Abu Aardvark

Doha, Day One

Don't expect regular liveblogging of the al-Jazeera Forum, but I thought I'd take the opportunity of being wide away with my computer at 12:30 AM to post something...

I always find these huge conventions a bit surreal. I keep having the kinds of experience I can only imagine that I would have at a Buffy the Vampire Slayer convention: "hey, do you think that's Ahmed Mansour?" (answer: yes) and "Do you think Fahmy Howeidy would find it rude if I walked up to his table to say hi?" (answer: no, a perfect gentleman) and that sort of thing.

Anyway, after meeting with the BBC/Doha Debates team this morning, I took the obligatory tour of al-Jazeera. Very neat. Then I had a very nice lunch with Issander el-Amrani, and sat with Hugh Miles (who I had never met before) at the opening press conference. I saw General Anthony Zinni, who was in town for a different event, but didn't get to chat (Bill Clinton was here yesterday, but I didn't see him).

Then it was time for the opening press conference. All anyone wants to talk about is al-Jazeera International. I had been hearing rumours from well-placed sources that the tension between the Arabic and English stations had been growing, and that the English management had been going around saying that there would be no cooperation at all between the two networks. Well, they were singing a different tune in public today: both Wadah Khanfar (al-Jazeera) and Nigel Parsons (International) talked at great length about how much editorial coordination there has been, how much the two stations will draw on each other, and so forth. Now all anyone wants to talk about is why they are presenting that particular public front.

And, then, off to the Doha Debates. It was a trip, an extremely lively discussion helped on by Tim Sebastian's characteristically acerbic questioning. Khaled al-Hroub was my partner, while Mona Eltahawy and Abdullah Schlieffer argued the other side. The motion on the floor was "resolved: the Arab media needs no lessons in journalism from the West." I'll refrain from discussing the contents of the discussion until it airs this weekend (BBC World, both Saturday and Sunday - though how the producers are going to edit a fast, intense 90 minute event into a 46 minute broadcast is beyond me... good luck with that!).

But just a few quick comments: Mona is really a terrifically effective speaker (at dinner, Khaled told her that after listening to her he wanted to vote for her side). The way the program is structured, with lots of questions to the panel from an audience of students (and expats and various worthies who happened to be in Doha tonight), most reminded me of Ghassan bin Jidu's Hiwar Maftuh program on al-Jazeera - except in English. The audience asked some great questions, and really seemed to be in to it. I have to say that people are really obsessed with this Danish cartoons deal - there must have been four different questions about it. Israel and Palestine are still very much on peoples' minds. And I'll just say again that I never did like the wording of the question much....

And now, off to bed. My panel is 9:00 tomorrow morning, and then after that I'll be splitting time between watching panels and hanging out with people. If you're an Abu Aardvark reader and you see me wandering, please do say hi! Let's just hope that I don't blush when I finally meet Jumana al-Namour, or at least that she has a sense of humor!

one morning in London

Quick question to my UK-based readers:  it looks like I'm going to have about a ten hour layover in Heathrow on the way to Doha.  What should I do for one morning in London?  Any particularly interesting museum exhibits or whatever right now that would make it worthwhile heading into town instead of curling up in an airport corner with my laptop?

Arab media on Hamas: in pictures

How is the Arab media covering the Hamas victory?  Well, it's too early for any columnists to write about yet, so nothing to report there.  I thought some pictures might be more interesting, anyway.

I've just been watching an incredibly interesting program on al-Jazeera.  They convened a panel discussion in Ramallah of eight prominent Palestinian academics, journalists, and politicians representing almost every political trend to talk about the implications of the Hamas victory.

The moderator asked questions, as did various commentators out of the studio and from other locations such as Gaza.  The panel had a large studio audience, and a number of Palestinians had the chance to pose their own questions (and often make their own little speeches).

Meanwhile, on the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya, they were showing a fascinating report on the foreign travels of Saudi King Abdullah.   Riveting. 

I'm sure they had lots of coverage of Palestine today, but this is what was on when I went looking to compose this post. [UPDATE:  in fact, in all fairness, after finishing the post I went back to al-Arabiya and they are now running news coverage of the Palestinian elections.  Not a panel discussion giving voice to a range of observers and ordinary Palestinians, but not a blackout either.  UPDATE 2:  and to be even more fair, don't miss Mohammed's comment below about al-Arabiya's show Palestine Votes a few days ago, and al-Jazeera's current riveting Haykel program about Nasser eating a cheese sandwich.]

This morning, I watched Bush's press conference live on al-Jazeera.  When I was watching it, I thought that the translation wasn't as good as normal - but then, when I saw a recording of it in English, I realized that Bush seemed to be in unusually bad form today and it probably wasn't the translator's fault.   What was funny - and almost certainly was NOT done by al-Jazeera on purpose, was that for the first part of the press conference there was a big camera dangling in front of Bush's face.  Deconstruct as you wish.

Finally, this cartoon ran in al-Quds al-Arabi, which is generally the most "Arabist" of the major Arab dailies:

"The Democracy Intifada".   Lots of ways to interpret that image!

Hamas: tests acoming.

If the reports now out of a clear Hamas victory in the Parliamentary elections, with upwards of 70 seats on participation of over 70%,  turn out to be accurate, then we are now facing the single most important test - possibly ever - of America's commitment to democracy in the Middle East.  (Update:  al-Jazeera is reporting that the Palestinian government has resigned, Fatah has refused to take part in a proposed national unity government, and President Mahmoud Abbas has asked Hamas to form a government.)

It is an article of faith among virtually all Arabs and Muslims that in 1992 the United States and Europe green lighted the Algerian military coup after the Islamist FIS stood on the brink of electoral victory.  This has been taken for a decade and a half as the definitive evidence that the American and European commitment to democracy was a hypocritical farce:  democracy only if our allies won. 

The Bush administration has talked a lot about democracy, about past mistakes in American policy towards democracy in the region, and so forth, but I think it's fair to say that most Arabs remain deeply suspicious.  Recent Arab elections haven't really tested whether this has changed.   Iraq under American military occupation is sui generis.   In Egypt there was never any chance that the Muslim Brotherhood would be allowed to actually win, and even if it somehow had Mubarak would have remained in control over a relatively impotent Parliament.   Jordan's Parliamentary elections have been sufficiently gerrymandered (via electoral law) to ensure a strict ceiling on Islamist seats.   Sudanese Islamists arrived on the back of a military coup.

Hamas winning and presumably moving to form a government is the first real instance of an Islamist movement on the brink of winning power democratically since 1992. If they take power, we are going to see some major political science propositions put to the test:  does power moderate or radicalize Islamist groups?   Will they be willing and able to work with non-Islamist parties in a coalition?   Will they use their democratic victory to abolish democracy?  Will Islamist groups concentrate on the pragmatics of rule or resort to foreign policy grandstanding?  Will they use their position of power to pursue terrorism?  Will they be willing to set aside doctrine and work pragmatically with Israelis and Americans?   Will they use government power to impose unpopular sharia rule over their people?  Will they oppress Christian and non-Islamist Muslims?   Most academic and policy analysis of these questions has remained counterfactual and hypothetical, since there have been no actual examples of an elected Islamist group in power.   That could now change.

Its really hard to know at this point, given sketchy information and all that (note to self: never, ever pay attention to exit polls anywhere ever again), but based on years of opinion polling it seems fairly likely that the Palestinians vote for Hamas was less about endorsing an Islamist state or violence against Israel than about rejecting the corruption and incompetence of the Fatah Palestinian Authority.  Sweeping away the Fatah old guard would in and of itself be a service to everyone, especially Palestinians but also everyone who wants to see the rise of a competent Palestinian state.   And Hamas would have to decide very quickly what to do about American aid and about dealing with Israel (both peace talks and just running daily administration) - with a strong practical incentive to deal with both pragmatically.  I doubt that Hamas itself knows exactly what it will do;  there will be a lot of internal debates and arguments, and signals from the outside (Israel and the US) will be closely monitored. 

For America, I think it's extremely important right now to handle this right:  honor the will of the people, demonstrate a commitment to democratic process, and see what happens.  Give Hamas the chance to prove its intentions.  Don't get too upset about the inevitable bursts of objectionable rhetoric by excited victors - test deeds, not early words.  Above alll, don't give the Islamist hardliners the winning argument they crave about American hypocrisy.  Refusing to deal with Hamas right now could effectively kill American attempts to promote democracy in the Middle East for a generation. 

And get it right from the start - initial impressions of the American response will be extremely important.  Never mind what was said a few days ago, either by Israel or the US - that can be dismissed as pre-election gamesmanship, trying to help Fatah win.  That's history.    Here's where public diplomacy as an integral part of the policy process has to matter.  If Karen Hughes isn't sitting around the table when the Bush administration formulates its response to the Hamas victory, forcing policy makers to think about how their statements will impact Arab and Muslim public opinion, she might as well resign right now. 

Doing Doha

Blogging will be light to non-existent for the next two weeks.  This week I'm frantically trying to finish up two articles, my syllabus for spring teaching, a bunch of committee work, and more.   Then on Sunday I leave for Doha, where I'm taking in part in two unusually exciting events.

First, I'm going to be one of the panelists in the January 31 edition of the Doha Debates.  These are really cool events - two speakers on each side of the issue, with a studio audience of about 300 people (students, journalists, whoever) who vote at the end.  The proceedings are filmed and then broadcast a few days later on the BBC (February 4th at 12:10 and 20:10 GMT and February 5th at 8:10 and 17:10 GMT).   The topic for the debate is this:  "Resolved: This House believes that Arab media needs no lessons in journalism from the West."  I don't love the wording of the question, but it promises to be a lively and fascinating debate.  The other scheduled panelists are Khaled al-Hroub (host of al-Jazeera's program about books, and one of the most insightful writers about the Arab media, in my opinion), Abdullah Schliefer (former editor of the Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal, and who you might remember from his appearance in Control Room), and our friend Mona Eltahawy.   

Then, I'll be one of the speakers at the 2nd annual al-Jazeera Forum, which this year has the theme "Defending Freedom, Defining Responsibility."  I can't find any online link, unfortunately, but it should be a fabulous event.  I'm on the very first panel, titled "The World Media:  Building Bridges of Understanding or Creating Divisions."   It's hosted by Riz Khan (now of al-Jazeera International), and also features Abdul Bari Atwan and Fahmy Howeidy (both of whom were on my list of the five most influential Arab columnists), Andres Izzara (president of TeleSur), and several others.    Other panels include one on journalism and professional ethics (with Abdul Wahab Badrakhan of al-Hayat, Alain Gresh of Le Monde Diplomatique, Wadah Khanfar of al-Jazeera, and others);  one on bloggers and new media (including our friend Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices Online - who in the world would imagine that an al-Jazeera Forum would have two people with 413 area codes?);  challenges to news organizations in the 21st century (hosted by Jumana al-Namour),  media and power (hosted by Faisal al-Qassem);  and several others.  The whole thing is being broadcast on al-Jazeera Mubashir (the C-Span version). 

Should be an exciting week, if I can just make it there!

Voices: TPM Cafe

Matt Yglesies has a short review of Voices up at TPM Cafe.   He raises a really important point:

My reading of this narrative, though not necessarily the author's, was that the United States in an important way "lost" the argument about the Iraq War before Bush even took office. Neither the Clinton administration, nor the Bush administration, nor any of either administration's Arab surrogates, were able to convince most people to view the conflict our way -- the suffering of Iraqis under sanctions as Saddam's fault, rather than ours and American policy toward the region as broadly beneficial rather than driven by narrow interests.

You can find my brief thoughts about this over at the Voices supplemental blog (where I put information about my appearances and reviews of the book).

Braude Internet and Iran

Joseph Braude has an interesting piece in TNR arguing that the rise of the internet and blogging may be harming rather than helping the cause of reform in Iran, in part by moving political and cultural debate out of the public sphere and into a relatively private sphere:

The Internet may actually impede political change in Iran as much as it facilitates it. While 100,000 or so Iranians post their passions to the blogosphere, 4,900,000 other users are evidently doing something else. It is well known, for example, that Iranians massively consume Western entertainment--sports media, pop music, and other elements of global culture that the regime in Tehran bans from the public sphere. This injection of hours of hi-speed fun into Iranian homes makes daily life under a theocracy less different from daily life anywhere else--and probably less difficult to tolerate. The advent of Web use in Iran might be less of a net gain for dissidents than many Iran watchers expect because the revolutionary change Iranians want has already arrived. And the truce between the reigning mullahs and their subjects may well have been fortified, rather than undermined, as a result.
....
The trouble with the rise of the Internet in Iran is that rather than unite the two groups against the regime, the new medium may instead isolate them from each other. The ranks of Jeffersonian idealists are less likely to be swelled by fans of Jefferson Airplane and "The Jeffersons" if the latter crowd can at last enjoy its new media risk-free--without sticking their necks out in a political movement inspired by the former. As far as the shallow side of youth culture is concerned, the cause of reclaiming Iran's public space from its self-appointed guardians of public virtue--who ban hand-holding in parks and foreign films from movie houses--is less urgent in the twenty-first century than in the twentieth: Internet dating, movie downloads, and other gifts of the global village have effectively stocked private space with countless Western trimmings.
....

But if the Internet played a role in counteracting the Islamist agenda in Israel, it has probably been a blessing to Islamists in Iran: that is, a boon to the status quo. The Iranian government seems to have figured out how to use the medium to its advantage: Over the past four years, the regime's strategy of social control over the Internet has switched from sweeping security crackdowns to the more subtle practice of technological filtration, accompanied by the periodic jailing of some bloggers. No other Muslim country, to my knowledge, has gone through a similar evolution. Back in May 2001, Tehran police shut down more than 400 cyber cafés in advance of the country's June elections. Four years later, the government has replaced such clumsy measures with more targeted efforts against specific kinds of Internet use. According to OpenNet Initiative, a collaborative partnership among Harvard Law School, the University of Toronto, and the University of Cambridge, the regime has adopted "one of the world's most substantial Internet censorship regimes." And it's what the government is--and isn't--censoring that's particularly noteworthy: "Currently, Iran's filtering focuses on Iran-related, and particularly Farsi-language, content. Non-Iran specific sites, such as news, human rights, and foreign government pages, are subject to less filtering, though pornography, sex, gay, and some proxy and circumvention Web sites are subject to censorship with varying degrees of effort." In other words, the sites that could really hurt the government--those maintained by Iranian political dissidents--are heavily censored. By contrast, foreign sites that allow Iranians to participate at a distance in Western culture are less likely to be blocked.

Meanwhile, Iran's public sphere is becoming less, rather than more, permissive. In the summer of 1998, I observed a relaxing of restrictions on public displays of affection, Western music, and other hot button issues of domestic concern--a shift that was widely discussed and commonly credited to the reformist president. Today, those concessions are being rolled back; for instance, Iran's new president has banned Western music from all radio broadcasts. Hardliners are freer than they were several years ago to mold public behavior according to their ideals--perhaps because liberals are freer than they were several years ago to experience global culture at home according to their whims.

I doubt that optimism about Iranian blogs is cooling enthusiasm for action against Iran, which is how he frames the piece - more likely it will be taken as evidence that the Iranian people are stockpiling their hugs and puppies to welcome us as liberators.   But aside from that, I think that the basic point is an intriguing and important one.   I don't know nearly enough about the Iranian blogosphere to say whether or not he's right, but as a think piece it's provocative and worth a read.

Al-Jazeera and Jill Carroll

I've seen a number of writers (including Alvin Snyder, discussed in the previous post) using al-Jazeera's airing of the video of abducted journalist Jill Carroll as evidence of the station's radicalism.  I really disagree.  That video was heartwrenching for me, personally, when I saw it on CNN Wednesday morning.  I think that it had the same effect with most people, and contributed to the inspirational level of public calls for Carroll's release across the Arab and Muslim world  - including by the leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Mehdi Akef and by al-Jazeera's Yusuf al-Qaradawi.  Al-Jazeera itself has called for her safe release, and it also just aired an emotional appeal by her father.  When, god willing, Jill Carroll is released, I think that al-Jazeera's role will be remembered as an important positive contributing factor.  And let me just add yet again how deeply I hope that this happens soon, and we see her returned alive and unharmed. 

Snyder: al-Jazeera fading

Alvin Snyder of WorldCasting argues that al-Jazeera's popularity is fading and al-Arabiya's growing.  He relies on the same Ipsos-Stat surveys in Saudi Arabia cited by al-Arabiya's PR director Jihad Ballout, and makes many of the same arguments as appeared in al-Sharq al-Awsat earlier this month:

In a monthly charting of audience ratings prepared exclusively for Worldcasting by the premier independent Middle East television survey organization IPSOS-STAT, the Saudi government-financed Al-Arabiya surpassed Al Jazeera in audience viewer rankings for the first time in the history of the two channels. IPSOS-STAT says that in 2003 and 2004 "the gap between the two stations was very big" in Saudi Arabia, with Al Jazeera holding a significant lead.

IPSOS-STAT says that the weakening viewership of Al Jazeera is not confined to Saudi Arabia, which is inhabited by some 18 million persons, "most of whom are wealthy with high purchasing power." The trend shows a weakening of Al Jazeera's former lead throughout the region, with Al Arabiya getting stronger, although Al Jazeera is still leading in Kuwait, for example.

I would love to see these detailed, month by month surveys - it's exactly the kind of data that should be available to researchers.  Snyder's piece is very frustrating, though, because neither Ipsos nor he offer any evidence outside of Saudi Arabia to support the regional claim.   My sense, based on the variety of survey evidence I've seen (including the Zogby/Telhami survey), is that the market is fragmenting.  Even if nobody agrees on the exact distribution of market share, I think everyone can agree that the name of the game now is intense competition, not the kind of al-Jazeera near-hegemony of the late 1990s through 2003.  Besides the region-wide challenge by al-Arabiya, it's about new stations emerge with particular appeal in a particular region:  the Lebanese stations are strong in Lebanon, Abu Dhabi TV and Dubai TV strong in the UAE, and so forth.  Al-Jazeera is still the one station which almost everybody watches, but it has at least one and often several strong challengers almost everywhere. 

I was also a bit troubled by this throwaway line in Snyder's essay:

Al Arabiya's content is seen by IPSOS-STAT as more moderate and seemingly more in tune with what viewers want to watch, and Al Arabiya's management is given credit for being "more enlightened and visionary."

This does not sound like the kind of commentary I would expect from an independent, neutral market research agency.  Can you imagine Nielsen saying that ABC won the fall sweeps because its programs are moderate and in tune with the viewers, and its leadership is enlightened and visionary?   I mean, it's one thing for me to make interpretive judgements like that, or Snyder, but when Ipsos itself sounds like the al-Arabiya PR team it has to raise eyebrows. 

And that's a shame, because I want Ipsos to be credible.   I've got absolutely no stake in al-Jazeera doing well or al-Arabiya doing poorly - I just want reliable information so that we can move on to conducting serious analysis of what's happening in the Arab media and why.    We need to get to the point where we can discuss hypotheses like "al-Jazeera's radicalism is alienating viewers" or "al-Arabiya's pro-Saudi line is alienating viewers" or "al-Jazeera's dynamism is maintaining its hegemony" or "al-Arabiya's moderate vision is beginning to take hold with mass audiences."  But as long as there is no independent, neutral market survey available - an Arab version of the Nielsons that everyone sees as credible, and which produces comparable data over a period of time - we're stuck arguing about measuring the dependent variables (market share) and can't move on to explaining them.  Until we have the kind of "gold standard" information that everyone can agree on about market shares, these discussions will remain fundamentally limited. 

MERO Salih's road to re-election

Yemen's long-time ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh made headlines last July by announcing that he would not stand for re-election.  There was a great deal of excitement over the prospect of an Arab leader actually giving up power of his own volition, and a great deal of skepticism (I was among the skeptical; Jefferson Gray offered a fascinating guest post presenting the case for optimism).   Back in December, the GPC re-elected him as head of the party anyway, and Saleh now seems set to be re-elected in September and to stay in power at least until 2013.   I mention all of this mainly because I want to recommend the interesting piece in Middle East Report Online by Gregory Johnsen detailing the whole controversy, and what its resolution means for Yemen's political future.