the Qatar Files: AL JAZEERAS STRATEGY AND PLANS An occasional series: THE WAR AGAINST POLITICAL ISLAM By: Youssef M. Ibrahim Qatar did not invent Al Jazeera. Exactly the opposite: Al Jazeera that put Qatar, a tiny entity of 250,000 tribal and rather primitive native Qataris of the most extreme Wahabi Islamist persuasions and the highest per capita income in earth thanks to limitless wealth of natural gas and crude oil. By all the standards established since that began to happen in the seventies till today, the combination has proven explosive and far too dangerous. Damage is still ongoing. The Al Jazeera news team was in effect a BBC team of Arab broadcasters trained at the venerable British institution Arabic program who wee hired by Saudi Arabia to launch its own above average radio programming. The whole team fell into Qatars lap as a result of one of those typical , and recurring, Saudi caprices -- like passing up the Security Council Seat, or cutting ones nose off to spite ones face. The Saudis became upset their news team was acting like newsmen and women, shut it down and fired all of them. The Emir of Qatar had the prescience to hire each and everyone of them, move them to Doha and Al Jazeera was launched . The rest is history. The Saudis aim was to create a station belonging to the Saudi royal family which they named Orbit Communications Company. Many of the team were of Palestinian origin and quite a few with strong Muslim Brotherhood leanings, none of which bothered the Saudis. But when they were turned by Qatar against its big sister in Saudi Arabia a real war on the air began producing Al Arabia, the Saudi answer to Al Jazeera which never quite caught up. Eventually the two warring tribes spawned a whole world of Arab TV networks that is raging across the air waves today from Algeria to Egypt to Iran and Lebanon. All these events got their stead in the mid-1990s and continue to grow. At this point, Al Jazeera is basically the Emirate of Qatars equivalent of an Atomic bomb. It is widely hated and fiercely efficient. There are no reliable stats, but the scores of bureaus and hundreds of staffers , cameramen, news teams crisscrossing the world, including Europe and now the USA and programming -- in both Arabic and English-- costs a minimum of a $ 1 billion per year, all paid by the Emirs and ruling family of Qatar. Al Jazeera has no advertizing. The breadth of the enterprise can be grasped if one appreciates It evolved from a tiny 6 hour a day affair to a mammoth 24 hours seven days in two languages ranging the globe. The thinking head was a militant Palestinian Islamist called Wadah Khanfar, today 47. During his tenure Al Jazeera went from a single channel to a media behemoths with Al Jazeera Arabic channel, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Documentary, Al Jazeera Sports, Al Jazeera’s multiple news websites, an Al Jazeera Media Training and Development Center, the Al Jazeera Center for Political Studies, Al Jazeera Mubasher (Live), and Al Jazeera Mobile phone facilities etc. Indeed, Hillary Clinton described it as nothing less than a monster machine, telling ABC news the US was losing the information war as, in her words, : Al Jazeera has been the leader in that [they] are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective,” she said.[5]^ Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: Al Jazeera is ‘Real News’, U.S. Losing ‘Information War’. ABC.: In September 2011 KHANFAR stepped down as the head of Al Jazeera Network. Probably he had become the target of much hatred and open complaining, including threats, by all Arab regimes. But it is unlikely he has walked away from the levers of power in Doha. The country needs him too much to let go. His stepping down was meant to calm the rising storm but evidently has not altered Al Jazeeras aggressiveness, witnessed in its unrestrained support of the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammad Morsi in Egypt and its vicious attacks against the military which overthrew him to this day. regards - ymi
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 23:41:28 +0000
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