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An occasional column by Nigel Parry for Middle East International magazine.
At an October 1998 seminar for the Arab Information Project at Georgetown University, Dr. Jerrold D. Green, Director of the Greater Middle East Studies Center at RAND in Santa Monica, presented a paper entitled, "Social Movements & Electronic Opposition: Who's On-Line?"
Green argued that a variety of data show the Middle East to have the lowest overall and relative numbers and percentages of Internet users and Internet hosts in the world concluding, in short, that there are really not many in the region who are online.
Highlighting reasons for low levels of connectivity that include not only security and 'moral concerns', but also the hurdles of cost, Green asserted that governments in the Middle East often do not seem to know how to appropriate the Internet, and many individuals with access do not take advantage of it. What significance then have websites produced by opposition movements, if local people not only cannot but do not look at them?
A more recent seminar held by the Arab Information Project (AIP) [http://www.georgetown.edu/research/arabtech/] on 23 March 1999, titled "Impacts of the Internet in Jordan", was given by Dr. Marwan Muasher, Ambassador of Jordan to the United States. Muasher is an unusual diplomat in that, as well as having served as ambassador to Israel and a delegate to Middle East Peace talks, holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Purdue, and has served as Jordan's Minister of Information and in various capacities with Jordan's National Information Centre and Ministry of Planning, for computing development.
A central focus of Muasher's seminar presentation was the question of how the Internet is redefining politics in Jordan. Introduced to the public in Jordan during 1995-1996 through private sector companies, the Jordanian Internet now has some 30,000 clients throughout the country compared to around 4,000 in the period before local electronic bulletin boards converted to Internet service providers over the past two years.
The Internet, Muasher emphasised, provides access to knowledge in open societies. In the developing world, by comparison, its potential to both publish and receive information without official sanction, bypasses government censorship. As a former Minister of Information, Dr. Muasher was also naturally speaking as a former supervisor of censorship, but interestingly suggested that was time for governments to revisit the concept of censorship, observing that political censorship will decrease as fast as the cost of technology falls and becomes more accessible to populations. Computer and Internet access and awareness in Jordan itself is scheduled to dramatically extend, as the government has plans to provide free Internet for all public schools.
Jordan effectively ceased censorship of foreign information sources in 1996. Its restrictive new press law did not apply to the Internet in recognition, as Dr. Muasher pointed out, that the medium obviates censorship. In an experiment using Internet technology to expand freedom of speech, Dr. Muasher, as Minister of Information, worked with local bulletin board company NETS to create an online chat forum called "Ask the government", open to all subscribers.
Jordanians proved to be more forthright in cyberspace than in the Jordanian press, which widely practices self-censorship in common with much of the Arab World. Even the Jordanian Mukhabarat (an intelligence agency), unique in the Arab World in that it maintains a website, regularly responds to public queries. The Internet in Jordan has thus contributed to new transparency and accountability where, as the AIP website puts it, "these are not otherwise institutionally assured." On the basis of this experience, Dr. Muasher's opinion was that Internet use will accelerate democratisation by bypassing old ways and habits of censorship.
All seemingly good news, but a few caveats bear mentioning that could have bearings on the progress of this anticipated new information dawn in the Middle East. In the case of Palestine, although the Palestinian Authority's official website [http://www.pna.net/] is maintained by a very competant staff, both the funds and the freedom to make imaginative content decisions have very clearly not been delegated, resulting in a mostly frustrating and sometimes counterproductive offering.
Bear in mind also that in many countries in the Middle East, including Muasher's native Jordan, the high proportion of refugees and others with a low socioeconomic status render the dream of universal access financially prohibitive in the short term. Unfortunately these very people, customarily convenient pawns for political movements everywhere, are exactly the kinds of voices we need to be attentive to in the search for genuine stability in the Middle East.
Last and most certainly not least, if the local publisher of an opposition website is identifiable to the authorities, the uncensorable medium of the message will not stop security service agents turning up at his or her front door to intimidate the messenger.
Whatever happens in this still sensitive arena, the facts remains that the Internet is demonstrably a force of change in the Middle East and, in a worst case scenario, an individual armed with a laptop, a mobile phone, and an Internet service provider based abroad, can maintain a very vocal and profoundly unpopular website with total anonymity. And that is what, quite rightly, has got opponents of censorship so excited about the Internet.
by Nigel Parry
23 April 1999
MEI 598