Talking Points: American Enterprise Institute event on bloggers in the Middle East

Speaking were:

Arash Sigarchi, an Iranian blogger who had been sentenced to 14 years in prison for espionage and insulting the country’s leaders, speaking through an interpretter

Mohammed Ali, an Iraqi blogger (http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/)

Tony Badran, a Lebanese blogger (http://beirut2bayside.blogspot.com/)

Arash in his opening statement described how he was forced into blogging by the pervasive censorship of the media in Iran. Publishing anything critical of the government results in beatings, fines, and jail. When Arash began blogging, the government was largely unaware of the Internet, so he was free to publish whatever he wanted. In recent years, though, it has begun monitoring the Internet. Arash said that western funds to promote democracy in Iraq allows the government to brand bloggers and others as mouthpieces of the US, so a better form of aid would be to help people get Internet access. Responding to a question from Paul Wolfowitz about the reach of Voice of America and other media, Arash also said that access to western media is more limited than access to drugs. He also noted that Ahmadinejad is still quite popular, and the general people don’t know about economic sanctions against Iran.

Ali, an Iraqi blogger, said that he had spoken with other bloggers, in both Iraq and Sudan, who had been inspired by him to begin blogging. Arab media outlets are heavily government funded, but blogging allows independent people to express themselves cheaply. Blogging can be difficult, though, because Internet access is scarce.

Tony Badran said that in Lebanon, where Internet access and access to western media are much more common, blogging presents other difficulties. Blogs are being used for propaganda and conspiracy theories by Syria, and it can be difficult to distinguish genuine citizen blogs from Syrian “info ops.”