Arab News Blog

US Vice President Joe Biden praised planned low-level peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians this week as "a moment of real opportunity" — just as a member of the Israeli government seemed to …
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United States Institute of Peace, Next Generation Peacebuilding in Iraq is interesting in terms of this blog, as it will include a webcast from Iraq. [today, 2 pm to 3:30 pm (Eastern)]

Also see Meedan, The US Institute of Peace webcast "Next Generation Peacebuilding in Iraq"

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It will be interesting to learn what
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boingboing.net, Beyond breaking firewalls: how to fight net-censorship "Ethan Zuckerman’s new piece on Worldchanging, "Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention," looks at the technical and social limitations of circumvention of censoring firewalls that we love so much as a tool for helping people in repressive regimes liberate themselves."

And here it is:

Ethan Zuckerman, worldchanging.com,
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Yassin Musharbash, Spiegel Online, Germany Ends Biggest Case Since RAF, 4 Mar 2010 "The planned attacks by the Sauerland cell changed Germany, showing the country was also vulnerable to international terrorism. The case ended Thursday with prison sentences for four would-be terrorists."

CSM, German terror trial convicts four for plotting attacks on US targets, 4 Mar 2010 "The four men convicted
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Saudi novelist Abdo Khal won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction this week for "Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles," about the seductive yet destructive allure of the world of the palace.
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This afternoon at the Elliott School of International Affairs I moderated a really interesting panel on war reporting, co-sponsored by my Institute for Middle East Studies, Sean Aday’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communications, and Jim Lebovic’s Security Policy Forum. The panel featured three major American print war journalists: Michael Gordon (of the New York Times) and Ann Scott Tyson and Rajiv Chandrasekaran (of the Washington Post). What emerged was a fascinating picture of strengths and weaknesses, of what war reporters could and could not accomplish — especially the difficult of getting unfiltered access to local Afghan or Iraqi voices. And the panel brought out some thought-provoking points about how significantly Afghanistan differs from Iraq for the press corps… and not for the better.

There was a fairly sharp, and productive, divergence in the presentations of Gordon, on the one hand, and Tyson and Chandrasekaran on the other, about the ability of the media to cover Iraq, Afghanistan, and other such war zones. Gordon mounted a strong defense of the performance of the media in Iraq, arguing that it was the press which first noticed and drew attention to the chaos following the fall of Saddam and to the improvements following the "surge." He showed a striking slideshow of images from combat, and talked of his many embeds across Iraq as offering direct and systematic access to both the American and Iraqi sides of the conflict. All three journalists pointed to how much could be learned through embeds, from the body language and frank evaluations of the junior officers and soldiers and from the moods on the streets and bases — and all had poignant vignettes demonstrating what a sensitive and determined journalist could do with such access.

At the same time, the Washington Post reporters both offered more guarded evaluations of what the press had been able to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chandrasekaran described a brief "golden age" after the fall of Saddam when journalists could get out into all parts of Iraq fairly freely, but as the violence mounted and journalists were targeted in the struggle access to many parts of Iraq or to many Iraqis became much more difficult. For years, journalists (even those not living in the Green Zone) were forced either to huddle down in offices and rely on stringers, or else go out into the field with the military as embeds. Both routes offered useful perspectives, but neither is perfect.

Tyson and Chandrasekaran were both frank about the limitations of trying to speak to Iraqis or Afghans from within a military embed (hopping out of a military vehicle and surrounded by large men with guns is not always the best way to strike up a conversation — through a translator — with locals). The U.S. military’s decision to shift to a population-centric COIN strategy created more and better opportunities for such contacts, intriguingly. Both mentioned the great value of stringers, Iraqis who could get out into their communities, and who help constitute an effective overall team. Such use of stringers is essential but raises its own problems, of course – including, not least, their own safety. I pointed out my dismay at the number of books about
Iraq written by even very good journalists which fail to quote or take
heed of Iraqis themselves. Anthony Shadid was brought up several times as an exception, but what makes Shadid exceptional is
that he is, in fact, exceptional in this regard both in terms of his
Arabic language and his access (ditto Nir Rosen and a few others).

Both also acknowledged the reality of the Defense Department’s control of access to embeds and of crucial information (a point Gordon disputed). Tyson mentioned at least one instance where she was not allowed to travel to a location in Iraq because it would have been a "bad news story", and the frustration of trying to get accurate and useful data from the military. Meanwhile, as I pointed out, the Pentagon’s own media strategy must be taken into account — the marketing of "good news" stories, the selection of embeds, the provision of the "right" shaykhs or former insurgents with a message to send, and so on.

Chandrasekaran — just back from covering the Marja campaign
– noted some significant differences between Iraq and Afghanistan for
war reporters. In Iraq, he argued, Baghdad was a central hub where a lot of the meaningful politics happened, while in
Afghanistan Kabul is just a bubble and tells you virtually nothing about what’s
going on elsewhere. The infrastructure of stringers is far less
developed in Afghanistan, curtailing that stream of vital information
for reporters trying to make sense of the full range of voices and
viewpoints. Tyson also pointed out differences in treatment of reporters by the British and other commands compared to the U.S. command. Both expressed concerns about journalists bringing their Iraq experiences and lessons learned to an Afghan context where they may not apply.

As usually happens when journalists come together, talk turned to the financial crisis of the press today and the resource constraints which this imposes. Both the Times and the Post have continued to devote significant resources to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even increasing the latter. But there’s a lot fewer other papers able to do so, and to this point no clearly viable new media business model to fill the gap. Tyson pointed out how the Iraq focus had sucked attention away from Afghanistan for the crucial years of 2005-2008, a gap which the media was only now beginning to fill — tellingly, following rather than leading the White House’s decision about where to focus.

Finally, Gordon complained of the "lag time" between Washington-based analysts and reporters
on the ground, and hit out against bloggers, pundits, politicians, and
other analysts who weren’t there on the ground. This
struck me as something of a red herring — war reporters and policy
analysts do different things, have access to different streams of
information, have different needs and make different contributions. Embedding with the military offers an unparalleled worms eye view, but it’s only one part of a complex picture, and such experiences are only one of the multiple streams of information and context needed by serious analysis. One point which didn’t come up in the discussion but perhaps should have is the significant difference
in what can be learned between long-term war correspondents, present in the field for months
and months and able to get out into the field and really learn their
turf, and the "war tourists" coming in for a week’s embed or a CODEL-style set
of briefings and trip through a marketplace tour to be able to say they’ve "been in Iraq/Afghanistan." Those differences would make for a fascinating follow-on panel
discussion — which someone else should organize!

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Nazila Fathi, NYT, Iranian Authorities Close 2 Opposition Publications, 1 Mar 2010 "The Iranian authorities on Monday closed two major opposition publications, among the last to remain in circulation as the government has suppressed its opponents’ communications in recent months."Earlier, the authorities had blocked most opposition Web sites inside Iran and slowed the Internet to a crawl to
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Ishtiaq Ahmed, Daily Times, A time to humanise Islam, 2 Mar 2010 "There is a screaming silence from the custodians of Islam — the ulema — on the execution of Jaspal Singh, probably because he was not a Muslim. The Muslim masses have not taken to the streets in protest because they have been conditioned to protest only when something is perceived to be anti-Islam."
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Tim Stevens, ubiwar, Castells and the Global Cybersecurity Heuristic, 25 Feb 2010 "The current storm about cybersecurity in the US has rightly been the subject of some skepticism, not least from yours truly, but it’s worth remembering that there is a world beyond the US."Interesting post, referring to Manuel Castell’s Communication Power (OUP, 2009)
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So you thought that Ahmed Chalabi and Ali al-Lami’s Accountability and Justice (De-Ba’athification) Committee had done all they could to wreck Iraq’s elections and advance their political agendas?  Not even.  Yesterday, in what al-Hayat calls a surprise move, Lami announced that the AJC had named 376 military, police and intelligence officers for de-Ba’athification. The list includes a number of important people in senior positions.

The political calculations here are transparent.  Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has the Constitutional right to except individuals from de-Ba’athification in the national interest, but presumably he won’t out of fear of being portrayed as "soft on the Ba’ath" in the last days of the election campaign.   Lami’s move will likely further inflame the situation, demonstrating the degradation and politicization of Iraqi state institutions and further antagonizing many Sunnis (Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said today that the Iraqi government had "failed" at national reconciliation, though a return of civil war remains unlikely, while Ayad Allawi is on the defensive over his visit to Saudi Arabia to launch his election campaign).   That polarization will strengthen the electoral hand of the more sectarian parties, including of course the one for which Lami is personally a candidate. 

The impact of this new move hasn’t yet really begun to play out, but it will.   If you don’t know, now you know. 

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