On location in South Lebanon Ghifar Charafeddine adjusts the sound on his microphone and recorder as he begins to interview a member of the Lebanese Municipal Police. UNIFIL's Radio Unit are doing a story on police training coordinated by UNIFIL for members of the local police force. Charafeddine has already recorded background soundscapes of the training, including audio of mock arrests and roadblocks. He will use this to build a feature story that will be broadcast on five local channels across Southern Lebanon.

Yury Kushko, the head of UNIFIL's Radio unit, explains how the feature story they create is unusual in the Lebanese radio broadcasting landscape: "We work on a product that is unique in terms of its genre. It's a labor and time consuming 10 minute episode, packed with voices, music and noises. It's not easy to produce it."

But for Kushko and his team the feature story is worth the effort, "I like its evocative nature, because with music, with sounds or noises (what we call atmospheric effects or ambiances), you can create any scene. It's like to paint, though to use instead of water or oil paints, just sounds."

Back in their production rooms in Naqoura their colleague, Rania Bdeir, has scripted and records a voiceover for a separate story on Blue Line marking. For a team of just three people, this unit's yield of a new feature story per week is impressive. This means the team works concurrently on two or three stories at any given time. Kushko praises his team's commitment, "I remember my time in the BBC when every producer could count on a huge team: sound engineers, studio managers, editors, and a huge archive, as well as a wide network of freelance reporters. Here we can count on ourselves, on our resources, and our mutual support."

Bdeir, whose warm voice is now familiar across Southern Lebanon, says: "I feel happy when people tell us, during our visits to villages and towns, that they have been following our radio programme "Salam min al-Janoub" for years. What we are trying to do is to convey to the Lebanese people a clear message about UNIFIL and the tasks they carry out in south Lebanon."

Kushko agrees, "I value radio as a means of sharing information, of course, and also as a tool of shaping a more peaceful future. In a way, we work to tune our audience to the frequency of peace."

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Article: Aoibheann O'Sullivan
Video Editor: Aoibheann O'Sullivan
Video Camera: Aoibheann O'Sullivan, Mohamad Hamze
Photo: Pascual Gorriz Marcos
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