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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)