Afghan radio after 2021 — what survived
Which Afghan radio stations still broadcast, which went silent, and why the station most people search for no longer exists. Based on testing every stream we could find.
Afghanistan had one of the densest radio landscapes in the region — hundreds of licensed stations, most of them small, local and commercial, built up across two decades. A great many of them are gone. Others broadcast but have no internet stream, which from outside the country amounts to the same thing.
We tested every Afghan stream we could find. This is what we learned, and it is not information that is collected anywhere else.
Arman FM does not exist any more
This is the first thing to say, because Arman is the station people search for most.
Arman FM — 98.1 — was the dominant commercial music station in Afghanistan before 2021. It was the sound of Kabul for a generation of listeners, it ran Afghan Star's audience, and it is the station Afghans abroad still ask for by name.
Moby Media suspended Arman's own programming after August 2021. The frequency now carries Ariana News audio. There is no independent Arman FM stream to listen to, and no amount of searching will produce one. Sites that still list it are listing a dead link.
What is still broadcasting
RTA — Radio Television Afghanistan. The state broadcaster still runs multiple radio channels, including Taranum FM, which is given over almost entirely to music. RTA's streams are carried on a commercial content delivery network, which in practice makes them the most reliable Afghan audio available from outside the country.
Radio Azadi, the Afghan service of RFE/RL, continues in Dari and Pashto — news, but also music and poetry programming, and school lessons broadcast for girls shut out of formal education.
Begum FM launched on International Women's Day 2021, founded by Hamida Aman and staffed almost entirely by women. When girls above sixth grade were barred from school, Begum turned much of its schedule over to broadcast education. It is the most distinctive thing on Afghan radio right now.
Salam Watandar continues the model it started with in 2005 — a national programming service feeding dozens of independently owned local stations rather than broadcasting from one transmitter. That structure has proved more durable than a single station would have been.
BBC Pashto and VOA Ashna both still broadcast. Neither is produced inside the country.
A detail worth knowing if you use podcast apps
Voice of America's individual Afghan programme feeds — the per-show podcasts you will find listed in Apple Podcasts and elsewhere — stopped publishing in May 2025. They still return episodes. They still appear current in directory listings. Nothing has been added in over a year.
The consolidated VOA Dari and VOA Pashto feeds are still updated daily. If you have subscribed to a VOA Afghan show and wondered why it went quiet, that is why.
What this means for listening abroad
Most Afghan radio is not available internationally. Of what is, a meaningful share is produced outside Afghanistan by international broadcasters. The stations actually transmitting from inside the country with a working stream number around ten.
Those ten are on Sandar, tested and checked rather than copied from a directory. Streams do go down — small stations change hosts without notice — so the list is re-verified rather than assumed.
Read next
Where to start with Afghan music · Ahmad Zahir — the voice that defined Afghan music