Arab and Iranian Bloggers: Emerging Threat to Official Line

Arabs and Iranians are using blogs to exercise free speech — while governments work to stifle them.

By Vivian Salama
February 14, 2007
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=118010

On a visit to Tehran in spring 2006, Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan received a rather frosty sendoff from Iranian authorities. His blog, dedicated to discussions relating to Iranian politics, technology and pop culture, exposes a number of political and social issues that were once — or perhaps still are — unmentionables in Iran.

Citing a violation of Iran’s integrity, authorities interrogated Derakhshan, then forced him to sign an apology for his blogging activities before permitting him to leave, he describes in his blog.

Defiant of the warnings made by Iranian authorities, Derakhshan left his homeland and continued to blog. With some 20,000 subscribers, his site is one of the most widely read Persian-language blogs. After returning to Canada, his first order of business was to tell the world about his experience.

“The well-behaved official … warned me not to write anything about the incident in my blog or I’d be formally prosecuted next time I was in Iran. But I didn’t comply, since it was a silly and illogical demand,” he posted on his blog in September.

Over the past three years, blogging in the Middle East has functioned as a mechanism for free speech, but often at a high cost. In a land where oppression — political and social — is often the norm, citizens across Iran and the Arab world are frequently turning to blogs as a source for noncompliance — and many governments are not having it.

“[Internet] is a new threat just the way Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and BBC were a threat in the post World War II years,” says Nancy Beth Jackson, a journalist and professor at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs.

Blogging is believed to have begun in the Middle East in 2003 when an Iraqi using the cyber-ego “Salam Pax” (“Salam” is Arabic and “pax” is Latin for “peace.”) gained notoriety when he began publishing a blog about his life during the invasion.

“One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran,” read a post by Salam on his site, titled “Where is Raed?” on May 30, 2003. “Iraq will be off your media radar. Out of sight, out of mind. Lucky you, you have that option. I have to live it.”

Since then, Middle Easterners are emerging as citizen journalists, attending rallies and protests, then posting articles, photographs and video on their sites and the sites of others.

But it’s been a slow crawl because of government interventions and social setbacks. Countries with larger populations, such as Egypt and Iran, have extremely low Internet user numbers, with only 7 percent and 11 percent, respectively. Even Internet usage in wealthier nations like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar remain low at 35 percent and 27 percent, respectively (especially when compared to Israel’s 51 percent, for example). There are some 32 million Internet users in the Arab world (and Iran), out of a combined population of 347 million. That accounts for about 3 percent of the total Internet community worldwide, according to data from Internet World Stats, an online research group.

Those numbers are an increase, however. In 2002, the Arab world (and Iran) had only about 9 million users, according to a study by Madar, another online research group, and Reporters Without Borders. That accounted for 1.6 percent of the total Internet community worldwide.

Blogging has given many in the Arab world and beyond the chance to delve into subjects their societies may frown upon. Iran and Syria are classic examples, as their regimes impose domineering ideologies on society.

Jad Najjar, a Lebanese-American who made his mark blogging under the cyber ego “Con Man” about the summer 2006 Lebanese-Israeli war from New York, explains that blogging lends a voice to those under the watchful eye of Arab despotism. “In the Arab world, the implication can’t be more extraordinary: Many of those societies are so closed and oppressed. Blogging can help speed up democratization or can help make the society more free or liberal.”

“Blogging anonymously helped many to criticize their society, culture, politicians, system, government, taboos, etc., something they never got the chance to do before,” Haitham Sabbah, host of Bahrain-based Sabbah’s Blog told me in an e-mail interview.

In a study conducted in 2005 by Reporters Without Borders, a number of countries in the region were dubbed “Enemies of the Internet.” Top offenders often implement crackdowns and censorship on independent news publications, as well as chat rooms and blogs. This is usually done in an attempt to stifle the spread of political dissidence or to prevent people from challenging Islamic authority via the preaching of other religions or by use of sexual content. Harassment and intimidation are common, and imprisonment of bloggers is a growing trend.

“[The government] is pre-empting against the Internet because it is an expansion of the public sphere which breaks their monopoly or influence over public opinion,” Derakhshan, the Iranian-Canadian blogger, suggested to me in a live chat conversation.

In Saudi Arabia, aggressive tactics are increasingly being used to cap the spread of online pornography, drug use, conversion of Muslims by other religious groups and gambling via blogs or chat rooms, according to a study [PDF] conducted by the OpenNet Initiative, an online research group. The study adds that lesser actions are taken on blogs promoting homosexuality, women’s rights, alcohol use and religious extremism, and there was a noticeable decrease in the filtering of human rights Web sites in Saudi Arabia between 2002 and 2004.

Since Tunisia’s President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali has a solid monopoly on Internet access in his country, the government has a tight grip on virtually all online activity. All Internet cafés are state-run. According to the OpenNet Initiative and Human Rights Watch, Internet cafés are required by Tunisian law to have on-site monitors to prohibit the access of sites that are either sexually — or politically — explicit.

Blogs relating to Tunisia do exist, but any blog coming from within its borders generally discusses travel — blogs from outside Tunisia are filtered. As described in a study released by OpenNet Initiative in 2005, the state’s Internet service providers purchase access from Tunisia’s Internet agency, which combs through the sites and blocks those deemed deviant by government standards.

In Egypt, award-winning blogger and opposition activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah made international headlines in 2006 following his arrest at a pro-democracy demo after he managed to smuggle handwritten blogs out of prison with his wife. Traditionally, the arrest of political dissidents in Egypt often meant the temporary disappearance of the detainee.

Abdel-Fattah’s entries from behind bars offered people both in his political movement and around the world a window into this secret underworld — and almost in real time. The blog even featured illustrations detailing the prison layout, sketched by another imprisoned activist and passed along to Abdel-Fattah’s wife during visiting hours.

“Information is power,” notes Jackson, the journalist and professor at Columbia University. “That’s why Arab regimes — any government — have to be worried about the Internet. More information of all kinds and all degrees of ‘truth’ are now available.”

Gone are the days when the closest thing to free speech was the hushed banter of men (and only men) at qahwas (cafés). Now, anyone with access to a computer has access to a world of ideas — and their own thoughts are part of that ever-growing arena.

Blogs now serve as a platform for issues once considered taboo, or which encourage dialogue in the way of political opposition; they educate and they tear down stereotypes through discourse.

In fact, many governments realize this and are jumping on the bandwagon. In August, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joined the budding international cyber community by starting his own blog.

Ahmadinejad’s first post consisted of his life story, Iran’s Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. The blog included a poll questioning whether Israel and the United States were trying to start a new world war, plus a forum for visitors of the site to post comments. The site was dubbed a political stunt by some of his critics since Iran exercises some of the strictest censorship practices.

Blogs that function as a form of “citizen journalism” usually lack the degree of credibility that the mainstream media has for the simple reason that it is often extremely difficult to verify the blog’s sources of information. This is augmented by the strong tendency of Internet users in the region to maintain their anonymity, whether for the sake of privacy, or in fear of government or societal retribution.

Illiteracy and language barriers will continue to hinder a full-on Internet boom. According to the United Nations, some 65 million people in the Arab World are illiterate. Many of the regionally based blogs cater to those who write in any number of languages, though with 250 million Arabic speakers worldwide, the Arabic Web sites have a strong following.

Government surveillance continues, meanwhile, particularly with regard to blogs that host independently produced video clips. Blogs are an alluring forum for religious extremist groups looking to spread their propaganda to a broader audience given the expansive outreach of the Internet. This is a legitimate concern for many Arab and Muslim countries that continue to face their own domestic wars against religious extremism.

Regardless of exhaustive efforts by governments in the Middle East and North Africa to crack down on illicit Internet usage, their efforts are no match for the infectiousness of the World Wide Web.

“Blogging is just one aspect of the vastly expanded access to information brought by the Internet and satellite television,” explains Cairo-based journalist and blogger Issandr El-Amrani in an e-mail interview. “The security services are fighting a losing battle, and I think for the most part they know it.”

Cyber Diplomacy

FORWARD MAGAZINE

by Vivian Salama

Syria’s Ambassador to the US loves music, art, and his wife. He is keen on showing that to the rest of the world through his online blog. Ambassador Moustapha has redefined diplomacy by blogging.

Accessibility usually is not the first word that comes to mind when discussing Arab diplomats – that is, until recently. I first became interested in learning about Dr. Imad Moustapha. Syria’s Ambassador to the United States, while watching him on a number of American media networks during the Israel-Lebanon war of last summer. Often put on the hot seat by journalists trying to portray Syria in a certain light, Moustapha was extremely candid, often firm, but always polite.

Since much of my recent writing and research has focused on Arab blogs, I was even more intrigued to learn that the Ambassador, a computer scientist by trade, had launched a blog of his own. An Arab diplomat AND a blogger? Something didn’t add up. I eagerly searched for it online, all the while, anticipating pages full of sharp critiques and hardball politics. Instead, I discovered a window into Moustapha’s private life. I was taken aback: a clear Syrian patriot, the Ambassador’s personal blog comprised of page after page of personal information, from his love for art of all kinds, to the chronicles of his one-man book club. He even posts photos from vacations he’s taken – that is, mostly photos he’s taken of his wife. As for politics – it seems that’s just a day job for this multifaceted diplomat.

I had to meet him.

Usually when a reporter looks to meet any politician or diplomat, they must go through their press secretary. In the case of Arab diplomats, this is usually followed by weeks of run-around, missed calls, a little stalking and ultimately, a lot of frustration. Therefore, I was less than pessimistic when I clicked on the link that read “email me.” It amused me that he would tease his cyber visitors with such a thought.

Naturally, I was left dumbfounded when the Ambassador returned my email within a mere 12 hours with a simple “thanks” and “just say when.” In less than a week, I was sitting in the Syrian Embassy in Washington, DC, tea in hand, for a chat with this technocrat-turned-politician. Right up front, the Ambassador confessed to me that his colleagues in Syria’s diplomatic community are a bit perplexed by his desire to blog.

“I guess they think it’s unconventional,” he admits. “I have no image what a diplomat is because I am not a career diplomat. I’m not a technocrat either. I think a more accurate term to describe me is tech-savvy.”

In fact, it appears his cyber activities are so unconventional that the Ambassador has even met his share of Western skeptics. On 6 May, 2006, Moustapha wrote: “A couple of journalists who interviewed me last month in California asked me if I were really the author of my blog. When my face reflected utter astonishment, they felt a little embarrassed.” The 21st century is all about the citizen journalist, or blogger, as they have come to be known in cyberland. Online conversations are no longer casual; they are hardly private. Internet users from all four corners of the globe have taken on a new role.

It remains unclear who the first blogger was; a young American journalist named Justin Hall was cited by the New York Times in December 2004 as being “the founding father of personal blogging.” Hall would cover video game conferences, and then publish his reviews in the form of an online diary. Dozens of young men and women were quick to follow suit, establishing personal websites and updating them frequently, asking any visitor of the site to post their comments. Years later in Iraq, an individual by the screen name of Salam Pax (Salam is Arabic and Pax is Latin for the same word; “peace”) gained notoriety in May 2003 when he began publishing a blog about his life during the invasion. The blogs were honest and compelling – so much so, in fact, that skeptics began speculating whether he might be a US or Israeli agent, or a relative of Iraqi government officials set to spread misleading informationabout the war.

Once the Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Damascus, Moustapha originally developed his own website in 1997. The site would grow in sophistication and eventually evolved. “The phenomenon of blogs started, and I liked that you can get personal. I have a very stressful life.” In 2005, the Ambassador launched his blog and would eventually work his way up to receiving some 7,000 hits per week. Only shortly after the New York Times published an article about the blog did his site receive some 123,000 hits within a couple of days, and another 1,100 would come within three days of an article written in Israel’s Yediot Aharonot. Most notably, he says, was the tendency by people he was meeting for the first time to make reference to his blog. “Often I would be meeting someone and they would instantly connect with me, for instance by discussing a book that I wrote about in my blog.”

Moustapha and a small handful of others like him have kicked off a new, often controversial, trend within the diplomatic community. Jan Pronk, the UN’s Envoy to Sudan was recently expelled from the country after remarks he made on his personal blog angered the Sudanese government. Sudanese officials accused Pronk of “psychological warfare” after writing that the government had broken Security Council resolutions. While Ambassador Moustapha’s blog steers clear of political issues, he suggests that diplomats can play both sides of the fence. “Professionally, the UN envoy shouldn’t flagrantly be taking positions,” he says. “If you are trying to find solution to both sides, you shouldn’t take sides. This is not professional. That said, as a human being of course he has the right.”

Moustapha makes no secret of Syria’s reported attempts to limit Internet access to its citizens. Reporters Sans Frontiers, a non-profit media rights group, cites Syria as an “Enemy of the Internet,” saying it is a top offender for imprisoning cyber-dissidents. According to the group, the Syrian government also bans access to Arabic- language opposition sites and sites catering to the nation’s minority groups. The Ambassador insists the situation has improved tremendously in recent years, though he concedes that some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) function differently than others. “If you try to access my blog from one ISP in Syria you can’t, but then you try using another ISP and you can,” admits Moustapha.

He continues: “The situation is not that bad in Syria but it needs to evolve. We have different interpretations about what is legal and illegal; healthy and unhealthy. I personally belong to a school of thought that promotes the relaxation of state interference.” Moustapha goes so far as to cite an example from his days as a lecturer in Damascus. As a professor of computer science, firewalls were part of the puzzle for mastering the Internet. “When I was a professor, my students always tried to bypass firewalls,” he recalls. “I think all young people should be naughty. My students used to bypass these firewalls and then they would come and tell me. I would pretend to be cross with them but really it would make me happy – also because it meant I was a good teacher!” Nowadays, the Ambassador refers to himself as an “outside observer” with regard to his blogging. Since he and his wife Rafif welcomed a new addition to their family just days after his interview with FORWARD – a baby girl named Sidra – Moustapha confesses that his blog may divert from topics of art and literature to talk of bibs and baby nappies. Overall, the Ambassador’s weblog is meant to give Internet surfers incite into the man behind the politics. “It’s liberating. I never thought it would be that fun.”

From Long Island to Lebanon: Arabs blog in America

Arab Media & Society

By Vivian Salama 

 Just an ordinary Sunday afternoon in Massachusetts.  Nothing remarkable about the apartment either; picture the room of a typical engineering student. Stuff everywhere, chaos reigns.  But in the mind of this room’s inhabitant, a blogger known to his online readers by the pen-name ‘Jij,’ connections are being made in time and space.  For Jij, the violence being meted out on his country Lebanon on this lazy Sunday afternoon is all too real. So real he is gripped by thoughts of family far away:

“My room is a mess. I am sitting in the middle of a war zone. Every inch of the floor is covered with books, papers, clothes, empty bottles of water, electric wires, CDs, trash and cardboard boxes. It feels like my room is slowly moving to Beirut while I sit in it…I found some old photos behind my desk. One of them is a black and white picture of my parents. On the back it says ‘Aleppo 1976.’ They were so young. They were my age.”

 Jij, or Jihad Ibrahim as he is more commonly known, was not alone as an Arab in America writing about the Israel-Hizbulla War online (for blogging in Lebanon see also Sune Haugbolle). When Israel first began dropping bombs on Lebanon following the abduction of two soldiers by Hizbullah, Arabs in America turned not just to the coverage of Al Jazeera, LBC, and Al Arabiya, but also increasingly to the Internet (for mainstream media-blogging interaction, see Will Ward). Isolated from the events taking place overseas—not to mention from their loved ones caught up in the month-long war—Arab ex-pats wanted to feel as though they too had a voice to be reckoned with.  So, people in America and elsewhere went online to vent their frustrations, anxieties and criticisms of events.  The online response to the war shows once again how the Internet is being used to generate loose Diaspora communities that cross national boundaries.

Blogging the War

Responding to Western reporting of the conflict which many Arabs considered vague and biased, Arab-American bloggers felt a responsibility to encourage balanced dialogue during the Israel-Hizbullah War of July and August 2006.  This meant not only seeking out previously rarely-heard voices from the Arab World, but also playing some role in shaping narratives of the war. For many bloggers, this marked a rare shift to political discussion.  

“I only wrote politics during the war, because I really did not feel like writing about anything else,” admits Jihad Ibrahim, host of Salam Cinema.1 “There was nothing else on my mind.  That was the case for everyone online, I think. I felt compelled to write a lot because I felt there was an asymmetry in the way things were presented online.”

Ibrahim exhibits the struggle for those living in the Diaspora to combine an affinity for Western pop culture with a deep concern for contemporary political issues in his homeland, Lebanon.  On his homepage in late November, “Jij” posted a tribute to the late Hollywood director Robert Altman followed immediately by a long analysis of the assassination of Lebanese Christian leader, Pierre Gemayel.  “The country’s divisions are very deep and are not going away. Let’s hope nobody else dies in the meantime,” he wrote on November 23, 2006.  The post shows the subtle ways in which Arab-American bloggers negotiate their dualistic identities.

Bypassing Censorship in the Arab World

If blogs can function as a means for Arab-Americans to communicate directly with people in the Arab World, they may be particularly valuable to Arabs suffering from censorship and persecution due to their online activities.  Often, those who discuss politics in North America do not feel the same pressures felt by bloggers in the Middle Eastern countries—that is, as long as they are outside the region.  Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan was wrapping up a visit to Tehran last year when authorities detained him at the airport.  His blog, http://hoder.com/weblog/, which is dedicated to discussions relating to Iranian politics, technology and pop culture, addresses a number of subjects considered taboo in Iran.  His website even offers tips for setting up personal blogs and getting around censorship tools.

Citing a violation of Iran’s integrity, authorities interrogated Derakhshan, then forced him to sign an apology for his blogging activities before permitting him to leave.  He says his experience in Iran has only reinforced his desire to continue blogging.  “[The Iranian government] wrongly sees me as a threat,” says Derakhshan.  “They think I am trying to topple the regime, but I’m not.” 

A number of regimes in the Middle East are infamous for cracking down on bloggers to cap the spread of online dissidence.  However, given that there is greater room for free expression in America, Arab-Americans usually feel at liberty to criticize Arab governments without fearing the same retribution. Moroccan-American journalist and blogger, Issandr El-Amrani concedes to this: “I blog under my own name partly because the blog is linked to my journalistic writing and partly because I have more freedom to do so as a US citizen,” he says. 

According to Nancy Beth Jackson, a journalist and professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York, Arab regimes are still trying to come to grips with the way technology is changing the dynamics of opposition. “It is easier [for governments] to control the message in a newspaper than online,” she explains. “Governments controlling the press can also control the message. Try that with Google!”

With that in mind, to what extent is blogging by Arab-Americans linked to opposition movements within Arab countries?  In fact, blogs more commonly touch on personal stories or pop culture than politics.  Most act primarily as a means of communication between friends.  As the majority of bloggers are young (a study conducted last year by Perseus, an online research group, found that 58 percent of bloggers worldwide are between the ages of 13 and 19; 36 percent are in their 20’s, blogs are fertile ground for social exploration and interaction. Many Arab-Americans who were previously isolated from young people in the Middle East find themselves more aware than ever before about the issues and interests of their peers overseas. So Arab-American blogs are more likely to be socially rather than politically threatening to Arab regimes.

Nevetheless, the best-read blogs are likely to adopt political causes. “The best blogs, in my opinion, are quite focused and issue-driven and can act as a platform for activism or to bring attention to a particular issue,” notes El-Amrani. “They also often help tear down false representations that people have of certain countries or cultures.”

In some sense then, even blogs which are not strictly political can have some political impact by changing readers’ opinions. 

Blogging to the Homelands

For the most part, Arab-American bloggers believe their online writing is more than just a hobby; it is a way of life.  Many say they seek to provide a service both to people in Diaspora communities seeking discussion about their ‘homelands’ or looking to engage in debate beyond the confines of the mainstream media. 

“I think an Arab-American is expected to have certain views on certain issues, so it’s not so much that there are pros or cons about raising these issues, but it’s really all about how those issues are brought up and discussed,” says American-born Egyptian blogger Paul Kist, host of the site Singing in the Shower. He relishes the opportunity to interact with people of other cultural backgrounds online, and in the process break down barriers.  Kist, 28, a resident of Long Island, New York, targets those with “preconceived notions, biases, or hatred” with the aim of broadening their horizons, and ultimately persuading them to think differently—to “remember, ‘he’s no different than me.’”

But if blogs help readers from different cultural stand points understand each other, they also allow for widely divergent views of the world. This is as true within the Arab expatriate community as it is between Arabs and non-Arabs.  In their blog “Kompashun” dubbed a “Podium for the Powerless,” Arab-American bloggers Jad Najjar and Omar Farha face off with essays and posts that reflect their polar views on the Middle East conflict, particularly when discussing the role of Hizbullah in Lebanon. 

“Thoughtfulness is an important aspect of our writing and our mission because the mainstream media has no choice but to leave out too much from its reporting, which ultimately facilitates the average American’s ignorance,” says Najjar.

Many Arab American bloggers express frustration with the mainstream media; others with politics itself.  Such frustration can be sensed by the following entry written by Dr. As’ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and host of the blog “Angry Arab News Service:”

Saturday, December 02, 2006:

“Nothing annoys me about the March 14th Movement in Lebanon and the opposition movement is their frequent invocation of the word “civilized” to describe their activities and movements. I just heard a Hizbullah leader talk about the “civilized” nature of the protests. Civilized? What is with that obsession? Count me out of any movement that aims at “civilized” behavior. They all want to be like the White Man. It is a disease in Lebanon, afflicting all political movements and groups.”

This is just one more example of the potential for bloggers to participate in framing their own narratives.  This is particularly important for Arabs in America, a country where some mainstream media outlets have only ratcheted up their patriotism in the wake of the so-called “War on Terror,” a trend which often results in associating terrorism uncritically with the Middle East.  Blogs can allow Arab-Americans to find their own voice which fuses a sense of belonging in the United States with a sense of attachment and pride in ethnic identity.

Bloggers of Middle Eastern origin writing from abroad for Arab and Iranian audiences can help forge a new sense of Diaspora community and identity. “Blogs reinforce communities for sure, since they give voice to their scattered members,” admits Derakhshan.  “Technology has also made it very easy to get in touch with things at home. The information gap has never been narrower between exiled Iranians [for example] and those who live in Iran.”

This is particularly true for Lebanese living abroad trying to keep track of fast-changing events in their homeland. “I wanted to feel like I was taking part in the protests that culminated in the historic March 14 demonstration, which in turn epitomized the Cedar Revolution,” says Lebanese-American blogger Raja Abu Hassan, one of six contributors of the Lebanese Bloggers website.  “I wanted to communicate with other Lebanese and find common ground based on liberal ideals and a love of our country.”

But this is not just true of politics; events of profound cultural significance can also galvanize the blogging Diaspora. For example, when Egypt’s legendary author and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz died earlier this year, blogs around the world paid tribute to his writing.  For those living in the Diaspora, it gave them the opportunity to commemorate his legacy by sharing memories of the stories they or their parents grew up reading. 

But despite the potential for footloose interaction, blogging is not without its own barriers. For example, it likely that the perceptions of Arab-American bloggers, like those of the Arabs overseas, are shaped by their environment.  Bloggers in the United States may hone in on scrutinizing (or hailing) the Bush Administration’s policies in the Middle East, whereas Arab bloggers in Egypt or Palestine, for example, tend to place heavier emphasis on the troubles within their own regimes. 

More significantly, perhaps, is the role language plays constraining interaction.  For the online community in the Arab world, illiteracy is a major impediment since some 65 million Arab adults cannot read, according to the United Nations.  In the United States, English is the mother tongue for many of the young Arab-Americans taking to the World Wide web.  While a few sites do cater to entries written in both English and Arabic, the majority of those hosted by Arab-Americans are exclusively in English.  Certainly this creates a language barrier between the Arabic-only online community in the Middle East and the English-only community of Arab-American bloggers. 

One might also question the accuracy of political and social assessments made about the Arab world by those living in the Diaspora.  Some web-hosts based in the Arab world caution that their peers overseas represent, in the words of one blogger, a “romanticized” view of the events taking place in the Arab world, and that their blogs must be taken merely at face value. 

“Arab-Americans are usually delusional about the country and culture they left behind,” suggests Cairo-based Egyptian blogger “Sam Adam” (his penname), host of the popular blog Rantings of a Sandmonkey.  “They usually think in terms of ‘I am Egyptian American’ or ‘I am Muslim American,’ so they come loaded with the prejudices, beliefs and preconceived notions that their families, community, other Arab friends and the media tell them.  This definitely reflects in their blogs.”

Nevertheless, committed Arab-American bloggers adamantly defend the medium’s social and political potential. “Bloggers naturally form communities that shape public opinion—I think they can have a role in shaping the perceptions of conflicts and on-going issues in the region,” notes El-Amrani.

is particularly significant for Arab-Americans who found themselves—their culture and religion—thrust into the spotlight following the attacks of September 11, 2001.  As media images show incessant images of violence and destruction in the Middle East, Arab-American bloggers find themselves in a sensitive—but vital—position to challenge stereotypes of Arabs living in the Diaspora while equally strengthening solidarity among them.  “The words we use can be powerful tools,” notes Kist.  “They can build, or they can destroy—I try to remind myself of this, so I can keep contributing back, and hopefully affect someone in a positive way.”

Vivian Salama is a contributing editor for Arab Media & Society. She spent nearly three years as a journalist and commentator in the Middle East, recently returning to New York to pursue a Master’s degree in Middle East Studies at Columbia University. She is an award-winning journalist who has reported for Newsweek, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, The Daily Star and the Jerusalem Post. Prior to working in the Middle East, Salama was a producer for NBC News in New York.

The Iraq insurgency for beginners

FROM SALON.com, A VERY INFORMATIVE BREAKDOWN OF THE OFTEN DAUNTING IRAQI INSURGENCY:

 

Sunni insurgent groups (top row): Jihad Factions of Iraq, Al-Qassas Brigade, Al-Rashedeen Army, Islamic State of Iraq, Mujahideen Army; (bottom row) Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI), 1920 Revolution Brigades, IAI.

A leading expert on the insurgency clarifies who is shooting whom in Iraq, the growing power of al-Qaida, the influence of Iran, and the only thing left for the U.S. to do.

By Kevin Berger

Mar. 02, 2007 | For somebody in America, Evan Kohlmann has a remarkably intimate view of the Iraq insurgency. In 2004, he founded GlobalTerrorAlert.com, a clearinghouse of virtually every communiqué — video, audio, Internet, printed — issued by insurgent groups in Iraq. For three years, Kohlmann has pored through every one of them, with the help of Arabic translators, and emerged with a clear-eyed view of who is fighting whom in Iraq and why. Given his insights, Kohlmann has been put to work as a consultant by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA.

Spending time in Kohlmann’s archives is an extraordinary experience. It strips away the cloudy myths of the insurgency steamed up by U.S. politicians and pundits and leaves you with a bracing portrait of roving insurgent groups, more like neighborhood gangs, with their own identities and insignias, progressively growing more violent. I wanted to talk to Kohlmann for the simple reason that as much as I follow the news about the Iraq war, I have always felt slightly frustrated at not knowing who the enemy really is. Kohlmann says I’m far from alone. And he’s talking about people way over my head. “I find it tragic that people in Washington, D.C., who are the heads of major congressional committees, and deciding things about Iraq, don’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites,” he says. Kohlmann insists he is nonpartisan. He spoke from his office in New York.

Every day you look at Iraq through the lens of insurgent videos and Internet postings. What do you see?

A picture of fundamentalism. Shiite fundamentalism clashing with Sunni fundamentalism clashing with American fundamentalism. We have tried imposing things upon Iraq that are totally foreign to it. Now each side is unwilling to acknowledge the right of the other to have a voice in what’s going on. It’s a disaster.

Describe the insurgency.

You have to be careful when you say “insurgency.” You have to distinguish between the Shiite militias and the actual insurgency, which is the Sunni groups. Most of the Shiite militia activity is not directed at the U.S., it’s directed at the Sunnis. The Sunni insurgency, meanwhile, is directed at everyone — the U.S., the Iraqi government, the militias.

The best way to divide it up is into three camps. You have Sunni nationalists, initially a large portion of the insurgency; the moderate Sunni Islamists, who use Islamic terminology and talk about establishing a government based on Sharia law; and you have the Salafists, like the group Al-Qaida in Iraq. To them, the fight is not about preserving the borders of Iraq, it’s about revolution, about rebuilding something completely new on the basis of some kind of idyllic Muslim empire.

What drives people to join the insurgency?

I’ve called up families of fighters and when I ask that question, the response is always the same: Wouldn’t you? They are extremely upset about what’s going on in Iraq. Some of them have a burning hatred for the U.S. They see the U.S. as imposing its will on their countries. Some of them have a burning desire to be a missionary and martyr for Islam. You have people who have broken out of prison and gone to fight in Iraq. It’s now a vacuum sucking in every disaffected voice in the region.

How has the insurgency evolved?

When the U.S. invasion began in 2003, it was mainly Baathists, ex-Iraqi military, and Saddam loyalists. They were Iraqi nationalists, opposed to foreign occupation, who saw Iraq as a competitor with Egypt for the control of the Arab world. It was an issue of national pride. Video recordings and communiqués were coming out from everybody who had an AK-47. But as the war dragged on, some of these groups started coalescing; others were destroyed. Only the strongest, the most hardcore, the best financed, the people with the most training, survived, despite airstrikes and the arrest of their senior leaders by the U.S. military.

Do you call the insurgents “terrorists”?

No. The nationalist insurgents have done a lot of really brutal things. But in general they are people opposed to foreign occupation. If foreign occupation were removed, they wouldn’t necessarily sit down and shake hands with Shiites. But at the end of the day, they would like to see a peaceful Iraq where Sunnis and Shiites can at least coexist with each other. Terrorists are people who set off bombs in marketplaces and deliberately kill innocent civilians for no good reason. Any suicide bombing is a terrorist act. It’s not an insurgent act. There is no military objective in it. The vast majority of suicide bombings that take place in Iraq are either the work of al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked groups. Al-Qaida are the terrorists.

Who constitutes al-Qaida in Iraq now?

It includes everyone from past conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya to people from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, Syria and Jordan. A growing number of Iraqis continue to join its ranks every day. The people in the nationalist groups feel intensely hurt to see Iraq being torn apart. This is their homeland. And now their groups are taking on an Islamic tinge or else becoming straight-up jihadist groups controlled by al-Qaida. A lot of people joining the jihadist groups are now convinced there is no future left for Iraq, that the only future left is with al-Qaida, the only people who can protect them is al-Qaida.

David Kilcullen, an astute counterinsurgency expert, told George Packer in the New Yorker that what drives a lot of young men to become jihadists is a “sense of adventure, wanting to be in the big movement of history that’s happening right now.” Do you agree?

Oh, yeah. For some of these guys, it’s like a safari. They see themselves as knights of the round table. In fact, that’s how al-Qaida now sells the insurgency to them: Are you a chivalrous knight or a coward?

Has the U.S. invasion, in fact, strengthened al-Qaida?

Definitely. And this is the depressing thing. The hardcore true believers of al-Qaida at one time were probably 10 percent of the insurgent groups. Now they’re 50 percent. Al-Qaida is growing in places it shouldn’t. You have groups like the Islamic Army of Iraq that have transitioned from being traditional insurgents to extremist ones. Or take a popular insurgent group called the 1920 Revolution Brigades. The very name of the group has a nationalist, not Islamist meaning. And yet very recently, the head of al-Qaida’s Islamic State in Iraq issued a statement in which he said that people from the 1920 Revolution Brigade were now fighting alongside al-Qaida. The U.S. is failing miserably at containing the spread of al-Qaida.

Why are the more moderate Muslim groups siding with al-Qaida?

They have no choice. There’s a group called the Iraqi Islamic Resistance Front. They are far from angels. They recently released a video of supposedly a chemical rocket attack on a U.S. base in Samarra. But they were also the subject of a flier that was being posted around in Ramadi. The flier was signed by al-Qaida and said the Front was working with the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi government, and so is no longer a legitimate group. The Front was furious. They issued a statement saying, “We’re not working with the government, we’re with you guys, so don’t issue these kinds of accusations.” So there’s a lot of pressure to work with al-Qaida or be targeted by it.

Does that message go out to people on the streets too?

Yeah, sure. That’s the sad thing. If you work with the U.S. or the Iraqi government, you are targeted by al-Qaida. If you work with anyone else, you are targeted by the Shiites. It’s a lose-lose situation. And what’s amazing is this slide has all happened over the past 12 months. It’s pegged to one singular event, the spark, which is the 2006 bombing of the Askariya Mosque in Samarra. Al-Qaida never claimed direct responsibility for it but they did call the mosque the heretical idol and mocked the fact that the Shiites were upset about it. Afterward, it was saying, “We’ve been fighting Shiite militias all along.” To broaden its appeal, it said, “We’re declaring the formation of an Islamic state in Iraq. This is no longer just an insurgent movement. We now have a state that we’re fighting for, so come and join our cause. You’re either with us or against us.” Sure enough, we started seeing more groups edging toward al-Qaida’s jihadists umbrella network.

Would al-Qaida have blown up the mosque if the U.S. wasn’t in Iraq?

There wouldn’t be an al-Qaida in Iraq if the U.S. wasn’t there. The story of al-Qaida in Iraq begins in 2003. We handed al-Qaida exactly what it was looking for, a real war in the Middle East where it could lead the way. Al-Qaida is like a virus. It goes for weak victims and it uses conflicts to breed. Iraq gives al-Qaida a training ground, a place to put recruits in combat. If they come back from battle, you have people who have fought together, trained together, you have a military unit. As Richard Clarke has said, it was almost like Osama bin Laden was trying to vibe into George Bush the idea: “Invade Iraq, invade Iraq.” This was an opportunity they seized with amazing alacrity. As brutal and terrifying as what they’ve done is, you have to acknowledge they capitalized on an opportunity that we handed them.

What happened to the U.S. message of democracy?

It totally failed. The idea of Western-style democracy in Iraq doesn’t appeal to anyone. It was our own myth. We thought that if we get rid of Saddam Hussein, people would come together and celebrate and democracy would reign throughout the Middle East. The people who thought that up are people who think Iraq is like Texas. Iraq is not Texas. To Iraqis, tribal affiliations, religion and family mean a lot more than saying, “I’m from Iraq.” You know we’re doing a bad job of communicating our own message when we’re losing the propaganda war to people who cut other people’s heads off on camera. Think about it: People in one of the most Westernized countries in the Middle East would rather trust al-Qaida than the United States. That’s a terrible sign of things to come.

How many total insurgents are there?

Somewhere in the tens of thousands. I would say al-Qaida, including the various groups in its alliance, has about 15,000 people, probably more. To give you an idea of its strength, consider that it has sacrificed 800 of its own members in suicide bombings. We know that through direct evidence because al-Qaida has videotaped and recorded many of the bombings. And remember, those 15,000 are just on the Sunni side, and constitute just one group out 10 or more.

The U.S. is fighting both the insurgency and Shiite militias, right?

Right. But the Shiites aren’t a simple group either. They have divided themselves into two factions: the pro-Arab Shiites who are Iraqi nationalists and the pro-Iranian Shiites. There have been some incidences involving the Shiite Mahdi Army and the U.S. and British military. But the scope of activity between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military is minute. The militias pose less of a day-to-day insurgent problem and more of a problem in the way they have infiltrated the Iraqi police force and other Iraqi government services, particularly the Interior Ministry, and how they arranging the murder of Sunnis through those agencies. They are creating instability, and that’s the main reason we’re going after them. It’s also the No. 1 reason why Sunnis fight and are upset: The Shiite militias have essentially taken over the law enforcement and are using it to murder Sunnis.

We invaded Iraq to rectify crimes by Saddam Hussein against the Shiites, right? We wanted to bring him to justice. What the Sunni groups are saying is, “How come there’s no justice to people who are drilling holes in people heads right now? Never mind 20 years ago.” They have a point. Dozens of bodies turn up every day in Baghdad but nobody is paying heed to them. So the Sunnis are saying to the U.S., “If you guys are not going to prosecute the people responsible for this, then we’re going to take matters into our own hands.” And the Shiites are saying the same thing. They’re saying, “You can’t protect us from al-Qaida’s suicide bombers. Your idea of strengthening security is to crack down on the Mahdi Army, who are the only ones preventing suicide bombers from coming into Sadr City. Why should we trust you? We should rely on ourselves. You can’t trust anyone but your own people.” It’s an arms race. It just builds up and up.

How do the militias stack up against the insurgents in number of fighters?

There are probably fairly equal numbers of militiamen to Sunni insurgents, if not more. Given that they’re waging open war with each other, and neither one seems to be winning outright, the answer is that one doesn’t outnumber the other to create an imbalance.

Is a surge of 21,000 new U.S. troops going to help?

I don’t think any number of new troops is going to help unless we’re going to station troops on every single corner of every single street in every single city in Iraq. The problem is the insurgents are not just a foreign force. You’re talking about such a diverse organization and network, where even major groups, when their leaders are killed or captured, still persist. They’re self-sustaining operations.

Look at Fallujah. In late 2004, we pumped that place full of overwhelming military force. We went block by block, street by street, and liquidated the place. We got rid of all the insurgents. We chased al-Qaida out of there. That was undoubtedly a military victory. But was that the end of al-Qaida? No, it moved to other cities, established bases in Ramadi, Samarra and Mosul. And Fallujah itself? It was relatively stable but in the past year has started to fall apart. And once again, insurgents are attacking Fallujah.

What do you make of the recent furor over the New Yorker that the U.S. is taking part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and Syria and that a “by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups”?

The idea that the U.S. is bolstering Sunni extremist groups in Iraq deliberately is pretty ridiculous and sounds awfully conspiratorial to me. Most of the Sunni groups consider themselves to be antithetical to the very idea of the United States. Even if we were to offer to help them for some strange reason, they would never knowingly work with us. But I can’t say the same for Saudi Arabia and other supposed U.S. allies in the Gulf region, who don’t have any soldiers in Iraq at risk from Sunni insurgents, and who would do just about anything to curb the expansion of Iran.

Contrary to what U.S. leaders are always saying, do you think the insurgency, and militias, have, ultimately, won the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people?

Unfortunately, I do. But I tell you this: Between August and December of 2005, there was a dramatic loss of influence of al-Qaida in Iraq. People associated with groups like the Islamic Army in Iraq, mainstream Sunni insurgent groups, were not so sure about killing people at a polling station. Al-Qaida was threatening to kill anyone, Sunni or Shiite, who tried voting. But the Sunni insurgents were saying, “No, we’re not going to let the Shiites take power willingly. We’re going to try and beat them anyway we can.” At the time, I could see the various Iraq tribes saying, “Forget this, al-Qaida, maybe we can achieve reconciliation with the Shiites.” The U.S. could have capitalized on that friction. But it didn’t. A month went by, there was bickering about the makeup of the government and the results of the election, and we weren’t hands-on enough in trying to broker out some kind of truce. Then came the bombing of the mosque in Samarra and it was too late.

What should the U.S. have done to capitalize on the friction at the time after the elections?

We needed to make sure that the Shiite militias were kept in check. And that’s exactly what we didn’t do. Following the bombing of the mosque, there should have been a serious clampdown. It was a matter of trying to stop the cycle of reprisals. But we did nothing while the Shiites went on a rampage.

Do you think the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq?

I’m afraid not. If we withdraw from Iraq right now, there’s no doubt what will happen. First there’s going to be a war for control of Baghdad and then once Baghdad is ripped to the ground, the battle is going to spread across Iraq. It could potentially be like Rwanda. Right now, hundreds of people are being killed each month, which is awful and horrifying in itself. Imagine if that figure was 100 times bigger. Also, if we withdraw, a widespread war is going to be entirely our responsibility. It’s easy to say it’s Iraqis killing Iraqis. But nobody else is going to see it that way. Everyone is going to affix blame to us. We will ultimately cause a situation that forces us to reinvade Iraq and create even more casualties. It’s an awful Catch 22.

I take it you have little faith in the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi government is a joke. A very sad joke. It’s beset on all sides. It’s been thoroughly infiltrated by militia groups and has no sway whatsover among Sunnis, even moderate Sunnis. It is completely incapable of defending itself, despite whatever bizarre claims Prime Minister Maliki may make. If we were to withdraw, it would collapse. An Iraqi government would only work if it included both Shiites and Sunnis, and there are precious few Sunnis who are working in Iraqi government, and even the ones who do are under constant threat.

So what’s the solution?

We have to give people a reason to stop supporting al-Qaida. And the only way to do that is to punish the people who are harming them. We have to show that democratic forces can also hold up justice. Right now, democracy for Iraqis amounts to Shiites in control of the police force and running everything. The things that might convince Sunnis to move back in the other direction would be a real step at trying to reform the Iraqi police force, the Interior Ministry, and try and bring some of the individuals in those places, which have committed gross crimes, including crimes on the scale of Saddam Hussein, to justice.

Does the Bush administration have the smarts to figure that out?

I’m not sure they do. I thought perhaps, in invading Iraq, they had some long-term view that nobody else could see. But that hope faded very quickly. The Bush administration didn’t reach out to anyone credible when they were asking about, for instance, the connections between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Anybody with any real knowledge of the region would have told them there are no connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The only people who believed that nonsense were lunatics.

If I was going to invade Iraq, the first thing I would do is commission the top history experts, top geographical experts, top cultural experts, and sit them down at a table and say, “This is what I’m thinking about doing. Is this feasible?” That was never done. Nobody in their right mind would have taken a look at Bush’s plan and said, “Oh, yeah, that’s going to work.” It’s not possible that it could work. Every historic precedent works directly against Bush’s plan. I know it’s easy to say, but the best solution is not to have invaded at all.

– By Kevin Berger