In Syria, al Jazeera’s Credibility Implodes
The guy who runs al Jazeera’s Syrian coverage is the brother of a SNC bigwig
By PETER LEE
March 05, 2012 “Counterpunch” — Over the last couple days the Syrian
army has moved into the Baba Amr district of Homs.
The action is Syria’s Tiananmen.
The Western shorthand for Tiananmen is `authoritarian regime reveals
its true monstrous face to the world and its own citizens by trampling
on helpless pro-democracy demonstrators.’
Maybe so, but in the Chinese official political lexicon Tianenmen was
`a demonstration of state power against a dissident group meant to
illustrate the absolute authority of the state and the utter
marginalization of the protesters.’
On February 25, I wrote this about the Homs endgame in Asia Times:
`Then there is Homs or, more accurately, the Baba Amro district of
Homs, which has turned into a symbol of resistance, armed and
otherwise, to Assad’s rule.
`Assad’s Western and domestic opponents have put the onus on Russia
and China for enabling the Homs assault by their veto of the UN
Security Council resolution, a toothless text that would have called
for Assad to step down.
`However, the significance of the veto was not that it allowed Assad
to give free rein to his insatiable blood lust for slaughtering his
own citizens, as the West would have it.
`The true significance of the veto was the message that Russia and
China had endorsed Assad as a viable political actor, primarily within
Syria, and his domestic opponents, including those holding out in Baba
Amro, should think twice before basing their political strategy on the
idea that he would be out of the picture shortly thanks to foreign
pressure.
`It is difficult to determine exactly what the government’s objectives
are for Baba Amro. Hopefully, they are not simply wholesale massacre
through indiscriminate shelling.
`Recent reports indicate that the government, after a prolonged and
brutal softening-up, has decided to encircle the district, send in the
tanks, and demonstrate to the fragmented opposition that `resistance
is futile’, at least the armed resistance that seems to depend on the
expectation of some combination of foreign support and intervention to
stymie Assad and advance its interest.
`Whatever the plan is, the Chinese government is probably wishing that
the Assad regime would get on with it and remove the humanitarian
relief of Homs from the `Friends of Syria’ diplomatic agenda.
…
`The message that Syria and China hope the domestic opposition will
extract from Homs in the next few weeks is that, in the absence of
meaningful foreign support, armed resistance has reached a dead end;
it is time for moderates to abandon hope in the local militia or the
gunmen of the FSA and turn to a political settlement.
`To Syria’s foreign detractors, the message will be that the genie of
armed resistance has been stuffed back into the bottle thanks to `Hama
Lite’; and the nations that live in Syria’s neighborhood might
reconsider their implacable opposition to Assad’s continued survival.’
I think this interpretation of events is pretty spot on.
And I wish somebody would address the issue of who were the 4000 who
stayed to the end in Baba Amr, `a working class district of 100,000′:
Was it the core of the resistance? People who couldn’t or wouldn’t
leave when the Syrian army tightened the noose? Any second thoughts
on that botched exfiltration of that Sunday Times reporter that got
him out a couple days before the Syrian army moved in (and moved the
journalists out) but apparently got 13 people killed?
Was Homs a) a carnival of slaughter unleashed by a madman against his
own citizens? b) a bloody exercise in Fallujah-style collective
punishment meant to terrify Syria’s Sunni majority into submission? c)
a brutal and effective coordinated
military/security/political/diplomatic campaign meant to isolate and
marginalize the rebels and convince Syrians that the insurrection has
no hope of foreign succor or domestic success?
Inquiring minds want to know.
It looks like they won’t find out from al Jazeera.
The main event, or what should be the main event, for Western
observers of Syria is the messy implosion of Al Jazeera’s credibility.
Somebody disgruntled with the diktat of channel management that the
Syrian revolution (at least the SNC version of it) `must be televised’
leaked some raw footage of Homs coverage and interviews staged for
maximum anti-regime effect.
As’ad AbuKhalil, proprietor of the Angry Arab newsblog, hails from the
atheist/Marxist/feminist quadrant and is no friend of the Bashar
regime. He had this to say about recent trends in programming on
Syrian state TV:
`It seems that Syrian regime had agents among the rebels; or it seems
that the Syrian regime obtained a trove of video footage from Baba
Amru. They have been airing them non-stop. They are quite damning.
They show the correspondent or witness (for CNN or from Aljazeera)
before he is on the air: and the demeanor is drastically different
from the demeanor on the air and they even show contrived sounds of
explosions timed for broadcast time…
`PS This is really scandalous. It shows the footage prior to Aljazeera
reports: they show fake bandages applied on a child and then a person
is ordered to carry a camera in his hand to make it look like a mobile
footage. It shows a child being fed what to say on Aljazeera.’
Later in the day:
`This is rather explosive. You know how low Aljazeera has sunk when
Syrian regime TV stations have a field day with the shoddy journalism
and fabrication procedures of Aljazeera. It seems that people inside
Aljazeera have leaked raw footage and pre-air reports to someone in
Syrian regime TV. I am not surprised of the leak at all: I am in
contact from people inside Aljazeera who are disgusted by the
propaganda work of the network in the last few months. … I know how
those things work and they know that I know. The footage that are
being shown show staging of events of calling a civilian an `officer’
in the Syrian army, of faking injuries and feeding statements to
people before airtime, etc. Aljazeera seems to be writing its own
professional obituary. I don’t know how it can really resurrect
itself again. It is mortally wounded. I know that there are people in
the network who are pained about what is happening but royal orders
are royal orders in the network and no one dare to disobey. I am told
that orders came down to the effect that no half-position would be
tolerated and that categorical adoption of the Qatari foreign policy
on Syria is a job requirement.’
Actually, information about Al Jazeera’s Syria biases had already
reached the English language media on February 24 (and Syria watchers
when Josh Landis posted it on his Syria Comment blog), when an article
in al Akhbar reported on some e-mails hacked off al Jazeera’s servers
by the Syrian regime’s `electronic army’:
`The major find to be made public was an email exchange between
anchorwoman Rula Ibrahim and Beirut-based reporter Ali Hashem. The
emails seemed to indicate widespread disaffection within the channel,
especially over its coverage of the crisis in Syria.
…
`Ibrahim … protested that she had `been utterly humiliated. They wiped
the floor with me because I embarrassed Zuheir Salem, spokesperson for
Syria’s Muslim Brothers. As a result, I was prevented from doing any
Syrian interviews, and threatened with [a] transfer to the night shift
on the pretext that I was making the channel imbalanced.’
`Ibrahim also spoke of how Syrian activists invited onto Al Jazeera
use terms of sectarian incitement on air, `which Syrians understand
very well.’
…
`They also confirmed an allegation Ibrahim had reportedly made in one
of her emails: That Ahmad Ibrahim, who is in charge of the channel’s
Syria coverage, is the brother of Anas al-Abdeh, a leading member of
the opposition Syrian National Council. He allegedly stopped using his
family name to avoid drawing attention to the connection.’
Yes, emphasis added. The guy who runs al Jazeera’s Syrian coverage is
the brother of a SNC bigwig.
The requisite ironic coda (and what should be the obituary for al
Jazeera as a serious news outfit, at least as far as its current
Syrian coverage is concerned) is contained in this observation:
`However, the scoop did not attract the attention that had been hoped
for. Like other official Syrian media, the channel is not widely
watched and has suffered a loss of viewer confidence.
`Thus the report was barely noticed, and Al Jazeera itself completely
disregarded it.’
Yes, news you can report just by walking into your newsroom; that’s
too far for al Jazeera (and, probably CNN).
PETER LEE has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on
international affairs. Lee can be reached at [email protected]