http://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newsroom/memp_main/ en USC Center on Public Diplomacy Copyright 2005 2005-06-30T21:51:11+00:00 This op-ed piece was originally published on the Daily Star on June 28, 2005. The Daily Star is published in Beirut, and it is the "insert" paper that comes folded inside every copy of the International Herald Tribune published in the Middle East (except Ha'aretz in Israel). -- the Editor So Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is not Iran's new president. That result must come as a particular surprise to anyone who tried to follow the campaign by light of the Western media. As recently as last Thursday - the day before the run-off vote between Rafsanjani and his rival, Tehran mayor Mahmood Ahmadinejad - reputable polls gave the latter a clear lead. Yet headlines in the International Herald Tribune continued to describe Rafsanjani as the "front-runner." In the run-up to the first round of voting on June 17, his campaign was the focus of most election coverage in the Western media. CNN's interview with Rafsanjani during the campaign treated him as a president-in-waiting. So what happened, exactly? Was the election actually much freer than most Western observers were willing to credit? Or, on the other hand, if it was fixed from the beginning, then we of the Western media were obviously woefully ill-informed about Iranian politics, particularly with regards to exactly who fixes elections and to what end. The answer may be much simpler, if no less embarrassing: Granted how little most of us outsiders know about the politics of the Islamic Republic, it was probably just easiest to focus on Rafsanjani because he, alone among the candidates, was a familiar figure to Western journalists. That quality made him easy to write about, and easy to cover; it made it especially easy for us to assume that he would win. It was also relatively easy to assume that Rafsanjani's candidacy represented a bid by conservatives to reclaim the presidency, which they lost eight years ago to the reform-minded Mohammad Khatami. Rafsanjani, after all, was Khatami's predecessor. Rafsanjani ran as a moderate reformer, a position that, granted his history, most in the West found difficult to credit. It was only in the final few days of the campaign that some reporters began noticing that Iranians, too, seemed to find his new-found liberalism a bit difficult to believe. With Rafsanjani the Iranian system's consummate insider, it was easy to dismiss his moderate platform as a pose and to assume that the results had been fixed in his favor, particularly since he was standing against a field of candidates most outsiders had never heard of. Yet, when the first round of voting produced no clear majority for a single candidate, thereby forcing a runoff, media coverage focused more on the fact that no previous Iranian campaign had gone to a second round. "Historic" and "unprecedented" were common terms used in the press. Rarely asked was how the Western pundits and reporters could have been so wrong. Rafsanjani did, indeed, top the first round of voting, but with barely 20 percent of the total in a seven-candidate field. More surprisingly, the second-place candidate was not the reformer Mustafa Moin, who came in fifth, but Ahmadinejad, a candidate generally described as being so hard-line that, by comparison, Rafsanjani's status as a reformer was hardly open to question. Prior to the election Moin was often seen in the West as Rafsanjani's main competition. The assumption in that narrative was that Rafsanjani represented the conservative old guard. Moin, a former cabinet minister who was initially barred from standing by Iran's Council of Guardians (the body that approves potential candidates for Parliament and the presidency), was seen as the obvious successor to Khatami. That might have been true, but it ignored the fact that there is more than one type of "reform." Reform can mean loosening restrictions on how people dress and behave in public and private. But it can also mean tackling corruption and cronyism - which was the vein of popular anger into which Ahmadinejad tapped. None of this is meant as commentary on the fairness or unfairness of the Iranian electoral system. Nor is this to pass judgment on the claims of electoral fraud made by some of the candidates defeated in the first round; or to debate the effect President George W. Bush's criticism of the vote may have had on turnout (anecdotal evidence suggested it may have increased it). The simple fact is that Iran is a society in transition - to what is not exactly clear, but in transition nonetheless. Eight years ago the unexpected election of Mohammed Khatami seemed to promise an era of reform. We in the West did not know exactly what to make of Khatami back then, and we seem equally unsure of Ahmadinejad today. Perhaps, though, we have learned a lesson about not assuming that outcomes in certain situations are preordained. *** Gordon Robison is a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. He is based in Amman, and his weblog on Middle East politics is www.mideastanalysis.com. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR. This op-ed piece was originally published on the Daily Star on June 28, 2005. The Daily Star is published in Beirut, and it is the "insert" paper that comes folded inside every copy of the International Herald Tribune published in the Middle East (except Ha'aretz in Israel). -- the Editor


So Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is not Iran's new president. That result must come as a particular surprise to anyone who tried to follow the campaign by light of the Western media.

As recently as last Thursday - the day before the run-off vote between Rafsanjani and his rival, Tehran mayor Mahmood Ahmadinejad - reputable polls gave the latter a clear lead. Yet headlines in the International Herald Tribune continued to describe Rafsanjani as the "front-runner." In the run-up to the first round of voting on June 17, his campaign was the focus of most election coverage in the Western media. CNN's interview with Rafsanjani during the campaign treated him as a president-in-waiting.

So what happened, exactly? Was the election actually much freer than most Western observers were willing to credit? Or, on the other hand, if it was fixed from the beginning, then we of the Western media were obviously woefully ill-informed about Iranian politics, particularly with regards to exactly who fixes elections and to what end.

The answer may be much simpler, if no less embarrassing: Granted how little most of us outsiders know about the politics of the Islamic Republic, it was probably just easiest to focus on Rafsanjani because he, alone among the candidates, was a familiar figure to Western journalists.

That quality made him easy to write about, and easy to cover; it made it especially easy for us to assume that he would win. It was also relatively easy to assume that Rafsanjani's candidacy represented a bid by conservatives to reclaim the presidency, which they lost eight years ago to the reform-minded Mohammad Khatami. Rafsanjani, after all, was Khatami's predecessor.

Rafsanjani ran as a moderate reformer, a position that, granted his history, most in the West found difficult to credit. It was only in the final few days of the campaign that some reporters began noticing that Iranians, too, seemed to find his new-found liberalism a bit difficult to believe. With Rafsanjani the Iranian system's consummate insider, it was easy to dismiss his moderate platform as a pose and to assume that the results had been fixed in his favor, particularly since he was standing against a field of candidates most outsiders had never heard of.

Yet, when the first round of voting produced no clear majority for a single candidate, thereby forcing a runoff, media coverage focused more on the fact that no previous Iranian campaign had gone to a second round. "Historic" and "unprecedented" were common terms used in the press. Rarely asked was how the Western pundits and reporters could have been so wrong. Rafsanjani did, indeed, top the first round of voting, but with barely 20 percent of the total in a seven-candidate field.

More surprisingly, the second-place candidate was not the reformer Mustafa Moin, who came in fifth, but Ahmadinejad, a candidate generally described as being so hard-line that, by comparison, Rafsanjani's status as a reformer was hardly open to question.

Prior to the election Moin was often seen in the West as Rafsanjani's main competition. The assumption in that narrative was that Rafsanjani represented the conservative old guard. Moin, a former cabinet minister who was initially barred from standing by Iran's Council of Guardians (the body that approves potential candidates for Parliament and the presidency), was seen as the obvious successor to Khatami. That might have been true, but it ignored the fact that there is more than one type of "reform." Reform can mean loosening restrictions on how people dress and behave in public and private. But it can also mean tackling corruption and cronyism - which was the vein of popular anger into which Ahmadinejad tapped.

None of this is meant as commentary on the fairness or unfairness of the Iranian electoral system. Nor is this to pass judgment on the claims of electoral fraud made by some of the candidates defeated in the first round; or to debate the effect President George W. Bush's criticism of the vote may have had on turnout (anecdotal evidence suggested it may have increased it).

The simple fact is that Iran is a society in transition - to what is not exactly clear, but in transition nonetheless. Eight years ago the unexpected election of Mohammed Khatami seemed to promise an era of reform. We in the West did not know exactly what to make of Khatami back then, and we seem equally unsure of Ahmadinejad today.

Perhaps, though, we have learned a lesson about not assuming that outcomes in certain situations are preordained.

***
Gordon Robison is a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. He is based in Amman, and his weblog on Middle East politics is www.mideastanalysis.com. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.]]> 2005-06-30T20:51:11+00:00 When I was younger I occasionally tagged along with my father at conferences in Europe where East-West security issues were discussed. Dad taught me two especially important lessons during this time: 1) find a seat on an aisle near the back, that way you can slip out quietly if things get really boring; and 2) all the really interesting stuff happens during the coffee breaks, at meal times and (especially) in the bar. All this comes back to me as I contemplate this weekend's meeting here of the World Economic Forum, the Geneva-based organization that runs the annual Davos conference. The regional meetings are less well known than the January bash in Switzerland, but they are important. This weekend's conference brought together about 1,000 business, media and political leaders from around the region and the wider world for three days of formal and, more importantly, informal talks. During a town hall session the occupants of each table were asked to discuss a particular issue, in our case educational reform, and then share thoughts with the rest of the delegates. My companions for this exercise included Radhida Dergham, the chief diplomatic correspondent for Al-Hayat (probably the region's top newspaper); Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister and UN Special Envoy; and a Dubai-based regional manager for Microsoft. At other points during the weekend I had coffee with the Afghan foreign minister, a long chat with a Palestinian deputy prime minister, lunch with the head of the Middle East's largest cellphone operator, and a 15-minute discussion on Egyptian reform with the editor-in-chief of the Arab world's top business newspaper (who is, incidentally, one of the few women in the region to hold so senior a media job). What an opportunity to show a human face, make contact with opinion leaders and, generally, soften the American image where it most needs softening. For the official American delegation it was a public diplomacy opportunity of the first order. But sadly it's one they fumbled badly. The official American delegation was huge: four senators (Gordon Smith of Oregon, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Orrin Hatch of Utah), two members of the House (Christopher Shays of Connecticut and Jane Harman of California), Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Cheney, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scott Carpenter and, of course, first lady Laura Bush. Throughout the weekend they were everywhere and nowhere. They sat on many panels, but invariably arrived at the last minute (if not later) and left the instant things were over. Thirty-minute coffee-break-cum-networking sessions separated each round of panels. At these times the conference center's two lobbies were packed with the region's most senior politicians and businesspeople, all milling around, chatting and getting to know each other shorn of the aides, secretaries and other hangers-on who usually accompany them (I have returned from the weekend with a two-inch high stack of other people's business cards). In three days of talks I only saw one of the above-mentioned grandees bothering to mix with the rest of the attendees. That was Sen. Coleman, who also spent an hour working the bar at one of the conference hotels on Friday night. The rest of the delegation members spent every networking session closeted in private meetings with other big-wigs. I'm not saying the meetings among the high officials are not important, even necessary, but a bit of balance might have brought America's distinguished representatives into contact with a lot of other interesting people: People who can sway public opinion out here; People who just might have valued a three-minute chat with a key senator or State Department official. And maybe that human connection would soften some of the delegates' images of the American behemoth. grr
All this comes back to me as I contemplate this weekend's meeting here of the World Economic Forum, the Geneva-based organization that runs the annual Davos conference. The regional meetings are less well known than the January bash in Switzerland, but they are important. This weekend's conference brought together about 1,000 business, media and political leaders from around the region and the wider world for three days of formal and, more importantly, informal talks.

During a town hall session the occupants of each table were asked to discuss a particular issue, in our case educational reform, and then share thoughts with the rest of the delegates. My companions for this exercise included Radhida Dergham, the chief diplomatic correspondent for Al-Hayat (probably the region's top newspaper); Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister and UN Special Envoy; and a Dubai-based regional manager for Microsoft.

At other points during the weekend I had coffee with the Afghan foreign minister, a long chat with a Palestinian deputy prime minister, lunch with the head of the Middle East's largest cellphone operator, and a 15-minute discussion on Egyptian reform with the editor-in-chief of the Arab world's top business newspaper (who is, incidentally, one of the few women in the region to hold so senior a media job).

What an opportunity to show a human face, make contact with opinion leaders and, generally, soften the American image where it most needs softening. For the official American delegation it was a public diplomacy opportunity of the first order. But sadly it's one they fumbled badly.

The official American delegation was huge: four senators (Gordon Smith of Oregon, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Orrin Hatch of Utah), two members of the House (Christopher Shays of Connecticut and Jane Harman of California), Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, Principal
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Cheney, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scott Carpenter and, of course, first lady Laura Bush.

Throughout the weekend they were everywhere and nowhere. They sat on many panels, but invariably arrived at the last minute (if not later) and left the instant things were over.

Thirty-minute coffee-break-cum-networking sessions separated each round of panels. At these times the conference center's two lobbies were packed with the region's most senior politicians and businesspeople, all milling around, chatting and getting to know each other shorn of the aides, secretaries and other hangers-on who usually accompany them (I have returned from the weekend with a two-inch high stack of other people's business cards).

In three days of talks I only saw one of the above-mentioned grandees bothering to mix with the rest of the attendees. That was Sen. Coleman, who also spent an hour working the bar at one of the conference hotels on Friday night. The rest of the delegation members spent every networking session closeted in private meetings with other big-wigs.

I'm not saying the meetings among the high officials are not important, even necessary, but a bit of balance might have brought America's distinguished representatives into contact with a lot of other interesting people: People who can sway public opinion out here; People who just might have valued a three-minute chat with a key senator or State Department official.

And maybe that human connection would soften some of the delegates' images of the American behemoth.

grr]]> 2005-05-26T07:09:48+00:00 As I write this it is late evening and Lebanon's Future Television is deep into its nightly talk show. Four hours, more or less, on where the country is headed. In the upper left corner of the screen a black mourning band cuts across the station's logo. Next to it is the legend "40 ... for Lebanon." The number marks the days since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The words are part of the Lebanese opposition's slogan: "The Truth ... for Lebanon." Much of central Beirut is festooned with pictures of Hariri and banners calling for "The Truth." Hariri has been buried in Martyrs Square, the historical heart of the city, and the scene of some of the fiercest fighting during the civil wars that wracked Lebanon from 1975 until 1990. The demonstrations that took place in the square for nearly a month after Hariri's assassination have ceased, but Christians and Muslims continue to trek to the grave day and night, a sign that the tensions of Lebanon's war years are buried, but far from forgotten. The media's role in all this has been extraordinary. "TV and newspapers are not only following the news, they are part of it," says Yusef Bazzi, a columnist for Al-Mustaqbal, Future Television's sister newspaper. It is a view seconded by Gebran Tueni, publisher of one of the country's oldest newspapers, An-Nahar. "We have a clear agenda now for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon .... The Syrians have been behaving very badly with all of Lebanon and now there's a snowball effect." The weeks since the assassination have been a defining event for this country's media. "My impression is that the media has had a huge impact at several different levels. It was the vehicle that promoted mass mobilization ... providing a sense of solidarity. Even just by watching the media at home you felt fortified and you felt part of something big," says Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of the English-language Daily Star. The effect, Khouri says, has been similar to that of the first Gulf War on CNN: bringing the young network into the big leagues, and instilling it with a sense of mission. Future, a television station set up by Hariri in the early '90s, has stayed with the story in ways the rest have not. Its anchors are required to wear black mourning clothes and Hariri pins with blue ribbons, another symbol of Lebanon's opposition. The regular programming schedule of movies and soap operas has been abandoned, and almost any statement by an opposition political leader is carried in full. The station's staff argue that none of this compromises their objectivity as journalists. "All Lebanese TV stations are owned by somebody. Everyone understands this," says Elsa Yazbek, an anchor/reporter at Future TV. "The first mission is we want the truth. The first mission is to keep the subject alive in the minds of the people." "The owners of the media are politicians," Bazzi says. And objectivity? "It's very relative." Yazbek and others come close to arguing that the media's open partisanship serves some sort of higher purpose. Her refrain, "people are not afraid anymore," is one a visitor to Beirut hears often these days. Not all stations have taken the same approach. Hizbollah's Al-Manar television seems to do its best to minimize the opposition's activities, while Lebanon's most popular station, LBC (which is Christian-owned and is widely identified with some of the wartime Christian militia leaders) has almost completely returned to its regular schedule, which is long on soap operas and relatively thin when it comes to news. Khouri decries a lack of "detached analysis" in the Arab media generally, something he says the performance of Lebanese newspapers and television stations has only made more glaringly obvious over the last month. There's a dearth of balanced interpretation, he says. "They've provided a megaphone, rather than a microscope."
Much of central Beirut is festooned with pictures of Hariri and banners calling for "The Truth." Hariri has been buried in Martyrs Square, the historical heart of the city, and the scene of some of the fiercest fighting during the civil wars that wracked Lebanon from 1975 until 1990. The demonstrations that took place in the square for nearly a month after Hariri's assassination have ceased, but Christians and Muslims continue to trek to the grave day and night, a sign that the tensions of Lebanon's war years are buried, but far from forgotten.

The media's role in all this has been extraordinary.

"TV and newspapers are not only following the news, they are part of it," says Yusef Bazzi, a columnist for Al-Mustaqbal, Future Television's sister newspaper.

It is a view seconded by Gebran Tueni, publisher of one of the country's oldest newspapers, An-Nahar. "We have a clear agenda now for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon .... The Syrians have been behaving very badly with all of Lebanon and now there's a snowball effect."

The weeks since the assassination have been a defining event for this country's media. "My impression is that the media has had a huge impact at several different levels. It was the vehicle that promoted mass mobilization ... providing a sense of solidarity. Even just by watching the media at home you felt fortified and you felt part of something big," says Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of the English-language Daily Star.

The effect, Khouri says, has been similar to that of the first Gulf War on CNN: bringing the young network into the big leagues, and instilling it with a sense of mission.

Future, a television station set up by Hariri in the early '90s, has stayed with the story in ways the rest have not. Its anchors are required to wear black mourning clothes and Hariri pins with blue ribbons, another symbol of Lebanon's opposition. The regular programming schedule of movies and soap operas has been abandoned, and almost any statement by an opposition political leader is carried in full.

The station's staff argue that none of this compromises their objectivity as journalists. "All Lebanese TV stations are owned by somebody. Everyone understands this," says Elsa Yazbek, an anchor/reporter at Future TV. "The first mission is we want the truth. The first mission is to keep the subject alive in the minds of the people."

"The owners of the media are politicians," Bazzi says. And objectivity? "It's very relative."

Yazbek and others come close to arguing that the media's open partisanship serves some sort of higher purpose. Her refrain, "people are not afraid anymore," is one a visitor to Beirut hears often these days.

Not all stations have taken the same approach. Hizbollah's Al-Manar television seems to do its best to minimize the opposition's activities, while Lebanon's most popular station, LBC (which is Christian-owned and is widely identified with some of the wartime Christian militia leaders) has almost completely returned to its regular schedule, which is long on soap operas and relatively thin when it comes to news.

Khouri decries a lack of "detached analysis" in the Arab media generally, something he says the performance of Lebanese newspapers and television stations has only made more glaringly obvious over the last month.

There's a dearth of balanced interpretation, he says. "They've provided a megaphone, rather than a microscope."]]> 2005-03-27T05:18:26+00:00 According to news reports over the weekend, President Bush plans to appoint his long-time media advisor, Karen Hughes, as the new undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. That this post has been vacant for months, even amid general agreement that America’s image overseas is in need of a radical makeover, is itself testimony to the depth of the challenges the new undersecretary faces. The downside of the President’s choice is Hughes’ lack of foreign policy credentials. She rose to national prominence as the chief spokeswoman for Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. When Bush entered the White House, Hughes ceded the high-profile press secretary’s job to Ari Fleischer, opting instead for a (probably more powerful) behind-the-scenes role as counselor to the president. She left the administration to return to Austin in 2002, but is widely reported to have remained an informal advisor to Bush from her home in Texas. This resume hints at the upside of her selection: Hughes is personally close to the president. She has his ear. He trusts her. Those facts make this, potentially, a very good appointment for the advancement of public diplomacy. Here, then, are some things the new undersecretary may wish to keep in mind. First and foremost, this is a long-term job. When Bush talks about the need for reform in the Middle East he speaks of “generational change.” That applies as much to the U.S. and our public diplomacy efforts as it does to building a democratic and electoral culture in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Hughes needs both to broaden and to narrow the focus of her new job. Her first Bush administration predecessor, Charlotte Beers, came from Madison Avenue and erred in the belief that selling America and its policies was not fundamentally different from selling soda or laundry soap. It has become common to dismiss Beers as a failure because she failed to see that in many cases it was the policies themselves that needed to change, not the way they were sold. There is some truth in this, but it is overly simplistic. It is true that some American policies (an unquestioning embrace of Ariel Sharon, for example) simply cannot be presented in a way that makes them palatable to the Arab World. It is equally true that presentation has been a problem. Last year the United States sent an enormous delegation to the World Economic Forum’s regional meeting here in Jordan. A number of the delegation’s mid-level officials gave interviews to the Jordanian media that were so condescending that officials at the U.S. embassy here still wince when the subject comes up in conversation. Similarly, it is easy to fear that Hughes, coming as she does from the world of political spin, will see public diplomacy as little more than keeping the administration ‘on-message’ overseas as well as at home. That, too, would be a misreading of the situation, though it touches on another American public diplomacy shortcoming: the inability to counter rumors and negative information quickly and forcefully. Too often accusations or rumors appear in the morning papers in this part of the world and spend an entire day being repeated on satellite TV with no attempt at an American reply. Why? Because the reply, according to current procedure, must wait for the daily State Department news briefing. By the time the briefing takes place the TV channels of the Middle East have moved on to another news cycle, and the next day’s newspapers are in the final stages of production. For most viewers and readers the charges, therefore, go unanswered. If Hughes can bring her communications experience to bear on this aspect of public diplomacy it will be a welcome change. Finally, we need to look carefully at the long-term, less glamorous aspects of public diplomacy. There is a glaring need, above all, for vehicles that promote American and Western culture, society and values in a neutral, non-ideological way. The British, French, Spanish and German governments are all good at this. Want to learn French? Watch Spanish movies? Study German cooking? The Alliance Francaise, Instituto Cervantes and Goethe Institute are all happy to help you. The United States, on the other hand, has spent the last decade shutting down its fine network of libraries and cultural centers around the world. The result has been the ceding of cultural promotion to Hollywood and the commercial marketplace. Personally, I love both “24” and “Sex and the City,” but if that’s the only image of American society on offer one can understand why a lot of people find it less than appealing. All of this is a tall order for the new undersecretary. The rest of us can only wish her well, and hope for the best. Gordon R. Robison
The downside of the President’s choice is Hughes’ lack of foreign policy credentials. She rose to national prominence as the chief spokeswoman for Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. When Bush entered the White House, Hughes ceded the high-profile press secretary’s job to Ari Fleischer, opting instead for a (probably more powerful) behind-the-scenes role as counselor to the president. She left the administration to return to Austin in 2002, but is widely reported to have remained an informal advisor to Bush from her home in Texas.

This resume hints at the upside of her selection: Hughes is personally close to the president. She has his ear. He trusts her. Those facts make this, potentially, a very good appointment for the advancement of public diplomacy.

Here, then, are some things the new undersecretary may wish to keep in mind. First and foremost, this is a long-term job. When Bush talks about the need for reform in the Middle East he speaks of “generational change.” That applies as much to the U.S. and our public diplomacy efforts as it does to building a democratic and electoral culture in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Hughes needs both to broaden and to narrow the focus of her new job. Her first Bush administration predecessor, Charlotte Beers, came from Madison Avenue and erred in the belief that selling America and its policies was not fundamentally different from selling soda or laundry soap. It has become common to dismiss Beers as a failure because she failed to see that in many cases it was the policies themselves that needed to change, not the way they were sold. There is some truth in this, but it is overly simplistic.

It is true that some American policies (an unquestioning embrace of Ariel Sharon, for example) simply cannot be presented in a way that makes them palatable to the Arab World.

It is equally true that presentation has been a problem. Last year the United States sent an enormous delegation to the World Economic Forum’s regional meeting here in Jordan. A number of the delegation’s mid-level officials gave interviews to the Jordanian media that were so condescending that officials at the U.S. embassy here still wince when the subject comes up in conversation.

Similarly, it is easy to fear that Hughes, coming as she does from the world of political spin, will see public diplomacy as little more than keeping the administration ‘on-message’ overseas as well as at home. That, too, would be a misreading of the situation, though it touches on another American public diplomacy shortcoming: the inability to counter rumors and negative information quickly and forcefully.

Too often accusations or rumors appear in the morning papers in this part of the world and spend an entire day being repeated on satellite TV with no attempt at an American reply. Why? Because the reply, according to current procedure, must wait for the daily State Department news briefing. By the time the briefing takes place the TV channels of the Middle East have moved on to another news cycle, and the next day’s newspapers are in the final stages of production. For most viewers and readers the charges, therefore, go unanswered. If Hughes can bring her communications experience to bear on this aspect of public diplomacy it will be a welcome change.

Finally, we need to look carefully at the long-term, less glamorous aspects of public diplomacy. There is a glaring need, above all, for vehicles that promote American and Western culture, society and values in a neutral, non-ideological way.

The British, French, Spanish and German governments are all good at this. Want to learn French? Watch Spanish movies? Study German cooking? The Alliance Francaise, Instituto Cervantes and Goethe Institute are all happy to help you. The United States, on the other hand, has spent the last decade shutting down its fine network of libraries and cultural centers around the world. The result has been the ceding of cultural promotion to Hollywood and the commercial marketplace. Personally, I love both “24” and “Sex and the City,” but if that’s the only image of American society on offer one can understand why a lot of people find it less than appealing.

All of this is a tall order for the new undersecretary. The rest of us can only wish her well, and hope for the best.

Gordon R. Robison
]]> 2005-03-15T14:43:00+00:00 This is an important moment in the Middle East. Events have been moving quickly in several countries around the region. The questions now are whether the momentum for reform can be sustained, and whether the United States, despite its poor reputation throughout the Arab World, can play a constructive role. The year began with elections that went better than expected in both Iraq and the Palestinian territories, followed by voting for municipal councils in Saudi Arabia – a country whose king said a decade ago that elections were culturally inappropriate for Arabs. What is happening now in Egypt and Lebanon, however, is potentially even more significant. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s surprise announcement that he will allow candidates other than himself to stand in September’s presidential election was unexpected, but it has been greeted warily both at home and abroad. Everyone agrees a ballot with several candidates is fundamentally better than a ballot with only one. Exactly how much is really going to change in Egypt is, however, another question. Symptomatic of this was a conversation I had with a prominent Egyptian over the weekend. He’s the sort of person who would surely like to see the country open up and have a freer political system. But the fact that I can’t name him, and that he was clearly reluctant to speak on the phone is a reminder of how far Egypt still has to go before it can be considered even a partially open society. He was markedly less than enthusiastic about Mubarak’s announcement, noting that the constitutional changes making their way through Egypt’s parliament will require all presidential candidates to be approved by parliament itself, a rubber stamp body controlled by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party. Talking to Egyptians it is difficult to miss the sense that they believe they are trading one sort of stage-managed election for another. “What we really need is some kind of independent body to oversee the election,” my friend said. For the moment the administration is saying the right things. “Egypt has now the prospect of competitive, multi-party elections,” President Bush said during a speech earlier today at the National Defense University. “Like all free elections, these require freedom of assembly, multiple candidates, free access by those candidates to the media and the right to form political parties.” All of those are going to be key indicators of how free this election really is. It is right and appropriate that the President make it clear now, early on, that the United States will be watching. Conventional wisdom has it that Condeleezza Rice’s cancellation of her visit to Cairo helped prompt Mubarak’s decision. “There’s a feeling that Mubarak got the Americans off his back for the moment,” offered a Cairo-based Western observer. He added that the real question is not what happens in this election, but what happens in the next one. No one questions that Mubarak will win again. The things to watch are how much openness his regime allows during this fall’s campaign and who it lets onto the ballot. This could be the thin end of the proverbial wedge. That is where pressure, such as Bush’s remarks, can be useful. The trick is not to provoke a reaction. Beirut today saw a huge pro-Syria demonstration, organized mainly by Shiite Muslims, who make up Lebanon’s largest single confessional group. The gist of their argument was that foreign governments (by which they mainly meant the United States and France) should not interfere in Lebanese affairs. As Ghassan Salame, a former Lebanese cabinet minister, told the New York Times last week, “You need democrats to produce democracy. You can’t produce it through institutions. You need people to fight for it to make it real. Neither American tanks nor domestic institutions can do it.” “Each country in the Middle East will take a different path of reform and every nation that starts on that journey can know that America will walk at its side,” Bush said today. The trick is doing that in a way that helps without alienating. grr
The year began with elections that went better than expected in both Iraq and the Palestinian territories, followed by voting for municipal councils in Saudi Arabia – a country whose king said a decade ago that elections were culturally inappropriate for Arabs.

What is happening now in Egypt and Lebanon, however, is potentially even more significant.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s surprise announcement that he will allow candidates other than himself to stand in September’s presidential election was unexpected, but it has been greeted warily both at home and abroad. Everyone agrees a ballot with several candidates is fundamentally better than a ballot with only one. Exactly how much is really going to change in Egypt is, however, another question.

Symptomatic of this was a conversation I had with a prominent Egyptian over the weekend. He’s the sort of person who would surely like to see the country open up and have a freer political system. But the fact that I can’t name him, and that he was clearly reluctant to speak on the phone is a reminder of how far Egypt still has to go before it can be considered even a partially open society.

He was markedly less than enthusiastic about Mubarak’s announcement, noting that the constitutional changes making their way through Egypt’s parliament will require all presidential candidates to be approved by parliament itself, a rubber stamp body controlled by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party. Talking to Egyptians it is difficult to miss the sense that they believe they are trading one sort of stage-managed election for another. “What we really need is some kind of independent body to oversee the election,” my friend said.

For the moment the administration is saying the right things. “Egypt has now the prospect of competitive, multi-party elections,” President Bush said during a speech earlier today at the National Defense University. “Like all free elections, these require freedom of assembly, multiple candidates, free access by those candidates to the media and the right to form political parties.”

All of those are going to be key indicators of how free this election really is. It is right and appropriate that the President make it clear now, early on, that the United States will be watching.

Conventional wisdom has it that Condeleezza Rice’s cancellation of her visit to Cairo helped prompt Mubarak’s decision. “There’s a feeling that Mubarak got the Americans off his back for the moment,” offered a Cairo-based Western observer. He added that the real question is not what happens in this election, but what happens in the next one. No one questions that Mubarak will win again. The things to watch are how much openness his regime allows during this fall’s campaign and who it lets onto the ballot. This could be the thin end of the proverbial wedge.

That is where pressure, such as Bush’s remarks, can be useful. The trick is not to provoke a reaction. Beirut today saw a huge pro-Syria demonstration, organized mainly by Shiite Muslims, who make up Lebanon’s largest single confessional group. The gist of their argument was that foreign governments (by which they mainly meant the United States and France) should not interfere in Lebanese affairs.

As Ghassan Salame, a former Lebanese cabinet minister, told the New York Times last week, “You need democrats to produce democracy. You can’t produce it through institutions. You need people to fight for it to make it real. Neither American tanks nor domestic institutions can do it.”

“Each country in the Middle East will take a different path of reform and every nation that starts on that journey can know that America will walk at its side,” Bush said today. The trick is doing that in a way that helps without alienating.

grr
]]> 2005-03-08T21:20:01+00:00 The Oscars wrapped up a bit before 7am over here and I crawled off to grab a few hours sleep after the school bus picked up my teenage daughter. Neither of us usually gets up at three in the morning to watch television, but the Oscars are something rare: a cultural moment we can share with the rest of America, in real time. We almost missed it because of a problem with our satellite dish, and because I had not noticed that the long-time holder of the ceremony’s Middle East broadcast rights, MBC2, had lost the telecast to a new rival channel, One TV. Luckily the repairman showed up Sunday both to fix our reception and to add One TV to our channel list. I spent a good chunk of yesterday phoning friends who work in TV out in the Emirates trying, without success, to figure out how much One TV paid to get the Oscars away from MBC. An inattentive viewer, however, might not even have noticed that MBC has lost the rights. MBC was airing so much pre and post-Oscar programming that its lack of the ceremony itself seemed almost a minor issue. All this is a useful reminder that at this moment when ‘America’ is deeply unpopular in this part of the world, much that is ‘American’ remains both much desired and difficult to escape. MBC and One TV are perfect illustrations of this. Both stations are based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, are seen throughout the region and compete for viewers with steady streams of American fare. One TV offers “CSI”, “Law and Order”, “The Sopranos” and (I swear I’m not making this up) “The Bold & the Beautiful” against MBC’s longtime line-up of “Seinfeld”, “Frazier”, “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and Oprah. On both stations the shows air with subtitles. The ads during the commercial breaks, however, are entirely in Arabic. And that only covers the free-to-air channels. If one is willing to shell out $30-$60 a month there is a lot more American TV buzzing around the ether. While it is true that American shows have long been a fixture here, the current fare is a far cry from a generation ago when Egyptian TV’s only English-language series were five year old episodes of “Falcon Crest” while the Saudis offered decade-old reruns of “CHiPS”. The latest twist in the programming war, however, is news. About a month ago MBC launched a new channel, MBC4, to which it moved all of its American series. The long-established MBC2 channel became an all-English-language-movies station. Faced with the need to fill hours of extra airtime every day on MBC4 programmers opted not for more reruns, but for news. As weird as this may sound, viewers around the region can now catch ABC’s “Good Morning, America” and “World News Tonight” and CBS’s “The Early Show” and “CBS Evening News” every single day. MBC4 also shows “60 Minutes”, “48 Hours” and “20/20”. The Oscars, I understand. “Friends” I understand. But “Good Morning, America”? “There’s a lot of interest in what is being said in America and this interest does not lie with the people watching ‘Friends’,” a long-time, and well-connected, Gulf observer said. “It lies with people who went to school in the States and important people in the government. They want to know what this congressman is saying to that congressman and what’s on the agenda over there.” He pointed out that the market for American broadcast news had been established by the pay-service Orbit, which offers a 24 hour news channel cobbled together from the three US broadcast networks and Fox. Orbit News proved that elites would pay to see “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday”, he said, so why not see if people would watch “World News Tonight” if it was offered for free? All this is a sign that public diplomacy is not just about what the government does, and may not even be primarily the government’s doing. It is a reminder to our politicians that they are addressing the world, even when they think they are talking only to the folks back home. It is proof, if we needed any, that the public diplomacy paradigms of the Cold War need to be rethought in the 21st century. grr
I spent a good chunk of yesterday phoning friends who work in TV out in the Emirates trying, without success, to figure out how much One TV paid to get the Oscars away from MBC. An inattentive viewer, however, might not even have noticed that MBC has lost the rights. MBC was airing so much pre and post-Oscar programming that its lack of the ceremony itself seemed almost a minor issue.

All this is a useful reminder that at this moment when ‘America’ is deeply unpopular in this part of the world, much that is ‘American’ remains both much desired and difficult to escape.

MBC and One TV are perfect illustrations of this. Both stations are based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, are seen throughout the region and compete for viewers with steady streams of American fare. One TV offers “CSI”, “Law and Order”, “The Sopranos” and (I swear I’m not making this up) “The Bold & the Beautiful” against MBC’s longtime line-up of “Seinfeld”, “Frazier”, “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and Oprah. On both stations the shows air with subtitles. The ads during the commercial breaks, however, are entirely in Arabic.

And that only covers the free-to-air channels. If one is willing to shell out $30-$60 a month there is a lot more American TV buzzing around the ether. While it is true that American shows have long been a fixture here, the current fare is a far cry from a generation ago when Egyptian TV’s only English-language series were five year old episodes of “Falcon Crest” while the Saudis offered decade-old reruns of “CHiPS”.

The latest twist in the programming war, however, is news. About a month ago MBC launched a new channel, MBC4, to which it moved all of its American series. The long-established MBC2 channel became an all-English-language-movies station. Faced with the need to fill hours of extra airtime every day on MBC4 programmers opted not for more reruns, but for news. As weird as this may sound, viewers around the region can now catch ABC’s “Good Morning, America” and “World News Tonight” and CBS’s “The Early Show” and “CBS Evening News” every single day. MBC4 also shows “60 Minutes”, “48 Hours” and “20/20”.

The Oscars, I understand. “Friends” I understand. But “Good Morning, America”?

“There’s a lot of interest in what is being said in America and this interest does not lie with the people watching ‘Friends’,” a long-time, and well-connected, Gulf observer said. “It lies with people who went to school in the States and important people in the government. They want to know what this congressman is saying to that congressman and what’s on the agenda over there.”

He pointed out that the market for American broadcast news had been established by the pay-service Orbit, which offers a 24 hour news channel cobbled together from the three US broadcast networks and Fox. Orbit News proved that elites would pay to see “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday”, he said, so why not see if people would watch “World News Tonight” if it was offered for free?

All this is a sign that public diplomacy is not just about what the government does, and may not even be primarily the government’s doing. It is a reminder to our politicians that they are addressing the world, even when they think they are talking only to the folks back home. It is proof, if we needed any, that the public diplomacy paradigms of the Cold War need to be rethought in the 21st century.

grr
]]> 2005-02-28T23:04:43+00:00 Iraq’s election went off better than expected. Now that the results have been announced the hard part begins. Though Ibrahim Al-Jafaari’s emergence as the prime ministerial candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance makes him the leading contender to head the country’s next government his grasp on the levers of power remains far from certain. The Shia-led UIA emerged with a thin majority in the 275 seat National Assembly, but it is far short of the two-thirds needed to form a government. This is especially the case since the UIA is hardly a cohesive block. It is hard to imagine any grouping containing both Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and Ahmed Chalabi holding together for long. The current Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi (a secular Shiite) is openly courting some of its members in a bid to keep his job. The Kurds appear to be watching all of this warily. Their role, or lack of it, in the new government will be a key indicator of the country’s future. Kurdistan’s two main parties fought the election as a single slate. When facing the rest of Iraq their leadership is relatively united and pretty clear about what it wants. For now their list of demands does not include breaking up the country, but there is little doubt they will do so if they feel that is the only way to preserve the society they have built in northern Iraq over the last dozen years To no one’s surprise there are virtually no Sunnis in the assembly. President Ghazi al-Yawr’s list managed only five seats. How the Sunni political class, and the Sunni population at large, deal with this will be one of the great unknowns of the coming months. An intriguing titbit came from an Iraqi friend of mine, a journalist who comes from one of the larger and more important Sunni tribes. A few days after the election he told me he could have voted in relative safety because he works in the Green Zone, but chose not to do so out of solidarity with his neighbors in the overwhelmingly Sunni district of Abu Gharib, on Baghdad’s western outskirts. Many of his neighbors, he said, wanted to vote but thought it was simply too dangerous to do so. He says he does expect them to vote in October when the new constitution is put to a referendum. If his reading of his neighbors is correct this is a particularly good sign, and one that reinforces the emerging conventional wisdom that Sunni leaders may now believe their boycotts were shortsighted. The real question is whether the leaders who are now emerging with some electoral legitimacy can deal with each other with a measure of maturity, farsightedness and statesmanship. The, admittedly short, history of Iraq’s emerging political class does not inspire much confidence on this score, but the election was a surprise, so things might go better than expected. Writing a new constitution by October is going to be a tall order. Getting it approved in a vote a month later may be even harder, especially since a two-thirds ‘no’ vote in any three provinces sends the entire process back to the drawing board. It is going to be a long spring and summer in Iraq – but one well worth watching. grr
Though Ibrahim Al-Jafaari’s emergence as the prime ministerial candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance makes him the leading contender to head the country’s next government his grasp on the levers of power remains far from certain. The Shia-led UIA emerged with a thin majority in the 275 seat National Assembly, but it is far short of the two-thirds needed to form a government. This is especially the case since the UIA is hardly a cohesive block. It is hard to imagine any grouping containing both Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and Ahmed Chalabi holding together for long. The current Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi (a secular Shiite) is openly courting some of its members in a bid to keep his job.

The Kurds appear to be watching all of this warily. Their role, or lack of it, in the new government will be a key indicator of the country’s future. Kurdistan’s two main parties fought the election as a single slate. When facing the rest of Iraq their leadership is relatively united and pretty clear about what it wants. For now their list of demands does not include breaking up the country, but there is little doubt they will do so if they feel that is the only way to preserve the society they have built in northern Iraq over the last dozen years

To no one’s surprise there are virtually no Sunnis in the assembly. President Ghazi al-Yawr’s list managed only five seats. How the Sunni political class, and the Sunni population at large, deal with this will be one of the great unknowns of the coming months. An intriguing titbit came from an Iraqi friend of mine, a journalist who comes from one of the larger and more important Sunni tribes. A few days after the election he told me he could have voted in relative safety because he works in the Green Zone, but chose not to do so out of solidarity with his neighbors in the overwhelmingly Sunni district of Abu Gharib, on Baghdad’s western outskirts. Many of his neighbors, he said, wanted to vote but thought it was simply too dangerous to do so. He says he does expect them to vote in October when the new constitution is put to a referendum. If his reading of his neighbors is correct this is a particularly good sign, and one that reinforces the emerging conventional wisdom that Sunni leaders may now believe their boycotts were shortsighted.

The real question is whether the leaders who are now emerging with some electoral legitimacy can deal with each other with a measure of maturity, farsightedness and statesmanship. The, admittedly short, history of Iraq’s emerging political class does not inspire much confidence on this score, but the election was a surprise, so things might go better than expected. Writing a new constitution by October is going to be a tall order. Getting it approved in a vote a month later may be even harder, especially since a two-thirds ‘no’ vote in any three provinces sends the entire process back to the drawing board. It is going to be a long spring and summer in Iraq – but one well worth watching.

grr
]]> 2005-02-26T20:19:56+00:00 I’ve spent a day here in the suburbs of Los Angeles talking about the Middle East with students and faculty at my alma mater, Pomona College. The really interesting thing is that while I came to talk about Iraq, I keep getting asked about Israel and the Palestinians. Add in Monday’s assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and Iraq, the constant topic of the last two years, seems to have vanished from the agenda, at least for a moment. The thing about living in the Middle East in general, and in Amman in particular, is that Iraq has a way of looming over nearly every conversation. Amman is the way station for virtually everyone traveling to or from Baghdad. The city is filled with exiles from street vendors to wealthy merchants. On both Arab satellite television and on CNN it is the first story in a generation that has managed to push the Israeli-Palestinian conflict off center-stage for more than a few weeks. Any yet in the four days I have been in the United States people have asked me about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at least twice as often as about Iraq. What is happening here? Has the carnage in Baghdad numbed us to the story? Is the daily news from Iraq so repetitive that people have finally tuned out and moved on (as for popular media, I gave up on the radio on the drive out from Los Angeles this morning after finding every talk radio outlet – including Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly – talking about the Michael Jackson trial)? If one accepts the (in my opinion overly narrow) definition of public diplomacy as the selling of the administration’s policies then this, I suppose, must be counted a victory. But it is dangerous to assume that if Americans are not paying attention then no one else is. That surely would be a gross misreading of the situation. Iraq is a long-term project, both our involvement there per se and undoing the damage our adventure there has done to our image in the wider world. It is important to talk about what we are doing – or at least what we think we are doing – as long as this mess continues. grr
The thing about living in the Middle East in general, and in Amman in particular, is that Iraq has a way of looming over nearly every conversation. Amman is the way station for virtually everyone traveling to or from Baghdad. The city is filled with exiles from street vendors to wealthy merchants. On both Arab satellite television and on CNN it is the first story in a generation that has managed to push the Israeli-Palestinian conflict off center-stage for more than a few weeks.

Any yet in the four days I have been in the United States people have asked me about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at least twice as often as about Iraq. What is happening here? Has the carnage in Baghdad numbed us to the story? Is the daily news from Iraq so repetitive that people have finally tuned out and moved on (as for popular media, I gave up on the radio on the drive out from Los Angeles this morning after finding every talk radio outlet – including Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly – talking about the Michael Jackson trial)?

If one accepts the (in my opinion overly narrow) definition of public diplomacy as the selling of the administration’s policies then this, I suppose, must be counted a victory. But it is dangerous to assume that if Americans are not paying attention then no one else is. That surely would be a gross misreading of the situation. Iraq is a long-term project, both our involvement there per se and undoing the damage our adventure there has done to our image in the wider world. It is important to talk about what we are doing – or at least what we think we are doing – as long as this mess continues.

grr
]]> 2005-02-17T22:58:54+00:00 America’s public diplomacy problems in the Middle East can be summed up in a single word: credibility. Over two generations we have acquired a well-deserved reputation for saying one thing and doing another. We preach the virtues of democracy while supporting tyrants. We proclaim our openness and freedom even as we make the US an ever-more-difficult place to visit (and don’t kid yourself – getting a US visa was a slow and often humiliating process before 9-11, in the three years since it has only gotten worse). Washington has long portrayed itself as an honest broker in Arab-Israeli peace talks, but as the recent memoirs of long-time Mideast envoy Dennis Ross show Washington usually cleared American proposals and ideas with the Israelis in private before ‘presenting’ those ideas to ‘both’ sides. That revelation surprised some in the US. In the Arab world it merely confirmed what most people had long suspected. In Egypt today the Bush administration faces a crucial test of its public diplomacy skills and, hence, its own credibility: after all the talk over the last month about supporting freedom and standing up to tyrants, will the United States do anything serious to help Ayman Nur? Nur is an opposition member of Egypt’s parliament. In recent weeks the government has blocked his attempts to form a new political party, prevented the party from publishing a weekly newspaper, stripped Nur of his parliamentary immunity and arrested him on trumped up charges of forgery and corruption. Nur’s sins include questioning President Hosni Mubarak’s policies, calling for the direct election of Egypt’s president (currently parliament – dominated by Mubarak’s party – ‘picks’ a single candidate who is then submitted to the public for a yes/no referendum in which the ‘yes’ vote invariably draws 95+ percent) and openly questioning the president’s efforts to pass his office on to his son Gamal. There have been demonstrations in support of Nur in Cairo, despite emergency laws making such protests difficult and dangerous. The case is getting significant media coverage around the region though little internationally (the best place to follow it in English is Al-Jazeera’s website: english.aljazeera.net). And where, in all this, is the Bush administration, the self-declared foe of tyranny and friend of democracy activists? State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in Washington last week that a dialogue between Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party and opposition parties is scheduled to take place later this year, adding “we find this arrest at this moment incongruous with proceeding with that dialogue.” In fairness, the United States is not completely absent on this one. This evening US-funded Radio Sawa devoted a good chunk of its evening news and current affairs program to a report on the case including interviews with several opposition-leaning Egyptian analysts. That’s a good start, but it is far, far from adequate. Egypt is one of the largest recipients of American foreign aide. It is a key military ally. It plays an important role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. All of this has, on the whole, earned it a pass on public criticism as Mubarak’s government has grown steadily more repressive over the last 15 years. If President Bush’s inaugural address and Condoleezza Rice’s speech this week in Paris are to mean anything then something beyond Boucher’s wishy-washy statement needs to come out of Washington. The criticism needs to be sharply worded and public. It is Mubarak’s sovereign right to go down this repressive road, but if he chooses to do so America must make it clear he does so without our support. Later this spring G8 foreign ministers are scheduled to meet their Arab counterparts in Cairo. If Mubarak refuses to ease up on Nur’s Al-Ghad party, allow it to function and drop the ridiculous charges against Nur himself then neither Rice nor any other American official should attend that meeting, and the Secretary should publicly say why she is not going to Cairo. Many Egyptians will complain that this amounts to interference in their internal affairs. Perhaps, but then we are under no obligation to give large sums of money to a government that abuses its citizens and flouts its own laws. Even if you deeply oppose the policies President Bush has laid out over the last month there is a bigger issue at stake here. American credibility is once again on the line. Right now hardly anyone here in the Middle East thinks the Bush administration is really serious about supporting democratic reform in the region. Public diplomacy is in large measure about showing the world what we, as a society, stand for. If the president means what he says the time to prove it is now and Egypt is the place to start. grr
In Egypt today the Bush administration faces a crucial test of its public diplomacy skills and, hence, its own credibility: after all the talk over the last month about supporting freedom and standing up to tyrants, will the United States do anything serious to help Ayman Nur?

Nur is an opposition member of Egypt’s parliament. In recent weeks the government has blocked his attempts to form a new political party, prevented the party from publishing a weekly newspaper, stripped Nur of his parliamentary immunity and arrested him on trumped up charges of forgery and corruption. Nur’s sins include questioning President Hosni Mubarak’s policies, calling for the direct election of Egypt’s president (currently parliament – dominated by Mubarak’s party – ‘picks’ a single candidate who is then submitted to the public for a yes/no referendum in which the ‘yes’ vote invariably draws 95+ percent) and openly questioning the president’s efforts to pass his office on to his son Gamal.

There have been demonstrations in support of Nur in Cairo, despite emergency laws making such protests difficult and dangerous. The case is getting significant media coverage around the region though little internationally (the best place to follow it in English is Al-Jazeera’s website: english.aljazeera.net).

And where, in all this, is the Bush administration, the self-declared foe of tyranny and friend of democracy activists? State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in Washington last week that a dialogue between Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party and opposition parties is scheduled to take place later this year, adding “we find this arrest at this moment incongruous with proceeding with that dialogue.”

In fairness, the United States is not completely absent on this one. This evening US-funded Radio Sawa devoted a good chunk of its evening news and current affairs program to a report on the case including interviews with several opposition-leaning Egyptian analysts. That’s a good start, but it is far, far from adequate.

Egypt is one of the largest recipients of American foreign aide. It is a key military ally. It plays an important role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. All of this has, on the whole, earned it a pass on public criticism as Mubarak’s government has grown steadily more repressive over the last 15 years.

If President Bush’s inaugural address and Condoleezza Rice’s speech this week in Paris are to mean anything then something beyond Boucher’s wishy-washy statement needs to come out of Washington. The criticism needs to be sharply worded and public. It is Mubarak’s sovereign right to go down this repressive road, but if he chooses to do so America must make it clear he does so without our support. Later this spring G8 foreign ministers are scheduled to meet their Arab counterparts in Cairo. If Mubarak refuses to ease up on Nur’s Al-Ghad party, allow it to function and drop the ridiculous charges against Nur himself then neither Rice nor any other American official should attend that meeting, and the Secretary should publicly say why she is not going to Cairo. Many Egyptians will complain that this amounts to interference in their internal affairs. Perhaps, but then we are under no obligation to give large sums of money to a government that abuses its citizens and flouts its own laws.

Even if you deeply oppose the policies President Bush has laid out over the last month there is a bigger issue at stake here. American credibility is once again on the line. Right now hardly anyone here in the Middle East thinks the Bush administration is really serious about supporting democratic reform in the region. Public diplomacy is in large measure about showing the world what we, as a society, stand for. If the president means what he says the time to prove it is now and Egypt is the place to start.

grr]]> 2005-02-11T18:33:39+00:00 So I spend three weeks on the road, nearly half that time in the snowy mountains of Italy and Austria. I get home late last night, rise early this morning, look out the window… and it’s snowing. This is not utterly unknown here in Jordan, it happens roughly once each winter. Last year’s ‘storm’ (I use this word generously. Today’s snow virtually shut down the city but would barely have qualified as a flurry in Vermont, where I grew up) left me stranded in Baghdad for two days because the plane scheduled to bring me home was unable to leave Amman. By day’s end we had an accumulation of, perhaps, 2mm. Still, it was a decidedly mixed blessing. I have only four working days here at home before I hit the road again, and I work out of my apartment. Today was supposed to be the day my daughter returned to school full-time after a long convalescence entailed by a car accident. I was looking forward to a long, quiet day in which many things could be accomplished. But by 7:20a I had a bad feeling about things. Looking out my front window, coffee in hand, it dawned on me that in the previous ten minutes I had seen only one school bus come down the street, rather than the usual six or eight. With immense trepidation I picked up the phone. “Is there school today?” I asked the man who answered. “No, no, sir,” he said. “There is no school because of the snow.” This was one of those moments of parental epiphany. As a child in New England I lived for snow days. I gather my parents viewed them with dread. Suddenly, watching the microscopic snowflakes land in the empty street three floors below, I understood exactly how my parents felt a quarter-century ago. There goes the day. So much for getting significant amounts of work done. Sure enough, by 10am the DVD player was going non-stop. The fact that our heating was on the blink for most of the day did little to improve my mood (though surprisingly little to dampen my daughter’s). Worse news came around midday when a friend mentioned that Thursday is a holiday – Islamic New Year. No school then either. For forgetting this, I have no one but myself to blame. As I write this it is early evening and Halle is vigorously arguing that there will be no school tomorrow either. Things are too messed up around the city (not my impression when I was out this afternoon, but I’ve learned to avoid arguments like these). Her friends say so, and they are always right. Fine, I said. You get up at 6:30a tomorrow as usual. I’ll call the school at 7:15 and we’ll see what they say. I am desperately hoping for a warm front. grr
This is not utterly unknown here in Jordan, it happens roughly once each winter. Last year’s ‘storm’ (I use this word generously. Today’s snow virtually shut down the city but would barely have qualified as a flurry in Vermont, where I grew up) left me stranded in Baghdad for two days because the plane scheduled to bring me home was unable to leave Amman.

By day’s end we had an accumulation of, perhaps, 2mm. Still, it was a decidedly mixed blessing. I have only four working days here at home before I hit the road again, and I work out of my apartment. Today was supposed to be the day my daughter returned to school full-time after a long convalescence entailed by a car accident. I was looking forward to a long, quiet day in which many things could be accomplished. But by 7:20a I had a bad feeling about things. Looking out my front window, coffee in hand, it dawned on me that in the previous ten minutes I had seen only one school bus come down the street, rather than the usual six or eight. With immense trepidation I picked up the phone.

“Is there school today?” I asked the man who answered.

“No, no, sir,” he said. “There is no school because of the snow.”

This was one of those moments of parental epiphany. As a child in New England I lived for snow days. I gather my parents viewed them with dread. Suddenly, watching the microscopic snowflakes land in the empty street three floors below, I understood exactly how my parents felt a quarter-century ago. There goes the day. So much for getting significant amounts of work done. Sure enough, by 10am the DVD player was going non-stop. The fact that our heating was on the blink for most of the day did little to improve my mood (though surprisingly little to dampen my daughter’s).

Worse news came around midday when a friend mentioned that Thursday is a holiday – Islamic New Year. No school then either. For forgetting this, I have no one but myself to blame.

As I write this it is early evening and Halle is vigorously arguing that there will be no school tomorrow either. Things are too messed up around the city (not my impression when I was out this afternoon, but I’ve learned to avoid arguments like these). Her friends say so, and they are always right.

Fine, I said. You get up at 6:30a tomorrow as usual. I’ll call the school at 7:15 and we’ll see what they say. I am desperately hoping for a warm front.

grr
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