The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4 he caller from Azerbaijan had a problem. “I own an apartment in Makrorayan, a section of Kabul,” he told the moderator of a recent installment of “Listeners’ Corner,” a regular program on Radio Free Afghanistan. He had lived there for 20 years before flee- ing to Azerbaijan to escape the repression of the Taliban. “Now my daughter and brother-in-law are living in the apartment, but some time ago a man who introduced himself as Commander Basir’s relative came and threat- ened my daughter, ordering her to leave the apartment.” Within hours, Afghan authorities arrived at the man’s apartment, evicted the interloper and returned it to the rightful owners. It turned out that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had been listening to the popu- lar Radio Free Afghanistan program, and promptly dis- patched aides to look into the matter. That kind of impact has been the hallmark of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasts for more than 50 years. Cold War Origins RFE/RL was founded in the early days of the Cold War to broadcast uncensored, accurate information behind the Iron Curtain (Radio Free Europe to Central and Eastern Europe, Radio Liberty to the Soviet Union). That mission almost ceased after the collapse of commu- nism. In 1991, a special presidential commission con- cluded that RFE/RL should continue to serve as a source of encouragement and factual, analytical support to newly free nations of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as they struggled to build free- market democracies. But in 1993, amid a general reduc- tion in U.S. funding for defense and foreign affairs activities, Congress slashed RFE/RL’s budget from a peak of $227 million a year to a maximum of $75 mil- lion, and set the end of 1999 for the elimination of tax- payer support for broadcasts. On July 4, 1994—U.S. Independence Day and the 44th anniversary of RFE broadcasting — President Bill Clinton formally accepted an offer from Czech President Vaclav Havel and the CzechGovernment to relocate all of RFE/RL from Munich, Germany, to Prague. The move symbolized America’s commitment to democratic development in Central Europe, and coincided with the creation of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the reorganization of U.S. international broadcasting under the U.S. A FTER THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM , THIS VENERABLE C OLD W ARRIOR SHIFTED ITS FOCUS TO THE TROUBLED AREAS OF E URASIA AND S OUTHWEST A SIA . B Y T HOMAS A. D INE F O C U S O N U . S . B R O A D C A S T I N G T R ADIO F REE E UROPE /R ADIO L IBERTY : T ODAY AND T OMORROW