Subject: Fighting Talk - Doha - Monocle
From: "Michael Andrews" <[email-masked]>
To: "Chris Heinz" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Devon Archer" <[email-masked]>, "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:20:20 -0400

Chris-

I mentioned the Monocle magazine to you at lunch. In my view it is  
stronger than the Economist and includes a great deal of information  
as well as travel and cultural coverage.

Michael

Al Jazeera has become the must-watch news channel for the unrest in  
the Middle East. But it is also a potent soft power weapon that the  
channel's owner, the Emir of Qatar, is happy to wield. Monocle travels  
to the headquarters in Doha.
issue 43 . volume 05 . May 2011

Writer: Steve Bloomfield
Photographer: Roderick Aichinger

Autocrats taking on Al Jazeera
Protesters across the Middle East have welcomed Al Jazeera's coverage,  
but the region's autocrats have been less impressed:
Muammar Gaddafi, Libya:
"Do not believe the channels belonging to stray dogs."
Bashar al-Assad, Syria:
Al Jazeera broadcasts "lies, lies, lies that they eventually believe  
is the truth".
Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen:
"What the channel is doing only serves the Zionist entity and  
terrorist groups such as Al Qaida."

When the uprisings began in Bahrain, the foreign minister of Qatar  
flew to Manama to meet his counterpart. According to people familiar  
with their conversation, Bahrain's foreign minister had one simple  
request: turn off your cameras. Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab television  
news channel owned and lavishly funded by the Emir of Qatar, had  
provided around-the-clock coverage of the uprising in Tunisia, the  
revolution in Egypt and the rebellion in Libya. It had made little  
attempt to hide its support for the protesters and, as unrest spread  
across the region, those leading demonstrations in other countries –  
including Bahrain – hoped for similar coverage of their own plight.
It did not come. The Bahraini protests were mainly ignored; worse  
still for the protesters, they were often characterised as sectarian  
and the threat of an Iranian influence was highlighted. The Saudi  
forces that crossed the causeway in mid-March to lead the crackdown on  
the protesters were portrayed positively and any criticism of the  
intervention by ordinary Bahrainis was kept to a minimum.
Al Jazeera likes to style itself as the "voice of the voiceless" and  
over the past few months it has played an influential role in the Arab  
uprisings. Its coverage, particularly of the revolution in Egypt, was  
vastly superior to its rivals, both in the Arab world and the West. Al  
Jazeera
English (AJE), which will celebrate its fifth birthday later this  
year, has become a major rival to the BBC and CNN, wielding a budget  
and a serious news agenda that journalists at other stations can only  
dream of. During the Egyptian revolution, AJE replaced the American  
networks as the White House's channel of choice.
The Al Jazeera that the White House and the West see is very different  
from the one beamed into homes, tea shops and souks across the Arab  
world, though. The Arabic version has become the most influential  
voice in the region, one that is capable of forming public opinion  
from Benghazi to Baghdad. One Arab envoy in Doha happily admits that  
he is "ambassador to Al Jazeera first, ambassador to Qatar second".
The power of Al Jazeera is not lost on its owner. While the English  
channel is left free of editorial interference, the Arabic channel is  
less independent.
As the Bahrain incident shows, the Emir is willing to bend the  
editorial line of his television station to fit Qatar's foreign  
policy. As one ambassador in Doha describes it, Al Jazeera is "the  
ultimate diplomatic weapon".
To get to Al Jazeera HQ, you drive out of downtown Doha – a  
bewildering, dizzying collection of half-empty skyscrapers – and head  
towards the helpfully named "TV roundabout". Behind a security gate  
manned by rather officious and incompetent police officers (presidents  
and prime ministers due to be interviewed by Al Jazeera have been  
known to be kept waiting for hours), lie a series of innocuous looking  
single-storey buildings.
On the left-hand side of the road is Al Jazeera English, on the right  
is Al Jazeera Arabic. (Some of those at AJE refer to Arabic as "them  
over the road".) There are some obvious cosmetic differences between  
the two. There are dozens of dishdashas and hijabs in the Arabic  
newsroom, while the majority of the
English newsroom appear to be white westerners. The news agendas of  
the two stations are markedly different too: in the week that the  
Japanese nuclear crisis was the lead story on AJE, it merited a minor  
mention on the Arabic channel after far longer stories on Libya,  
Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia and Bahrain.
The biggest difference though is in attitude. AJE is clear to  
emphasise its journalistic credibility, its adherence to balance and  
its countenance of bias. "We do serious journalism," says Sami Zeidan,  
an experienced anchor who has been with AJE since its launch. "And we  
do it accurately and dispassionately. We don't take sides or suffer  
from prejudices." Over the road, Hassan Shweiki, Arabic's head of  
output, is more blunt. "We are a fighting channel," he says, ramming  
his finger on his desk.
There is normally one television in Shweiki's small office locked on  
his own channel. Now he has another two screens in the office – one  
for Al Arabiya, the other for Libyan state TV – as well as an extra  
computer rapidly filling up with the newswires, his two mobiles and  
his office phone, all of which ring several times during the next 20  
minutes. He pauses to drink a glass of sweet cinnamon tea. "There are  
times," he says grinning, "when you can feel overwhelmed."
War brings out the best in Al Jazeera, Shwieki argues. "If there are  
no wars, no acute problems, we tend to be like everyone else.  
Reporting on the mediocre, the usual. This channel is at its best when  
it is reporting on the unusual, when there are wars, when there are  
uprisings." He lists the countries he has reporting teams in, his  
voice rising with excitement. "In any single day, one of these hot  
potatoes would be enough to roll for a few hours!"
Shweiki's office looks out over the newsroom, a dark and dreary office  
space with a brightly lit studio at one end. The woman in the studio  
expertly juggling the hot potatoes is Eman Ayad, a glamorous  
Palestinian who is widely seen as the face of Al Jazeera in the Arab  
world. Ayad lived for a decade in the US, has American citizenship and  
was on air when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on  
September 11. She presents a nightly discussion show, "Harvest of the  
Day", that is influential across the Arab world.
Like many other staff at Al Jazeera Arabic, Ayad is unambiguous about  
whose side she and her network are on. "We are pleased to be the voice  
of the voiceless in these events," she says. "It's momentous. We are  
lucky to be covering such historic moments in the Arab world that  
people have been awaiting for so many years."
Siding with the people against the power can make life difficult  
though. Over the past 15 years, Al Jazeera has been banned from most  
of the countries it covers. All journalists faced the threat of  
physical attack during the Egyptian revolution, but none were targeted  
as much as those working for Al Jazeera. The Mubarak regime did  
everything it could to silence them: the state satellite provider,  
NileSat, blocked their signal; the Cairo bureau was burned down; most  
of their reporters were arrested; and pro-regime thugs tried to smash  
their way in to the hotel where Al Jazeera staff were staying. "There  
was no security, no security whatsoever," recalls Jamal Elshayyal, a  
27-year-old reporter and producer who was part of the AJE team in Egypt.
Being a fighting channel has consequences. While covering the early  
days of the Libyan rebellion, an Al Jazeera cameraman, Ali Hassan Al  
Jaber, was killed by unknown gunmen. He is not the first Al Jazeera  
journalist to be killed in the field. Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian  
producer, died in 2003 when US missiles hit the Al Jazeera bureau in  
Baghdad. A museum built at the back of the Arabic studios in Doha  
displays the twisted metal remains of recording equipment rescued from  
the bureau. It also records the US bombing of the Kabul bureau in the  
early days of the Afghanistan war, as well as letters and clothes  
belonging to Sami al Haj, a Sudanese cameraman who was held for six  
years in Guantánamo Bay before being released in 2008 without any  
charges brought against him.
The exhibits are a pointed reminder of Al Jazeera's difficult  
relationship with the US. But the museum also highlights some of the  
cultural differences between the Arabic and English channels. It  
refers to Ayoub as a "martyr", a word that makes senior employees at  
the English channel wince. "They take a very different attitude  
towards safety," said one AJE staff member. According to several staff  
at the English-language channel – all of whom wished to remain  
anonymous while criticising their employer – AJE is beginning to take  
a similar cavalier attitude towards safety. It's an allegation which  
Al Anstey, AJE's managing director refutes. "Safety underpins  
everything we do," he says, listing off a series of measures he  
assures senior managers took to protect staff in Egypt.
Anstey is one of the few senior westerners who came over to Doha for  
the launch of Al Jazeera and is still there. Doha can be a hard sell  
for people with families – Adrian Finighan, a former CNN anchor who  
recently joined AJE, freely admits he was a "bit sniffy" about coming  
to Doha – but the attraction of a large budget and a serious news  
agenda still manages to attract reporters, anchors and producers who  
have spent most of their careers with the BBC, ITN or CNN.
Anstey is understandably anxious to dispel suggestions that the Emir  
has any influence on his output. "Never once has anyone told us to do  
a story in one way or another, or elevate a story about Qatar," he  
says. There is internet chatter that a demonstration could take place  
in Doha later that week. "If lots of people turn out, we'll cover that  
story," he says, but then adds: "It's a small country. It's not  
necessarily going to get much coverage."
Protests appear unlikely, though, at least in the short-term. The  
criticisms voiced about the Emir have little in common with those in  
other Arab countries. Instead, it is his alleged closeness to the US  
(whose relationship with the Emir appears unaffected by the Bush  
administration's dim view of Al Jazeera) and his supposed support for  
Israel (Doha hosted an Israeli trade office until 2009). His wife,  
Sheikha Moza, is criticised by some conservatives for the clothes she  
wears and her support for girls' education.
"Look at the progress made in recent years," says Anstey. "Education,  
rights, women – not just the tall buildings." Not democracy though. A  
referendum in 2003 was supposed to introduce elections for two-thirds  
of the 45-member Majlis al-Shura (or Advisory Council), but none have  
taken place yet. The Emir maintains complete control.
The money helps. Qatar is filthy rich. With just 250,000 Qataris,  
Sheikh Hamad is willing and able to financially support the majority  
of the population. "I've never met a poor Qatari," jokes one westerner  
who has lived in the country for more than a decade.
The money comes from oil and gas – Qatar may be tiny but it is sitting  
on one of the world's largest gas fields. Annual growth is a barely  
believable 18 per cent. While most autocrats would simply shovel the  
money into the family coffers and the armed forces – and there is  
certainly an element of that here – Hamad has used his country's  
wealth to boost Qatar's global image and influence. Al Jazeera is just  
one part of the strategy.
"The tradition of Gulf countries has been 'put your head down and get  
on with what you're doing'," says one western diplomat. "Qatar has  
been enthusiastic about playing a development role. And it's got the  
money to back it up."Qatar has become a vital mediator in the region,  
intervening as an honest broker in Darfur, Lebanon and Afghanistan.  
The diplomatic activism even extends to disputes that barely register  
with the rest of the world. Qatar intervened in a recent border  
dispute between the two tiny Horn of Africa states, Eritrea and  
Djibouti, using the Emir's personal relationship with the president of  
Eritrea to mediate.
Qatar's growing international influence is demonstrated by the number  
of new embassy buildings crowding into Doha's diplomatic quarter. The  
Brazilian embassy, a dust-coloured residential house with a pleasantly  
relaxed attitude to security, opened in 2005 and the current  
ambassador, Anuar Nahes, was appointed two years later.
"Our foreign policy aims are very similar," Nahes says, noting the  
role Qatar has played in nuclear negotiations with Iran. "Qatar is  
almost neutral so they have become a reliable broker." Money can only  
do so much though.
The country's small population can also be a hindrance. "Qatar has a  
few seasoned diplomats, but they are aware they need more."
The football link helps Brazil too, particularly since both countries  
will be hosting the World Cup. Qatar's winning campaign for the 2022  
tournament has, as the bid's chief executive Hassan al Thawadi says,  
"brought Qatar to the world stage". But not necessarily in the way he  
would have wanted. The decision by the Fifa executive committee was  
taken against a background of corruption. Ahead of the vote six senior  
Fifa officials were banned for offences including bibery and,  
separately, allegations were made that Qatar's bid had bought votes.
Al Thawadi is looking on the bright side. "The negative criticism  
vindicates why we should host the World Cup," he argues. "People see a  
country with significant natural resources but nothing much else. The  
World Cup will allow the world to see what Qatar is about."
When the UK, the US and France were building their coalition to carry  
out the military operation in Libya, a major diplomatic effort was  
made to get the Arab League on-side. But there was one country the  
West knew it needed to sign up: Qatar. The support of the Emir doesn't  
add much to the military capabilities of the coalition – Qatar's  
Mirage jets have flown few sorties – but, crucially for a western-led  
military attack on an Arab country, it has meant positive coverage on  
Al Jazeera, something which the US and UK could never have dreamt of  
with Iraq.
The Emir gets something in return. As part of the Gulf Cooperation  
Council, it is keen to prevent the uprising in Bahrain spreading  
across the Arabian peninsula. Despite the killing of peaceful  
protestors and the crushing of a nascent democracy movement, the West  
has been almost entirely silent.
When British prime minister David Cameron recently visited Qatar, he  
made a point of speaking to Al Jazeera Arabic. "We have a lot of  
leaders who come to Qatar and want an interview," says Ayad, who  
carried out the interview. "They know the influence of Al Jazeera."  
And so does the Emir. — (M)