American Enterprise Institute

February 4, 2008

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

10:15 a.m.	Registration
10:30	Presenters:	Mohammed Ali, Iraq the Model
		Tony Badran, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
		Arash Sigarchi, Panjereh Eltehab
	Discussant:	Hassan Mneimneh, Iraq Memory Foundation
	Moderator:	Michael Rubin, AEI
12:00 p.m.	Adjournment

Proceedings:

 Michael Rubin:  It’s a rarity that panels in Washington ever start on time, but people who know me know I’m kind of obsessive about it.  So I do want to welcome you to what I hope you will find to be an extremely interesting panel.  We are very fortunate to have an international array of guests with us today to talk about “The Battle for Cyberspace, Blogging and Dissidence in the Middle East.” 

 We are not going to speak in the order in which we are seated, but I will introduce the panelists in alphabetical order.  I do also want to remind people that if your cell phones aren’t already off or on vibrate, they should be off and on vibrate too, because there is also nothing I treasure so much, especially with television watching, as to embarrass the person whose cell phone goes off – that includes the panelists.

 We are happy, sitting in the middle, to have Mohammed Ali, who is an Iraqi blogger and a civil society activist, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Baghdad, I think back in 2005.  He started the blog Iraq the Model in 2003. In 2007, PC World magazine named him one of the 50 most important people on the web.  He will be talking about the state of the Arabic blogosphere and the Iraqi blogosphere.

 Tony Badran is a Research Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.  He blogs for the site – actually he founded the site – Across the Bay and speaks often in quite an influential way about events in Lebanon and Syria. 

 Arash Sigarchi, we are especially glad to have.  We are especially glad that he is out of prison right now.  He was the editor-in-chief of the Iranian daily, Gilan Emrooz, who was arrested for breaking censorship laws by putting things that were censored from newspapers onto his blog.  His blog, for anyone that is familiar with it, isn’t associated with any political grouping or such, but is pretty much a straight journalistic blog, and so I am very thrilled to have him here with us today. 

And translating for him is Ali Alfoneh, who many of you also know from our daily Iran press updates.  Ali I met both at the Washington Institute and later at the Royal Danish Defense College.  He is currently finishing his PhD at the University of Copenhagen on Civil Military Relations in a variety of different locales.  I’m Michael Rubin, I’m a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, but my job is just to moderate and not to dominate. 

What I want to do is basically start with Mohammed Ali to let the panelists say their piece, they are the guests today.  I will try to limit the panelists to about six or seven minutes apiece so that we have plenty of time for Q and A, which is really the meat of the discussion.  And with that, I turn the floor over to Mohammed.

Mohammed Ali:  Good morning everyone and thanks AEI for hosting this event, and let me speak about part of the story of the blogosphere in the Arab lands.  Actually, the first bloggers that appeared in the Middle East were in Iraq after the invasion.  I think that this wave that launched in early 2003 was the inspiration for other Arab countries to start blogging, especially for the youth.

And after five years from the first blog started in the Arab lands, we find now about 100,000 blogs all over the Arab countries and dozens of forums that many millions of Arab people participate in.  The number is not promising in comparison with the blogosphere in the rest of the world, but we should put into our consideration the circumstances in the Arab lands.

First, the problem is the regimes in these countries where they try to manipulate all of the windows that reach the people, especially the media.  If we know that the Arab media costs about $15 billion per year with an income of only $1.5 billion, we should know who pays the change and why he is paying that.  So these blogs are considered to be a new window for the people to express themselves without fear of the government.

But still also there is another obstacle, which is about the access to the Internet.  Only 30 million of the Arab people have access to the Internet, out of 300 million people.  And also it’s not that easy even to think about starting your own blog or website that you can speak in a free way other than the view of the government, especially if we know that many of us bloggers have been detained or tortured by the government. 

And also it’s not only the government that sometimes fights those bloggers, but also the radicals.  Because bloggers who are mainly young people, intellectual, and well educated, trying to express themselves in a new way and discuss everything, even the religious and social issues that no one dares to talk about--which makes them a target also for the radicals, not only the government.  That is why most of the bloggers in the Arab lands do not use their real names and keep themselves anonymous. 

But in spite of these hard circumstances, I think that the 100,000 blogs is good so far.  They are not representing the majority more than they are representing the future.  Offering this new view or looking to the future and trying to shape it really gets the attention and direction from other people.  And I can tell that from the comments that I read.

First, people were not used to seeing different points of view other than what the government gives them and now they are discussing new issues.  I remember one of the guys from Sudan, he said when he first started to read my blogs, he thought that I was crazy.  Then after a while, he started to become convinced about my point of view and he started his own blog and now there are hundreds of blogs in Sudan inspired by this guy.

And there is also an interesting phenomenon in the Middle East now that we can see.  There are hundreds of thousands of secular blogs, atheist bloggers;  those who criticize the history and rewrite in the history and even Islam and religion, especially in the Gulf area, where the radical people try to manipulate everything and try to shape their life in their way.

And if you read the material in these blogs, I mean even the Danish cartoon will seem like a silly joke.  Still you see people are debating about these things, but I can tell that people are listening to those bloggers and you can see that from the number of readers; it is growing.  And besides giving a new point of view or looking to the future, I think blogging in the Middle East is a great tool to create networks between the activists and the Arab lands themselves. 

And we saw that through many unions and organizations that are trying to unite those bloggers and direct their activities in a way that overcomes all of the obstacles by the government.  And here I would love to tell a story that I personally experienced.  In late 2004, we tried to develop an Arabic blogging tool so that we could give hosting for the people who do not know anything about English to start their own blogs and express themselves out of any other – I mean, it gives free hosting in Arabic just to make it easier for them to have their own websites.

Within three years now, we have 2,700 bloggers using these tools and a community of 20 million readers.  And through this network, we met each other in our virtual land, which is the website.  And we found that we are the people that share the same point of view, can cooperate, and work together to do things.  We never met each other except through blogging, and we led dozens of conferences all over Iraq and even in other Arab countries.

It is a hard time, it was very difficult, but we succeeded by using the technology and these tools to overcome all of the difficulties.  And now we are leading a huge campaign, a blog comprised of thousands of activists and 100 NGOs to participate in rewriting our constitution in Iraq.  And we succeeded in submitting our suggestions to the [Iraqi] parliament with 80 members of the parliament agreeing to sign onto our suggestion.

Through these tools, we succeeded in gathering people and making this blog a part of rebuilding our country.  I think this networking throughout the blogosphere will continue in the Middle East.  It is an easy and good tool that we can use to continue our discussion or to continue our activities.  Again, I am not saying that we are representing the majority more than we are representing the future.  This is –- we have now a virtual homeland that we see our dreams in and I think in the future they will come true.  Thanks for listening to me.

Michael Rubin:  Thank you very much, Mohammed.  You spoke about grass roots activism, you spoke about a situation where the government in Iraq listens to bloggers, at least many Iraqi politicians do, and it becomes an independent forum.  From that, we are going to shift to Arash Sigarchi who comes from a situation where bloggers are still very much struggling to have the government respond to their voice and to annunciate themselves without fear of official state sanctioned retaliation.  And with that, I turn the floor over to Arash and to Ali to help translate.

Arash Sigarchi:  Allow me to thank you for being here in your presence and letting me, allowing me to make this presentation about blogging and writing blogs in your presence.  In general, there is a classical definition of what blogging is and what it means to be a blogger.  But for me and my compatriots who live and work in Iran, blogging and writing on the Internet has a completely different definition than the one which applies to you. 

I was a journalist but the pressure from censorship forced me into the blogosphere.  Therefore I feel compelled to describe to you the process which forced me away from journalism and into blogging.  Please allow me to take the liberty of describing first journalism and then blogging.  There are two different kinds of censorship in Iran, one of them is internal, and the other one is external. 

So let me begin with the external factors, beginning with the Supreme National Security Council of the Islamic Republic.  This council of course is supposed to defend the country from external enemies and secure the country’s security and in Iran’s dialogues with the rest of the world.  But in practical terms, they also get involved in internal domestic matters and journalism.

On a weekly basis and upon order, direct orders from the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, this institution informs the journalists and newspapers of new themes of censorship, new themes which are covered by the censorship regime on a weekly basis.  And the second group of course is the Iranian judiciary--is there really anyone among you here who does not know the power of the Iranian judiciary and its role in censorship, enforcing censorship in the Islamic Republic?

They act upon the direct orders of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic and if there are orders from the Supreme Leader on one item, they would shut down 20 to 30 newspapers.  It might be interesting for you ladies and gentlemen to know that more than 200 newspapers have been shut down by order of the Iranian judiciary during the past couple of years.  Two journalists have been killed, 70 journalists have been imprisoned and many, many hundreds of people have been summoned to the Intelligence Ministry for interrogations.

The third group which I would like to introduce to you is the so-called pressure groups.  In Iran, we call these groups the “Hezbollahi” groups, the party of God.  They are the Lumpenproletariat, they are the types who attack journalists because of our political opinions and writings.  These groups are attached to the Basij resistance force and to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and to the security agencies.  I have personally experienced pressure from these groups at a time where I criticized the Friday prayers leader of our town and they attacked us in our newspaper office. 

A fourth group which formally exerts pressure against the journalists and newspapers is the security agencies.  As a journalist who has been working professionally in the business of journalism for the past twelve years, I have never ever had the opportunity of criticizing the Revolutionary Guards.  Don’t think that there is not any kind of protest or criticism of the Revolutionary Guards in the Islamic Republic, but we are not allowed to publish it.

Besides the Revolutionary Guards, there are also the securities agencies.  You know, the security agencies of the judiciary and intelligence agencies which exert pressure on us.  Allow me to explain to you that during the end of the Khatami era and with the advent of President Ahmadinejad, the Minister of Intelligence started a new program, a new scheme in Iran.  All of the newspaper journalists were summoned and asked to cooperate with the system, which means with the regime.

The answer was very clear – if you cooperate, you can work; if you do not, you will be imprisoned.  There were certain advantages given to those who chose to cooperate with the regime, such as economic advantages.  I am most unfortunate to say that some of my former colleagues did indeed cooperate with the regime and today hold good positions of power.

The fifth group which I would like to present to you is the Office of the Friday Prayer Leaders.  In Iran it is so that Mr. Khamenei, as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, has a representative in each city.  These are the small Khameneis of small towns, and very much like Mr. Khamenei, they also propagate censorship and enforce censorship in the provinces. 

And let me tell you an anecdote.  The Friday Prayer Leader of Rasht spoke about a house which costs $200,000.  During the following Friday prayers, he criticized the system for why the workers in Iran cannot afford decent housing.  I wrote an article in which I wrote about this issue by saying that I wish those who talk about workers’ rights, instead of buying $200,000 houses, would see to it that workers do have access to decent housing.

The very day the newspaper was published, seven people attacked me and beat me up and the judiciary fined me $1,000 – which is not so much money in the United States, but in Iran, it is a lot of money, fined me $1,000 for insulting the sacred matters of Islam.  The last group which I would like to – the last external group to which I want to talk about - is the economic actors, which are connected to the regime and because of their relationship with the regime also help to enforce censorship.

Besides the external factors which I have mentioned, there are also some internal matters inside the world of journalists which I would like to discuss now.  In Iran, the editors of newspapers do not decide everything in a newspaper office.  The executives of newspapers are those who are approved by the regime.  And because of their attachment to the regime, they enforce censorship, and of course there is the matter of self-censorship among us journalists.

Many of my colleagues have not become mercenary pens in the hands of others, but they censor themselves in order not to get arrested.  This is the general atmosphere of journalism in Iran.  Now what is to be done for someone like me, a responsible journalist?  I tolerated all of this pressure, but there are limits even to my tolerance.  Because I wanted to seek a way out of censorship, I started the web logging. 

And at that time, it was my good luck that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s government was not well aware of the blogging and Internet phenomena.  I must confess that I was not a professional web logger.  Everything which I could not publish in my newspaper, I did write on my blog.  Luckily or unluckily, the Islamic Republic of Iran did indeed find out about the Internet.  I was arrested in August 2004.  On January 17th, 2005, I was convicted and imprisoned. 

I was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years because of cooperation with the U.S. government, cooperation with that government, two years because of insulting the leadership, and two years because of propagating against the Islamic Republic.  Don’t be surprised – fourteen years of imprisonment, this was my sentence.

There is another story about blogging in Iran.  I have utilized the Internet and blogging as a means, as a weapon in my fight against censorship.  And I am very, very happy to announce to you that two million people are writing blogs in Iran.  Despite the fact that the Ahmadinejad government has done its best to shut down blogging and limit it during the past two months, they have not succeeded yet.

Since I have mentioned Mr. Ahmadinejad’s name, let me also speak a couple of minutes about him.  Unfortunately, Mr. Ahmadinejad is still very popular in Iran because he is a great demagogue.  He says our discussions with the entire world with regard to Iran nuclear issues are over, but he still negotiates with Westerners.  The entire world has sanctioned us economically, but in Iran, nobody knows this.

Let me give another example.  Last year, Mr. Ahmadinejad came to Gilan in order to inaugurate a sports stadium.  This year, it was announced that the place is open.  But the matter is that this sports stadium was meant to open fifteen years ago when I was a schoolboy and it was meant for Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president, to inaugurate this stadium.  Of course, I was very happy to see and hear that Mr. Ahmadinejad has actually inaugurated this sports stadium.  But it unfortunately turned out that this sports stadium had to shut down the very next day after Mr. Ahmadinejad had inaugurated it because it was not finished. 

Mr. Khamenei says that we need to be self-sufficient with regard to cereals.  And Mr. Ahmadinejad says that we have indeed become self-sufficient in this field.  I have made a journey, along with my wife, inside Iran, from province to province.  In the southern provinces, such as Hormozgan, Bushehr, and Khuzestan, I have pictures, photographs of foreign ships importing cereals to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Is this anything else but demagoguery?  Well, then you might ask me are Iranian journalists asleep?  No, we are awake, but in prison.  With the conditions that I have described to you we are in need of having more, broadening the sphere of blogging in Iran.  There is a need for increasing the number of bloggers, but at the same time, also for teaching them how to protect themselves so they do not get caught in the judicial system so that there is somebody to write the truth.

I have written a book on journalism in which I also have attended to the matter of blogging.  This book did not receive a license for publishing in the Islamic Republic, but I hope that I can publish this book on the Internet so that my compatriots can access it through the net.  I firmly believe that the only group of people who can counter the demagoguery of the Ahmadinejad government is the bloggers and never think twice.  With the help of their efforts, censorship in Iran will be crushed. I am very, very thankful that you listened to my long presentation.

Michael Rubin:  I do want to thank you as well, Arash.  As you can see from our previous two presentations, six to eight minutes has a very special definition in both Iraq and Iran.  But with that, I want to turn it over to Tony Badran to talk about how – we’ve talked about how blogging fills a gap, but blogging isn’t always necessarily a positive throughout much of the Middle East.  So with that, I will turn over the floor to Tony.

Tony Badran:  Along with the pressure of finishing in six to eight minutes, which I will try to do; thanks very much, Michael, and AEI for the invite and the pleasure of being in the company of my fellow bloggers from Iran and Iraq.  Lebanon’s case is a bit different from the rest of the Arab world and indeed Iran as well in that the dynamic is not really the regime versus dissidents. Such that the Lebanese blogs have a different character, which is not to say that some don’t share a fundamental commonality with dissidence blogs that are fighting for freedom against totalitarian forces and regimes.

Lebanese blogs by virtue of operating in a basically free environment, be it in Lebanon or by Lebanese expatriates, are essentially a fair reflection of Lebanese society.  Before 2005, Lebanese blogs were quite scarce and not really known.  There were a few social diaries and the like, but no visible real political blogs until 2003 with the blog of Lebanese journalist and political analyst Michael Young, which started in April or March, 2003. 

The focus was diversified basically along all Middle East politics and affairs, but it was driven by the biggest event of the time, which was the Iraq war and that was really the focus.  And then the focus started to shift again toward Lebanese affairs with the introduction, with the passing of the Syria Accountability and the Lebanon Sovereignty Act in Congress at the end of 2003. 

Then subsequent events, especially in 2004, brought Lebanese developments more to center stage and it was in April 2004, a year after Michael Young’s blog, which had inspired me, to a large extent, to launch my own blog Across the Bay.  Initially it was essentially a substitute for an email list, but then through plugs from people like Michael and Martin Kramer and others, it took on a life of its own. 

Like Michael’s initial focus, my blog was initially focused on Iraq and then 2005 was the seminal sort of turning point that made me focus again about Lebanon; this was the assassination in February of 2005 of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri.  It was then that an explosion of blogging happened in Lebanon and a number of blogs are dated basically after February 14, 2005 and explicitly state that they were spurred to blogging by the assassination itself and the growing popular movement and outcry that was happening in Lebanon against the Syrian occupation at the time.

Basically their use was for people who were on the scene in Lebanon to relate how the public popular rallies that were taking place at the time and which were at the center of media attention at the time.  So the blogs became “go-to” sites for media, Western media and Arab media as well – less so Arab media – to cover the popular movement at the time.

You had blogs also, influential blogs, in the United States, for instance, but also across the world and they were also, a lot of them portrayed the same sectarian diversity that exists in Lebanon as well.  But nevertheless, after the euphoria of March 14, 2005 when the public rally subsided and politics settled in, the same divide that had happened in March 2005 between Hezbollah-led forces and the pro-independence coalition, the same divide basically could be seen in the blogosphere.  It could also be reflected in its own political commentary.

The blogs essentially reflect that divide, but also reflect another issue of great importance for outside analysts and audiences.  One of the main assets of blogs is basically to give outside readers access to Arabic media, to translate it, to give excerpts of it, but also most importantly, to put it into context.  Because the pool of sources itself is biased, so too does it have to be decoded.  The Arab media reports themselves are not necessarily an accurate reflection of events.  And so there is always the value of blogs to interpret that or the lack thereof, which we will come back to in a second.

Another asset of blogs is to serve as a corrective for Western journalists and correspondents from Beirut who are commenting on Lebanese affairs, oftentimes with great, great lack of understanding of what really is going on.  So they always, either by virtue of the people they talk to, the sources, the so-called “experts” who oftentimes are mere flacks for either political parties or operators or even foreign regimes.

And so one of the values of blogs is to serve as a corrective, and we saw that in the 2007 bi-elections in Mt. Lebanon where there was a terrible case of bad interpretation of the events by the Western media, which was corrected in the blogs.  However, the same dynamic through which Western journalists serve willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, as conduits for propaganda, the same thing happens through this blogosphere, because essentially as much as blogs exist as tools of dissent against regimes, regimes have also been able to use media and blogs as a tool for disinformation. 

So essentially, the title of this conference, of this panel, as a battle for cyberspace is essentially correct, because what the blogasphere has become on a certain level is basically a veritable information warfare theater.  So for instance, the Syrian regime employs, heavily employs and relies on info ops, essentially, both to support regular operations that it does, be it assassinations or infiltration of terror groups or what have you, but also serves as a political sort of psychological warfare of demoralization of the Lebanese population and the independence movement. 

So whenever there was a foreign dignitary that appears in Syria, for instance, you would have a massive campaign of demoralization that somehow a deal was around the corner between the US and Syria at the expense of Lebanon and so on and so forth. 

The Lebanese media itself oftentimes serves as a conduit for this kind of Syrian–allied media that serves as a conduit for this type of psychological warfare.  And this stuff then gets picked up and re-disseminated in the blogasphere depending on the blogger’s political affiliation.  And not necessarily with a particular party, but just political orientation in general.  And therefore there is a value to the blogosphere in correcting this information for foreign audiences and in placing it in context and commenting on it, but it also has the flip side of basically further disseminating it, and not all blogs doing this are necessarily Lebanese blogs, although there are a couple of them, in particular, that do so.

There are also blogs concerned with either the Middle East or Lebanon or Syria that essentially serve as tools for this.  One very famous pro-regime blog, for instance, Syria Comment does this most of the time, but even the Syrian Ambassador has opened his blog, essentially, in the United States.  It is very interesting to check out from time to time, especially when he hosts Seymour Hirsch and then Seymour Hirsch comes up with an article that quotes a certain Middle East ambassador, and so on. 

But this information network has always been, especially in the United States, has always been a Syrian objective.  So before the Hariri assassination, there was an attempt by two people closely aligned with Syria called Michel Samaha, who is a former minister, and a certain lady called Roula Talj. Samaha has been banned entry to the United States, but Talj unfortunately still roams and her network actually dovetails quite a bit with Emad Mustafa’s.  But it has a reach into the blogosphere.

For instance, Talj may have been involved with a certain non-Lebanese blogger who became a conduit for disinformation regarding the Hariri assassination.  So one pro-Syrian newspaper in Lebanon published a dossier of supposed confessions of an Islamist, all of which was done before the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, when the prosecutor general was basically a Syrian appointed puppet.  So it was an attempt at a cover-up for the crime. 

And then two years later, the paper publishes them in Arabic and this blogger translates them into English.  It was during the time also when there was a massive campaign through people like Seymour Hirsch and others, that the Fatah al-Islam phenomenon in Lebanon, this hybrid group, terrorist group that infiltrated a Palestinian refugee camp and waged the war against the state was somehow the creation of the pro-independence movement in Lebanon to fight Hezbollah with American and Saudi funding as the Seymour Hirsch story had it.

So it was a timing where all of this stuff was put forth, both in the blogasphere and in the media.  And it was also in the blogosphere that much of this was debunked and placed in context.  Unfortunately, this battle continues and most of these bloggers who are doing the countering have no resources of their own – of course, they are just basically people who are just sitting in their houses and doing this in their spare time. 

And the disinformation, once it leaks to the mainstream media, it sticks so it is sort of an uphill battle.  And it is vital too for regimes basically and as such, the blogosphere again gains another feature.  Aside from being an instrument for dissent, it is again a theater for information warfare and countering that network of disinformation as well.  So I will try to end it here.

Michael Rubin:  I do want to thank all of the panelists, an extremely substantive panel.  In addition, before we move on to questions and answers, I also do want to thank Jeffrey Azarva, a research assistant here at AEI, someone whose Arabic is excellent.  And if any of you have not read some of his work on Egypt, it is well worth reading. 

I also do want to mention that this isn’t the first time when we’ve had bloggers speaking on AEI panels, although this is the first instance in which we have a panel dedicated to bloggers.  In the past, we have had Syrian and Tunisian bloggers and especially in the case of the Tunisian blogger, there was quite substantive retaliation against her and her family.  It is a little bit upsetting at times that among the worst offenders, while in this case we have an Iranian talking about some of the offenses against bloggers, among the worst offenders are prominent US allies, like Egypt and like Tunisia.

I’d also just like to note that when we talk about the issue of blogging as a reaction to official censorship, that there is an ongoing case with regard to the Kurdistan regional government with regard to Iraqi Kurdistan in which – and at the only independent newspaper in the region, Hawlati, the editor is facing jail time.  He is out of jail right now on 1 million rial bail for the crime of republishing an article, which ironically had criticized the Kurdistan regional government and Jalal Talibani for targeting journalists with frivolous lawsuits. 

That’s ongoing right now.  And it’s another instance of where perhaps US pressure could be better brought to bear, especially because it’s quite difficult to make the case for civil society and freedom of the press in countries with antagonistic relations with the United States if those countries which are allies of the United States are seen to get a clean pass. 

Now what I’d like to do is go on to questions and answers.  There is a couple of rules for Q and A, the first of which is wait for the microphone.  When you do get the microphone, before you ask your question, please give your name and your affiliation.  I don’t know of anyone in Washington who doesn’t have an affiliation if they want to come up with one.

We’re going to play Jeopardy rules which are: form your statement in the form of a question;  and while you can ask as many questions as you would like, I am going to direct the panelists only to answer the first question so that we can have as many people involved in the discussion as possible, and then we will have time to get to the second and third round and so forth.  So with that, does anyone have any questions?

Robert Raffell:  Hi, my name is Robert Raffell, Voice of America.  My first question is for – I hope I am not mispronouncing your name – Mr. Sigarchi, Arash?  If you could tell me, sir, you have talked about your own imprisonment in Iran, have you heard--or has it been filtered back to you--of any sort of harassment of Iranians who read your blogs or post comments on your blogs?  What sort of information have you heard about that in terms of the government allowing people to view your blogs or take any sort of steps, any punitive steps against those people who do.

Arash Sigarchi:  Thank you for your question and fortunately I must say that I have not heard any reports of people being harmed because of reading my blog or posting comment messages on my blog.  But the reason is this.  In addition to the public room in my blog in which people can comment and send their questions and anything that they might be interested in, there is also the possibility for sending me and posting private messages.  And Iranians, of course, very much unlike Mr. Khamenei, are very intelligent people.  So if they feel that their comments might give them trouble, they post their messages under pseudonyms.

Michael Rubin:  Yes?

Brent Blaskey:  Good morning, Brent Blaskey from the Department of State.  I have a question for the panelists in general.  You touched on this already, but should the West, the United States in particular, be helping bloggers and if so, what kind of assistance should it be, keeping in mind the real fear that any kind of link leaves them open to charges of being agents of the United States. 

Tony Badran:  In the case of Lebanon, I don’t think necessarily that – I mean, people are not in need of that kind of help because the access if free and people are doing it, so there is not really a big problem.  What I would say is perhaps some office in the Department of State or elsewhere could maybe keep an eye on these things because of the certain benefits and counter-benefits that I made in my presentation.  Because a lot of the stuff – I mean, it’s a great pleasure to me and I know other bloggers as well to see in my stats that there are always “dot.gov” IPs and so on, so there are people who are reading.  I hope this is of value because basically it’s an ability to bring to you a certain dynamic, but that’s the case – I think.

Mohammed Ali:  I think more access to Internet is important in Arab countries.  So as much as you can help people to reach the Internet, it means that indirectly you are helping bloggers.  It’s not a matter now about the finance thing, because it’s more about the technology itself.  Until now, in Iraq, we don’t have DSL and we depend mainly on the dish Internet.  The greater access to the Internet is, the more people can read or express themselves.  

Arash Sigarchi:  We are aware of the fact that the United States government has spent or chosen to spend $75 million in order to promote democracy in Iran.  Since Iran is a semi-totalitarian state, this aid has become a stick with which the government of Iran uses against the journalists.  Every time we open our mouths, somebody says that you have received the money from the US government. 

Therefore, I suggest that if there are some thoughts of aiding the bloggers, I suggest that this aid is not given to individuals, but to support background for blogging.  Let us propagate the use and art of writing blogs.  Let’s train the journalists to write in such a way that the government cannot by legal measures stop bloggers anymore.  Most Iranian bloggers are less than 25 years old of age and they are not aware of their legal position in the Islamic Republic, and this is much more important, as I see.

Michael Rubin:  Just to point out a couple of things.  As the moderator of the panel, it’s not my job to talk really as a panelist.  However, the issue of stigma and the issue of taint when it comes to assistance to dissidents is really a key question that is the subject of great debate, both within the US government and outside the US government.

We had done a Middle East Outlook essay looking specifically at the case of Egypt and Iran.  This would be available online at AEI.  And what it found was there was a mixed bag.  However, to draw from what the panelists said, it seems that there is a growing consensus that the US should be involved in creating, in helping enable a template upon which people can help themselves.

When it comes to the issue of stigma in US allies, I found some of the most interesting conversations out there to be those that respond, for example, to the Egyptian government by saying you are trying to taint us as puppets of the Americans for going to a conference that may have funded our airfare to the tune of $500, and yet you accept $2 billion a year from the same American government.  Don’t you see the hypocrisy of that? 

I also do want to point out that for many of you who have attended our Dissent and Reform in the Arab World Conference series, you have seen all of the people coming in from the different Arab states.  The result of that, their writings, writings dating back to 1990 showing the whole democracy debate, that it’s not imposed from the outside, that there is an indigenous discussion as well, should be released from the AEI press within a week or two.  So I would urge you to keep an eye out for that.  Now there is a question over here then as we move forward, I will go to Dr. Wolfowitz, Professor Matthee, yourself, and Bill Royce and then we will go around to the side. 

Ken Elliott:  Hi, my name is Ken Elliott and I’m with the Project on Middle East Democracy.  I also had a question for Mr. Sigarchi.  Do the aspects of the media which are government influenced report on the rest of journalists and then vilify them as treasonists or does the government attempt to suppress information about these arrests?

Michael Rubin:  In addition to Arash’s answer, I’m going to ask Ali Alfoneh to comment on that as well.

Arash Sigarchi:  There are different methods from the government side.  One of my jobs as a blogger was actually monitoring, monitoring the rights of journalists, especially those imprisoned.  We do have an organization which is a semi-governmental organization, which is a professional trade union for journalists.  This trade union did not do what unions usually must do in defending their members’ rights, but to be the members at the congregations of this union, professional union, got news of what was going on with our friends so we could report it.

I have conveyed news of arrests of newspaper journalists and other journalists to foreign media, such as BBC Persian, Radio Farda, and other media.  But we have also reported this to organizations and institutions such as, international organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.  But we also did attempt to send this kind of information to the United States government or to the European Union member countries, so they are aware of what’s happening to Iranian journalists. 

Michael Rubin:  Ali, do you have anything you want to add on your own observations?  Okay, Dr. Wolfowitz and then Professor Matthee, yourself, and Bill.

Paul Wolfowitz:  Paul Wolfowitz, AEI.  I’d like to ask you about traditional media and particularly those sponsored by the United States, like Voice of America or Radio Sawa. I would be interested, particularly from the Iranian perspective.  But all three of you, how much do people have access to this kind of information from abroad and how effective is it?

Michael Rubin:  We will start again this way and work our way down.

Tony Badran:  It is interesting – there has been a lot of controversy regarding Al Hurra, as you all know.  And there is an interesting duality about it in that on the one hand, I know personally from people in Lebanon who look at it who only try to watch it because of their own sort of political and ideological orientation because they also view it as above the local partisanship of the local media.  Unfortunately, the editorial line of Al Hurra has, and for a number of reasons one can debate, has shifted quite a bit toward being a lot more sympathetic to Hezbollah stuff and so on.  So it’s been a mixed bag, but I know personally of people who only would like to watch that because of the same reasons that I have mentioned before.

I don’t think that other US sponsored media necessarily factor much – the BBC is available and all of these things, so people listen to that on radio.  Those things are quite available and satellite dishes bring in CNN and all of the cable kind of networks, so these are quite available to the Lebanese public, most of which is multi-lingual.  So they have quite the access to it – it’s not a big deal.

Mohammed Ali:  Well, Al Hurra in Iraq is a real success when compared to other Arabic media or other media.

Michael Rubin:  Mohammed, if I could insert just as a point of information, there are actually two Al Hurras – there is the general Al Hurra and Al Hurra Iraq.

Mohammed Ali:  Al Hurra Iraq, their program at 7 pm is the number one program in Iraq.  Their coverage of the news, it gets the direction of Iraqi people and the Iraqi people are watching it more because we have – I mean, we are fed news from Al Jazeera and even from Al Iraqiyya, which has become more sectarian.  But Al Hurra Iraq, as one of my friends said, is more Iraqi than Al Iraqiyya. 

I saw when I was moving in the Middle East and I went to an Al Hurra café, you can see the list filled with all Arab nationals only at Al Hurra.  It’s like a deal between the government in these places were people can see TV, that Al Hurra should be banned.  So I didn’t have the chance to see it in other Arab countries, but in Iraq, no – it’s really a good success. 

Arash Sigarchi:  Access to information in Iran is such a difficult job.  I’m not speaking of my personal experience, but acquisition of drugs, narcotics, is easier.  There are several ways of acquiring news and I will elaborate on all of these several ways of acquiring information in Iran.  And the people of Iran must suffice with information from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the sole source of information whose executive is appointed by the Supreme Leader. 

When there is a single shooting in Israel, Iranian television asks the people to go out demonstrating against Israel.  And at the time of election, this television urges people to go vote.  Since it is the only and sole voice in the Islamic Republic of Iran, people do listen to it and especially the mobs do as the media requires of them.

Now let me look at the truth from the other side.  It is obvious that the press cannot write everything.  Within the press, there is a lot of censorship on the Internet because of the Chinese companies involved in distributing the servers in Iran and in America, also.  So the site’s Internet pages are also censored.  It is the case in Iran that if the police see that you have acquired a dish so you can see satellite TV programs, the police are allowed to rush into your home, break into your home, and beat you up only because you have the ownership of a dish and they are also allowed to fine you.

I wish and I do believe that it could have been much better if there were some thoughts here in Washington so people could access information and channels without using dishes, without using the satellite TV channels.  But it is widely believed that 40 percent of Iranians do have access to satellite TV.  The largest audience watches Voice of America’s Persian service and there are some criticisms against it.  I am very, very sorry to say this.

We honestly do not know if Voice of America is broadcasting to the couple of millions of Iranians who live in the US or 70 million of Iranians living in Iran.  And therefore, it is difficult to connect with Voice of America.  You are experts in the field of mass media, you do know that people do watch television channels with which they can relate, to which we can relate.  And I am sure that some reforms in organization could make this a television channel which could promote democracy in Iran. 

Michael Rubin:  The only thing that I would like to add is just as a point of information with regard to Al Hurra, that the next issue of the Middle East Quarterly, which should be in people’s mailboxes in about a week and a half, will have a lengthy interview with Daniel Nassif, the head of Al Hurra, talking about some of the issues as to the balance between being an American station and being a Middle Eastern station, as well as some of the trials and tribulations which Al Hurra has been through to this point of time.

Tony Badran:  If I can also add that I hope that the interview will also touch on Mr. Nassif’s own political affiliations inside Lebanon.

Michael Rubin:  What I would like to do is turn the microphone over to Professor Matthee up here in the second row.  And while he is waiting for the microphone, I do just want to say that while he may not be the loudest of Iranian historians, his work is by far the most exciting in terms of the Safavid era’s economy and trade.

Rudi Matthee:  Thank you.  My name is Rudi Matthee from the University of Delaware.  I have a question most directly addressed to Tony Badran, but it really concerns all of the panelists.  You talked about how the bloggers initially got ahead of the game by getting their message out and how the governments ended up catching up and turn it around and started putting out their own propaganda. 

Which incidentally, reminds one very much of early modern Europe, the print media, the same process, and the same development of course and it continues to be a struggle around the world.  But it’s very poignant, of course, because this is happening in a time capsule.

Now my question is we end up with a situation on the Internet which in general, of course, as we all know, is filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly where it becomes, to my mind, extremely difficult to discern what the truth is.  You know, we end up with a room filled with fog.  We don’t know who is what, it is filled with pseudonyms, is it the government, is it a double agent, or is it a legitimate blogger?

Arash talked a little bit about the fact that the Iranian government apparently has not really caught up with it.  They have caught up with it in the sense of trying to censor, but not countering with the same kind of sophistication.  But it’s probably just a matter of time, or maybe it’s already happened and we don’t know about it.  But anyway, the question is how does an intelligent, even educated person in an environment, in a Middle Eastern environment, which is filled with conspiracy theories – yes, we all know of all kinds – discern, distill the truth?

Tony Badran:  It is kind of the big question, isn’t it?  Part of the problem, I think, is really the dynamic between the bloggers and the regular media, right?  There is a feeding off of each other that happens.  And one has credibility, one does not, so to speak, right?  And so I gave the example of Seymour Hirsch because of the great aura of truthfulness that is assigned to his reports, he is digging and so on.

But as I showed on my blog and other blogs, I mean when we dissected his New Yorker piece about Fatah al-Islam – which, by the way, appeared months before the actual operations on the ground started taking place.  And then after the fighting broke out, you see the Syrian regime has also figured out that its newspapers, its print media, nobody reads them, not even the Syrians read them.

So Bashar al-Assad has launched two internet media.  I have written about this, an article that is available on the web about – one is called Sham Press and the other is Syrian Views.  And actually they reflect local power centers within Syria itself, but essentially they are official propaganda.  Those, for instance, are monitored by other people for news and so on because they have this aura of technological novelty and so on, modernity which Bashar would like to exude.

The Sham Press, the first week of the fighting in Northern Lebanon, for a whole week every single report quoted Seymour Hirsch.  So there was this sort of third party validator kind of dynamic happening.  It’s an uphill battle.  I really don’t know the answer except just constant counter information essentially.  And this is why I suggested that an office in the State Department or elsewhere – be careful. 

I mean, under the pretense of expertise, like for instance the Syria Comment blog that I mentioned, I mean it is blatant propaganda.  I mean, its author is a professor, but it is regime propaganda straight up.  This can happen on a number of levels.  Sources in the regular wire stories, in Reuters or whatever, quoting people in Lebanon. 

Like the other day there was a piece, again on Fatah al-Islam, a very sensitive issue, in the San Francisco Chronicle that quoted only two sources.  One is Amal Saad-Ghorayeb who works for the Carnegie Center in Beirut and one is a professor at AUB, his name is Ahmed Musali.  Now of course, somebody who is reading this doesn’t know who these people are; Carnegie and AUB – fantastic.  Ahmed Musali, for instance, is a paid – is known – is a paid consultant or whatever for a political operative inside Lebanon who is aligned with Syria.  Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is closely aligned with Hezbollah, for instance.

So then the wire story then is transmitting all of this nonsense and it’s really an uphill battle.  People like myself or other people who counter this kind of stuff have difficulty accessing the mainstream media in this country for a number of reasons.  A lot of them are fully justifiable, right?  But if we cannot necessarily influence public opinion, I would urge the US government to at least have somebody who is looking at these things to try to balance information out and keep an open mind to these things.

Michael Rubin:  Before anyone else in the panel comments, I would actually just like to rephrase the question a little bit to draw out a point which I didn’t really hear.  Do you get the sense that the audience in the Middle East, which is covered by this fog of information, disinformation, conspiracy and whatnot is becoming a little bit more savvy in determining what is a good source and what is not a good source, or is it a spinning wheel that doesn’t improve the sophistication of the audience?

Mohammed Ali:  I don’t think that being against the government means that you are right that you are in opposition.  But I think what the blogasphere offers in the Middle East is the discussion itself, trying to discuss things that we were not allowed to previously.  I am now watching a debate, a big debate, on the Iraqi blogosphere about al-Mehdi theory.  These things we were not allowed to talk about. 

I am not saying this is good, this is right, this is credible, this is not, but the discussion itself may make the people watch and they can decide later on which is best for them.  So it’s more about – it is opening the discussion or the debates and the things that we were not allowed to do previously.

Arash Sigarchi:  In Iran, there is a certain difference when it comes to these kind of issues.  It is not so common to see some anonymous sites try to convey certain messages to the Iranian public.  The blogs in Iran are reflective of the personal views of the author and therefore when the author of the web log is not known, is anonymous, it is not taken seriously by the wider public.  But there are a few web logs which are anonymous, but also are well read.  One of them is the – yes, funny stuff, humor.

And the second issue has to do with sexual matters in which the writers do not commit their true identity.  There are certain political groups in Iran which do exist and they operate through home pages.  Raja News is one example whose name is from the second president of the Islamic Republic.  It is close to or actually is the grouping faction which supports Ahmadinejad.  The Aftab site on the other hand is close to Mr. Ghalibaf, the Mayor of Tehran.  Tabnak is a site which is close to former commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezai.

Blogs should, of course, convey very direct messages because they belong to a certain person with certain ideas and then consistently supports the viewpoints of Mr. Ahmadinejad and it is probably the mouthpiece of Mr. Ahmadinejad.  In other words, it is fairly easy from an Iranian perspective to discern between different blogs in Iran.

Tony Badran:  If I may just add one last thing about conspiracy theories.  That is really a big, big problem.  It’s not helped by a lot of Western journalists who peddle it and it is certainly peddled in the Arab media, which is fully conspiratorial as well.  So the entire environment is conducive to this, that’s on the one hand.

On the other hand, there is also this complete lack of understanding of how American policy works.  So when somebody puts out – oh, there is a paper from The Washington Institute or there is a paper from AEI that says blah, blah and somebody will pull it out as somehow being proof of something.  So awareness of how these things work.  And this stuff translates into the mainstream public discourse, essentially.  So that is the second issue. 

The third issue is that a lot of the people are essentially partisan.  So there is a deep partisan divide.  So whatever the party line is, a majority – not all – I mean, people are not stupid and we can see that with the case of Michel Aoun in Lebanon, for instance, lots of support.  Because at one point, it becomes absurd.  Nevertheless, it’s an uphill battle.

Michael Rubin:  I see the questions in the back, but I had promised in the front.  So sorry – state your name and affiliation and then Bill Royce and then we’ll work our way to the back.

Fariba Amini:  My name is Fariba Amini, I am with the International Center for Journalists.  We have a website for journalists in Iran, which has been actually very, very successful and it has not been filtered.  It is a privilege to meet three bloggers from three very dangerous zones in the Middle East, especially Arash, I am very privileged to meet you and to hear what you have to say about journalism in Iran.

You pointed to this matter before, but I would like you to elaborate a little bit more.  Since the allocation of $75 million for regime change by the US government, the pressure on the civil society in Iran and especially journalists has been brutal.  You as a journalist who goes around Iran and who meets people from different walks of life, who has a blog, who worked in a major newspaper of Iran and who deals on a daily basis with Iranians from all walks of life, could you tell me what Iranians think about this idea of regime change?  Do they agree with it, even if they are under tremendous political, economic pressure?  And I would also like to know your stance on this.  Thank you.

Arash Sigarchi:  Let me make an explanation with regard to the $75 million budget and see, analyze if there has been more or less suppression of civil rights in Iran.  I must say that despite the fact that I have not access to a single dollar, I have been sentenced to ten years of imprisonment because of that, but have not received anything from this budget.

But the truth is that no.  There was also suppression before the $75 million always, always by the Iranian authorities long before the $75 million budget was passed here in the US.  But I cannot refute the fact that the avenue has been opened for a new type of allegations against us.  Before they said “propagation activities against the Islamic Republic of Iran and disturbance of the public mind.”  Now they use other allegations.

Now in addition to those allegations, they say “cooperation with the US government and receiving US funding.”  I personally do not find it bad for democracy in Iran that there are certain types of aid to promote democracy in Iran.  But I personally believe that instead of passing this kind of budgets to personalities, to individuals, this budget should be used in order to prepare the right background for democratization in Iran. 

And now let me talk about the discussions on the possible US attacks against Iran and the popular perception of this.  The Iranian situation is very, very different from any other countries.  When I see pictures of the Ashura passion scenes, the Shi’ite passions of the Ashura in Iraq, this is a religious city – Karbala is a normal city with normal conditions of life, despite the fact that it is religious.

We have also another religious city in Iran; the one is Karbala is the thirty Imam of the Shia, we have a city which hosts the mausoleum of the eighth Imam of the Shia.  This city in Iran is full of roads and is fairly well developed – it is extremely well developed, actually.  You cannot democratize Iran with the same formula which has been applied to Afghanistan and Iraq, and Afghanistan which has only one kilometer of railroads. 

Iran is a country which has a certain weight in regional matters, but unfortunately it is in the claws of a dictatorial regime, which is not surprising, because the clerical education system trains them to become hierarchical and authoritarian.  And when it comes to the people of Iran, the people of Iran do want to achieve democracy.  When they see that many other countries have achieved democracy so fast, they are more motivated. 

In Iran for the past 100 years, we have had a lot of efforts, we have done a lot of efforts in order to achieve democracy.  One of those attempts was disrupted in 1953, unfortunately with the cooperation of the British and the US, and was restricted, this craving for democracy of ours.  I am not an expert, I am not one to write a program for the future of Iran, but do not be surprised when I, as a representative of the public opinion in Iran, will tell you that people of Iran have resisted any invading army for the past hundreds of years. 

Therefore, one cannot reason that you can attack Iran one night and just invade the country.  But it is indeed possible to bring the gift of democracy to the people of Iran with the efforts of the Iranian people themselves.  Thank you.

Michael Rubin:  One, just as a point of information, I would actually, especially a question coming from journalists, urge some precision, because while the $75 million had been the request I believe in fiscal year 2006, the actual amount allocated was $66 million, $30 of million of which went to fund Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.  And then a good deal of it which also funds the State Department’s international visitors program and the translation of the State Department website and other US government statements into Persian. 

So the real number of the so-called democracy fund is much lower, but that said, the question is – one, there is no doubt that the stigma and the conspiracy about the purpose of the money is out there.  Unfortunately, we do need to end on time.  What I’m going to actually ask with Bill’s approval, since you are going to have an opportunity to ask a question in another setting, whether I could put the last question to Zainab Al-Suwaij and I’m going to very much limit the time for which we can respond so that I can thank the audience.

Zainab Al-Suwaij:  Thank you, Zainab Al-Suwaij from the American Islamic Congress.  Recently a blogger called Fouad Al-Farhan in Saudi Arabia has been arrested for blogging.  As a member of a civil rights Muslim organization, we started a campaign to release him.  My question to you as bloggers and you have been in that field for many years, what do you think the best approach that the US government should take to free this blogger from a so-called allied country?

Michael Rubin:  Arbitrarily I’m going to limit the answer to the question just to Mohammed just for a matter of time so I can thank the audience.

Mohammed Ali:  I think keep the pressure on the governments from not only the United States of America, but also from human rights organizations, from the European Union.  Because I saw that and we both led the campaign for Karim Sulayman too.  Keep the pressure on the governments, at least they will avoid that with others in the future. 

We can be a headache for them by sending emails, signing a petition or even push the other governments in the West to ask the Saudi or the Egyptian government to release them.  So it’s more about protecting the other bloggers in the future.

Michael Rubin:  In addition to thanking our panelists on stage, some of whom have come here through fairly horrendous and diverse journeys, I also do want to thank again Jeffrey Azarva for putting this together.  I get the credit; he does the work.  And also I very much want to thank Ali Alfoneh – translating is never an easy job to do and I think Ali has done a wonderful job today.  With that, thank you very much.  The last point I would note is always, the videos and the transcripts of these events should be online in the next couple of days at the AEI website, so check back.  Thank you. 

[End Conference]