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COMMENTARY
The battle for the Arab
mind
By Ehsan Ahrari
Don't
let anyone mislead you about the political astuteness of
the US Central Command (CENTCOM) officials. This command
is responsible for carrying out the invasion of Iraq and
many of its officials have made a point of learning
about Arab culture and Arab and Muslim sensitivities. In
this sense, they are way ahead of the American civilian
leadership, which, on the contrary, regularly uses harsh
language to express its incessant irritation at what it
sees as a lack of enthusiastic support of Arab
governments for the ongoing invasion of Iraq.
The latest example of the shrewdness of the
CENTCOM was reported in the March 20 New York Times, the
night following the invasion of Iraq. The dispatch
reports that press officials of that command accepted an
invitation to join the editor of the Qatar-based
television station al-Jazeera at his home for a
barbecue. Accepting a personal invitation of that nature
is the beginning of creating a personal bond, and a
decisive step toward ameliorating feelings of alienation
that have prevailed for the past two or more years on
the US as well as the Arab sides.
No one is
suggesting that because of such social events al-Jazeera
will change its own version of objectivity in its
coverage of the US invasion of Iraq. Military officers
understand that point much better than their civilian
counterparts. This reality was underscored by the fact
that in Washington, al-Jazeera was depicted as the "All
Osama all the time" network, largely because it
regularly played videotapes of the Saudi super terrorist
during operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and
allowed guest spots to talking heads in its shows who
praised bin Ladin and derided the United States.
In the pre-al-Jazeera days, BBC and CNN
broadcasts claimed a monopoly on objectivity. Arab
audiences intently followed their broadcasts, especially
during political or military crises, given the
highly-controlled nature of the mass media within their
own countries. However, as the US side was never very
conscious about the fact that media objectivity, more
often than not, is in the eye of the beholder, it was
unpleasantly surprised when it was faced with the Arab
version of objectivity that al-Jazeera started to
present in the midst of a military campaign in
Afghanistan.
It is not a much-discussed reality
that media criticism of the US government has
perceptively gone down since the September 11 terrorists
attacks. CNN, which claims to be the most objective,
also regularly toes the government line on almost all
issues of international affairs.
Faced with
al-Jazeera's version of objectivity regarding bin Laden,
and especially the nature of that network's coverage of
the escalating violence in occupied territories in
Israel, the US government lost its cool. Secretary of
State Colin Powell is reported to have asked the Emir of
Qatar to put pressure on al-Jazeera to lower the level
of what he described as "anti-US propaganda" during the
Afghan military campaign. Imagine any Middle Eastern
official making such an outrageous request to President
George W Bush about similarly controlling any American
newspapers or television networks?
Two
observations may be offered regarding Powell's desire
for controlling al-Jazeera. First, he, like other top US
officials, figured that since al-Jazeera is located in a
region of authoritarian rule, controlling it should be
viewed as "standard operating procedure" by the
government of Qatar. Second, and alternatively, Powell's
desire to silence al-Jazeera's criticism of the US and
the contemptuous attitude of the US government toward
the Arab network underscored the kind of double
standards the US civilian leadership has manifested
toward things Middle Eastern.
Now at the time of
the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has
palpably and perceptively modified its attitude toward
al-Jazeera. It has recognized the fact that the Arab
network reaches 45 million people in the Middle East and
North Africa, while its Internet site attracts many
more.
So, the information war is on. US
officials have decided that instead of scorning the
network they should woo it and the Pentagon even offered
al-Jazeera choice spots with American military units in
its program of "embedding" journalists with soldiers. It
was offered a total of four such positions for the
coverage of military operations in Iraq. But it had to
decline two slots that were based in Kuwait and Bahrain
because of diplomatic problems involving the network and
those emirates.
The US government's decision to
engage al-Jazeera is partly driven by the belief that a
failure to do so would be to leave its journalists to
the influence of the Saddam government, with which it
has considerable contacts. The US military has also
assured al-Jazeera executives that it "would not
scramble satellites in order to prevent transmission".
But there is more to the US's sophisticated
media blitz. The US troops are reported to have been
given orders on "two matters of decorum: no throwing of
candy to Iraqi children and no displaying of flags -
regimental, state or even the American flag", according
to another dispatch of the New York Times. The official
position is that the American flag "could give the
citizens of Iraq the wrong idea" and may even be viewed
as a provocation. The American troops are "not ... the
army of conquest, intent on claming Iraqi land or
treasure for the United States, but a liberation force".
So far, it appears reasonably interesting. But
there is still the matter of a US military general
ruling Iraq after the war. An eminently superior option
is for the US to hand over the political command of Iraq
to the dual leadership of the Arab League and the United
Nations in the shortest period of time after the demise
of the Saddam regime. That leadership, in turn, should
negotiate with the various power groups of Iraq to
evolve a mechanism, a-la Afghanistan, for democratic
elections of a leader of that country. The legitimacy of
such a mechanism in the Arab and Muslim world would be
beyond any reproach.
Ehsan Ahrari,
PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent
strategic analyst.
(©2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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