It takes a special roughly person to run a radio station in an area managed by Islamist militants in northern Syria. Track is forbidden, so are women presenters. But Raed Fares – manager of Radio Recent FM – has arise with an inventive reaction to the militants’ demands.
It is mid-day and virtually time for the most recent news from Radio Contemporary FM in the insurrection-held province of Idlib, in north west Syria.
Suddenly the airwaves are full of assorted sounds of tweeting birds, clucking chickens and bleating goats. because the newsreader gets below way, the cacophony keeps beneath his voice.
you might be forgiven for pondering that this is a few form of farming bulletin. it isn’t. It’s simply that the station’s manager, Raed Fares, has had sufficient of being told what to do by means of the powerful jihadist workforce, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS – which till closing July used to be linked to al-Qaeda and known as the al-Nusra Entrance.
“They tried to force us to prevent playing music on air,” says Fares. “So we began to play animals within the heritage as a roughly sarcastic gesture towards them.”
Image copyright AFP Image caption Raed Fares was once one in all many demonstrators within the the town of Kafranbel in the early days of the Syrian rebellion
Then came the threats from fighters of the so referred to as Islamic State. Like JFS, they said the station’s song used to be haram, or offensive to Islam. Believing this to be completely incorrect, Fares left out the threats and carried on as ahead of, however nearly paid with his life.
Just over 3 years ago, when the FORTY FOUR-year-old former estate agent arrived home within the early hours of the morning, after completing work on the radio station, IS gunmen with Kalashnikovs have been waiting for him. They fired a barrage of photographs, leaving greater than a dozen holes in his automotive, even more in the wall in the back of, and within the proper aspect of his body. These shattered a few bones in his shoulder and ribs, as well as puncturing his right lung.
