “We were encouraging other women to leave their houses, to work in public, to integrate into society. If we stop broadcasting, what kind of a message does this send to other women?” (3)
Indeed, for her, the radio station is not only a way to support the community but a message of emancipation for the times to come, an enactment of progressive thinking that needs to be kept alive. For her, silence is still not an option. To this day, old recorded shows are every now and then filling the silence of Radio Roshani trying to keep in position a light of hope, but unfortunately, it seems that any solid plan to revive the live broadcasting is likely in place.
Sediqa’s story is powerful, inspirational, and representative of a local reality of both courage and fear. It portraits the tangible consequences of remote decisions that come to debilitate people’s everyday life conditions at several levels. Conditions that are often hold back from the mediatic attention and abstracted beyond the high powers’ businesses.
In our hyper-connected world, the illusion of closeness to such reports is limited to the screens of our phones and devices, overwhelmed by instant and systematic news. News that constantly bring remote sites of the world directly to our eyes; information that lives stored between the anxiety of a collective responsibility and the helplessness of isolated individuals, more and more living in their filtered bubble of constructed beliefs. Exposed to such a crafted flow of information, we barely remember the true meaning of listening. Daily, we consume fast-produced images to their bones, hear through our biased eyes, and overlay these stories with presumed truths. We have lost touch with the most simple and relatable human sides, making those who don’t get to be heard the biggest victims of this power game on who gets to be louder.
Hidden between crumbling certainties, survival instincts, and the aspiration of a better future, unveiling and celebrating the simplicity of ordinary gestures can make a real difference. In situations lacking a consistent history of primary human rights, simple conditions, such as having a voice, are often undermined privileges. While radio could be considered an outdated medium, the urgency of keeping alive such powerful voicing platform, as dangerous as it can be, goes very much beyond the need for affirmation. In the specific, Radio Roshani provides much more than a symbolic mean of communication. It exposes a familiar reality, allowing to express the rhythm of a community and to recount the instances that matter to its own people. Sediqa’s mission enacts praise for hope and justice within a lost normality and preserving this radio station means subscribing to the commitment she made to both this aspiration and the community built around it. Nevertheless, it stands on a long history of significance, adding another valuable chapter to instituted power between radio and women.
In the past, the role of radio had proven to be a powerful platform for the unheard voices, and it played a significant part in women and gender empowerment, a legacy that clearly still inspires contemporary stories far away to be superseded. The simplicity of this technology which relies on the natural resource of the electromagnetic spectrum, and its accessible, diffused a more distributed counter-practice of radio, throwing a light on the employment this medium not yet appreciated, due to its link to mainly military purposes or political propaganda. By enabling to abolish distance, and for voices to be perceived in the intimacy of someone else’s living room, there is something almost supranatural in the sounds that travel through the airwaves. A presence that pervades spaces and minds resonating among materials and vibrating in the air. Radio creates intimate connections where the body fails to do so: it overcomes geopolitical constrains gathering a transnational community where the trust, already validated by the authoritative nature of the channel, supports these bonds.
Already during the years of the Cold War, many international organisation - such as FreeRadioEuropa (or Radio Liberty) – took full advantage of the potential of this medium to operate across national borders and offering a free flow of information within the media landscape.
Proving its impact in empowering local communities, especially in areas where censorship and authoritarian powers enforce a high control over current mainstream media. Blurring the boundaries between private and public, when radio was introduced in the houses, it pervaded the domestic soundscape. The medium enabled women to be heard against a male-dominated media landscape, while the idea of being connected beyond the physical limits of their house, increasingly expanded towards a unifying ideology. The International Association of Women in Radio founded in 1951 (now IAWRT, where T was added in 1957 for the Television), is a living proof of it (4). Increasingly integrated into the everyday life of families, radio had a new type of audience and the programming, and its production were readapted to the new by then numerous female listeners. Many programs and now-established formats were indeed shaped by the female audiences, which contributed to the democratisation and modernisation of the broadcasting practice. On the contrary of the television, which was showcasing the female figure in highly objectified and instrumentalised position, radio somehow “removed” the physicality of the body, shifting the attention to the message, and decreasing the risk of exposure. Because of such potential, for many women, as Sediqa Sherzai, broadcasting is the best way of being listened to, of being able to state their existence and to embody an empowered position through their very own voice. Breaking the silence, crossing physical borders and cultural boundaries, and producing alternative flows of information, on-air broadcasting enacts symbolically freedom of speech often lacking in other media.
(this article was published on Muses Nest website, currently off-line)
(1) Thomson, Mike. 2021. "The Woman Who Dares To Run A Feminist Radio Station In Afghanistan". BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49584155.
(2) Latifi, Ali. 2021. "Residents Of Afghanistan’s Kunduz Recount Taliban Takeover". Aljazeera.Com. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/9/residents-of-afghanistans-kunduz-recount-taliban-takeover.
(3) Raghavan, Sudarsan. 2015. "Afghan Radio Station Focused On Women’s Rights Is A Casualty Of The Taliban". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/an-afghan-womens-radio-station-becomes-a-taliban-casualty/2015/11/15/64f8eeac-7db6-11e5-bfb6-65300a5ff562_story.html.
(4) Skoog, Kristin. 2020. "Women And Radio: On The Same Wavelength". UNESCO. https://en.unesco.org/courier/2020-1/women-and-radio-same-wavelength.