The Arab World Tunes In
By TOM BROKAW
ne of the most important changes in the Middle East since the last war against Iraq has been the proliferation of satellite news services. The small satellite dish is now a familiar fixture at apartment buildings, cafes and other public gathering places, distributing news through four Arabic-language channels.
Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, is by far the most powerful, with some 35 million viewers. It still reflects an Arab point of view, but it is far more independent than the old government-controlled broadcasters that dominated the Middle East until a few years ago. In addition, CNN has expanded its own reach. The network estimates it now has viewers in 10 million households in the region.
As a result of this widespread dissemination of information, the fundamental structure of Middle East politics has been altered, if not over-hauled. Today, political pressure develops quickly and independently from the ground up, not just from the top down, a dramatic difference from a decade ago.
I recently spent time in Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan during a period in which the French opposition to war was heating up at the United Nations and huge antiwar demonstrations were being held around the world. I was struck by how swiftly the American position on an Iraqi war deteriorated on the Arab street, among ordinary citizens who had followed the developments on their television sets.
The laws of political physics took effect almost instantly. As public polls reflecting disapproval of American war policies clicked up to 70, 80 and even 90 percent, leaders friendly to the United States responded by lowering their public profiles just as quickly. During that critical week, I saw no one in the region taking to the air waves to defend President Bush's policies.
During the same period, the Turkish prime minister, Abdullah Gul, was bargaining with the Bush administration on the terms of a deal to accept United States troops. When I asked him whether the troops would be allowed in, he said, "Yes." Two days later, after the weekend of global protests, the Turkish price had gone up. Since then, the deal has been further imperiled.
Even in Qatar, where the emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, has made a big bet on his friendship with the United States, the leadership is not immune to the effects of Al Jazeera — which the emir himself started.
At a dinner I attended with senior government advisers, there were a lot of murmurs about the split between the United States and Europe and the attention it was generating at the studios of Al Jazeera just a few miles away. "This is a delicate time," one adviser said.
Communications experts in the Bush administration are aware of the power of Al Jazeera, and that their point of view is underrepresented. They appear to be working harder to get senior officials more face time. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a recent appearance on the network but it was only his second in two years.
In the meantime, the United States military in the region is left to contend with the vacuum. One senior war planner said, bluntly, "We've done a terrible job out here explaining why we're going after Saddam Hussein." The absence of that persuasive explanation is even more conspicuous against the desert-brown and olive-green backdrop of American military machines and uniformed forces pouring into the area. The overwhelming image of America on Persian Gulf television screens these days is a soldier's face framed by a camouflaged helmet.
Service personnel are well aware of the volatile political climate in which they could receive their orders to head for Baghdad. Al Jazeera has made arrangements to accompany troops so that battlefield action and postwar policies will be widely televised in the Middle East.
Americans have no doubt about their military superiority or their preparedness for the hard tasks of desert warfare against a desperate enemy. But waging and then winning the communications war is a different proposition. As a battlefield commander put it, "If we don't get this right, we'll be here another 10 years."
Tom Brokaw is managing editor of NBC Nightly News.
AI
