When the earthquake struck in 2005, two men in Islamabad loaded their bags and headed for Azad Kashmir. They made it as far as Kohala bridge where the road got cut off. From there on, they made it by foot and hitchhiked on motorcycles and the back of pick-up trucks to Muzaffarabad. One of the few offices still functioning there was Rescue 15 whose building had half collapsed. The men asked the surprised police officials inside if they had a car battery. The officials led them to a crushed Suzuki Mehran. The men got to work. A radio transceiver was plugged into the battery and they started transmitting messages to Islamabad since telephone landlines had collapsed. In the next few days they sent nearly 3, 000 messages to Islamabad by radio, which their affiliates spread throughout Pakistan by phone. Most messages were confirmations of survivals and deaths. These men belonged to the voluntary Pakistan Amateur Radio Society (PARS) which has been around since 1970. It is made up of licensed professionals who operate amateur or ham radio, which keep people connected when all else fails. Decades later, the society is still going strong, and since its fledgling foray into Kashmir has increasingly taken up the cause of rescue and relief work when humanitarian disaster strikes in Pakistan. Ham radios come to Pakistan Ham radios emerged at the end of the 19th century with licensing starting from the US around 1912. One theory suggests that it was the initials of a group of early adopters—Hyman, Almy, and Murray at Harvard University’s radio club—that shortened first into HYALMU and then the name HAM. A more popular theory is that in the early days professionals looked down at the amateurs as ‘hams, ’ as in ham-fisted or unskilled. Despite the pejorative etymology, the name stuck and is used proudly today. Amateur radio operators have operated here since before Partition. The oldest membership card was issued in November 1947 and a Pakistan Amateur Radio Society one from 1950 carries the call sign AP5B. Records show that one was active in Karachi in 1949 and from Quetta’s Chiltan Hotel in 1953. Old QSL cards from Pakistan (clockwise from top): From 1947 issued under the old VU call sign, from 1949 with the new Pakistani AP call sign, the oldest society card from 1950, and the card for Quetta’s Chiltan Hotel. Photos via PARS Though these records appear in 1950, former PARS President Nasir Khan (call sign AP2NK) said in a 2019 interview that the society was formed in 1970. (This discrepancy could be explained by a change in registration rules after which the society began anew). According to Nasir Khan, many of the initial members, including him, were associated with the telecommunications industry which is why their professional interests led them to ham radio, and ultimately to create the society. When Nasir Khan passed away in 2025, PARS announced that AP2NK was now a ‘silent key’. Ham radio work is driven by enthusiasm and charitable spirit but it is still governed by regulations which say a licensed operator has to be a member of PARS to legally function. Licenses were first issued by the Post and Telegraph department, followed by the Telephone and Telegraph department, and since 1996, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) which now has a dedicated Radio-Based Services section. PTA records thus date back to 1962-63 even though files and folders have moved around between departments. Radio operators in Pakistan must be at least 16 years old. They join PARS as a ‘short-wave listener’ (SWL) for at least one year (like a driving learner’s license) before earning a full license (two years if you are under 18). SWLs can listen but not speak on the radio and use this time to learn mannerisms and techniques. Applications require details of equipment and operators are subjected to security verification which takes three months or more. A written test and interview follow at the PTA. Each newly licensed operator is then assigned a unique call sign, which in Pakistan begin with AP2 (or 5 for organisations) followed by the person’s initials. Radio communication takes place with phonetic codes, so AP2 will become “Alpha Papa 2”, and universally recognised Q codes, such as QTH relating to location and QSL relating to receipt of transmission. Codes such as “5 and 9”, meaning readability and signal strength respectively are at their highest, are also used. Audio of communication between hams in Islamabad and Lahore, a distance of over 283 kilometres. They announce their call signs, and confirm readability and signal strength by saying “5 and 9”. PARS helps applicants prepare and for several years, tests were conducted in coordination with the PTA. The license fee is Rs2, 000 and has to be renewed every five years. Members pay the Society Rs2, 000 a year, students Rs1, 500 for three years and SWLs Rs4, 000 for a three-year term. People over 65 years are granted lifetime licenses. Licenses can be revoked legally but according to the PTA no such case has arisen so far. Licenses usually end when holders pass away or fail to renew. The PTA does not allow mobile radio stations in its law. Exceptions can, however, be made for temporary periods in times of emergency and special need. This provision, in particular, is central to how the Society has worked in rescue efforts. ‘It’s not a hobby’ Today the group has around 600 active members of whom around 160 are amateur radio operators and the rest are SWLs or others. Most members have full-time jobs or businesses. One works in the oil and gas industry, some are telecom engineers, another is a cardiologist and several are serving members of the armed forces. Former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Amir Gulistan Janjua (AP2AGJ) was also a member. There is nothing ‘amateur’ about PARS. During initial interviews, my use of the word ‘hobby’ was met with polite clarification that every member was a professional and the operations are considered a service. Indeed, the Facebook page and website lists PARS as a non-profit organization with coordinators and representatives in all provinces. It does not accept donations or raise funds and the rule is that no politics or personal matters can ever be discussed on air. Equipment is considered expensive but lasts decades. Members learn how to repair their own machines and one member even created a specialized battery that can power several radios at once. This spirit of invention also takes members to science fairs and expos. At an event in NUST in 2026, for example, PARS taught students how to make an antenna using a clothes hanger, with which they talked to someone in Gujranwala. Some of the society’s events, such as the annual meeting of its general body, take place at a university managed by one of the members. No premises have ever been acquired and the Society’s headquarters are generally based at the licensed location of a senior member. At one point it was a school owned by a senior office bearer and later another member’s house. The boy who loved radios I met the Society’s vice-president at his house in Islamabad that doubles as the organization’s headquarters. I had the location PIN and house number but when I got there, I realised I had wasted my time looking at plaques in the street. It was the house with the huge antenna. The antenna on the shack belonging to AP2AUM. Photo by author. In a ‘shack’ on the roof I met one of its oldest active members, Asadullah Marwat (call sign AP2AUM). He is in his fifties and has the congenial air of a man who has been around people a lot. When he speaks, he moves from anecdote to anecdote, a sign of a life full of experiences. He is a lawyer who worked his way up to Assistant Advocate General of the then NWFP before switching careers to the United Nations. Seasons have come and gone, Asadullah Marwat has changed cities for jobs and became a grandfather but the radio has been the one constant in his life. The set is switched on in his bedroom when he comes home from work, and it stays on until he falls asleep. For her latest birthday, Marwat gave his supportive wife a walkie-talkie, after finally finding one that fit in her purse as she had been demanding for years. Marwat’s first contact with radios came when he was a teenager living in Malakand, where his father was a government officer. His father had acquired walkie-talkies to coordinate poppy eradication in the district at a time when channels of communication were limited. With not much else to do, the young Asad got one and started fiddling around with it. He used makeshift antennas to increase the radio’s range until the antenna was so big that it started to bend over. The father and son were in the early days of their radio journeys when they learned about ham radios. A certain Farrukh Sahab (AP2FI) in Lahore had a powerful radio that he used to talk to “faraway places” so Marwat’s father loaded his children into the car and drove from Swat to Lahore to meet him. They watched in amazement when AP2FI talked to someone in Norway as a demonstration. A few years later the family went to the Industrial Expo in Islamabad, where they saw a stall set up by PARS. They also met the late Nasir Khan, the long-time president of PARS who explained how things worked. The inspired duo bought radios and were granted licenses a year later in 1993. Asadullah Marwat has been on air since then and served as vice-president since 2014-15. Asadullah Marwat (AP2AUM) in his shack. Photo by author Even with no disaster relief going on, he finds plenty of time to have fun. In 2019, he spoke to the International Space Station as it passed over Pakistan. Inside the shack, he fires up the High Frequency transceiver and rolls the knob until voices come into focus. “Russians, ” he says with a laugh, as we both lean forward to listen. Connecting the hops PARS members often boast they are more adept than those who rely on radios for their professional duties. An instance that demonstrated this arose in 2021, when a PARS member was approached for help by policemen on duty in Azad Kashmir deputed at Chilehana, the southernmost entry point for district Neelum, making it a key check post. Their headquarters in Athmuqam was around 35km away by road. The policemen had been equipped with radios but they couldn’t contact the headquarters reliably unless one of them climbed to the top of a mountain with a clear line of sight. There was only one problem, Chilehana sits right next to the Line of Control, which meant that it wasn’t the greatest idea to have a man in uniform prowl around on a mountaintop looking for a signal. The task of solving this mystery fell to one of the Society’s experts, Mubeen Ajmal (AP2AJM) who had a degree in telecommunications engineering. As with many children from the 1980s and 1990s, Ajmal was a fan of the Urdu spy novels Imran Series in which radio communication was a recurring theme. He came across PARS at a seminar at the Federal Urdu University, where he studied in 2006. He remained an SWL for six years, until he graduated and was able to set up his own station and earned a license in 2012. Ajmal figured out that the radio transmission from the checkpost was failing to complete a ‘hop’ to the middle of the district, from where it would then hop again to reach the headquarters at Athmuqam. All it needed was some new hardware to get messages across. Antennas have a relation between dimensions and the frequencies they are best suited to. Ajmal asked for the exact frequencies the policemen operated on and fabricated a Yagi antenna (a popular directional antenna named after its Japanese founder) at his house with the precise measurements needed. He used the best material he could find, in this instance a green PVC pipe as a boom to prop up the antenna. Left: The antenna made by PARS on the Police check post with a green PVC pipe as boom. Right: The group that installed it, including Marwat (front) and Ajmal (red hat). Photos via Mubeen Ajmal After running computer-based and live simulations to see if his antenna was working, he then drove with Marwat and some other members to Neelum. They set up the antenna right outside the container checkpost. Within moments, the policeman’s handheld radio crackled. “Are you on the mountain again? ” was the first thing the officer on the other end asked. “No sir, some men helped us fix the radio, ” the man on duty replied. ‘Don’t let them leave. ” The hams barely had a second to glance at each other, wondering if there was trouble, before the officer added that he wanted to invite them to dinner at his house. PARS has since signed an MoU with KP’s Rescue 1122 and helped restore or fix equipment in Galiyat and other regions. In August 2026, they travelled to Bahrain, in Swat, to fix an antenna that allowed the regional team to talk to headquarters again. When water kills power Inspired by the success in Kashmir, PARS started taking more interest in disaster relief. By the time the next one struck in 2010, the group was ready. One of the first casualties was electricity after the rivers swelled and enveloped swathes of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Telecom towers soon ran out of power and communications went down. It would take months to get cellular networks back up. One PARS team working on connecting Nowshera and Charsadda to Islamabad and Peshawar. Another team linked Faisalabad, Multan and Sargodha to Lahore. PARS already had a 2-meter repeater but its coverage wasn’t extending to far-flung areas. To fix this, they installed cross-band repeaters so they could use handheld radios instead of being limited to base stations, which required electricity at a time when power was down. An aerial view of the floods in Dera Allah Yar in 2022. Photo via AFP Once members spread out, the relief work became easier. In a communique on August 20, 2010, PARS said that Pashtun Garhi and Pir Sabak in Nowshera needed tents, food and water for 15, 000 displaced people. In Charsadda’s Mera Prang, they found 300 families without shelter. In Dharkhanawalla, Sargodha, they conveyed that entire villages were submerged. The group raised funds and collaborated with the Pakistan Academy of Family Physicians to bring in doctors and supplies, earning them a mention from the American Radio Relay League. When Sindh and Balochistan flooded in 2022 the team was able to venture further, reaching Badin, Thatta and Dera Allah Yar. Armed with the wisdom that it was better to remain mobile instead of setting up fixed base stations, this time they worked out of their vehicles. Marwat distributed handheld radios and the team spread out. A member would locate an emergency and call one of the doctor members. This way, the team managed to set up medical camps that helped almost 300 families. A call for help In August 2025, Buner’s Deputy Commissioner Kashif Qayyum found himself in a fix after his area was cut off by a catastrophic cloudburst. It took his team three days to restore road access but rescue operations had hit a snag. There was no way to decide where to send the excavators, tractors and ambulances at his disposal. The rain had decimated mobile networks and despite Qayyum’s calls for help, the PTA and telecom companies had been unable to restore signals. Assistant commissioners would head out to a distress spot, only to find that they had no way of conveying specifics to Qayyum or headquarters. Some of them were walking around for twenty minutes to find signals. What should have taken 30 minutes was taking three hours. Then, the DC remembered an old friend. Qayyum had been an SWL at one point and known Marwat since the early 2000s. One conversation and 48 hours later, PARS got three vehicles full of men and equipment to Buner. One of the men Marwat brought with him was Saqib Ashraf (AP2SAA), the society’s technical guru and equipment repair maestro because of his degree in electronics and communication engineering. (He fell in love with radio after seeing his first one in an uncle’s old army photos). Ashraf told me that Buner was one of the most challenging sites, because they wanted to get communications up in a single night. A base station in the DC’s office was their best shot at securing line-of-sight access. The men pointed the antenna in the direction of Pir Baba which was worst affected. A repeater was set up in Police Lines and official vehicles were equipped with radios. Key officials heading into the field were given handheld radios set to the PARS frequency. Left to right: PARS at work, the finished antenna, the devastation in Buner. Photos via PARS Suddenly, everything eased. Even in numerous ‘bowls’ between the Buner mountains, the radios did not lose coverage. Ambulances and excavators were dispatched as soon as a need was identified, to even the remotest parts of the district. The set-up was so successful that it runs to this day. Qayyum is now posted to Peshawar from where he told me that the experience showed him the impact of ham radios on district management. He argues that they could revolutionize forest range patrols and even security operations during Muharram, when phone signals are restricted. What’s next for PARS? A December 2002 issue of Australian Amateur Radio Magazine featured PARS which had around 170 active radio operators in 2000. The number is roughly the same 26 years later. At least 1, 200 members are needed for ample coverage across the country. By comparison, India has over 44, 000 operators and the US above 800, 000. The earthquake-prone Japan had 1. 2 million operators at one point even though its population and area are half of Pakistan’s. It isn’t expensive to take up amateur radio. A $25 portable unit will connect you to the same frequencies as the big setups. The PTA fees are among the lowest in the world (Rs2, 000 for five-year licenses, Rs100 for tests) even though they barely cover the cost of the license document it issues. Applications and testing cost $50 in the US (Rs13, 000) and at least ¥4, 300 in Japan (Rs7, 500). It is, however, a process to acquire a license in Pakistan, which is perhaps the only one in the world needing law-enforcement clearance. It can take longer than the stipulated 12 weeks and rejections are not always clearly explained. It takes less than a week for testing and licensing in the US and UK, and a month in Japan. India also conducts security clearances, but after its test. Of course, not everyone knows about ham radios in an age of smartphones, which might explain the low numbers. But as the last twenty years have shown this generation, networks do go down in urban and rural disasters, making ham radio a more important back-up than ever. Saqib Ashraf (AP2SAA) and others will warn you that ham radio isn’t a hobby or for cute drawing room show-and-tell. You have to respond in emergencies, pick up and travel to remote areas on your own steam, to make sure someone in distress can get a short message out. Back at the shack, Marwat switches on the transceiver to check if anyone else is on air. There is a crackle and the message comes out: “Flood warnings are coming in, I think we should start preparing. ” Header image by Mohsin Alam, based on photos from PARS
Pakistan’s amateur radios are tuned in for the apocalypse
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