A popular radio station in Afghanistan is funded by China’s international propaganda outlet and is broadcasting news with an anti-US and anti-NATO bent, according to US officials.

The Pashto-language Spogmai radio was set up recently as an FM station in Afghanistan, and US officials say it admits to receiving funds from China Radio International (CRI), Beijing’s state-run propaganda outlet formerly known as Radio Beijing.

US officials said an analysis of Spogmai revealed it has received training and equipment in addition to the funding and that much of its news reports include anti-American and anti-NATO material, along with occasional anti-Pakistan broadcasts.

Spogmai broadcasters took part in an international forum in Beijing on Dec. 2 and told attendees that CRI was providing funding, training, and equipment.

US monitoring of Spogmai broadcasts since May reveals that its broadcasts are systematically critical of the US military and NATO, which have been spending billions of dollars to rebuild Afghanistan and battle the Islamist Taliban insurgency.

One July 31 broadcast stated that Afghans are the only casualty of “someone else’s war” and are fighting their own people on behalf of US and western “politicians.”

In response to a call by a US Republican official to keep a US military presence in Afghanistan, Spogmai stated in a May 29 report that the United States is “not on the right path” in the war, and that local Afghans will rise up to “teach foreign troops a lesson.”

In response to the NATO summit in Chicago last May, a Spogmai broadcast said the summit was a deliberate attempt to prolong the war through assistance to Afghan security forces, which in turn will “make Afghans die on both sides.”

Regarding Pakistan, Spogmai appeared to support the Taliban position in opposing Afghan cross-border attacks in Kunar and Nuristan provinces that the radio said were not justified and “contrary to Islamic and international norms.”

The radio, broadcasting at 102.2 on the radio dial, also carries Chinese Pashto-language propaganda broadcasts.

Spogmai’s director, Hameedullah Nasery, was listed at the Chinese conference as working in the office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and as the chief spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture until 2010.

The disclosure that China is funding anti-US radio broadcasts drew a harsh response from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on government oversight.

“That China would be involved in anti-US/NATO broadcasts in Afghanistan should not be surprising, especially in the Pashto language,” Rohrabacher told the Free Beacon in a statement. “It is from the Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the Taliban recruit.”

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Editor's Note: Just one more foreign policy issue that will receive a "bow" from our current President.


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