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| Archival map of Kuwait |
A special thank you to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing the Wavescan program on Kuwait from November 17, 2025. Kuwait, at one time, had a prominent voice in the Middle East - but DXers are now left to wonder ... is Kuwait active on shortwave?
Jeff: In our feature today, we visit
the Middle Eastern country of Kuwait.
Kuwait was thrust into the headlines when the neighboring country of
Iraq decided to invade in August 1990, sparking the Gulf War. But Kuwait has a long and proud history of
radio broadcasting, and is still represented on shortwave to this day. So, from Los Angeles, here’s Ray Robinson
once more to tell us about the development of radio in that Gulf state.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. In my early years exploring the shortwave bands in the 1970’s, one of the stations I remember well was Radio Kuwait. I was in the UK, and during the afternoons in particular, I remember Kuwait in English booming in on 13 metres, a band that was otherwise almost empty, and yet Kuwait sounded just like a local medium wave station. I don’t remember the exact frequency – it may have been 21675 – but whatever it was, it was an excellent choice.
So were they channeling a New York Top 40 station there? I don’t know, but, as far as I can find, we in Wavescan have never covered Kuwait before, so I thought it might be fun to take a look into the history of broadcasting in that country.
Kuwait is situated at the northwest corner of the Persian Gulf, south of Iraq, and is only slightly larger in area than the U.S. state of Hawaii. The low-lying desert land is mainly sandy and barren. Kuwait City was founded by an Arab tribe in the early 1700’s, and by 1756 it had become an autonomous sheikdom. The first sheik was Abd Rahim of the al-Sabah, and his descendants continue to rule Kuwait, which is now a constitutional monarchy. In the late 1700’s and 1800’s Kuwait was on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire, and in 1897 the country obtained British protection when the sheik feared that the Turks would expand their hold over the area. In 1961, Britain ended the protectorate, giving Kuwait independence, but agreed to give military aid on request. No doubt as a legacy from the British Protectorate years, the official languages of Kuwait are Arabic and English.
Oil was discovered in Kuwait in the 1930’s, and it was subsequently proved that Kuwait had 20% of the world's known oil resources. Since 1946 it has been the world's second-largest oil exporter, after Saudi Arabia.
In the first half of the last century, there was no broadcasting in Kuwait itself, but Kuwaitis, like any other people, were attracted to news sources, especially with the outbreak of World War II. Many people owned radios, and regularly tuned into broadcasts from London, Cairo and Baghdad.
It was the Kuwaiti, Izzat Jaafar, who operated the first radio transmitter in the country after the war. His low powered station was located on the waterfront in the Dasman neighborhood of Kuwait City and used to broadcast songs, but it was not licensed, and didn’t last for very long.
In early 1951, Kuwaiti Mubarak Al-Mayal, who served in the military wireless sector, succeeded in setting up a new station, aided by a Pakistani technician, Mohammad Khan Tufail. After obtaining permission from Sheikh Abdullah Al-Mubarak, who was in charge of public security at the time, they began broadcasting, as Radio Kuwait. The first transmission was at 7pm local time on Saturday May 12, 1951, and Al-Mayal’s first words were “Huna Kuwait”, meaning "This is Kuwait" in Arabic.
In the beginning, programming was limited to just two hours daily, but he soon succeeded in extending the transmissions and employed more people to aid him.
The first appearance of the station in the World Radio TV Handbook is in the 1954 edition, where it is listed with 1 kW on 5,000 kHz, 60 metres. By that time, they were broadcasting for five hours per day – 7-9am and 7-10pm local time.
In 1958, two more broadcasters were employed to help develop the station further, which they did with dramatic story telling and playing listener requests. On the technical side, two 5 kW transmitters were installed in 1960, whose power was soon to be doubled. On June 10, 1960, Radio Kuwait transmitted their first newscast, and broadcasting hours increased to six per day, then 10, and in October 1960 to more than 16 hours daily. On Fridays, the Muslim Holy Day when everyone was at home, the station broadcast throughout the day till midnight, with four newscasts.
A year later, when the country proclaimed independence from the British, the station grew again, quite significantly, with larger staff, more studios and installation of 100 kW transmitters. In fact, the 1962 WRTH shows that the two 10 kW transmitters in Kuwait had been replaced with two Marconi 100 kW transmitters on 1130 and 1345 kHz medium wave, and at least one 50 kW shortwave transmitter on as many as seven different frequencies. All broadcasting at that time, though, was still in Arabic.
The rapid growth of the station continued apace in the 1960’s, with a 100 kW shortwave transmitter being added in April 1963 on 6055 kHz. In 1965, Brown Boveri of Switzerland delivered no less than four 250 kW shortwave transmitters, and programming in English was added for several hours per day on both medium wave and shortwave. It took a few years for new antennas to be installed at the transmitter site near the desert community of Kabad some 15 miles west of Kuwait City, but the new 250 kW transmitters entered service in 1968.
By 1970, for the domestic audience they were running 200 kW
on 1345 AM and 10 kW on a 60 meter band frequency, but they were also using the high power shortwave transmitters explicitly to target audiences in:
• Iraq/Iran,
• Bahrain/Gulf Area,
• Saudi Arabia,
• Aden/Yemen,
• Sudan,
• the North African countries of Algeria/Libya/Morocco/Tunisia,
• the Levant area of Egypt/Syria/Jordan/Lebanon, and then also
• India/Pakistan and
• Europe.
For a small country whose population at the time was less than 1 million, (it’s still less than 5 million today), they sure had a huge voice and carried a lot of influence in the Arabic-speaking world.
In the early 1980’s, the station’s studio production facilities moved into a new ‘Media Complex’ adjacent to the Ministry of Information in Kuwait City, where state-of-art equipment was installed, and new staff training programs were implemented by the management. A stylized drawing of the Media Complex was depicted on their QSL cards.
A 1985 program schedule shows they were then broadcasting two different channels on shortwave in Arabic, plus readings from the Koran for several hours per day and programming in English, Persian and Urdu. Transmissions were also added to the Far East, and for Australia and New Zealand.
Then on August 2, 1990, came the invasion by Iraq. Amazingly, the Iraqis were not able to silence Radio Kuwait completely, as the Kuwaitis were able to move some of their operation across the border into neighboring Saudi Arabia, first to a transmitting site at Al-Khafji, and later to a larger one at Al-Dammam.
The occupation lasted until February 28th 1991, just less than seven months. Radio Kuwait’s first broadcast afterwards announced "This is the Liberated State of Kuwait Radio." Radio Kuwait’s headquarters in Kuwait City had been ransacked and left in ruins, but announcer Hussein Al-Mulla proclaimed that "Kuwait is free and will remain free forever" from a tiny temporary studio he set up near the transmitter site. It took until 1993 for Kuwait Radio to be fully re-established and re-organized, restoring its role as the mouth of the nation. Five new shortwave transmitters were installed between 1992 and 1995
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| QSL from Gayle Van Horn |
But sadly, after 20 years in the harsh desert climate the transmitters started to become faulty, and not long after that recording was made, Radio Kuwait left shortwave. In 2016, however, Ampegon was contracted to refurbish and upgrade the transmitters, including making three of them DRM capable, which they did in 2017. Since then, Kuwait has remained one of the most acclaimed radio stations in the Arab world. And as far as I am aware, Kuwait is now the only Middle Eastern country still operating on shortwave. At least, I thought it was! According to their website, media.gov.kw/frequency.aspx, they currently broadcast on shortwave in Arabic, Farsi, English, Urdu and Tagalog, with most transmissions in DRM mode. Their daily English program is listed as running from 0500-0800 UTC, to South and Southeast Asia on 11970 kHz, and to Europe on 15530 kHz. However, when I tried tuning in at that time on October 13th using WebSDR’s in both the UK and India, nothing was heard in either analog or DRM modes. And, their schedule seems to have been removed from the DRM.org website. So, does anyone know what’s going on with Radio Kuwait now? Please let us know – just email wavescan@yahoo.com.
Of course, we should also mention the USAGM station in Kuwait which was set up in the 1990’s with a 600kW medium wave transmitter and 6 x 250 kW shortwave transmitters, although that’s been taken off the air this year by President Donald Trump’s administration. Back to you, Jeff.
Recordings of Radio Kuwait can be found by a search on YouTube. www.youtube.com
(Ray Robinson, (Wavescan 873/17 Nov 2025)
