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Radio Fresh in Syria: Peaceful, but forceful resistance to Assad and religious terrorism

This radio station was started in 2013 by local regime critic and dissident Raed Fares (pictured above) in his hometown of Kefranbel in Northern Syria, two years after the Syrian Civil War had begun following Assad’s forces and police officers shooting peaceful anti-government protesters. It reaches people in the Aleppo, Hamah and Idlib provinces that have seen some of the worst attacks and airstrikes by regime, Iranian and Russian forces and became the first independent radio station of Syria.

It broadcasts independent news and reports, and promotes non-violent activism, and thereby is one of the most important organizations of Syrian civil society, providing a counter to both regime and religious terrorist narratives both to locals (including the hundreds of thousands internal refugees) and the world with regular on-the-ground reporting in a country that otherwise has very limited access to reliable local information.

By doing so, it also gives a voice to people who support and fight in a revolution for a free and democratic Syria. According to Fared, only freedom of opinion and an open marketplace of ideas that allows for a free and vibrant civil society can make lasting peace possible.

After its start Radio Fresh quickly became popular in areas not controlled by the Assad regime, growing to have 600 employees and providing media-training to 2,500 people, men and women, to for example give them the abilities and skills needed to become citizen-reporters.

––Difficulties––

The popularity of such an anti-authoritarian, pro-democracy radio station threatens both the Assad regime and terrorist groups and undermines their propaganda efforts, and so the radio station and people working for it have been massively under attack over the years. Terrorist groups had taken the city of Idlib in 2015 and consolidated their power in the entire region in 2017, and Radio Fresh was forced to stop playing music and allow female voices on air by terrorist leaders.

Raed Fares responded sarcastically by playing animal sounds (goats, chickens, other birds), explosions and long Big Ben bongs instead, as well as ticking, football fan chanting and bomb shells flying through the air. To get around the ban of female presenters, their voices started being altered altered to sound more masculine and robot-like. Currently, in 2021, normal singing can be once again be heard on the station.

However, another difficulty is the limited availability of electricity, water, and general funding. While the station receives help from NGOs such as the Human Rights Foundations, it also depends on state aid, and the end of funding by the US during the Trump administration threatened the future of the station.

Additionally, threats are often more immediate and physical: Its office has been raided by ISIS terrorists several times and was bombed by Assad twice. Numerous times there have been harassments and abductions of employees, including of the founder Raed Fares. According to him, he suffered four abductions followed by torture at the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists in 2014 and 2015. Twice, terrorists hid a bomb below his car, and in 2014 he barely survived an assassination attempt that had him shot into the chest.

Regrettably, another assassination attempt of Fares in 2018 was successful, but the radio has carried on and to this day provides news coverage on FM with two transmitters in Kafr Nabl in the Idlib region and Surah in the Hamah region, online via a radio stream and on Facebook.

More information:

Free radio stream

Official website of Radio Fresh (in Arabic – Warning: may contain graphic images of dead people or warzones)

Facebook page of Radio Fresh (In Arabic – Warning: may contain graphic images of dead people or warzones)

Raed Fares: Building a Free Syria One Town at a Time, Oslo Freedom Forum of the Human Rights Foundation

Raed Fares: Opinion. U.S. funding cuts are jeopardizing a Syrian information lifeline — and making life easier for ISIS, in Washington Post (June 28, 2018)

Mike Thomson: A sarcastic response to Syria's militants, in BBC News (9 February 2017)

BBC Radio 4 report: Radio Fresh FM rebels against extremism with 'sarcasm' (9 February 2017)

DW.com: Syrian Radio Fresh's Raed Fares killed after opposing fundamentalist narratives (November 23 2018)

SOAS Radio: Solidarity with Syria: Radio Fresh - A Radio of Resistance (7 December 2018)

FMscan.org: Radio Fresh FM (Syria) FM Frequencies

Image sources

Radio Fresh Logo © Radio Fresh

Photo of Raed Fares: Oslo Freedom Forum, Photographer: Reka Nyari, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons