Abu Aardvark

Israel, Gaza, and Arab regional divisions

Israel's assault on Gaza, now in its second day with ground forces reportedly massing on the border, continues to dominate Arab politics and media.   It's not hard to find the usual zillions of commentators  consumed with the details of the Israeli-Palestinian issues (of those, I thought Dan Levy had a smart take on that today), so as usual I will focus on the regional political dimensions that interest me the most.

Almost every Arab media outlet, even those bitterly hostile to Hamas, is running bloody images from Gaza.  But as with the 2006 Hezbollah war, Arab responses are enmeshed within deeply entrenched inter-Arab conflicts, dividing sharply between pro-U.S. regimes and the vast majority of expressed public opinion.  One key divide revolves around the portrayal of the Arab regimes, with one side blasting Arab governments for what they are calling complicity with the Israeli attack and the other trying to create the impression that Arab leaders are working to formulate a collective response.   As protests escalate, this dividing line will likely intensify.  

 

Not quite 2006:  even Saudi-owned al-Hayat leads with caption "Gaza Massacre"

This doesn't mean that the Arab response has been unified.   In general, the responses have mirrored the faultlines which have dominated Arab politics for the least few years -- seen most vividly in the sharp Arab media divide during the early days of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.   As in the summer of 2006, many U.S.-aligned regimes and their media are attacking Hamas and tacitly approving of the Israeli action (and, particularly in the case of Egypt, have been themselves actively working against Hamas for years). Al-Sharq al-Awsat editor Tareq al-Homayed, a reliable conduit for the views of the Saudi leadership, explicitly equates Hamas 2008 with Hezbollah 2006.  Just as in the earlier conflict, where the war was initially blamed on Hezbollah's recklessness, Homayed suggests that Hamas should pay the price for its manifold sins.  This equation between Hezbollah and the very Sunni Hamas, by the way, should reinforce my long-standing point that the "Sunni Axis" attacks on Hezbollah were always more about the regime/popular divide than about sectarianism, no matter how much they worked to inflame sectarianism in order to undermine support for Hezbollah and Iran.   

One significant difference in the regional camps surrounding Hezbollah 2006 and Hamas 2008 is Jordan, which was firmly in the Saudi-Egyptian camp against Hezbollah in 2006 but is walking a more careful line today because of the unique issues posed by the Hamas-Jordan relationship. More on that later.  The Iraqi government, for its part,  has condemned Israel's attack, and Foreign Minister Zebari told al-Jazeera that Iraq would support any Arab initiative to help Gaza.

Meanwhile, most popular movements are lambasting the Israelis, Arab leaders, and the U.S., and -- even more than in the Lebanon war -- public opinion seems to be firmly on the side of Gaza rather than Riyadh and Cairo.  Al-Jazeera is in full crisis mode, and angry protests are roiling the streets from Amman to Cairo.  The protests are directed firmly at Arab governments as well as Israel and the U.S., with the Egyptian opposition daily al-Dustour trumpeting the Egyptian 'green light' for the attack and calling for a popular response commensurate with the magnitude of events and popular fury.  The Muslim Brotherhood is taking the lead in Cairo, with Supreme Guide Mohammed Mehdi Akef personally leading a large demonstration yesterday and another announced for tomorrow.  Angry arguments between Muslim Brotherhood and NDP Parliamentarians have roiled the Parliament.   Jordanian Parliamentarians are calling to sever relations with Israel, and even mainstream commentators are demanding the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador and labeling the attack "nothing but a massacre" (in the words of the liberal Jamil al-Nimri).  Iran is seeking to capitalize on the outrage, as well, while Hezbollah is playing up the comparisons to 2006 with Hassan Nasrallah calling for "millions" of Egyptians to take to the streets.

There are already some cracks in the anti-Hamas front -- three years of the Hamas- Fatah conflict dividing Arab attitudes towards and Arab media coverage of Palestinian politics do not seem to have dulled the intensity of the response to the images of Israel's bombardment of Gaza.  Here, it's instructive to compare Homayed's leader for al-Sharq al-Awsat (blaming Hamas and equating it with Hezbollah) with the leader by the editor of the Saudi-owned al-Hayat Ghassan Cherbel focused on stopping "the massacre" -- bemoaning the "monstrous attacks" and declaiming that there is no time to resolve deep inter-Arab conflicts before ending the killing in Gaza.

However this round of violence ends -- and it's hard to see any scenario in which it produces remotely positive results for anyone involved -- the outcome at the regional level will likely be to further exacerbate these conflicts and to undermine the chances for the incoming Obama administration to make early progress.  While Arab regimes will almost certainly survive the latest round of popular outrage, the regional atmosphere may prove less resilient.  Syria has reportedly broken off its indirect peace talks with Israel, for instance.  A bloody Hamas retaliation against Israelis seems highly likely, and if Abbas is seen as supporting the Israeli offensive against his political rivals then Hamas may well emerge from this even stronger within Palestinian politics.  The offensive is highly unlikely to get rid of Hamas, but it will likely leave an even more poisoned, polarized and toxic regional environment for a new President who had pledged to re-engage with the peace process. Obama has scrupuously (and wisely) adhered to the "one President at a time" formula in foreign policy up to this point... but you have to wonder how long he can sit by and watch the prospects for meaningful change in the region battered while the Bush administration sits by and cheers.

Egypt: proposed law to "slaughter the media"

The Egyptian independent newspaper al-Masry al-Youm has published what it claims is a draft of a proposed law governing the Egyptian media prepared by the ruling National Democratic Party (full text of the draft law here) to be submitted at the beginning of the next Parliamentary session.   Editor in Chief Magdy al-Galad declares the draft law an attempt to slaughter every form of media from satellite TV to Facebook.   If the published draft text is accurate, it's easy to see why. 

The draft law would establish a new national agency to issue all broadcast licenses, and to regulate and censor all forms of broadcast media.  It defines broadcast media very broadly to include the internet and all other forms of communicating text, video or audio.   It also defines prohibited content incredibly broadly, as anything which negatively affects social peace, national unity, the principle of citizenship, public order or public ethics.   In short, the proposal would grant the Egyptian government near-totalitarian control over all forms of media.  It would effectively destroy any serious politically independent media, putting an end to the only remaining area where anyone can find hope in the Egyptian political system (it's relatively contentious press and its internet activists).   And to top it off, according to Galad, media coverage of the proposed Agency's activities would itself be banned. 

Hopefully, the publication of the draft law will provoke sufficient outcry to prevent it from going forward.  But that is not the lesson of recent Egyptian politics.  We're clearly not going back to those long-past days (three years ago!) when Condoleeza Rice called for democracy at the American University of Cairo.  But this might be a good time for Ambassador Scobey to suggest that American allies receiving massive amounts of financial assistance should not be in the business of establishing near-totalitarian controls over the media. 

Military Review: "Partnering with the Iraqi media"

The current issue of Military Review (via SWJ) contains a quite fascinating article written by Lt Col Frank DeCarvalho, Major Spring Kivett, and Captain Matthew Lindsey entitled "Reaching Out: Partnering with Iraq Media."   The article enthusiastically details the efforts of Task Force Marne to use Iraqi media as a more credible source for pro-coalition stories.  An Iraqi face on the coalition's stories, they argue, offers a more effective way of influencing Iraqi attitudes than traditional PSYOP techniques:  "using native news reporters will increase chances of acceptance by the Iraqi population by relaying credible stories of progress that can resonate favorably through communities."   It's worth a look.

The authors explain that traditional PSYOP methods such leaflets, posters, handbills and radio broadcasts are inadequate to the task of influencing Iraqi attitudes:  "Iraqi citizens know the information's origin and often question its legitimacy, credibility, and intent."    After a while, they point out, "the inherently manipulative PSYOP process... reaches a point of diminishing returns. Inducement requires not just a persuasive message but also a credible source."   Backing away from the "inherently manipulative PSYOP process" does not seem to be an option, given that "influencing Iraqis is central to managing a favorable outcome in this war".  Instead, this led to an effort to find a more credible source:  the Iraqi media.

They found such a credible source in the Iraqi media, they explain, as Task Force Marne "established an Iraqi media section (IMS) to capitalize on Iraqi media capabilities and the advantages of using them."  The IMS began with media monitoring functions, and then "expanded its mission to include developing, translating, and disseminating coalition-related stories to Iraqi media outlets."  As of today, it has "contacts with 11 television stations, 27 newspaper outlets, and a host of media websites."  IMS also has an exclusive contract with Iraqi government's newspaper al-Sabah, and the article offers a lengthy vignette of a program it orchestrated for the government TV station al-Iraqiya.   All told, IMS has "conducted 38 battlefield circulations with Iraqi media crews, and it has translated over 300 'good news' stories into Arabic and disseminated them." 

While the authors stress repeatedly that their efforts are exclusively public affairs, they acknowledge that the IMS does not work for the Public Affairs office, with its mandate of informing:  "instead, it falls under the direction and oversight of the effects coordinator" (i.e. the unit which handles PSYOP and influence operations).   The authors insist that  this is not significant and that the IMS plays only a public affairs "informational" role - which would be odd, given everything else claimed for the program, but is duly noted.   Nevertheless, the stories and their placement are carefully coordinated with the "effects" officers, tightly interwoven with the strategic communications plan, and then their distribution used in part to improve the feedback loop on PSYOP development.   

The benefit of this, as they write repeatedly, is "putting an Iraqi face on the story; an Iraqi reporter talking to fellow Iraqis has a much greater effect on the Iraqi psyche than if a coalition reporter told the story."   This has worked so well that "the IMS is currently considering hiring independent Iraqi correspondents and developing a sustainable network of informed journalists."  Overall, the authors urge that the coalition develop more ways to "support and use the Iraqi media."

Quite interesting.  Some might remember the scandal which erupted back in late 2005 when the Lincoln Group's efforts to pay Iraqi newspapers to run pro-US stories was exposed.   This isn't quite that, in that the essay claims that the articles are published with full Task Force Marne attribution - though I'd like to know whether that "produced by Task Force Marne" disclaimer is used as universally as claimed.  But it is a sustained effort to place US military-produced "good news stories" in the Iraqi media, which falls under the jurisdiction of "effects" and not "public affairs", and which is explicitly cultivating the Iraqi media as a more credible face for its strategic communication efforts. 

This should not surprise anyone who follows the information war dimensions of counter-insurgency doctrine, or read various published accounts of specific IO operations in Iraq, but it might provoke some useful discussion.  There always seems to be a deep tension between strategic communications and traditional public diplomacy on questions like this, which will likely shape reactions to the Military Review story.   Some might respond that since the insurgency uses the media as a "force multiplier", so must the counter-insurgents.  Others might argue that there is something inherently objectionable about this kind of use of "independent media" for strategic ends, no matter how overt.  Yet others might note similarities to the administration's efforts to shape coverage in the American media. 

Some specific questions about this case come to mind.  Did the architects of these efforts consider that their efforts might discredit the Iraqi media over time, or that using the media to strategic effect might somehow compromise the independence and freedom of the Iraqi media?   Does the disclosure that the IMS has translated and disseminated more than 300 'good news stories'  force us to re-evaluate the credibility of "good news stories" published over the last few years in the Iraqi media? 

Finally, there's the issue of 'blowback' (when propaganda produced for foreign audiences is recirculated inside the United States).  Maj Gen Rick Lynch explains that "targeting the American audience is a PA responsibility, and targeting the Iraqi audience is an effects responsibility."  What happens when the disseminated good news report is picked up out of the Iraqi media source, tranlated - perhaps without that "produced by TFM" label - and then becomes the basis for American reporting?   

Matt Armstrong, Steve Corman, Andrew Exum, and others no doubt have some thoughts on the matter. 

a reprieve for Arab satellite TV

Arab leaders failed to reach an agreement yesterday.  Ordinarily,  "Arab leaders failed to agree" would merit about as much attention as  "it's humid in DC" or "the Brewers' bullpen blew a 7 run lead", or might offer the chance for another chorus of hand-wringing over the failures of Arab unity.  But in this case, failure to agree was good:  it was Arab Information Ministers failing to agree on the implementation of a controversial document which would have imposed dangerous controls on satellite television.  Their failure is a rare bit of good news in the ongoing, difficult struggle for a relatively free and independent Arab media.

The document, drafted and approved in February, represented an intensely controversial bid by Egypt and Saudi Arabia (among others) to impose political controls over satellite television. Annoyed by al-Jazeera and other politically troublesome broadcasters, they proposed a sweeping set of principles which would have in effect internationalized their own domestic systems of censorship and control.  While its defenders tried to present it as equivalent to America's FCC, ensuring standards and good taste, few Arab media practitioners or analysts bought the analogy.  As Daoud Kuttab put it,

the Arab League members with the exception of Lebanon and Qatar were not innocently trying to ban pornography or violent programming from Arabs’ television screens. Nor is their most recent resolution trying to curtail the content of Arab satellite stations an attempt to create an Arab version of the American FCC.  It is no short of an attempt to control the minds and thoughts of Arab viewers, mostly on political issues.

I don't have the time to dig them out right now, but I've got dozens of op-eds and essays in a pile somewhere (some of them tagged over the last few months) of Arab journalists and pundits expressing similar views in sometimes more colorful language.  Suffice it to say that many of them took this initiative seriously, and worried that the Arab regimes might be on the brink of snuffing out whatever political independence remained on Arab satellite TV (the parts not already curtailed by the Saudi-Qatari rapprochement or by domestic crackdowns from Egypt to Morocco to Yemen). 

That's why it was heartening to read this morning that the Arab Information Ministers failed to reach agreement on the implementation of the document.  According to al-Quds al-Arabi, its backers (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria) were surprised by the reservations expressed by Qatar, Lebanon, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, and Syria.   Objections ranged from the political (unacceptable restrictions on political freedom of expression... some, no doubt, felt this more sincerely than others) to the technical (concerns over efforts to establish a common 'dictionary', presumably so that nobody would use the word 'martyrs', that sort of thing) to the economic (the UAE reportedly objected that any censorship authority would hurt  business at its media city). 

According to unnamed sources from the meeting, the Egyptians and Saudis pushed hard for the power to impose political censorship on all Arab broadcasters, which really would mean regionalizing their draconian censorship and repression.  Advocates of media freedoms and democratization should be glad that America's "allies" failed.  They won't stop trying, but if al-Quds al-Arabi got the story right then for now it seems like good news.

Blaming the media is so 2004

President Bush offered up some 2004-vintage Arab media bashing the other day in response to a question about anti-American attitudes in the region, as he "blamed what he called “poisonous” state-run TV stations in the Middle East for spreading false information."  That's disappointing, considering how far the debate over the Arab media has come over the last few years.  Most of the 'war of ideas' community (as well as the public diplomacy community, which isn't quite the same thing) has developed a much more sophisticated approach to the Arab media, with far greater appreciation to its nuance and complexity.  Especially during the Karen Hughes tenure as public diplomacy czar the American approach has evolved from confrontation to engagement.  It's a shame seeing Bush fall back on the old mentality, in the face of what the public diplomacy community has been trying to do for several years.   

It's also ironic, given what has been going on in the Arab media over the last year (and given that I just happened to have been talking about this to a workshop a few days ago).  The Saudi media has been actively promoting American policies for years, with al-Arabiya having evolved virtually into a Saudi-branded al-Hurra (with viewers) - which is likely why Bush's advisers sent him to be interviewed by al-Arabiya rather than by al-Hurra for his trip to the region - and has been an active part of the Saudi post-2003 campaign against al-Qaeda.  Al-Jazeera has never been the hotbed of anti-Americanism portrayed in the popular media, but over the last year even its coverage has by many accounts changed in a more accommadating (to the US and Saudi Arabia) direction.   While the changes in al-Jazeera's coverage are often exaggerated, I think its fair to say that observers of the Arab media these days are more impressed - positively or negatively -  by the choreographed support for American policies (especially in Lebanon) than by its critical edge.  Bush's complaint was misleading five years ago, and is really out of right field now.   

To really see this, take a look at what al-Qaeda and its supporters say about the Arab media these days.    Far from praising it, they regularly complain about the "crusader media" tarnishing their image and failing to spread their message. The jihadist-oriented forums have been full of grumbling about the Arab media in general and al-Jazeera specifically.  Al-Qaeda finds itself deeply frustrated with the current state of the Arab media, unable to get its message out through the din of competing stations and unable to dominate the news agenda or the political discourse.  In Iraq, for instance, al-Arabiya promotes the Awakenings and tries to undermine al-Qaeda (especially on its show Death Makers), while al-Jazeera often features representatives of the anti-AQ insurgency factions (especially the Islamic Army of Iraq).   Al-Jazeera and other stations long ago stopped broadcasting al-Qaeda tapes in their entirety.  The howls of outrage from jihadist forums over al-Jazeera's treatment of bin Laden's Iraq tape a few months ago - distorting its meaning by airing clips making it appear that bin Laden was criticizing the Islamic State of Iraq when quite the opposite was the case - are still echoing (as in the ongoing "al-Jazeera watch" cataloguing the station's alleged sins).  Back to the days of Zarqawi, the fact that al-Qaeda manifestly couldn't rely on the televised media is clearly one of the reasons it turned to the internet to disseminate its tapes and messages. 

The extent to which al-Qaeda now sees television as a problematic front can be seen in a new monograph entitled "The media war on the people of Islam", released by the Global Islamic Media Front under the name of Mohammed ibn Zayd al-Muhajir (a name with which I'm not familiar  - he also signs with the name "Abu Osama", which is the tag of a frequent contributor to the jihadist forums but obviously not exclusive).

Image courtesy of William McCant's valuable new blog, Jihadica, here (where it can also be downloaded).

Under a cover depicting the Muslim world in chains emblazoned with logos including CNN, the BBC, al-Arabiya, al-Jazeera and LBC, the book offers a 25 page summation of the Arab media's role in furthering the American and Israeli psychological warfare campaign against Islam.  It blasts al-Arabiya for undermining the jihad, spreading lies and disinformation, supporting American crusader wars, supporting the Shia (as if!), and corrupting ethics (by association with the MBC group which broadcasts a lot of Western entertainment programming).  The book is even harder on al-Jazeera, which he warns is trading on its false credibility to deceive honest Muslims who don't know its real agenda.  The bill of complaints against al-Jazeera runs to 8 items (compared to al-Arabiya's 5): broadcasting lies and false news, dividing the Iraqi jihad, favoring the Shia and Iran (Ghassan bin Jidu, who has interviewed Sadr, Nasrallah, and others comes under particular attack), taking part in American media campaigns, normalizing with Israel, and insulting Islam in the name of free speech (a reference to Wafa Sultan's notorious second appearance on Faisal al-Qassem's program, for which he and the station were forced to apologize).  It's a grim picture of an overwhelming global media conspiracy against the jihad.

In short, Arab television continues to be a zone of intense political conflict, but it isn't one where al-Qaeda currently finds much comfort.   (The one exception is over Sunni-Shia relations, where the Saudi-backed media campaign to inflame Sunni-Shia tensions as part of its campaign against Hezbollah and Iran is perfectly compatible with al-Qaeda's vision... but neither side seems eager to claim that alignment, for some reason.)  I'm not surprised that the more positive media coverage hasn't translated into more support for US policies or pro-American attitudes in the surveys, since I've always thought the media was overrated as a causal factor.   But it probably does hurt al-Qaeda, both in denying them opportunities to reach a mass public and in harming their image among Arab audiences. 

GCC-Iran and Al-Jazeera Watch, continued

The GCC-Iran rapprochement appears to proceed apace, despite US efforts to tighten sanctions.  Yesterday Mahmoud Ahmedenejad had a well-publicized phone chat with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah about regional developments, and also found the time for his first-ever phone conversation with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.   UK based Palestinian scholar Khaled al-Hroub wrote an interesting piece the other day in the UAE's al-Ittihad outlying the good strategic rationale for the emergence of a "Gulf-Iranian security order."  In a piece which ran in both al-Ittihad and the Saudi al-Sharq al-Awsat, the Kuwaiti Saad bin Tufla al-Ajami wrote proudly a few days ago about his country's decision to send its Foreign Minister to Tehran after Bush's visit, to demonstrate that Kuwait and the Gulf will pursue their interests, which might not be American interests.  Just some more data points in support of the argument that the Gulf and other Arabs do not seem to be where the US is, or would like them to be, on the Iran question these days.   

Meanwhile, al-Jazeera's coverage over the last couple of weeks lends little support to the thesis that it has been neutered into a pro-American station.  During Bush's visit to Iran the Gulf [typo corrected; though wouldn't a trip to Iran have been something?], it sent a team to Tehran and aired an interview with Iran's Foreign Minister and a somewhat spectacular interview with Ahmedenejad.  That accords well with the "new GCC line on Iran" thesis, not so much with the "pro-Americanization" thesis.  And while I haven't been able to watch much Arab TV the last couple of days, at least some Arab media watchers are saying that its coverage of the current Gaza crisis has been the most thorough and effective, covering it heavily even as most Arab TV stations acted as if nothing unusual were happening.  That's what one would expect from al-Jazeera, but not from the alleged "new al-Jazeera."   Neither of these is decisive proof of anything, but they are suggestive.

Al-Jazeera and Saudi Arabia

I've gotten a lot of calls from journalists over the last year or two with questions about alleged changes in al-Jazeera.   To me, the best indication that little had really changed was that half wanted to talk about al-Jazeera's turn in a more radical Islamist direction and the other half wanted to talk about al-Jazeera's turn in a more pro-American direction.   At the same time!

Al-Jazeera's Western and conservative Arab critics like to highlight station director Wadah Khanfar's alleged Muslim Brotherhood and pro-Hamas inclinations, and make wild claims about the growing number of Muslim Brotherhood members working at the station.  Its Arabist and Islamist critics like to point to its changing coverage of al-Qaeda (such as its controversial distortion of Osama bin Laden's October video, which absolutely enraged al-Qaeda supporters and drew direct criticism from both Ayman Zawahiri and bin Laden himself),  to last year's appointment of a new board of directors dominated by Qataris and pro-American figures, and to the presumed urgency of getting al-Jazeera English access to the American market.   

From my own viewing of the station and from talking with various al-Jazeera people, I've always been skeptical of both the "radicalizing" and the "pro-Americanizing" claims.  Al-Jazeera has always thrived on diversity and clashing viewpoints, on generating controversy and airing heated debates about touchy subjects, and on covering the news from an Arab nationalist standpoint.   From the cacophany of its talk shows, it has always been as easy to pick out examples of radical discourse and claim that they are representative as it is to pick out examples of pro-American coverage and claim that al-Jazeera is "changing."   Most of the alleged changes, it seems to me, have more to do with the region's changing political realities.  If al-Jazeera is giving less coverage to democratic activists, that's probably because those democratic movements have largely been crushed over the last year as authoritarian states have tightened their grip. If al-Jazeera's coverage of Iraq is less bloody, that's probably because there's less violence to cover.

The one change which I do think is real, though, is the one covered by Robert Worth in today's New York Times:  the disappearance of the often absurd Saudi-Qatari feud which has characterized the Arab media since al-Jazeera's launch:

For the past three months Al Jazeera, which once infuriated the Saudi royal family with its freewheeling newscasts, has treated the kingdom with kid gloves, media analysts say.

The newly cautious tone appears to have been dictated to Al Jazeera’s management by the rulers of Qatar, where Al Jazeera has its headquarters.

...

“The gulf nations now feel they are all in the same boat, because of the threat of Iran, and the chaos of Iraq and America’s weakness,” said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. “So the Qataris agreed to give the Saudis assurances about Al Jazeera’s coverage.”

Those assurances, Mr. Alani added, were given at a September meeting in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, between King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and top officials in the Qatari government. For the meeting, aimed at resolving a long-simmering feud between the nations, the Qataris brought along an unusual guest: the chairman of Al Jazeera’s board, Sheik Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani.

Al Jazeera’s general manager, Waddah Khanfar, did not reply to phone and e-mail requests for comment. But several employees confirmed that the chairman of the board had attended the meeting. They declined to give their names, citing the delicacy of the issue. The governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia have remained silent on the matter.

Repercussions were soon felt at Al Jazeera.

“Orders were given not to tackle any Saudi issue without referring to the higher management,” one Jazeera newsroom employee wrote in an e-mail message. “All dissident voices disappeared from our screens.”

The employee noted that coverage of Saudi Arabia was always politically motivated at Al Jazeera — in the past, top management used to sometimes force-feed the reluctant news staff negative material about Saudi Arabia, apparently to placate the Qatari leadership. But he added that the recent changes were seen in the newsroom as an even more naked assertion of political will.

“To improve their relations with Qatar, the Saudis wanted to silence Al Jazeera,” he wrote. “They got what they wanted.”

The changes at Al Jazeera are part of a broader reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In December, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal announced that Saudi Arabia would send an ambassador back to Qatar for the first time since 2002. Also in December, the Saudis attended the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Doha, Qatar’s capital, which they had refused to do the last time it was held there. The Saudis have also indicated that they may allow Al Jazeera to open a bureau in Riyadh.

In other words, al-Jazeera's shifting coverage of Saudi Arabia appears to be both an important indicator of and a major cost of the revitalized GCC approach towards Iran and the United States which I wrote about for today's Christian Science Monitor.   I doubt it will last long, given the history of Qatari-Saudi relations and the unlikelihood of prolonged GCC unity.   But for now, there are three points to make.   

First, one can only rejoice if this means that viewers will no longer be subjected to the absurdities of the Saudi-Qatari feud (with al-Jazeera covering someone arrested for littering in Riyadh, followed by an al-Arabiya expose of  a man picking his nose in Doha).   Second, that joy is tempered by the fact that this will remove one of the only real sources of independent media scrutiny of Saudi politics.  Third, and most important, it remains to be seen whether the specific changes towards Saudi Arabia will spill over into the coverage of other parts of the region and the world.   If so, then an important era in Arab politics will really have come to an end, at least for now.  As at the beginning of this post, I remain skeptical about the broader claims about change.  But it's certainly something to keep an eye on.

UPDATE:  the blogger formerly known as praktike wonders how to reconcile the al-Jazeera story with my CSM story.  So do some contributors to G2K.   I'm not sure I see the contradiction.  There are two seperarte things going on:  the Saudi-Qatari rapprochement, and the changing GCC approach to Iran (which is partially based on that greater GCC unity). I interpret the Saudi-Qatari affair as part of the collective GCC effort to strike a new approach to Iran and their impatience with the American approach, in other words, and not as evidence of their fear of Iran (as in the NYT article).

More Arab bloggers in peril

It seems like every day there's another story about Arab political bloggers being arrested, harrassed, or shut down.   In Egypt, Abd al-Monem Mahmoud draws attention to the early December arrest of Ahmed Mohassan ("Eyes Still Open"), whose blog has among other things reported police torture, and the harassment and arrests of other Egyptian bloggers.   More attention has been given to popular Saudi blogger Fouad Farhan, whose arrest has had a chilling effect on the Saudi blogosphere.   I'm glad that Farhan's arrest has received a great deal of international attention, and can only add my own support and hopes that he will soon be freed - and that the campaign will help to strengthen the hand of other bloggers around the world in the face of regime repression.

The campaigns which have sprung up in support of bloggers like Alaa Abd al-Fattah, Kareen Amer, and now Farhan aren't without problems, but are nevertheless absolutely essential.  As with classic human rights campaigning, mobilizing international attention around a specific case is probably the best chance to both help the individuals in question and to protect other bloggers and activists from similar depredations. Not necessarily:  one well-known Arab blogger who went through a similar ordeal told me that he might have been singled out because of his prominence, the better to send a message to others - and the more international attention, the more obstinate the regime might become in order to avoid looking like it is knuckling under to outside pressure.   

But that's no reason not to campaign on the behalf of bloggers and activists facing state repression across the Arab world (and beyond).    What's happening to Arab bloggers was entirely predictable:  their increasing visibility and political influence (at home and abroad) drew the attention of security services, which began to push back and try to regain control.  Mobilizing international attention is one of the few levers available for the bloggers and activists to push back in turn, and try to defend the open spaces for public discourse that they've begun to open.   More power to them.     At the least, sustained international attention might make security services think twice about whether it's worth going after the bloggers - even if it ultimately can't stop them from doing so. It's a start.   

MERIP 245: Politics of Youth

The new issue of Middle East Report is out.  It focuses on youth issues in the region - it's full of really interesting articles, including a good overview piece by Ted Swedenberg and my own article on Muslim Brotherhood bloggers.  Those are free online, along with a wealth of fascinating material in the print edition.

"Young Brothers in Cyberspace" is one of the two articles that I wrote up after returning from Egypt - I hope that it does justice to the fascinating trends and individuals I saw emerging there. I started writing this piece before the issue really started to heat up - and then watched as over the course of a few months the MB bloggers emerged as one of the hottest and most contentious issues within the Brotherhood.  I got the article as up to date as possible before it went to the printers (amazingly so, all things considered), but still couldn't capture the denouement of the recent dust-up over "Ikhwan Offline", al-Masry al-Youm's attempt to again cast the bloggers as threatening to split the MB, Mohammed Habib's suggestion in an interview that bloggers talk to their elders before rattling off the first thing which comes into their heads, or the official Ikhwan Online's publication of Ahmed Abd al-'Atti's advice to and Mustafa al-Naggar's defense of the MB bloggers.   Also, I've presented the material three times since completing the article and given the opportunity I would probably have adjusted a few minor points (mainly of emphasis and presentation) in light of the excellent feedback.  At any rate, I'm really happy with the article and hope that y'all enjoy it.    Thanks to all the Brotherhood bloggers and activists who took the time to meet with me (including Abd al-Monem Mahmoud, AbdulRahman Rashwan, AbelRahman Ayesh, Mohamed Hamza, Ibrahim Hodeybi, Khaled Hamza, Abdelrahman Mansour and so many more - including others like Magdi Saad and Asma el-Erian whose blogs I've long followed but didn't get a chance to meet, and analysts like Khalil el-Anani, Diya Rashwan, Mona el-Ghobashy, and Chris Toensing who helped put it all in perspective). I hope they find it accurate and useful, even if some of the conclusions might not be totally as they might have liked.   I don't think that these MB bloggers are alone going to change Egypt, or even that they'll necessarily win their internal battles over the Brotherhood's future - but it's a fascinating and important trend worth respect and attention which has become a surprisingly potent issue in recent months.

Both my and Ted's articles are available online for free. I'm glad that it will therefore reach a wider audience, but there's also a more serious issue there.   MERIP, for decades one of the single best sources for quality analysis of the Middle East, has fallen on even tougher financial times than usual, as post-9/11 foundation interest has begun to dry up. They're facing a $60,000 shortfall, which in some political quarters would be the bar tab for a weekend conference but in the non-profit world is rather steep.  Now would be a good time, if you're so inclined, to subscribe or donate or do what you can to save this invaluable institution.

And now, I'm off to Montreal for the MESA annual meeting.  Hope to see friends new and old there!

GWU: The media and misperceptions

Last night, as part of the launch of our new Institute for Middle East Studies here at GW, I chaired a panel discussion at GW about the role of the Arab and American media in shaping mutual perceptions and misperceptions.  It featured two of the finest and most experienced journalists working in their respective media.   Hafez al-Mirazi, the long-time Washington bureau chief for al-Jazeera and host of the extremely popular talk show From Washington, and Robin Wright, one of the senior diplomatic coorespondents covering the Middle East for the Washington Post.   Rather than have each give canned lectures, I ran it as a real dialogue, posing them questions and bouncing them off of each other (figuratively speaking). 

Nathan Brown, Skip Gnehm, Robin Wright, Marc Lynch, Hafez Mirazi.  Credit: Oxana Minchenko

I first asked Mirazi about Arab coverage of the United States.  He described al-Jazeera's heavy  coverage of the 2004 Presidential election, which really was extraordinary - weekly programs which went daily by the end of the campaign covering the primaries, the nomination process, fundraising, and even the basic contours of the American political system.  Since few Arab universities really offer detailed coverage of the United States, it was often said at the time that Mirazi's 2004 programming represented a tutorial in American political system at "al-Jazeera university".  The high ratings for the programs suggests a real hunger among Arabs to understand American politics - in no small part, as Mirazi pointed out, because for Arabs today what happens in the United States really is domestic politics, not foreign policy, and the US has very much become a highly present Middle Eastern power rather than a distant great power.

Lynch and Mirazi.  Credit: Oxana Minchenko. Note to Lounsbury: now stop complaining about my ties.

But after he described that coverage with justified pride, I asked him whether that represented a single moment, the exception rather than the rule.  He somewhat ruefully agreed.  Other than the heavyweights like al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, most Arab media lack the staff, money, or expertise to cover all of US.  Coverage therefore tends to focus on the issues of direct concern to Arabs - American foreign policy towards the Middle East, overwhelmingly.  That's understandable, but paints a distorted picture of the priorities of the American people and the working of the American political system.   He suggested that the American Arabic-lanugage TV station al-Hurra would have been far more useful to American foreign policy if it had simply concentrated on presenting America in all its complexity and diversity to the Arab public, instead of trying to compete with al-Jazeera in its coverage of Palestine or Egypt.   I happen to agree with that suggestion, and have made it myself many times, but that doesn't mean that he isn't right!

Mirazi also pointed out something which came up repeatedly throughout the discussion, and which Ambassador Skip Gnehm later spoke about quite eloquently:  it is very difficult for Arabs from afar to  to discern who matters and who doesn't or the political context of statements.  Stupid comments by an obscure preacher mocking Islam are given equal weight as a Presidential statement, and all of them appear to be "America."  While Mirazi didn't say so, this is the exact mirror image of the MEMRI problem, with incendiary comments taken out of context and presented as representative of the wider public - and in today's information saturated world, such comments will always be easy to find if one cares to look.   In a year of election campaigns, there's going to be a lot of "cheap talk" for domestic political consumption which won't necessarily look that way to Arab audiences. 

Robin Wright, in her answers to my questions about the performance of the American media in covering the Middle East, argued that journalists often get caught up in the crisis du jour and don't have the time or the incentives to work outside the conventional wisdom or framing of the issues.  The pre-existing narrative can capture journalists, who need to provide the latest news and information concisely and don't usually have the time or inclination to work outside the convenient existing narratives within which the new information will make sense to readers.  She complained about the shortage of coverage of the diversity and cultural complexity of the Arab world in the American media - not because journalists don't know about it, necessarily, but because journalists need to file stories about the major crises of the day and there is rarely room left over for anything else.   She also said several times that the media reflects the public mood:  in general the public is not really interested in foreign news, and there are only a couple of pages even in the Washington Post of foreign coverage each day, and this also colors what they can do. 

I asked both Mirazi and Wright to reflect on their media's coverage of Iraq.  Mirazi largely rejected criticisms of al-Jazeera and the Arab media in 2003 and beyond:  given how horribly Iraq turned out, if anything the Arab media wasn't critical enough of US invasion. He did say, however, that the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, should have been more of a moment of self-criticism for the Arab media:  how could it have been so mistaken in its reporting of the balance of forces and the military situation?   Beyond that, however, he didn't seem to think that the Arab media had a lot of accounting to make for its performance in Iraq.  The biggest problem, he argued repeatedly, had to do with the continuing domination and ownership of the media by Arab regimes - as long as terrible, undemocratic governments controlled the Arab media, directly or indirectly, there would be harsh limits on its ability to really progress. 

Wright admitted that the media performed poorly in the runup to the Iraq war, but offered the defense that at that time it was hard to challenge the official narrative.   As above, the public mood mattered:  critical stories were met with a deluge of emails and letters and criticism, editors were cautious, and reporters were in a sense bound by their sources.   She argued that the press would not likely repreat its mistakes in the face of a campaign for war on Iran.  The public environment has changed, making it easier to challenge the administration's rhetoric, and reporters are more skeptical of official sources.

But after that appropriately self-critical opening, Wright surprised me by offering a chillingly persuasive argument about how the rationale for war with Iran had shifted from the nuclear program to its role in Iraq.  To support this, she rattled off a series of examples of what "we know" about Iran's role in the violence, with her voice taking on a stacatto rhythm of seemingly hard facts about the Iranian role (to be clear, I don't mean that she offered these in support of war with Iran - only that she offered these facts in support of her interpretation of the administration's current thinking).   So I challenged her a bit:  how is this not business as usual? What lessons have really been learned, if you (somewhat unfairly being asked to stand in for "the media") will now simply repeat the administration's claims about Iran's role in Iraq as uncritically as you/they did the administration's claims about Iraqi WMD?  Why isn't the media more critically delving into the factual basis of the administration's claims about Iran's role in Iraq?     After all, otherwise the lesson of 2002-2003 will simply be "the media will never again be fooled by the Bush administration's claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."  That's not very useful.   Wright seemed a bit put out by this, but I think it then generated an interesting exchange among the panelists.  Certainly food for thought - and the talk of the dinner table afterwards. 

Ambassador Skip Gnehm wrapped things up with an incisive critique of the Bush administration's approach to the region:  tactics without strategy.   As a diplomat, he would always want to know the endgame, the purpose of various tactical moves - but with this administration, they seem to shift with events and make it up as they go along.  Do they want a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian relationship or not?  Do they want a unified or a partitioned Iraq?    He also worried about the system-wide effects of lost American credibility, pointing to his own long experience as a diplomat to suggest how difficult everything becomes when the US has lost credibility and when its allies - not only its enemies - can't figure out what it is trying to achieve.

I thought it was a fascinating event, and hopefully this post conveys some of that to those who weren't able to make it to the Elliott School last night.