LOS ANGELES, 29 November — In an increasing effort to woo angry and wary Arab youth in particular, and Muslim youth in general, the US administration has planned an extensive public relations effort to bridge America’s cultural gap with young Muslims in the Middle East.
The plan, code named “Initiative 911,” and in its initial phase, has the US turning to music and AM-FM radio.
About $30 million has been set aside in year-end spending bills to launch a new Middle East radio network targeted at young Arabs, many of them hostile to the US but also hungry for Western, as well as Arabic music.
Its musical mix will run from Madonna and the Backstreet Boys to popular Middle Eastern singers, like Egypt’s Amr Diab and Cheb Mami of Algeria. The first 600-kilowatt AM transmitter has already been purchased and will be placed on the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, and the Bush administration hopes to have the station up and running by next June.
Call it “Good morning Egypt, be-bop Bahrain.”
The station promises a unique mix of Western and Arab pop music. Applying modern marketing to an age-old cultural divide, a New York research firm is already testing the format on young Arab audiences. As many as a dozen focus groups already have been held in Jordan and Egypt to test the ideas.
The White House has already allocated an additional $19 million to revive a separate Radio Free Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, intense efforts are afoot by the House of Representatives’ International Relations Committee to double the present $479 million overseas broadcasting expenditure to cover the entire Muslim world from Nigeria to Indonesia. All these ideas were conceived before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but Initiative 911 reflects prodding from Congress and is part of around fifty measures held over from the previous Clinton administration to establish more cultural ties with Middle East.
The ongoing conflict in Afghanistan has angered many in the Muslim world, who hear radical Islamic activists argue that the fighting there shows the US is hostile to Islam. In response, the Bush administration is scrambling for new ways to convince the Muslim world, especially its young and impressionable citizens, that the US is fighting terrorism, not Islam, and that American culture isn’t hostile to Islam.
In addition to radio, a parallel effort to launch US-sponsored television broadcasts could be in the offing to compete with the popular Al-Jazeera satellite station. Al-Jazeera broadcasts from Qatar and often is accused of having an anti-American tilt.
But radio is the quickest avenue available to Washington, and lawmakers have urged the administration to be more aggressive in getting broadcasts going as it also fits in an effort to use airwaves instead of bombers to improve America’s position in the Islamic world.
Plans also call for two more AM and 11 FM transmitters to be placed across the Middle East to allow better quality broadcasts of music and localized programming, including current events and talk shows.
Norman Pattiz, a wealthy Californian who made his fortune in radio, is the driving force behind the project since winning an appointment by former President Bill Clinton last year to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the government panel that oversees American radio broadcasts abroad.
The nine-member board also supervises the Voice of America, which would run the new Middle East radio network, and it enjoys extraordinary independence under legislation adopted in 1994.
The combination of AM and FM transmitters gives the network redundancy of signals to ensure that it can be heard around the clock. “We’re looking to control our frequencies 24 hours a day,” Pattiz said. “I’ve been waiting my entire life to program something that isn’t a commercial enterprise,” Pattiz said.
But sources at VoA said the administration is planning a full-scale station, which would include a blend of news, call-ins and talk-shows.
