Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=04/26/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01318

TITLE=ARAB VIEWS ON IRAQI LIBERATION

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

[This is a rebroadcast of show #1-01312 originally broadcast 04-17-03.]

Host: What does the liberation of Iraq mean for Arabs elsewhere? Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: The quick collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein came as a shock to many people in Arab countries. They had been led to believe by Arab newspapers and television that Iraqis would put up a fierce fight to defend Saddam. Instead, crowds of Iraqis welcomed U-S-led coalition forces in Baghdad and other cities, greeting them as liberators. Many Arab viewers saw Iraqis in Baghdad take a sledgehammer to the base of a massive statue of Saddam. They watched as Iraqis enlisted American soldiers to pull down the statue, and when the giant metal Saddam was finally toppled, Arab television audiences saw an Iraqi crowd cheer and surge forward to deface the image of the fallen dictator. What does the outcome of the war in Iraq mean to Arabs? And how will they view the process of reconstruction? I'll ask my guests: Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Saudi Institute; Meyrav Wurmser, director of the Middle East program at the Hudson Institute; and joining us by telephone from London, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, editor of the daily newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Ali Al-Ahmed, was it a shock for the Arab world to see coalition forces greeted as liberators in Baghdad?

Al-Ahmed: It was a big shock for many in the Arab world who believed the newspapers and television stations, especially that Al-Jazeera had really led many Arabs to believe -- Al-Jazeera established its credibility prior to the war in Afghanistan and it gained a lot of credibility. The credibility of Al-Jazeera now has been severely damaged because it's a pro-Saddam t-v station, anti-American station that had made a lot of nonsense, it had made [portrayed] the campaign of America a failure just hours before the statue of Saddam fell.

Host: Mey Wurmser, was the shock just a matter of having gotten misinformation from one source or another ahead of time or was there something deeper going on as well?

Wurmser: No. I think there was something a lot deeper going on. You know, for many in the Arab world the prevailing ideology in the last forty or fifty years was the ideology of Arab nationalism. The idea that there is something that unites all Arabs, that only when they are united, the Arabs will come back to a position of power. What had happened here -- this is exactly, by the way, why you see volunteers from other places in the Arab world coming to the defense of Saddam. What has happened is that it became absolutely clear that Arab nationalism, or really the sense of Arab identity, became tied in to the concept of tyranny. Who were these volunteers coming to defend? They were coming to defend a dictator in the name of an Arab nationalism that in fact had failed them time after time, that had brought them tyranny and oppression and poverty and defeat.

Host: Well, I'd like to bring into the conversation Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, who's in London. Are you there by phone?

Al-Rashed: Yes, I'm here.

Host: Well, along these lines, you wrote in your newspaper, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that "It is not Saddam Hussein who fell yesterday. What fell is more significant than Saddam. What collapsed are the big lies that accompanied him, praised him and glorified him. Before the eyes of the whole world, the Iraqis decided in favor of truth, by themselves, in their own capital of Baghdad." What are the lies that you're referring to there?

Al-Rashed: One can imagine the war went on for twenty days. Until the twenty-first day, you wake up in the morning, you see a newspaper with a headline saying: "You know, the invaders will be massacred on the borders of Baghdad." You'll have television reports about how the Iraqis are absolutely behind their president and defending. And we're talking about only a few hours, or maybe even less than hours and here people see the American forces, tanks moving into the middle of Baghdad, downtown, with a lot of Iraqis coming out and greeting them. I think that was absolutely a shock because after, lets say two months, three months, when the diplomatic campaign started and the Arab press was quite, you know, on a daily basis, with a heavy dose talking about the Iraqi people backing the Iraqi leader and [saying] "they're going to win" too. So, two lies in one sentence, and I think that's where the shock came. The Iraqis lost, the Iraqi forces and leader. Second, the Iraqi people never really supported their government.

Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, there was a lot of talk in Arab countries in the lead up to the war and once the war had started, of a certain solidarity of the Iraqi people, many newspaper quotes of people saying, you know, "We're all Iraqis now," as the war was going on. And then when the Iraqis were expressing their joy and were celebrating, you had, at least according to a lot of newspaper accounts, people feeling dismayed and sad in other Arab countries. What happened to that notion of solidarity with Iraqi people?

Al-Ahmed: I think we have to understand first that the media in the Arab world is controlled by the government, by the regimes. Here we have autocratic regimes who control Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, M-B-C [t-v] [Middle East Broadcasting Center], even Al-Sarq Al-Awsat. And they tell them what to say and what to report on. So, it is not really the masses who are expressing. It's the regimes who are sending these messages for their own purposes. [Where are] those people who claim to be in love with the Iraqi people now, when the Iraqi people want medical [supplies]. There hasn't been a single country except Kuwait who sent in medical [supplies] and food and relief for the Iraqi people. There was a child who is twelve years old with amputated arms who needs help. Nobody [except Kuwait] has offered him relief or to fly him from Iraq for treatment. There are people who fly in palm trees to China or to Hong Kong but the Iraqi child who is 12 years old, who needs medical attention, there hasn't been a single Arab billionaire or a government that extended its arm to help him. It's really hypocrisy on the part of many Arabs that when Iraqis now need food and electricity, nobody came to help them because they are now starting accusation of being an agent for the Americans, the Jews and all of these things surfacing in the Arab media because we had what I call "Saddam lobby" in the Arab media. So many newspapers in London, in Jordon, in Egypt, especially in Egypt, these people were paid and sustained by a lot of money paid by Saddam. You will see many Arab newspapers, especially in Egypt, that will go belly up because the finances that come from Saddam will stop. Al-Quds Al-Arabi probably is one of them, in London, who will probably stop working.

Wurmser: Yes.

Host: Mey Wurmser, is there going to be a desire not to see Iraq succeed in some parts of the Arab world?

Wurmser: I am certain. You can bet that Syria is not going to want to see the Iraqi regime change actually work out. They're a Baathist country. They're the second and in fact, last bastion of Baathism in the world right now. You can bet that the last thing these guys want to see is a democratic neighbor next door.

Host: Let me bring in also Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed again. Let me read to you Mr. Rashed a quote from Shafeeq Ghabra in the Beirut, Lebanon newspaper The Daily Star, where he said that "The nationalism that misled Saddam and our peoples has also collapsed as well as a pattern of Arabism many of us exploited in favor of autocracy, oppression, dictatorship and the confiscation of other people's rights." Is he correct that something significant has changed in terms of the ideology dominant in the Arab world?

Al-Rashed: Not really. I haven't seen much change. I mean, the events happened only a few days ago. I wouldn't jump to conclusions and say things changed, really, in the region. You know, nationalism, Islamic radicalism is quite practiced here. It's been here for a long time. I think it's, I mean, I would think of it as exaggeration from my side if I will claim "things will change quickly." It will take a long time. But I think one shot like that, it will definitely open the eyes of many. I'm not going to say all of them because the lies are still going. Let me give you two examples I heard the past two days. One, I think it was, I think Al-Arabiya, the journalists said the American forces stole all the wealth of the museum, the national museum, the Iraqi museum. And of course we haven't seen any photos or footage to support this claim. Another one which was Al-Jazeera, quoted or had someone talk to him from the Iraqi opposition who was against the whole military action. And he said he got news the Americans used a nuclear bomb. That's why the Iraqis lost. And this wasn't an opinion. It was news reporting from somebody who had no official responsibility, you know, he has no credibility in, let's call it the market. And I think this kind of news obviously is still going on and it will continue in my opinion. And I think it will take a long time to see changes in the minds of the people who are working in the media.

Host: Well, Ali Al-Ahmed, let me ask you about that. Is one set of reports having been discredited by facts on the ground, is that going to be explained away now by a new set of phony stories about what's going on or has gone on in Iraq?

Al-Ahmed: You know, many of these media are ideological. They have an interest. They are not private media and if they are they are private but private with government monies, like Al-Arabiya, for example. It's private in name only. They have an interest. They want to achieve something. That's why they create and they manufacture news and they use loaded words or double-talk to achieve their desire. They still talk about, "Oh, it's so fragile, the situation." I just was watching in the green room an Al-Jazeera report on how the people in Karbala are so against the Americans it's at boiling point. It's going to explode. Where, the situation from my sources in Karbala is that it's very calm. You know, there is discussion. People are coming up and participating in their government. They relay the slogans that so many Arab -- for example there is a famous guy, Mostafa Bakry, who is an Egyptian. And he started to say we won't allow this and that. But now, all of his predictions that Americans would be defeated and Iraqis would stand have gone. But he still continues the same rhetoric but does not apologize or correct himself for the rhetoric that he has been using in the past. They are using people's emotions and preying on people's emotions and speaking for themselves or serving the regimes who hired them to do so.

Host: Well, Mey Wurmser, then has anything changed?

Wurmser: Well, a lot has changed. The media can only go so far in the Arab world. Reality has changed. And so, even if the media will continue its one-sided reporting -- and Ali is absolutely right in everything he said about the kind of reporting you get in the Arab media -- even if it continued, Iraq got liberated. And democracy will be established in Iraq. And one way or the other Arabs will face a changed political reality. And so, what's going to happen, I think, more likely than not in the next few years, is that the Arab media will become irrelevant largely. Even those stations that we in the West have deemed this democracy on the air, like Al-Jazeera, which we initially liked because it was not state-controlled or state-controlled to the same extent, will start losing credibility. People will simply realize that there is a reality that they are not hearing or seeing.

Host: Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, is there a difference in how that change is perceived by people in the region and how it's perceived by governments in the region?

Rashed: Well, there is a thin line, really, now-a-days because Al-Jazeera, it is owned one hundred percent by the Qatari government. But, if you ask my opinion, I think Al-Jazeera initially was a good television station when it started. And I think the Qatari government is a friendly one, does not have an agenda to promote, really. Radicalism definitely not. The problem is, the Qatari government, which owns the station, does not run the station. They just basically opened a big, nice, wonderful station in Doha and invited media people to come. So there are radicals who actually moved in. And they have their own agendas or their beliefs, or let's say, whatever, their favoritism. And I think this is quite a common case in the media, when you have a lot of people just owning t-v stations or newspapers and they really have no reason more than just basically having a tool, a media tool, but it's being run by somebody else who has a different whim. And I think the main issue it will take a long time. You see the development of technology and the media business did not make things easier. It made it actually worse because what happened, things that were said behind closed doors or in the street by those less knowledgeable, it's become now what is being listened to. And I think this is a normal case. It will take time before people develop their understanding of the events of the region. It could be a positive tool for a change in the future. But I don't see it right now. Especially in one field that I think is not just the Arab nationalism, which is the quite minimum in the region. I think the biggest problem we are facing is religious radicalism. And that's more dangerous. That's what we saw on the eleventh of September event. That's what could happen in Iraq in the future because of the vacuum we see today. The media plays the major role in promoting this radicalism for sure.

Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, how are the events in the liberation of Iraq being perceived in the world of Islamic radicals?

Al-Ahmed: I think, when you say Islamic radicals, you talk about so many people, but there are people who it would interest. For example, the Arab nationalists, it's a dismay for them. It's a loss for them across the Arab world. In the Arab world for what I call the Sunni fascist system, those Sunnis who are really glued by Arab nationalism, they are defeated because they wanted to keep a Sunni dominated Iraq where the majority of the population is deprived and oppressed and killed, meaning the Kurds who are not Arabs and the Shia who are not Sunnis. And we have Islamists who have the same agenda. I have been reading and for example, so many clerics in Saudi Arabia, one day when they issued a statement about Iraq they said: "Oh the Sunnis of Iraq. The Sunnis of Iraq." The Sunnis of Iraq, meaning the Sunni Arabs are a minority, a small minority in Iraq. They totally disregard the whole country, eighty-five percent, the Kurds and the Shia.

Al-Rashed: May I jump in?

Al-Ahmed: For the favor of one small [group]. And this has been the policy of the Arab countries, unfortunately since 1958.

Host: Let's bring in Abdul Al-Rashed, do you want to respond to that?

Al-Rashed: I think if you open your doors talking about sectarians and religious differences in the media, I mean goodness, you need hours to listen to this stuff. [crosstalk] I think radicalism, Sunnism, Shiism, we have absolutely twenty years since Khomenei took over, who is Shiite to bin Laden's Sunni. They all look alike. They are absolutely radicals and absolutely they are the worst, not just to the region but to the whole world as well.

Al-Ahmed: If you follow Al-Jazeera, you see that tendency because Al-Jazeera has a lot of Salafi who have influence. They have been rehearsing -- like you saw, Meyrav, saying Ahmed Chalabi, a Shia. You know they criticize Chalabi as a Shia, but they don't criticize others who are Sunnis who are in the same boat because they don't want to see a change of history in Iraq. Really, it's a phenomena that has to be addressed. And even the Arab media, they have been pushing on this sectarianism. I would love to see no sectarian question being brought up, but it has been the fact, Saddam himself built his regime on that sectarianism. Today I was reading from Al-Sharq Al-Awsat itself that Saddam asked Arab volunteers to create problems between Shia and Sunni for that purpose.

Host: Let me move, Mey Wurmser, to talk a little bit, not about the media per se, but governments and that's being perceived in the Arab world. The information minister of Jordan came out and said that the world had changed. There was something significantly different. Is it being perceived differently by different countries in the region or the governments of different countries in the region?

Wurmser: Yes, certainly. Look, the significance of what has happened in Iraq is, I think, that it did not just or only defeat Arab nationalism. It was also a defeat for radical Islam because, you know, radical Muslims everywhere could not come in or save or help or do anything of substance to help Saddam Hussein --

Al-Ahmed: Where's bin Laden?

Wurmser: -- a fellow, okay, secular, but never-the-less Muslim regime. In fact, September eleventh, instead of strengthening Islam, they brought America into the heart of Islam, only they brought America to defeat the Muslim regime. I think that you see differences in the way that people respond to the war, between those regimes that, to begin with, had a more pro-Western orientation and those regimes who know that they will suffer; those regimes who were willing to undertake a degree of reform and openness in their society like the Jordanians and regimes like Saudi Arabia, who all of a sudden, as I told you before, you put democracy in the middle of their world and people everywhere and all around will say: "Why are they free and we're not."

Host: Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, we only have a little less than a minute left. Maybe you can address for me how is the perception of the liberation of Iraq going to be affected by the way the reconstruction of Iraq proceeds?

Al-Rashed: I think time will tell, I mean, we've already seen real progress on the ground and it's being reported at the same time. It will have only two directions to go to. Either it will be extremely positive and Iraq will be a stable, prosperous, democratic state and that definitely will change the whole region; or Iraq will be divided with a lot of problems inside and it will just make the whole region worse and worse.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests: Ali Al-Ahmed of the Saudi Insitute; Mey Wurmser of the Hudson Institute; and joining us by telephone from London, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed of the newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can e-mail them to Ontheline@ibb.gov

For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.