US suspends broadcasting in volatile region, surrendering to extremists and rival powers

For nearly 20 years, VOA produced dedicated programming for the critically important border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The mountainous region lacks local independent sources of information about regional, international and U.S. news, and its state and private media markets are dominated by military and extremist narratives.

VOA filled the information void by broadcasting in Pashto with its Deewa Service. (Deewa in Pashto means “light”). The programming ensured the United States had a credible voice in the strategically significant region, where Russia, China and Iran all vie for influence.

At the start of 2025, the Deewa Service was broadcasting 75.3 hours of audio and video reports each week. It had a 24/7 television stream via satellite and round-the-clock digital operations. However, since President Donald Trump issued his March 14, 2025, executive order that effectively began dismantling VOA, the Deewa Service has stopped all broadcasts and is not producing any content on digital media.

The sudden silencing of VOA broadcasts caused alarm in several regional U.S. State Department offices across the globe, including in Islamabad, Pakistan. A cable from that post warned, “Shuttering VOA’s [Deewa] service will leave a critical news and information gap along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where military, jihadist, and extremist narratives and disinformation dominate the media landscape.”

VOA launched its Deewa Service in 2006, when the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region was the scene of an escalating Taliban insurgency, with militants using Pakistani’s then-tribal areas as safe havens to launch attacks into Afghanistan, and the U.S. carrying out targeted strikes in the area. “This is an area that is facing significant challenges ranging from ethnic and political strife to poverty and health issues, so it’s critical for them to have access to accurate and unbiased news and information,” said then-VOA Director David S. Jackson in announcing the new service.

The region continues to face significant hostilities as groups designated terrorists by the U.S. such as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, al-Qaida, Islamic State, and Baloch Liberation Army, as well as their allies and off-shoots pose a persistent threat to security.

Pakistan’s military said in early January that terrorists had carried out 5,379 attacks in the country in 2025, with violence largely concentrated in the provinces bordering Afghanistan — the region VOA Deewa serves. The U.S. Council on Foreign Relations warned in a December 2025 report that recent cross-border militant attacks in the area could lead to renewed armed conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2026.

Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, wrote in a January article for Foreign Affairs, “The most worrisome flash point in South Asia today lies not between the nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan but to the west, along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. A simmering conflict between these two neighbors now threatens to explode — with damaging consequences for the wider region.”

Before it was silenced, the Deewa Service had a significant reach in the region that was rapidly increasing. The Pakistani state was so threatened by VOA’s reporting on sensitive issues like militancy and enforced disappearance that it placed restrictions in 2018 on accessing VOA’s online journalism, which continue to this day. To counter the censorship, VOA Deewa used proxy sites and ensured digital stories were compatible with different social media platforms to minimize the impact of the state-imposed restrictions.

Political leaders and activists have credited Deewa’s impactful journalism with helping to force the Pakistani government to eliminate British colonial era regulations in the then-tribal region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2018. The controversial laws allowed for arbitrary arrests and collective punishment, and were referred to as “black laws” by human rights organizations. Their repeal after more than 100 years advanced democratic and political rights throughout the region.

The service provided intensive coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, assigning reporters to Israel soon after the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack. The coverage provided objective news to its mostly-Muslim audience and received millions of views. In the four days following the attack, content from VOA’s Deewa, Urdu, Dari and Pashto services broadcasting to Afghanistan and Pakistan generated a combined 77.7 million video views.

VOA Deewa journalist Rahman Bunairee reports from Israel after the Hamas terror attack in October 2023. VOA Deewa updated audiences in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey and Bangladesh on the latest developments.

In the absence of VOA, religious extremists are filling the news vacuum in the region, promoting anti-American views, radical ideologies and violence. In addition, a growing interest in the region from China, Russia and Iran has led those countries to expand their state-controlled media presence in recent years.

China Radio International and China Global Television Network (CGTN) broadcast in Pashto to Deewa’s target audience. Both of those outlets partner with local media to amplify their programming. Other Chinese media outlets operating in the region include the Xinhua News agency, People’s Daily and Economic Daily. The Russian TV broadcast RT is also accessible in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region via dish and cable. Iran’s Radio Tehran has a dedicated Pashto Service targeting Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan.