Media wars: Weapons of
choice By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - With the Pentagon planting "good
news" stories in the Iraqi media, and al-Qaeda
launching a sophisticated CD, the adversaries
share a keen desire to communicate their messages
other than through the barrel of a gun.
The battle to win the hearts and minds of
the Muslim world has clearly entered a new phase.
In Washington, in a briefing for the
powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Republican John Warner of
Virginia, the military this
week acknowledged that articles written by the US
military had been placed in Iraqi news media,
without always being properly identified as paid
advertisements.
Warner said that senior
commanders in Iraq were trying to get to the
bottom of a program that apparently also paid
monthly stipends to friendly Iraqi journalists to
report good news on the US invasion and occupation
of Iraq. The program was organized by a US company
under contract to the Pentagon, the Lincoln Group,
a Washington-based public relations firm.
Warner said that the program could
undermine the George W Bush administration's goals
in Iraq and jeopardize the country's developing
democratic institutions.
Al-Qaeda's
weapon Asia Times Online, meanwhile, has
learned of the release in Afghanistan of a
state-of-the-art CD comprising selected speeches by Osama
bin Laden from 2002 to December 2004. The CD is
already available (illegally) in Pakistan and in
parts of the Middle East.
Security experts
believe that soon it will flood the market as the
first step towards a broader al-Qaeda goal; to
shed its shadowy image and openly propagate the
call for mass jihad against the US and any other
foreign occupiers in the Middle East.
The
CD's speeches address specific audiences, like the
one in 2002 to the Pakistani nation, the 2003
speech to Americans, a speech in 2004 to Europe
and the December 2004 address to the people of the
Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia).
The CD
includes horrifying images of war and destruction
in Iraq, and pays tribute to the Iraqi resistance.
Unlike in the past, the CD appears to have
been made by professionals in a well-equipped
studio. The audio and visual effects are clear,
with English subtitles for non-Arabic speakers.
Additionally, separate formatted files include
transcripts in languages such as Urdu, Persian,
English and Arabic.
"This package clearly
shows one thing, that al-Qaeda has strongly
regrouped and in an organized manner is spreading
its propaganda material to the whole of the Muslim
world," a senior Pakistani security official told
Asia Times Online.
The lengthiest and most
impressive speech on the CD is bin Laden's
December 2004 video address to the people of the
Arabian peninsula in which he explains why the
rulers in Saudi Arabia were being targeted by
al-Qaeda. The reasons included their corruption,
tyranny, abuse of human rights and deviation from
the basic Islamic faith.
A senior
Pakistani intelligence analyst commented,
"Previously, al-Qaeda used to spread propaganda
material which would motivate people to join the
Afghan resistance, but this new CD does not aim
for that. Rather, it aims to connect with the
masses all over the world. The speeches selected
for the CD are not simply propaganda material to
instigate people to war, but instead present
in-depth analysis on al-Qaeda's approach and
clarification of their various actions and
justifications.
"Generally, underground
groups do not indulge in debate to justify their
actions. Instead, they indulge in rhetoric, which
attracts fresh blood to their cadre. However, when
underground movements try to connect with the
masses and try to cultivate their collective
thinking, this indicates their ambitions to do
mainstream activities, which include mass
mobilization or mass participation in their
programs."
On November 4, Asia Times
Online reported (Al-Qaeda goes back to
base) of an ongoing debate within
al-Qaeda on becoming a more open outfit, operating
from bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. This could
take several months to complete, but the first
shots have already been fired with the release of
the CD.
Washington's weapon In
Iraq, the US already has a head start in the media
war as it has attempted to influence the media for
some time.
The story of the Pentagon's
low-tech public relations efforts in Iraq was
revealed last week by the Los Angeles Times,
reports William Fisher of Inter Press
Service in New York. The Times said that many of
the articles were presented in the Iraqi press as
unbiased news accounts written and reported by
independent journalists. The stories trumpet the
work of US and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents
and tout US-led efforts to rebuild the country.
The Times reported that while the articles
are basically factual, they present only one side
of events and omit information that might reflect
poorly on the US or Iraqi governments. Records and
interviews indicate that the US has paid Iraqi
newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with
headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite
Terrorism", since the effort began this year.
The articles are received from the
military and translated into Arabic and then
placed with the Iraqi media, both print and
broadcast, by the Lincoln Group. Lincoln's website
boasts of its extensive network of relationships
with Iraqi journalists.
The Lincoln Group
defended its practices, saying it had been trying
to counter insurgent propaganda with accounts of
heroism by allied forces. "Lincoln Group has
consistently worked with the Iraqi media to
promote truthful reporting across Iraq," Laurie
Adler, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement.
A military spokesman in Iraq said contractors like
the Lincoln Group had been used to market the
articles to reduce the risk to Iraqi publishers,
who might be attacked if they were seen as being
closely linked to the military.
However,
the news about the Lincoln Group's doings came as
an embarrassment to administration and
congressional officials who have often emphasized
the importance the US places on development of a
Western-style free media in Iraq. Last week,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cited the
proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one
of the country's great successes since the ouster
of Saddam Hussein.
The hundreds of
newspapers, television stations and other "free
media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public
to debate the issues of their burgeoning
democracy, Rumsfeld said.
The
administration is not alone in pointing to the
"free" media as evidence of things going well in
Iraq. In a November 10 speech, Republican Senator
John McCain of Arizona touted Iraq's "truly free
press".
But Congressional Democrats said
the Lincoln Group's activities were the latest
example of questionable public relations practices
by the administration. In an earlier case,
payments were made to columnists, among them
conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, who
secretly received US$240,000 for promoting "No
Child Left Behind", the administration's education
initiative.
"From Armstrong Williams to
fake TV news, we know this White House has tried
multiple times to buy the news at home," Senator
Harry Reid of Nevada said. "Now, we need to find
out if they've exported this practice to the
Middle East."
Senator Edward Kennedy, a
Massachusetts Democrat on the Armed Services
Committee, called on the acting Pentagon inspector
general to investigate the Lincoln Group's
activities to see if they amounted to an illegal
covert operation. "The Pentagon's devious scheme
to place favorable propaganda in Iraqi newspapers
speaks volumes about the president's credibility
gap," Kennedy said. "If Americans were truly
welcomed in Iraq as liberators, we wouldn't have
to doctor the news for the Iraqi people."
Senator Joseph I Lieberman recently
returned from a trip to Iraq and wrote an article
for The Wall Street Journal in which he pointed to
Iraq's "independent television stations and
newspapers" as evidence of the "remarkable
changes" there.
In coordination with
Bush's speech last week at the US Naval Academy at
Annapolis, Maryland, the administration published
a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq". Among
its claims: "A professional and informative Iraqi
news media has taken root. More than 100
newspapers freely discuss political events every
day in Iraq."
Martin Kaplan, associate
dean at the Annenberg School for Communication at
the University of Southern California and director
of its Norman Lear Center, told Inter Press
Service, "Anyone who recalls the good-news
propaganda that ran in the state-run communist
press even as the Soviet Union was collapsing will
find what the Bush administration is doing in Iraq
creepy.
"It sends a deeply troubling
message about what they think democracy is. But
given their demonization of dissent in the United
States, it sadly comes as no surprise."
And National Security Advisor Steven
Hadley said on Sunday that if the payola
allegations were found to be true, it was bad
policy and should be discontinued.
Iraqi
journalists and their representative organizations
have also objected to the practice.
This
is not the first time the Pentagon's PR efforts
have come under scrutiny. In 2004, the agency
found itself engaged in bitter, high-level debate
over how far it could and should go in managing or
manipulating information to influence opinion
abroad.
The issue was whether the Pentagon
and military should undertake an official program
that used disinformation to shape perceptions
abroad. One of the problems with such programs is
that in a world wired by satellite television and
the Internet, US news outlets could easily repeat
misleading information.
Earlier, Rumsfeld,
under intense criticism, closed the Pentagon's
Office of Strategic Influence, a short-lived
operation to provide news items, possibly
including false ones, to foreign journalists in an
effort to influence overseas opinion.
Now,
critics say, some of the proposals of that
discredited office are quietly being resurrected
elsewhere in the military and in the Pentagon.
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau
Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com. Zafar
M Sheikh also contributed to this report from
Rawalpindi.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales, syndication and republishing
.)
speeches by Osama
bin Laden from 2002 to December 2004. The CD is
already available (illegally) in Pakistan and in
parts of the Middle East. 
