SENTINEL WATCH September 14, 2009 Issue

DEFENSE AGAINST HATE RADIO

RUTH WALKER

A RECENT ARTICLE IN THE ECONOMIST pointed out the dangers of "hate radio" in conflict zones around the world. "In an era of drones and spy satellites, it may seem odd that crude simple radio transmitters can still make huge mischief," the magazine wrote. "But the scale and sophistication of broadcasting has mutated downwards as well as upwards .... In recent years the medium has been exploited in ever darker ways by petty warlords as well as by big-time tyrants" (See http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14098593).

Radio was used in Kenya last year to incite ethnic violence, and the Rwandan genocide of 1994 is another notorious example. In both cases, announcers used coded language to call on their listeners to go out and kill.

The war zone on Pakistan's northwestern frontier is one of the current hot spots of hate radio. The Taliban there have relied on scores of small FM transmitters to shore up their power. The American diplomat Richard Holbrooke noted this past March that Mullah Fazlullah, a Taliban leader in the Swat Valley, "is going round every night broadcasting the names of people they're going to behead or have beheaded" (ibid.). The comparison with the experiences in Africa was clear.

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