DOHA, Qatar, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Cheers went up around the TV screens at the World Trade summit this week when the grizzled face of Taysir Alluni suddenly appeared.
"He's safe, thanks be to God," said one of Alluni's colleagues, Ahmad Kamel. "The bombs didn't get him after all."
Over the past two months, Alluni has become one of the most familiar figures throughout the Arab world as the Kabul correspondent of the Al Jazeera TV channel. When his Kabul bureau went off the air after being hit, presumably by accidental American bombing, hundreds of viewers from around the Arab world, and Arab-speakers in the United States, called the Qatar offices of Al Jazeera to find out of he had survived.
Nobody knew until Alluni turned up on the air Wednesday, having got out of Kabul, been robbed, and finally made his way toward the Pakistani border.
Just as the first bombing of Baghdad, Iraq, during the Gulf War catapulted CNN to global fame, the war on terrorism -- and its scoops with the videotapes of Osama bin Laden -- has made the international reputation of Al Jazeera.
But the TV channel was already famous, or notorious, across the Arab world as the first example of a Western-style news channel, based on Western principles of a free press and a critical skepticism about those wielding political power.
Egyptian viewers reeled in disbelief when it saw Adel Abdel Meguid, a convicted terrorist for helping plot bombings in Egypt, on an Al Jazeera talk show, discussing the state of democracy in Egypt and the Arab world. The station also screened Yasser Siri, an Egyptian sentenced to death in his absence for a failed assassination bid against former Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sidki.
Al Jazeera staffers, many of whom came an abortive effort by the British Broadcasting Corp. to start an Arabic TV service, say they learned from their British experience. By banning Irish Republican Army and Sinn Fein figures from the media, British politicians undermined their own cause, of defending democratic freedoms against terrorism.
"We operate on the classic principle of free speech," one of Al Jazeera's presenters who was also a veteran of the BBC, M'hamed Krichene, told United Press International.
"We found this answered a very deep aspiration all across the Arab world. People wanted another kind of information from the accounts they got on official TV and radio and in the official press."
"The official Arab media always ran the same headlines talking about ministers opening this and signing that. All the stories were about success. They were no problems, no opposition, no human rights, and everything that you read of heard was according to our social and religious taboos."
"Al Jazeera tried to tackle all those taboos -- and for this we became famous," Krichene said. The Arab people seem to love us, but Arab governments are much less happy."
Al Jazeera has provoked formal diplomatic complaints to Qatar from every Arab government except Lebanon. And though Qatar's ruling family are the major shareholders and bankrollers of the station, which has only just started making enough money to cover 50 percent of its costs, Qatari diplomats turned aside all complaints. Although Al Jazeera was launched by a 1996 decree from new Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani (who sits on the company board), they insist it is a private commercial venture.
Kuwait was furious when one of its officials seemed to come off worst in a TV debate with an Iraqi representative on its compulsive viewing "Opposite Directions" talk show. Jordan closed down the Al Jazeera bureau when it ran a debate among Jordanians on their views of the peace process with Israel. Palestine Authority President Yasser Arafat loves Al Jazeera when its relentless coverage of the intifada spurs pro-Palestine sympathies across the Arab world, but hates it when Al Jazeera targets corruption in his own circle.
Even Qatar's ruler can get criticized, like the emir's controversial decision to invite Israel to a Mideast economic summit he hosted. The emir's patience paid off. Nobody batted an eye when the Israeli delegation to the World Trade summit this week said -- on Al Jazeera --they had been treated excellently.
There are two aspects to Al Jazeera. The highly professional news programs, furnished by its 30 bureaus around the world, run interviews with Israeli officials as well as the bin-Laden tapes, and have dramatically widened the perspectives of Arab viewers. But the feisty talk-shows and combative debates like the regular "Opposite Directions" arouse the real controversy.
"We try to live up to our motto. In Arabic, 'Alrai wa alrai alakher'. It means one opinion against the other, to look at something from both sides," said Krichene.
"And now that the Arab people are getting this kind of information and this kind of wide political debate, they are getting better-informed and more demanding of their own media and thus of their own governments. We are sure that will have deep social and political implications for the better in the Arab world. And where that leads, who knows? But I'm sure it leads in a democratic direction."
