Radio

World Vision Radio

Last year, Afghan-American journalist Fariba Nawa returned to her native Afghanistan determined to find out what happened to her uncle in 1979. He was a professor at the University of Kabul when communist authorities came and took him away. In this Reporter’s Notebook, Nawa describes her search for information and answers to the question that has nagged family members for years — what really happened to Uncle Fazel?

Print version: The ghosts of Pul-e-Charkhi

Five years ago, Hamida Alami — a widow and in her 70’s — was living in a homeless camp in Kabul, Afghanistan. That’s where an Afghan filmmaker discovered her and put her in the movies. After more than 30 productions, she’s known all over Afghanistan as “Grandma Hamida.” Her most prominent role is in the movie “The Kite Runner.” Despite her fame, she doesn’t have much to show for it. She still lives with six family members in a tent outside Kabul with no water and no electricity. Fariba Nawa reports.
Print version: A movie star rises from ruins of war

A few years ago, Katrin Fakiri left a nice job in the Silicon Valley to return to her native Afghanistan for the first time in 22 years. She accepted an offer to launch a micro-credit organization that makes small, low-interest loans to poor women to start businesses. In its first four years, Fakiri’s organization has handed out 9,000 loans that women used to start businesses from carpentry to tailoring. But being an Afghan-American who owns her own business can be a risky undertaking in Afghanistan. Fariba Nawa reports.
Print version: Expatriate woman leaves San Jose to give micro-loans to poor Afghan women

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National Public Radio (NPR)

Afghanistan has seen a resurgence in opium trafficking since the fall of the Taliban at the end of 2001. Drug lords there entice villagers to carry opium across the border into Iran. But if couriers are caught or killed, their families are often terrorized into paying for the lost drugs.

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Free Speech Radio

Free Speech Radio News is the half-hour international news program broadcast nationally on Pacifica radio in the United States. More than a hundred stations air the program.

Fariba Nawa reported for the program from October to December 2001 from Pakistan and Germany, May to August 2002 from Afghanistan and June 2003 from Iraq. You can listen to the reports online by downloading these files. Fariba Nawa Archive