Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • revolution makers
The Al Jazeera website was also under relentless cyberattack from the onset
of the uprising.
“The regime did everything they could to make things difficult for us,
but they did not succeed,” said Souag. “We still had the most comprehensive
reporting of the events in Egypt.”
After the first few days of the uprising, the Egyptian state media began
running an insidious propaganda campaign in an apparent effort to terrorize
ordinary Egyptians into staying at home and off the streets. Channel
1 on Egypt state TV issued vague yet alarming warnings about armed
thugs trying to infiltrate the protests and later broadcast live phone-ins in
which members of the public complained about looting and disorder. It’s
hard to think of a better way to incite panic in a jittery population, especially
because there had been no emergency services in Egypt for days. By the
time these garbled and unsubstantiated stories passed through the Egyptian
rumor mill, ordinary people would be forgiven for thinking World War
III had broken out. Egyptian state media also warned about international
journalists with a “hidden agenda” and accused Al Jazeera of “inciting the
people.” One supposed “foreign agent” was shown on Egyptian state TV
with face obscured, claiming that she had been trained by “Americans and
Israelis” in Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based.
But the lid on Pandora’s box has been prized open, and undemocratic regimes
across the region are now looking over their shoulder at Al Jazeera—
for history shows that where Egypt goes, other Arab countries soon follow.
Given Al Jazeera’s enormous influence on the Arab street and its electrifying
message that Arab dictatorships are, in fact, mortal, it is no wonder dictators
and despots across the region have been left feeling rather rattled. There
have already been hints of insurrection’s ripples in Algeria, Jordan, Yemen,
and Bahrain. Could Al Jazeera threaten even Saudi Arabia
Helping to bring revolution to Egypt and Tunisia is one thing; fomenting
uprisings in the Persian Gulf is quite another. But the situation is delicate
in Saudi Arabia, where the regime is wobbling on the cusp of change. The
kingdom either directly or indirectly controls most of the Arab media, including
Al Jazeera’s principal rival Al Arabiya, but it remains highly vulnerable
to the kind of palpitations Al Jazeera could easily provoke.
And that’s where Al Jazeera’s home country of Qatar comes in. Qatar cer-
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