PRAGUE: With its Pakistan bureau shut by the authorities last week, Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty\u2019s Pashto-language station is broadcasting from its headquarters in a distant Prague, waiting for \u201cthe dust to settle\u201d, according to its senior editor.<\/p>\n

The Islamabad office of Radio Mashaal, or Torch in Pashto, with a target audience of some 10 million residents of areas along Pakistan\u2019s border with Afghanistan, was closed for airing content \u201cagainst the interest of Pakistan\u201d.<\/p>\n

The interior ministry said the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had also found its programmes \u201cin line with (a) hostile intelligence agency\u2019s agenda\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe [first] read the charges through social media. We were not informed by any government agent,\u201d claimed Radio Mashaal\u2019s Prague-based senior editor Daud Khattak while speaking to AFP on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Minutes after the news came through WhatsApp, \u201cpolice teams arrived at our office in Islamabad and asked our employees to pack up and close the office.<\/p>\n

\u201cLater some Pakistani TV channels aired news that we are working for the CIA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Funded by the US Congress, Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty (RFE\/RL) was founded in 1950 to beam programmes into the communist bloc. It currently broadcasts in 25 languages and aims to \u201cserve as a \u2018surrogate\u2019 free press in 23 countries where the free flow of information is banned or not fully developed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mashaal has over 1.6 million Facebook fans and scored 81 million video views on Facebook and 10 million views on YouTube in 2017.<\/p>\n

Its closure coincides with heightened tensions between Islamabad and Washington as President Donald Trump recently froze up to $1.9 billion in funding to Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Dawn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PRAGUE: With its Pakistan bureau shut by the authorities last week, Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty’s Pashto-language station is broadcasting from its headquarters in a distant Prague, waiting for “the dust to settle”, according to its senior editor. The Islamabad office of Radio Mashaal, or Torch in Pashto, with a target audience of some 10 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[4],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}