Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 3 - 2004 (mainly Iraq)
A Battle for Ears and Minds by David Crawford Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2004 AERIAL CAT AND MOUSE A Battle for Ears and Minds As Technology Gives New Voice To Dissent, a Saudi Vies to Be Heard By DAVID CRAWFORD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL LONDON -- For much of the Cold War, radio and television were powerful tools in the hands of governments trying to influence citizens in other countries. Now, media dissent is shifting to private citizens like Abdulazis Alkhamis. The 41-year-old head of the London-based Saudi Center for Human Rights has been engaged in a battle of wits against Saudi Arabian authorities who have sought to get his satellite-based radio and television stations off the air. He has scored notable victories -- such as radio broadcasts that last year led to the first demonstrations for human rights in the Saudi capital of Riyadh -- but also defeats, including a run-in with a Saudi bureaucrat who finagled transmission details out of one of his subcontractors. The broadcasts and countermeasures are part of a wider battle for the future of what was long seen as the most stable and pro-American government in the Arab world. Now, years of economic and political stagnation have left Saudi Arabia a brittle place -- one where Mr. Alkhamis's shoestring radio operation was able to send hundreds into the streets and trigger an aggressive effort to run him off the airwaves. It also highlights the power of new technologies to affect governments thousands of kilometers away. Technologies once too expensive for private lobbying groups are now affordable -- costs for round-the-clock satellite radio broadcasts have fallen sharply over the past few years to $5,000 - 4,000) a month. The result: an explosion of increasingly sophisticated dissent being beamed into living rooms around the world. Some stations have large potential audiences; Radio Voice of Iran broadcasts information critical of Tehran's Islamic government. Many stations seek to rally minority populations: The Voice of Oromo Liberation broadcasts to Ethiopia, seeking independence for the Oromo people in the Horn of Africa. Mr. Alkhamis wants democracy and more human rights in Saudi Arabia. A journalist who worked in Riyadh and London, Mr. Alkhamis discovered the power of satellite broadcasting after hosting a television show on a popular Arab network. Mr. Alkhamis and the show parted ways after just 10 months -- he says he was asked to leave; a programming director says Mr. Alkhamis chose to leave -- but Mr. Alkhamis is still a minicelebrity on the streets of London's Arab community, where people stop him to shake his hand. Mr. Alkhamis realized, however, that his secular beliefs weren't mainstream enough for most Saudis. So in 2002 he approached Saad Al Fagih, a dissident who heads the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, to host a satellite radio show. Mr. Fagih quickly agreed, and they named it Islah, or Reform, Radio. To handle the technical details, Mr. Alkhamis hired Ludo Maes, a Belgian short-wave specialist. Mr. Maes won't reveal the location of the short-wave transmitters, but Nick Grace of Clandestine Radio Watch, a group of radio buffs who publish a newsletter and run a Web site, says Reform Radio's transmitters were located in Lithuania -- a typical arrangement that takes advantage of transmitters left over from the Cold War. Mr. Maes also arranged for Reform Radio to be broadcast by satellite via a Deutsche Telekom uplink near Frankfurt. The satellite, called Hotbird, is owned by Eutelsat SA, a French company that leases broadcast bandwidth to brokers such as Deutsche Telekom. Mr. Alkhamis says satellite broadcasting was important because 80% of Saudi households own a satellite dish. "The government can't stop people from turning on their TV," he says. Reform Radio began broadcasting via satellite and short wave in December 2002. Listeners were encouraged to speak out against corruption and for a moderate Islamic government in Saudi Arabia. Trouble, though, soon set in. After four days of clear short-wave broadcasts, the station was hit by jamming -- signals emitted by a powerful opposing transmitter -- greatly diminishing the reception quality. Saudi Arabia won't say whether it is trying to block Mr. Alkhamis's stations, and officials declined to comment for this article. But Mr. Grace of Clandestine Radio Watch says members of his group tracked the jamming to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Mr. Maes in June received a letter from a lawyer representing the Saudi Embassy in Belgium threatening legal action "to halt the broadcasts." The letter accused Mr. Maes's company of inciting terrorism through the broadcasting of propaganda. Mr. Maes's lawyer responded by saying the broadcasts were legal and would continue. The Saudi Embassy and its lawyer declined to comment. Mr. Maes was perplexed by the letter. It contained detailed technical knowledge of Reform's broadcasts. Then he remembered a meeting he had earlier last year at a broadcasters' conference in South Africa. A man from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Information had made friends with him and over several bottles of wine, Mr. Maes now realizes he had told his new friend all the technical details of Reform's radio broadcasts. Says Mr. Maes, "I guess I told him too much." Without short wave, Reform Radio has relied on its satellite broadcasts. These are harder to jam, but because most Saudis get satellite broadcasts only on their television sets, Reform Radio had a problem reaching a wide audience. When people flip through the channels in search of a program, the radio channel shows nothing but a blank screen, so few people bother to stop and listen. So Messrs. Alkhamis and Fagih decided to set up a satellite television station. Unlike with radio, television broadcasting requires a license in most countries. In Croatia, however, Mr. Alkhamis was advised that he didn't need a license, and a television uplink was arranged in July. For a week, Reform Television was on the air. Mr. Fagih, liberal by Saudi standards but still orthodox on most religious issues, prohibited music for moral reasons. Mr. Alkhamis had no budget for video programming. Instead, he broadcast a picture of the Reform logo, along with text information scrolling across the screen. The audio was from the radio broadcast. Then the Croatian partner suddenly wanted a license. Reform Television was off the air again. But the television broadcast's brief existence was a turning point -- the program, low-budget as it was, brought Reform Radio to the attention of many Saudis. That became important in the weeks leading up to Oct. 12, when a government-backed conference began in Riyadh to discuss human-rights violations in other countries. Reform Radio called on Saudis to demonstrate peacefully for human rights at home. On Oct. 14, hundreds of young men in Saudi robes unfurled banners calling for human rights -- the first demonstration for human rights in the Saudi capital. Nearly 200 were arrested. A week later, the phone rang at the Usingen Earth Station near Frankfurt, where T-Systems, a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, controls and monitors television, radio and data beamed to satellites. On the line was an anonymous caller. "Stop broadcasting Reform Radio or we will jam you," he said, according to someone involved in the incident. About the same time, a powerful jamming beam turned the video monitor in the office to static. The jamming affected five TV programs broadcast via the same transponder, including several small commercial channels. When Deutsche Telekom stopped broadcasting Reform briefly, the jamming was stopped. A new anonymous phone call would then warn Deutsche Telekom not to resume broadcasting. On Oct. 25, Deutsche Telekom canceled its contract with Reform Radio. A representative for Deutsche Telekom declined to comment. The game of cat and mouse, though, has continued. In December, backed by new funding, Reform Television returned to the airwaves with a strategy designed to overcome jamming. Reform Television is now by itself on a satellite transponder, meaning jamming doesn't block other broadcasters' signals. If the jamming continues for 20 minutes or more, satellite owners can triangulate where the jamming is coming from. Since late December, the broadcast has been jammed only for brief intervals -- and flashes back on viewers' screens as soon as the jamming ends. Write to David Crawford at david.crawford@wsj.com1 |