America Increasing Pressure on Al-Jazeera TV
Robert Fisk • The Independent Newspaper Of London

BAGHDAD, 30 July 2003 — Only a day after US Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that the Arabic Al-Jazeera
television channel was “inciting violence” and “endangering
the lives of American troops” in Iraq, the station’s
Baghdad bureau chief has written a scathing reply to the
American administration, complaining that in the past month
the station’s offices and staff in Iraq “have been subject
to strafing by gunfire, death threats, confiscation of news
material, and multiple detentions and arrests, all carried
out by US soldiers...”

The unprecedented dispute between an Anglo-American
occupation authority supposedly dedicated to “democracy” in
Iraq and an Arab station once praised by Washington for its
services to free speech in the Arab world comes at a time
when the US administration appears to be laying the ground
work to close down Al-Jazeera’s operations in Iraq — along
with those of the Arabia channel — for alleged “incitement
to violence”.

America’s senior occupation proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer,
has officially stated that he would close down newspapers
or television stations guilty of “incitement to violence” —
without, of course, explaining exactly what this phrase
means.

Wolfowitz, a right-wing ideologue and fervent supporter of
Israel, is one of the cabal of advisers who pushed the US
administration into war with Iraq on the grounds that
Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and that the
destruction of his regime would open the way to a new,
democratic Middle East. He used the equally right-wing and
Murdoch-owned Fox Channel to make his allegations against
Al-Jazeera, many of which are palpably false. He claimed,
for example, that the staff of Al-Jazeera “have a way when
they want to cover somebody favorably, including Saddam
Hussein in the old days, of slanting the news incredibly
... and now, the minute they get something that they can
use to spread hatred and violence in Iraq, they’re
broadcasting it around.”

In fact, as the station’s Baghdad bureau chief, Wadah
Khanfar, points out in his letter — addressed to Bremer, a
copy of which has been obtained by The Independent —
“Al-Jazeera did not cover Saddam Hussein favorably. Both
Yasser Abu Hilala (one of the channel’s senior
correspondents) and I myself have been expelled from
Baghdad by the former regime for our reporting. The Baghdad
bureau was shut down twice by the former Ministry of
Information for unfavorable coverage, and once by
Al-Jazeera itself in protest over attempts at censorship.
Al-Jazeera reporters in Iraq have even been physically
assaulted by former Information Minister Mohamed Saeed
As-Sahaf for daring to broadcast events which cast the
regime in an unfavorable light.”

Already, however, the dispute between Al-Jazeera and the US
authorities has gone beyond mere words. American troops
have raided the bureau’s offices in the city of Ramadi and
arrested reporters, harassment that has been accompanied by
claims from US officers — a certain Col. Teeples of the US
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment prominent among them — that
Al-Jazeera has advance notice of attacks against American
troops. The truth is that the station sometimes receives
unsolicited videotapes — hand-delivered to their reception
staff by unidentified men — showing the military ambush of
US convoys. In many cases, Al-Jazeera has decided not to
show the tapes — but this has had no effect on the
Americans.

The history of mutual — indeed lethal — antagonism between
Washington and Al-Jazeera goes back to the 2001 bombardment
of Afghanistan when, after the Arab station showed
videotape of Osama Bin Laden, an American Cruise missile
exploded in their Kabul bureau. Then in the last days of
the invasion of Iraq this year, after the channel beamed
pictures of Iraqi civilians mutilated by US air raids and
tape of American prisoners in Iraqi hands, a US jet
targeted the station’s Baghdad bureau, killing one of its
senior reporters. Al-Jazeera had earlier given the map
coordinates of its Baghdad offices to the Pentagon to
prevent any accidental bombing of its bureau. These
frightening events — regarded by many of the international
Baghdad press corps as a deliberate attempt by the
Americans to murder Al-Jazeera staff — mean that the
channel’s reporters regard themselves at risk of their
lives if they offend the Americans.

Another of Wolfowitz’s claims involved the station’s
coverage of an incident in the Iraqi Shiite city of Najaf.
“Al-Jazeera ran a totally false report that American troops
had gone and detained one of the key imams in this holy
city of Najaf, Muqtad Al-Sadr (sic),” he said. “It was a
false report, but they were out broadcasting it instantly.”
Wadah Khanfar’s detailed reply — and his sense of
frustration — will be familiar to any Western newspaper
editor. “Al-Jazeera never stated at any time that Muqtada
As-Sadr was detained,” he wrote. “Our correspondent Yasser
Abu Hilala, a top reporter with thirteen years experience
covering the Middle East, stated he had received phone
calls from Muqtada As-Sadr’s secretary and two of his top
deputies saying the imam’s house was surrounded by US
forces after he called for the formation of an Islamic
Army. The phone calls were not only made to our offices but
to all the offices of As-Sadr’s followers in Baghdad
resulting in a massive demonstration in front of the
Republic Palace within 45 minutes which we reported, along
with the New York Times, CNN and a host of others.”

Khanfar added that “when Mr. Abu Hilala attempted to
contact the US military’s public information center they
did not even know about the demonstration going on in their
own backyard, let alone what was happening in Najaf. When
the US military finally got around to denying the
encirclement of As-Sadr’s home over 24 hours later, we duly
reported it.”

The Al-Jazeera bureau chief suspects that poor translation
of its dispatches mean that “half-truths and total
falsehoods about our reporting...make the rounds in
Washington, Baghdad and elsewhere.” No doubt remembering
the American missile strikes against Al-Jazeera’s offices,
he also states in his letter to Bremer that “the
mischaracterizations of our reporting made by Mr. Wolfowitz
and others are a form of incitement to violence against
Al-Jazeera, the first Arab television channel to practice
professional Western-style journalism free of the notorious
censorship so prominent in the rest of the Middle East.”

Khanfar is calling for Wolfowitz to retract his statement
and issue an apology. But the real cause of American anger
has always been Al-Jazeera’s powerful coverage of Arab and
Muslim suffering — and its ability to reflect this in
millions of homes throughout the Middle East.

And since the US government neither explained nor
apologized for its deliberate bombing of the station’s
offices in Kabul and Baghdad, Khanfar has not the slightest
chance of an apology from Wolfowitz.



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