CJR: Cairo Ignores U.S. Request to Pull Plug on Jihadi TV in Iraq

[Say_What]

So much for bringing *freedom and democracy* to the region...

<clips>

Sunni-Shia power politics and U.S.-Egyptian relations are at the center of a dispute over a satellite television station that is the latest weapon in the arsenal of Iraq's insurgents.

Al-Zawraa, an Iraq-based television version of the jihadi Web sites, is being broadcast across the Arab world by Nilesat, a satellite provider answerable to the Egyptian government. Al-Zawraa features non-stop footage of U.S. troops being picked off by snipers, blown up by roadside bombs and targeted by missiles. "We find the channel utterly offensive," said one U.S. diplomat in Cairo. Getting the Egyptians to pull the plug is "at the top of our agenda."

But the Egyptian government insists it's all just business. "For us, it means nothing," the Egyptian Information Minister, Anas el-Fiki, told me. "It is a channel that reserved an allocation on Nilesat. They had a contract, paid the fees. There is nothing political for Nilesat. It's pure business. We have no concern what the channel is doing."

But, as is often the case in the Middle East, much more is going on beneath the surface. The diplomatic tug-of-war over the station comes as Sunni Arab governments in the region, increasingly worried about a resurgent Iran, are more overtly lining up behind Iraq's Sunni minority. A little over a month ago, Nawaf Obaid, an adviser to the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., wrote in the Washington Post that Saudi Arabia would take steps "to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis."

...So for now, the insurgents have their televised voice and the Middle East has yet another of its countless contradictions: The U.S., which is demanding freedom and democracy in the Arab world, wants a TV station muzzled; while Egypt, whose prisons are crowded with home-grown Islamists and whose own media is tightly controlled, is defending the insurgents' right to their electronic pulpit.

http://www.cjrdaily.org/behind_the_news/cairo_ignores_us_request_to_pu.php