Why Al-Jazeera is essential in this Global War on Terror

Below I’ve posted two different stories I found on Aljazeera.net. Each story takes a different perspective on the Arab world. I would not have posted them in full, except that I doubt most Americans ever read al Jazeera on their own. As such, this is an attempt to open a window into a part of the world were we have so much at stake. The first story below takes a definitely anti-western perspective, while the second provides Arabs a channel for questioning their position in the world and the very prescient need for reform. I think these two stories speak volumes of the need to engage Al-Jazeera, even if at times it seems to be doing everything possible to thwart U.S. efforts in the region. After all, if a sole television network can put holes in our analysis and rhetoric, what makes us think the average Arab won’t be able to do so as well? This is a war of ideas, and whether we like it or not, Al-Jazeera and other Middle Easter outlets, not financed or allied with the U.S., are integral in the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic World.

Conspiracy to control the Arab world?

By Ahmed Janabi

Saturday 23 April 2005, 6:24 Makka Time, 3:24 GMT

Recent UN resolutions dealing with the Arab world have re-ignited the old debate about whether the West has conspired to hinder progress in the region for its own interests…

Double standards

Why, they ask, when it comes to Arabs, should the whole world be involved?

Egyptian presidential candidate Nawal al-Sadawi says Arab countries have never tried to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. ..

The US wants Syria out of Lebanon before Lebanese elections, and stresses that there is no point in holding national elections with foreign troops still in the country.

Mustafa Bakri, editor of Al-Osbou weekly magazine, says he wants to know why the same did not apply for Iraq.

"Why were there 140,000 US soldiers in addition to thousands of other foreign troops in Iraq when the elections were held?" he asked in an interview with Aljazeera.net…

Disagreement

Arabs disagree on who is to blame for their setbacks, the inability to fully invest their resources and the slow development in their countries.

Some blame the West and Israel for targeting them, and say the hands of those powers have continuously interfered in every detail of the Arabs' affairs.

On the other hand, there are Arab thinkers who believe the problem lies with Arabs themselves, accusing their communities of being lazy, dependent on the West, and corrupt.

The debate has grown since the recent wave of US calls for reform in the Arab world…

Internal weakness

Wahid Hamid, an Egyptian thinker at Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo, Egypt, believes politics cannot be free from a belief in conspiracies, but that it cannot be held wholly responsible for a nation's problems.

"I think we should simply imagine any community as a human body. Illness happens because there is an internal weakness. If your body is healthy, then it has enough immunity to fight diseases," he said.

"The same thing applies for any nation or community, I believe that our Arab nation's crisis is internal, and because we suffer internal weakness, foreign powers have been seizing the opportunity to steer our destiny according to their interests."

Seeking domination

Bakri says the opposite, believing the West has conspired against the Arab world.

"The conspiracy against us is so clear in Western officials' statements. What can we understand from constant calls for change and reform? Isn't that a clear indication that those powers are seeking domination?" Bakri asked.

"The occupation of Iraq, the interference in Lebanon's internal issues, and the way the UN has been dealing with the Sudanese issue [of Darfur] are clear indications of double standards."

Al-Sadawi believes internal and external factors should never be dealt with separately.

"Our internal hardships with our governments cannot be separated from outside pressures to keep the state of chaos and hindrance in our countries," she says.

"It is true that our rulers are the direct suppressors, but who is giving them power? Is it not their alliance with international superpowers?"

In pursuit of Arab reform

Thursday 20 May 2004, 17:26 Makka Time, 14:26 GMT

This special report is concerned with the increasingly pressing demand for reform in the Middle East. While few harbour any illusions over the need for such a compelling change, the disagreement centres on the question: How?

Some argue that introducing political reform to the Arab world is not a choice but an imperative given that Arab governments are interested in bringing their nations up to speed with the rest of the world.

Amr Musa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, tells Aljazeera.net in an exclusive interview that reforms must come from within.

His assertion seems to differ from the mantra-like statement repeated by those who oppose the US meddling in the region's affairs, especially following the unofficial introduction of the US-drafted Greater Middle East Initiative.

Danielle Pletka, the vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), advocates a contrary opinion. She tells Aljazeera.net that political reform in the Middle East is not only unavoidable, but that the US has a moral obligation to enforce it. Otherwise, she argues, it would not be fair to the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.

Meanwhile, Chris Patten, the European Union commissioner for external relations, discusses the EU role in this daunting task.

Shaikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent Islamic scholar, on the other hand, takes on the issue of reform in terms of its compatibility with Islam, which, according to some, is itself in need of reform.

But where does the Arab intellectual stand in all this?

Aljazeera.net examines the viewpoint of several prominent Arab thinkers who champion an array of views and interpretations, each with a unique position that makes this subject all the more thought-provoking.

These questions, and more, are considered: Are Arab governments willing to espouse political reforms from the inside, provided that the majority rejects change imposed from the outside? Is the man on the street capable of being an effective player in the reform process? Is the US genuine in wanting to democratize the Middle East? And are there viable home-grown alternatives to the US initiative?

In Pursuit of Arab Reform is an attempt to answer these questions. At the least, it provides a platform to those who believe they have an answer.

It is true that this network has a penchant for conspiracy theories that mostly make the West, particularly the US look bad, but what makes us think that the Arab street thinks any better of us? Is it not better to know where they stand and where public opinion in the region stands, to better address the image problems we have in the Arab world? After all, after decades of supporting the dictatorships of the Middle East in our quest for stability, how can we convince Arab leaders and layman that things have changed, and that now we want them to have democracy? In a part of the world, were American promises have often gone unfulfilled (think of Afghanistan and the Kurdish/Shia uprisings in Iraq, prior to September 11, 2001), how can we convince them that this time we are in it for the long haul? If we cannot face these questions from an Arab news network, how can we convince the average Arab on the street? For example, how can we ignore this question? More importantly, how do we answer it?

The US wants Syria out of Lebanon before Lebanese elections, and stresses that there is no point in holding national elections with foreign troops still in the country.

Mustafa Bakri, editor of Al-Osbou weekly magazine, says he wants to know why the same did not apply for Iraq.

"Why were there 140,000 US soldiers in addition to thousands of other foreign troops in Iraq when the elections were held?" he asked in an interview with Aljazeera.net.

We know the answer to that question; at least as Americans have interpreted it, but can we make the Arab world understand this seeming contradiction? Since Al-Jazeera is asking, does it not seem the best venue to address this question? Since it asks, I attempt to answer.

The reason we did not believe that elections could be held in Lebanon while Syrian troops and intelligence officers remained in Lebanon was due to the following; Syrian troops and intelligence personnel have been there since the Lebanese civil war, and although many Lebanese have asked them to leave, there they have remained. It has been over two decades since Syria first went into Lebanon and only recently left due to international and internal Lebanese pressure following the murder of Rafik Hariri. Even now, it is believed that Syrian intelligence officers are still in Lebanon and the recent killing of an opposition reporter seems to confirm these suspicions. Additionally, Syria occupied Lebanon with all the connotations the term implies and apart from restoring order did nothing to aid the Lebanese achieve self-determination. The U.S. on the other hand, would like nothing else than to leave Iraq, with a stable government that can hold the state together and make it prosperous. We do not seek to remain in Iraq for decades on, and are only there because a stubborn Sunni insurgency and its foreign allies refuse to accept the newly democratically elected government of Prime Minister Al-Jafaari. The one thing Sunni insurgents do not seem to understand or perhaps because they do, is that the more resistance and violence they inflict on the U.S. and the Iraqi government, the more determined we will become in ensuring that that government survives. It is a classic insurgency tactic to attack and harass the government or governing authority to elicit a response, and hence prove to its population that it is as brutal as the insurgents say it is. In Iraq, the objective seems to be not only this, but also to demonstrate that the country remains under occupation, by getting U.S. forces to respond to every attack with ever more restrictions on the lives of regular Iraqis, night raids, and the like. This however is a subject for a different blog. As far as this post, I will just point out that we are not protecting the government under Shia’s came to power following the election, but rather the democratic process that allowed them and everyone else’s voice to be heard. Indeed, even Sunnis have come to realize that it was a mistake to boycott the elections and are now talking with the government to regain some of the influence they have lost as a result of their miscalculation.

Despite what Arabs might believe, we do not have intelligence agents in Iraq to maintain our control over the Iraqi people, but rather to secure their new found freedoms, albeit curtailed because of the insurgency underway (both local and al Qaeda’s). While it has not been all we had expected, it is much better than the rule of Saddam Hussein, who slaughtered millions of his own people, while the rest of the Arab world cheered his “achievements.” Otherwise, Iraqis would not have braved insurgent bombings to elect their own leaders! Although, even Iraqis believe that the U.S. is occupying their country, with the exception of the Sunnis’ most seem to think that electing their own leaders is the fastest way to self-governance.

That said, Al-Jazeera provides an outlet for differing viewpoints, however slanted we in the west perceive it to be. This is why it is seen as a threat to Arab regimes, so much so that it has been banned from many countries in the region. So to recap, even if we find Al-Jazeera distasteful, and there are many reasons for this, we ignore it at our peril. We need to address it and its many conspiracies head on. We can also build, as we have already tried, a viable alternative to it that is not seen as a tool of the U.S. government. Whatever way we choose, we must do it fast, because the longer we take, the more time we give Bin Laden’s ideological prism a monopoly over the way Arabs perceive the outside world. Unless we already have an alternative, which we do not despite government claims to the contrary, Al-Jazeera remains the only alternative.

Besides, since it is already considered anti-Western in outlook, any time we can get positive reports from them, they are likely to have greater impact.

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Questions raised, for both sides...

A few days ago I came across this article in the Arab News written by Reem Al-Faisal. In it he argues that Americans are asking the wrong question when they ask “Why do Muslims hate Americans?” He claims that initially he answered that question by stating that Muslims did not hate Americans, that while they disagreed with U.S. policies and disliked recent American actions in the Muslims world, they did not hate the American people. He then goes on to argue that at the present time, the truth is that Muslims do hate Americans because Americans reelected the Bush administration, and in doing so approved of the way it has treated the Muslims world, and “its lies and abuse of power.”

Al-Faisal provides a comprehensive list of the U.S.’s dirty laundry beginning with Bush’s false assertion that there were WMD’s in Iraq, Abu Ghraib and ending with the use of America’s massive destructive power on defenseless Iraqi civilians. Once finished with this comprehensive list, he then states that his American friends are right, Muslims do hate America, but that they fail to ask themselves why. According to al-Faisal the U.S. and its people have convinced the Muslim world that they should feel pure hate for the U.S. because the U.S. has shown, during the past half century “an absence of respect for Muslims life, culture or religion, contempt and disregard for [their] rights and finally murder and torture from Afghanistan to Iraq.”

According to al-Faisal we Americans have allowed Israel to have its way with the Palestinians, denying them even the right to live, through our many vetoes on the Security Council quashing motions condemning Israeli actions, by preventing weaponry from reaching Palestinians so that they could defend themselves against a superior Israeli military. Additionally, he claims that the U.S. has attacked Muslims lands and people, destroyed them, embargoed, imprisoned and dealt with them as though they were savage animals. Then, as if to add insult to injury, he says we have the nerve to ask why Muslims hate Americans. He uses this as a set-up to ask Americans why they hate Muslims, he asks us to tell him what Muslims have done to earn America’s enmity and hatred. He asks what Muslims have done to have our army rampage through their land, killing and maiming only to state that it is all worth it, in the name of liberty and democracy.

In true form, he asks if it was worth the million and a half Iraqis who died as a result of the embargo, or the thousands of Afghans that perished as a result of our “smart” bombs, and again if it was worth the lives of the Iraqis who have died and continue to die today as a result of our occupation. He asks if we bothered to ask their opinion before embarking on our quest to change the destinies of these two nations. Al-Faisal also states that we take aim at their religion by belittling their beliefs and abusing their holy book, torturing them and degrading them, ignoring our own religious precepts, which he states is as noble as their own. He states that these methods, we are using, point to a deep sickness in our society (echoing the ever venerable father of mother Islamic fundamentalism, Sayyid Qutb) which will take decades to understand, not only its causes but also its destructive results. He ends in typical fashion asking that we someday answer, why, why do Americans hate Muslims so much?

I was just going to place a link to the full article, but I found it so unbearable and out of touch with reality that I had to paraphrase it to give everyone the full effect.

I guess I should begin by thanking Mr. al-Faisal for engaging us in a debate rather than picking up a Kalashnikov or better yet a martyrdom suit to make his complaints known to us by committing a suicide operation in a crowded mall. I guess I am being unfair, but it is hard to resist stereotyping him, when he shows us so little effort to avoid stereotyping us.

It seems that Mr. Faisal makes much of our reelecting Mr. Bush for another term, so much in fact that this makes us guilty of everything that has happened in the Muslim world under this administration. Simple enough, but lets review.

The first charge I guess we should start with is the invasion of Afghanistan. On September 11, 2001, a sunny Tuesday morning that seemed as all others, people working in their offices, or going to work. Life seemed normal, when at 8:46 am American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, beginning a series of suicide operations that at the end of the day would kill 2,819 innocent civilians.

These attacks precipitated the U.S. into a war it did not seek, but would surely finish. To avoid having to go into Afghanistan, we first requested that the Taliban government give up Osama Bin Laden and members of his organization, whom we knew had perpetrated these attacks. We gave the Taliban an ultimatum for handing him to us, and they refused. The reasons given, he was a guest of the regime, an Afghan hero, and innocent, despite his own remarks to the contrary. Only when it became clear that the Taliban would not hand over Bin Laden and members of his organization did the U.S. begin its campaign to remove them from power and capture Osama bin Laden. So when al-Faisal blames the U.S. for any Afghan dead, he should review the evidence to see that we wanted to avoid a war in Afghanistan, but the refusal by Taliban to hand over Bin Laden made its avoidance impossible. As such, if any Afghans died as a result of the war, it is Bin Laden and the Taliban who are to blame, not the U.S., we gave them enough time to turn Bin Laden over and they refused. Why doesn’t al-Faisal question why Mullah Omar and the Taliban hate the Afghan people so much that they chose to protect a mass murderer rather than prevent the American invasion?

Now we turn to Iraq. There were many reasons for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, there were those given by the administration, which are, his failure to comply with U.N. resolutions that he prove that he no longer had any WMDs, and allow inspectors to go into Iraq to verify his disarmament; these were requirements of the ceasefire that ended the Gulf War. In addition, Hussein’s failure to fulfill his end of the deal caused the U.N. to impose sanctions on his regime, which we eventually found failed to weaken him and only hurt the Iraqi people. That however, was an unintentional outcome of trying to punish Hussein, because we made the mistaken assumption that pressure on him to fulfill his end of the ceasefire agreement would build from inside his country as the quality of life deteriorated. What we did not count on, was Hussein’s lack of humanity in continuing to prevent weapon’s inspectors from verifying his disarmament, and his unwillingness to comply with the terms of the ceasefire, allowing his people to suffer and die for his obstinacy. Al-Faisal is right, many people died in Iraq as a result of the sanctions, a million and a half, but he is wrong in attributing blame to the U.S., the blame is Hussein’s. He is the one who flaunted international law by attacking Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia and other neighbors causing us to go to war against him. He is the one who failed to comply with the terms of the ceasefire that ended the Persian Gulf War. He is also the one who devised the Oil for food scheme to enrich himself while his people suffered, and he is the one who encouraged and financed martyrdom operations in the Palestinian territories for his own propaganda war against the U.S. rather than finance schools and reconstruction to improve the lives of Palestinians. He is further responsible for the death of his own people, for the death of Kurds and Shia, for the death Sunnis and all who suffered under the sanctions regime. Al-Faisal asks many questions, but he fails to ask the most elemental one of all: If Hussein did not have WMDs, then why did he kick out the inspectors? Why did he try to hide a non-existing weapon’s program? Why did he refuse to comply with U.N. resolutions calling for him to prove that he had disarmed? Why prolong the suffering of his own people if he had no WMD’s? Why refuse to comply even when it was clear the U.S. would remove him from power and start a war, if he failed to comply or go into exile? These are questions that need an answer and maybe his trial will provide enough tidbits to piece them together. As such, Hussein was the one causing all the death and destruction in Iraq, and while the U.S. and the world had a hand in enforcing the sanctions, ultimately the responsibility lays with him and so does the war to remove him from power. The question al-Faisal must ask now is; Why did other Muslims, particularly Arabs, hate Iraqis so much that they refused to ratchet up pressure on Hussein to either disarm or comply with the terms of the ceasefire? Why do some Muslims hate Iraqis so much that they finance and rejoice every time a jihadist blows himself in a market killing scores of innocent Iraqi civilians? By the Iraqi government’s count (12,000 or an average of 20 a day), more than those killed during the war to remove Hussein from power. Al-Faisal fails to ask why Muslims hate Iraqis so much, that some finance the insurgency that only prolongs the American occupation of Iraq?

While I disagreed with the way Bush went about in getting support for this war, and even in the timing of it, there is no doubt in my mind that there was no alternative other than the removal of Hussein from power to end the suffering of the Iraqi people. I also blame the Bush administration for failing to adequately plan for this war, and for ignoring General Shinseki’s advice that keeping the peace in Iraq would take anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 soldiers. To recap, although the U.S. shares some blame, the largest part of that blame lies with Hussein and on those in the Arab world who supported him. This is something Iraqis themselves have recognized and it is the reason why they are weary of their Arab neighbors.

It is true that in the aftermath of the Iraq war, our failure to secure the country completely, led to the rise of an insurgency that we are still trying to combat and defeat. As stated above, during the war, most Iraqi agencies reported a death toll of around 10,000 civilians due to the war. In post war Iraq, however, the Iraqi government has estimated that up to 12,000 have died since the end of the war with Hussein, and most have been killed by suicide bombers and IEDs in the name of al-Qaida and Islam. In fact, the Iraqi government estimates that an average of 20 civilians is killed by insurgent actions everyday. Yet I have not heard any sheik or mullah in the Arab world condemn Abu Muzab az Zarqawi for these deaths, they all blame the U.S. and so does al-Faisal. This regardless of the fact that az Zarqawi as a Muslim is prohibited from killing other Muslims, or anyone for that matter, and despite the fact he claims that killing Muslims in the course of Jihad is acceptable to God. No one and certainly not al-Faisal criticized him or those holding these views.

Al-Faisal also asks us if we consulted with the Iraqi or Afghani people before imposing on them our vision of their future. My question to al-Faisal is this, how could we when both people lived under tyrannical regimes that killed and tortured them at will? Does al-Faisal believe that the Iraqi people would