Is journalism failing to properly report the Arab Spring?
Chris Doyle,�director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding identifies six shortcomings in the media's approach to the Middle East. They include the lack of Arabic speaking journalists, rushed reporting, and a love of sensationalism. He concludes:
There are many commendable reporters who have illuminated our understanding. Those reporting on the ground have typically shown remarkable courage and bravery to feed our 24/7 hunger for constant updates. They have risked life and limb, with many being arrested in Libya, and some have even been sexually assaulted. Yet as one looks back over the last three incredible months, one cannot help feeling that the extraordinary images have yet to be matched by extraordinary analysis.
In a similar vein, Joshua Landis, director of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma, writes:
The real story is not the fake Gay Girl in Damascus ? a juicy distraction that has dominated the airwaves for the last two days ? but the way so many journalists cannot check their stories before deadlines because they are not permitted into Syria and don't understand Arabic. The Syrian government doesn't even try to add English subtitles to its version of events and Youtube recordings, making them useless to the thousands of foreign reporters who cannot understand Arabic. The result is bad reporting that often relies on one side of the story.
It should be pointed out that Landis, like the rest of us also fell for the Gay Girl in Damascus hoax.
But is right about standards of reporting and should journalists covering the region be Arabic speakers?
Asked how long it takes to learn Arabic, our Middle East editor, Ian Black, wryly said "a lifetime". Google translation is a tempting substitute in the meantime, but notoriously unreliable.
We are doing our best to check information with over-stretched Arabic speaking colleagues, but should we start taking a course?
Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British understanding explains why foreign intervention is not an option in Syria as it is in Libya.
For all the daily brutality, there seems to be little appetite to open the doors for foreign action. Syrians are well versed in the history of foreign occupation and interference ? Syrians also tend to be unimpressed by Nato's actions in Libya ? For these reasons, Syrian opponents of the regime are intensely nervous of collaborating with external actors. Very few opponents of the regime have called for the UN to take action.
A leading Syrian writer and former political prisoner, Louay Hussein, told me from Damascus: "We have to distinguish between foreign intervention and foreign pressure. We oppose foreign intervention but we would like to have foreign pressure based on support for human rights, not the support of a particular party against the other according to their own self-interest."
The lack of enthusiasm in Syria is matched internationally.
Here is a lunchtime summary.
? Syria: There are reports of a scorched earth policy by Syrian troops around Jisr al-Shugour, with the military burning land and killing cattle in the area (see 12.58pm). Troops have also advanced on a second protesting town, Maarat al-Numaan (see 9.57am). Reports say Turkey is reconsidering its softly-softly approach towards Syria (see 11.58am). The Arab League's general secretary, Amr Moussa, said the situation in Syria "should not be left in this state" (see 9.38am).
? Yemen: The condition of the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh is "tragic", according to a Yemeni official; he is badly burned and has a throat problem (see 12.57pm). Saleh is in Saudi Arabia, where he received treatment after a rocket attack. Saba, the Yemeni state news agency, said Saleh's health was improving and he would return home soon (see 11.21am). There were also reports of a mass anti-government rally in Sana'a, the capital.
? Libya: Muammar Gaddafi's forces have pulled out of Kikla; rebels are now in control (see 12.45pm). In Tripoli, residents are becoming more willing to criticise the Libyan leader, although an uprising there is still unlikely (see 12.43pm). Nato has struck the area around Gaddafi's compound again (see 12.34pm), as well as the town of al-Jufreh. Gaddafi's forces struck a refinery in Misrata, damaging rebel fuel supply lines (see 11.56am). Gaddafi's troops also fired into neighbouring Tunisia (see 10.27am).
Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (left), has spoken out about his worries for Christians across the Middle East as a result of the Arab spring.
Williams told the BBC it was an anxious time for the region's Christians, and said Christians in Syria were aware things were building up to breaking point. He claimed there had been more killings of Christians and burning of churches In Egypt than have been reported.
Mohammed Sulum, a farmer from near Jisr al-Shughour who fled to Turkey, appears to confirm Syria's scorched earth policy.
Sulum, who says he does not know the whereabouts of his wife and sons, said troops burned 500 acres of land and killed cattle in the area, according to a translation by my Arabic-speaking colleague Mona Mahmood.
He also claimed helicopter gunships shot at residents while they were burying a resident who was killed earlier.
He insisted that the civilians of the area were peaceful. "We don't have the military. We are not armed, but they still shot us," he said.
He said the regime had branded everyone a terrorist, even the cows and sheep.
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Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh (left), has developed a throat problem, a senior Yemeni official in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, told the Associated Press news agency. Saleh is being treated in Riyadh along with several other government officials who were wounded in a rocket attack on the presidential compound on 3 June.
In a telephone conversation with AP, the official said he could not identify the nature of the throat problem, and would not be named because of the sensitive nature of the information. The prime minster was badly burned. His condition is "tragic," the official said. The Shura Council speaker is in critical condition, has lost his left eye and will be treated further in London. One deputy prime minister lost his left leg. The other deputy was stable, he said.
Gaddafi's forces have pulled out of the town of Kikla, about 90 miles (150km) south-west of Tripoli, and rebel fighters are now in control, Reuters news agency reports.
Paul Owen has just been speaking to Xan Rice in Tripoli, who has found residents of the Libyan capital becoming more willing to criticise Muammar Gaddafi.
The vast majority of [people he has spoken to] if they're willing to talk are anti-Gaddafi and say he's finished and that it's time for him to go. Just the fact that they're willing to talk, even if in the back of their shop out of earshot of everyone else, seems to be a change because a few months ago people were too scared even to do that.
But he said an uprising in Tripoli still seemed unlikely. "The police have still got a pretty tight grip on the city. And people I've talked to, the attitude seems to be more, you know, we're waiting for the end, we know it's going to come but we're waiting. And in particular they're waiting for one of the rebel forces to the south, the west or the east perhaps to advance on Tripoli and get to the gates of Tripoli, in which case the revolt will come from within. But it seems unlikely that there's going to be an uprising here imminently."
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Why are members of Yemen's inner circle so intent on destroying each other, asks Sarah Phillips from the University of Sydney in an article for Foreign Policy magazine.
The article is enticingly headlined: "Who tried to kill Ali Abdullah Saleh?" It doesn't quite answer that, although the newly-arrived FBI may yet find answers, but Phillips clearly maps out the struggle in Yemen's inner circle between Saleh and General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who defected in march.
"By joining the opposition movement, Ali Mohsen and other defectors from the regime have not necessarily heralded a new era for the Yemeni people. Instead, they appear to be settling old scores," Phillips warns.
The "combustible" rivalry between Saleh's family, the Ahmar family and Ali Mohsen is the key to the political crisis she says. She concludes this and not counter-terrorism should be the main concern of the international community.
Yemen's modern history is full of short, sharp conflicts, but it is when outside powers have intervened, as in the 1962-70 bloody northern civil war - which became a proxy fight between Egypt and Saudi Arabia - that war has become most intractable. This observation provides all the more reason to worry about the deep involvement of Saudi Arabia and the United States, with its myopic focus on fighting al-Qaida, in Yemen's crisis. Both players may be helping to set the stage for the regime's internal rivalries to explode - with dire consequences for the Yemeni people.
The Associated Press news agency is reporting that a Nato air strike has again targeted the area near Muammar Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli.
A column of grey smoke could be seen rising from the area around Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound before dawn Tuesday. The explosion from the early morning strike could be felt at a hotel where journalists stay in the capital.
Turkey is considering changing its softly-softly approach to Syria, the Turkish daily H�rriyet reports.
Only a day after its general elections [on Sunday], Turkey has begun a substantial re-evaluation of its Syrian policy, as more than 7,000 Syrians have now fled to Hatay while another 15,000 mass near the border, according to reports.
"Turkey will keep engaging with Syria [to urge it to enact reforms and abstain from violence], but Syria's attitude will determine our position," a ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity told the H�rriyet Daily News.
The Turkish foreign ministry held a coordination meeting Monday with the participation of the prime minister's office, during which officials made "a political evaluation on Syria", according to diplomats.
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, has set great store by his policy of "zero problems with the neighbours", but the Syrian crisis is testing this.
Here is a round-up of the latest news from Libya:
? According to Reuters news agency, the rebels are edging slowly from Misrata towards Tripoli, but face fuel supply shortages after Muammar Gaddafi's forces hit a refinery in the city (see video at 11.34am). The rebels have pushed the front to the outskirts of Zlitan. See Google Map below for all locations. Reuters wrote: "Rebels from Misrata say tribal sensitivities prevent them from attacking Zlitan, and they are instead waiting for local inhabitants to rise up."
? Libyan state TV said yesterday that Nato was bombing the town of al-Jufrah in central Libya. Nato said it conducted 149 air sorties yesterday, 62 of them strike sorties that aim to identify and hit targets but do not always deploy munitions. Nato chiefs are due to meet in Belgrade today to discuss their mission, following the comments by Robert Gates, the outgoing US defence secretary, accusing some European allies of failing to pull their weight.
? The Libyan government promised yesterday to implement proposals laid out by African countries to end the stalemate, as well as draft a constitution and media law. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, urged African leaders to abandon Gaddafi, saying it was time for them to live up to their pledges to promote democracy across the continent.
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My colleagues on the video desk send this video from Misrata in north-western Libya.
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The English-language version of Yemen's state news agency Saba, is up and running again, almost three weeks after its headquarters were hit in clashes between the al-Ahmar family and President Ali Abdullah Saleh's troops in the Hasaba area.
Saba claims that's Saleh's health is improving and that he will return from Saudi Arabia soon.
Activists reports that another rally is taking place in the capital Sana'a demanding a new regime.
Mass rally is taking place in #Sanaa today, demanding the departure of the remaining symbols of the old regime. #Yemen #Arabspring
Sana'a-based journalist Jeb Boone sums up the mood in the country, in an article for Time:
And so Yemen remains in limbo, caught between fear and celebrating the health of a leader who is hospitalised in another country. Without a clear head of state or viable government, Yemenis who have remained in cities fear that violence could break at out any moment. Citizens caught in the middle are frustrated and weary, having weathered more than four months of protests, state violence against protesters, and a 13 day long war between loyalist troops and anti-government tribesmen.
Gaddafi's troops have fired rockets into neighbouring Tunisia, Reuters reports.
Libyan troops fired Grad rockets from positions controlled by Muammar Gaddafi over the border into Tunisia on Tuesday, witnesses said, in an assault likely to raise already high tensions between the two countries.
The explosions caused no damage or injuries.
The last time Libyan forces fired rockets into Tunisia, on May 17, the Tunisian government threatened to report Libya to the UN security council for committing "enemy actions".
"At least five rockets fell on Tunisian soil today in the Mrabeh. It was a heavy bombardment from Gaddafi's side of the mountains," said resident Mohammed Nagez, a local trader.
Anti-Gaddafi rebels control the border with Tunisia along Libya's Western Mountains region.
Syrian troops have advanced on a second protest town in the north of the country, Reuters reports.
Troops pushed towards the northern town of Maarat al-Numaan on the Damascus-Aleppo highway after rounding up hundreds of people in a sweep through villages near Jisr al-Shughour, fleeing residents said.
Late on Monday witnesses said troops and armoured vehicles had reached the village of Ahtam, 14 km (nine miles) from Maarat al-Numaan where there have been large protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.
This Google Map shows the location of Jisr and Maarat al-Numaan.
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The Arab League has started to speak out about Syria, to the fury of Damascus.
Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP The league's Egyptian secretary general Amr Moussa (left) said:
Though their views differ, Arab states are all worried, angry and actively monitoring the current crisis in Syria. What we are hearing and monitoring, about many victims falling, indicates great tumult in Syria ... The situation in Syria should not be left in this state.
Continuation of the status quo could lead to what may not be desired ... for Syria.
Syria's representative to the league, Youssef Ahmadm described Moussa's comments as "unbalanced" and politically motivated.
Days before leaving his post Moussa calls for a kind of foreign intervention in the Syrian affairs, when the Libyan blood, shed by Nato air strikes as a result for a [UN] security council resolution, based, regrettably on an Arab demand in which Moussa's efforts immensely contributed, isn't dry yet.
Syria's sectarian tensions in Jisr al-Shughour and beyond are mapped out very clearly by the New York Times's Beirut bureau chief, Anthony Shadid.
Jisr al-Shoughour, where the government used tanks and helicopters to crush what it called "armed terrorist gangs," sits in a landscape as complicated as anywhere in Syria. It is a Sunni town with an Alawite town less than a mile to the south, interspersed with Christian and more Sunni settlements...Syrian officials have suggested that militant Islamists have manipulated popular grievances and warned that the government's collapse would endanger the relative security of Christians and other minorities there. Opposition activists have played down sectarian divisions, which they describe as a government ploy to sustain its four decades of rule. If anything, they say, the government has stoked tensions in a cynical bid to divide and rule.
Gaddafi's regime in Libya has moved Grad rockets and munitions to a World Heritage Site, to avoid Nato bombing, the Times reports (paywall).
Leptis Magna in Libya. Photograph: Alamy "We received information yesterday that Gaddafi's forces are hiding inside Leptis Magna," said Abu Mohammad, the overall commander of rebel forces for the nearby town of Zlitan.
Welcome to Middle East Live. Here's a round up of the latest developments by country:
As Syrian troops move closer to the Turkish border, events in and around the besieged town of Jisr al-Shughour remain hotly disputed.
Turkey is setting up a fifth refugee camp in its southern border towns, but with the number of Syrians who have crossed the boundary topping 7,000, these camps may not be sufficient to deal with the fast-increasing number of people in need of help, writes Martin Chulov.
One Jisr refugee, Abu Ali, said:
There are 7,000 people across the border; more and more women and children are coming towards the barbed wires. Jisr is finished, it is razed.
Ammar Abdulhamid, a leading Syrian opposition dissident, says the troops are trying to prevent people fleeing to Turkey.
He disputes reports of a large-scale army mutiny in the town.
The truth is simple: there were some defections, and there was a brief clash between the few defectors and the army of loyalists, one that proved more deadly to the defectors than to the loyalists. But the scale of what happened was nowhere near a mutiny, nor was it a battle against defectors or gangs, but a terror campaign against an unarmed civilian population whose basic demands for freedom and justice remain an anathema to the Assads and their loyalists.
Joshua Landis, director of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma, agrees that reports of a widespread mutiny have been exaggerated. But Landis, who is more sympathetic to the regime than most Syria-watchers, doesn't buy the government's version of events either.
The Syrian army has exaggerated the number of its dead in order to justify ever harsher repression of the inhabitants of Jisr and Idlib province. The governent is thrashing about in a failed effort to stop the demonstrations from spreading.
As we noted yesterday Reem Hadaad,
the Syrian government spokeswoman ridiculed for likening refugees fleeing to Turkey to them visiting their mum's house, has been sacked..
Landis sees her dismissal as fall out from Syria's failed propaganda campaign.
The West is entirely convinced that "the people" stand with the opposition and favour revolution. Government attempts to explain to Western authorities that they stand with the people and are serving anything other than bloody-mindedness with the repression of the revolt, have been such a failure that Reem Haddad, the head of the government's media effort has been fired.
The head of the Royal Navy has warned that the fleet will not be able to continue the current scale of operations around Libya beyond the summer unless ministers take tough decisions about what they want to prioritise.
In a briefing at Admiralty House, Sir Mark Stanhope said:
How long can we go on as we are in Libya? Certainly ? in terms of Nato's current time limit that has been extended to 90 days ? we are comfortable with that. Beyond that we might have to request the government to make some challenging decisions about priorities.
The trial in absentia of former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia in January, will begin next week. Tunisia's interim prime minister, Beji Caid-Essebsi, said: "Ben Ali's trial will start on 20 June. He will be tried in a military and in a civilian court."
The Jordanian government �has denied reports that demonstrators attacked King Abdullah's motorcade. According to eyewitness accounts the royal convoy was�hit twice by stones and bottles during a visit to the southern town of Tafila, scene of recent protests. But a government spokesman claimed the reports were "baseless".
Bahrain has defied international criticism by continuing the military trial of dozens of medical personnel accused of trying to topple the government. Twenty doctors pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges ranging from stealing medicines to stockpiling weapons during the unprecedented unrest that erupted in February. The defendants looked healthier and better dressed than during a previous court appearance, but several of them wept as they told the judge they had been tortured and forced to sign false confessions, a relative told the Guardian.
Israel has denied that Ilan Grapel, a dual US and Israeli citizen arrested in Egypt on suspicion of plotting to undermine the revolution, is a spy. "This is a student, perhaps a little strange or a little careless. He has no connection to any intelligence apparatus, not in Israel, not in the U.S. and not on Mars," Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Army Radio.
His mother, Irene Grapel, said he was spending the summer as an intern at a legal aid group.
The unemployment rate in Gaza is among the highest in the world, a new UN report has warned, five years after Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees found that by the second half of 2010, real wages had fallen 34.5% since the first half of 2006, when sanctions were imposed by Israel after Hamas, an Islamist group that now rules the Gaza Strip, won a Palestinian legislative election.
Chat about this story w/ TalkitaSource: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2011/jun/14/syria-libya-middle-east-unrest-live
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