Safa Al Ahmad travelled to Yemen to investigate the escalation of US strikes against Al Qaeda. This is a campaign that has largely been fought in secret, but in January 2017 it briefly became headline news when US Special Forces raided the village of Yakla.

President Trump quoted the then Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, describing a ‘highly successful’ raid which ‘generated large amounts of vital intelligence’. Safa Al Ahmad travelled to Yemen to find out what really happened at Yakla. In the film she finds evidence of misidentified targets, civilian deaths and terrorised communities.

With unique access and tireless research, Al Ahmad shows that Al Qaeda recruitment in this region of Yemen is not necessarily driven by a desire for global jihad but by local factors, and is often a simple fight for survival.

The film finds evidence that significant numbers of Yemeni civilians have been killed. Exactly two years since the first strike on Yakla, Targeting Yemen suggests that contradictions in America’s policy towards Yemen are sabotaging its strategic aims – and have been since the start.

Chair:

Christopher Mitchell became Documentaries Editor at BBC Arabic in April 2018, after two years working for the BBC as a freelance executive producer. He is an award-winning writer, director and executive producer, having made many films for networks including BBC TV, ITV, Channel 4, ARTE, WDR Germany and Al Jazeera English. He was managing director of the independent production company OR Media from 2005 until 2014.

Speakers:

Safa Al Ahmad is journalist and filmmaker who has directed documentaries for PBS and the BBC focusing on uprisings in the Middle East.  Her  film “Yemen Under Siege” won two Emmy Awards in 2017.  She is the winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism, the El Mundo award for journalism for her body of work in 2015, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression  (CJFE) in 2015 and the Association of International Broadcasting (AIB) Best International Investigation for her film ‘Saudi’s Secret Uprising’ in 2014. Her writing on the Arab uprisings was published in an anthology ‘Writing Revolutions’ published by Penguin and won an English Pen award.

Farea Al-Muslimi is chairman and co-founder of Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies. He is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. He previously worked for the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and Middle East  Institute in Washington, D.C. as a visiting scholar where he covered Yemen and Gulf.

In August 2016, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon appointed Al-Muslimi to the Advisory Group of Experts for Progress Study on Youth, Peace and Security, a study mandated by Security Council resolution 2250 to examine the positive contribution of youth to peace processes and conflict resolution and effective responses at local, national, regional and international levels.

Al-Muslimi’s writings and analysis on Yemen and the wider region have been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, New York Times, The National, The Independent, The Guardian, Al-Hayyat, Assafir Arabi, Al-Monitor, and many other publications.

Tunisian identity, neighbourhood quarrels, and Jihadist fighters in Syria were among the subjects discussed at the Frontline Club on 23 September. The evening began with a screening of Tunisian journalist, Zuhair Latif’s latest film for BBC Arabic, The Battle for Bizerte. It was followed by an energetic Q&A moderated by BBC Arabic TV presenter, Makki Helal.

Makki Helal and Zuhair Latif. Photo: Antonia Roupell

Fifty-two years on from the colonial battle of Bizerte, Latif showed us a very different power struggle in Tunisia. The Battle for Bizerte depicts post revolution tensions between a Salafist group known as Ansar Al-Sharia and the local authorities. The Salafists’ self-appointed position as lawmakers and enforcers in Bizerte filled a void in the areas where the authorities fell short.

The audience was given a rare insight into the work of Salafist leader and protagonist, Abdel Salam, who set up what Helal referred to as a “kiosk of justice”. From his small shop, he deals with the locals as they ask him for advice on anything from marital disputes to more serious crimes. We witness him exercise his authority with efficiency, persuasive tactics and religious rhetoric to undeniable effect.

Seeking answers for individual concerns was echoed in the audience’s questions. One member of the audience explained that her son-in-law had just bought a house in Tunisia but now wondered if the situation would remain stable. Latif reassured her that he thought it would. Another gentleman proclaimed to a bemused audience that he would have welcomed the Salafists’ efficiency here in the UK in dealing with his own dilemmas on numerous occasions. With reference to the tendencies of Ansar Al-Sharia, another audience member observed, “some of them sound like the Mafia in New York City.”

On a more serious note, Latif praised the strength of the Tunisian administration but not its government:

“These people who take power now in Tunisia, they don’t have any political experience and this is why we fight ourselves without a real government.”

Latif explained that he was able to get such direct access by spending a couple of months gaining the Salafists’ trust. He continued to outline that this was not the first time he had dealt with the subject of emerging fundamentalism. He first tackled this subject two years ago and described the surprised Tunisian reaction at the time.  In Latif’s own words they exclaimed:

“Do we have these kinds of people in Tunisia?. . . No way, what are you talking about?”  

The timing of the film’s completion is another significant point, as it saw the climax of fighting between officials and the Ansar Al-Sharia in the area. Consequently, the group was banned, labeled a terrorist organisation and many of its members were forced underground.

Conscious of the film’s negative impact in its depiction of ultra-conservatives and some of their violent tendencies, Latif was quick to contextualise the Salafi phenomenon and defend Tunisia as a whole:

“This is one small angle of Tunisia. . . . Still in Tunisia we believe in a democratic solution, in a political solution.”

With some fragments of certainty, much of the discussion revealed nevertheless an ongoing identity crisis in the country. Latif reflected:

“Since our independence in 1956, what does it mean to be Tunisian? We don’t have one definition of who we are, we are Muslim, Arabic whatever…”

While media and TV industry professionals accounted for much of the audience, it was divided on the topic of the consequences of Salafism in Tunisia and beyond. Some voiced concern for the increasing signs of fundamentalist groups like Ansar Al-Sharia while a representative from Islamic TV dismissed them as, “a tiny group” and “a temporary phenomenon.”

Latif seemed to predict the decline of fundamentalism in Tunisia, stating:

‘Thank God Islamists come to power just after the election –  if not, next election they would be 99% saying “always we are hated”. . . . We are in the beginning of revolution; it’s a process.’

Had Latif’s life been endangered during the making of this film? Had he received death threats? These questions were particularly related to his journey to Damascus in pursuit of a young Tunisian jihadist who disappeared there.

Sensitivity towards the way the Syrian crisis was conveyed became the final topic of discussion. With some determined to bring the focus back to Tunisia, the resounding question seemed to be: when dealing with Salafism, where do the boundaries lie? According to Latif, one thing is certain:

“The stories continue and the battle did not end.”

Latif is currently working on another documentary researching the causes and effects of Tunisian Jihadists in Syria.

The film also reveals for the first time how the Salafists make their own rules, as they round up and punish those who infringe their strict interpretation of Islamic law. This film examines how the Salafists implement what they see as God’s law in Bizerte, and how far they are prepared to go to impose it on others. From Tunisia to Egypt and beyond, Salafists pose a serious challenge to authorities. The battle for influence and control is only just beginning.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Zuhair Latif, the BBC Arabic reporter on The Battle for Bizerte. Zuhair Latif is a Tunisian journalist who has 17 years of experience in broadcast journalism, covering conflicts in many countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kosova, Chechenya, and East Timor. The Q&A will be chaired by BBC Arabic TV presenter, Makki Helal.

This screening is organised by BBC Arabic.

Egypt’s Stolen Billions is a BBC Arabic investigative documentary that exposes the incompetence of the British Government in identifying Mubarak’s assets hidden in the UK. The film’s impact was felt across the global and Egyptian media and on the streets of Egypt, with numerous public demonstrations calling for the British Ambassador’s resignation. Syndicated by over 50 foreign media networks, the story reached the UN General Assembly where David Cameron announced the creation of a new UK Asset Recovery Taskforce for Egypt and the Arab Spring countries.

After the screening there will be a Q&A with the film’s production team who will describe the making of the documentary. There will also be experts and Egyptian campaigners in the asset recovery field. This discussion will contribute to finding a subject for the following film, which will also be commissioned by BBC Arabic.

Directed and produced by Daniel Tetlow
Reporter: Reda Al Mawy
Duration: 54′
Year: 2012

This screening is organised by BBC Arabic

Will 2013 see an escalation in tensions between Israel and Iran?  The Frontline Club in association with BBC Arabic brought together an expert panel to decipher the drumbeat of war and predict what 2013 may hold.

Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow began by telling an audience at LSE’s Sheikh Zayed Theatre on 12 December, that the consequences of military strikes would be “unbelievably catastrophic”.

From left: Meir Javedanfar, Azadeh Moaveni, Jon Snow, Abdel Bari Atwan, and Scott Peterson debate war and peace between Israel and Iran in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre at the London School of Economics.

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in chief of the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, opened the debate by stating he feels war is imminent.  Iran is tripping into the same fate that awaited Iraq during the last two decades, he said:

“When I say the comparison with Saddam Hussein and Iran, it is because the Israelis…want these weapons actually to be exclusive to the Israelis so they can scare the people from the Middle East and they can actually expand as they like…

The Israelis are preparing themselves…  The war against Gaza, which lasted about eight days, it was to test the Iranian missiles [from Hamas]…to test the Iron Domes, which [are] supposed to actually intercept all kinds of missiles…from Iran in particular.”

Toward this agenda, America supported Israel, Atwan said:

“[The U.S.] doesn’t want any regional superpower to possess nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in order to threaten [its] domination of the oil fields in the Gulf. That’s facts…  Saddam Hussein tried to do so, and he paid the price – his regime [was] deposed. The Iranians are repeating the same mistakes in the eyes of the Israelis and the Americas.”

Israeli-Iranian analyst Meir Javedanfar disagreed:

“It’s not because we don’t want the Iranians to have nuclear weapons. It’s because of this regime…  [It] has called for Israel to be eliminated, time and time again… [It] has put its hatred into action. We saw in the Second Intifada, 700 Israelis were killed by suicide bombings paid by Iranian money, half of it at least… You would not want that regime to have a nuclear weapon.”

Moreover, Javedanfar added:

“I don’t think there will be war…  We see that the sanctions and the diplomacy are [already] hurting the Iranian regime very badly…

[And] I don’t see Ayatollah Khomeini having the confidence to tell his officers that, ‘tomorrow we’re going to kick out all the IAEA inspectors, we’re going to take that enriched uranium…and we’re going to make a bomb with it,’ because the moment he does that, that’s the moment he’s going to risk an American attack.”

Other panelists Azadeh Moaveni, former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine and Scott Peterson, journalist and photographer, agreed with Javedanfar that war seems improbable.

Javedanfar thought injustice in Palestine, rather than nuclear saber-rattling in Tehran, was ultimately Israel’s greatest danger:

“Israel’s security? You know what? We can beat the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime doesn’t scare me. [But] if these guys, the Palestinian people, don’t have a state, that is an existential threat to the security of the state of Israel.”

The panel mostly agreed, with relief, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been particularly vocal in antagonizing Iran, seems somewhat isolated on this issue within Israel itself.

When the topic turned to sanctions against Iran, echoes of Iraq reemerged.  Moaveni argued that they destroy goodwill and are excessively cruel.

“It is becoming impossible to be middle class anymore in Iran,” she said. “This is the slow dying of the Iran middle class…  Do we want to impoverish another major Middle Eastern middle class the way we’ve done [in Iraq]?”

Snow ended the discussion by highlighting the need for the West to engage Iranians with the respect he thinks they crave.  And to resolve tensions, he offered his own alternative:

“When you spend time on the streets in Shiraz, in Tehran… you meet young people who look west.  This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the region.  These people look remorselessly west… And, you go around, and you ask people, and they want ipads!  That’s why I’ve always said:  if you want to bomb Iran, bomb it with ipads…  That’s what people want…  They want life. And they want joy…  It isn’t as if they crave a prayer-mat.”

Watch the full event here:

Coming straight from a day of reporting on the latest unrest between Israel and Gaza, the BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen was at the Frontline Club on 14 November to discuss the historic events that have reshaped the Middle East. He reflected on their political context, history and the evolving landscape as documented in his new book, The Arab uprisings: The people want the fall of the regime.

Joined by Samir Farah of BBC Arabic, Bowen noted that, in retrospect, even people who had intimate knowledge of the region were naïve as the events unfolded. When leaving for Egypt as things began, Bowen thought he would be back in three days and packed as many shirts. As it turned out, he would be gone for over a month and spent much of the past two years documenting the aftermath.

“The thing which actually makes me feel OK about the fact that I didn’t see it coming is that Mubarak did not see it coming, Assad didn’t see it coming, MI6, and CIA didn’t and actually looking back on it, we should have seen it coming. People knew that some change was pending,” he said.

Both Farah and Bowen also dispelled some of the myths arising from the desperate act of suicide on December 17 2010 in Tunisia, when Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself after being prevented from selling vegetables on the street. The tragedy is widely regarded as a catalyst, along with food inflation, drought, shifting demographics and other macro and socioeconomic realities, not just for the removal of the country’s president but also for the spread of unrest.

“Early on in Tunisia, there were reports saying that [Bouazizi] was a university graduate who had to sell vegetables because he couldn’t get a job and university graduates identified with that. Actually he wasn’t, he hadn’t even finished high school …[but] he was supporting his family from a young age and he just became an archetype which people could identify with and that was the thing in the end that made it happen,” he said.

Bowen also cautioned against oversimplification, not only of the diverse cultures and regions in the present day, but also in drawing parallels to other historic events. As it developed, the situation at first seemed reminiscent of Eastern Europe. Describing it as the “Arab Spring” references the Prague Spring and by extension the dominoes falling in the former Soviet Union in 1989. There was an expectation that by the summer of 2011 there would be a whole new Middle East. Not so, Bowen pointed out:

“It is going to be a generation-long process of change as we are seeing in Syria and we would have seen in Libya had there not been foreign intervention,”

Meanwhile, democracy in Egypt is still in its infancy:

“I have [heard] pious Muslims … say that [what the] Muslim Brotherhood [needs to do is not teach them] how to pray … they need to provide jobs, better healthcare, end corruption, make things efficient otherwise [they] might have to vote for somebody else,” he said, adding also that since the revolution, the amount of anti-Western feeling is increasing exponentially.

Audience questions leaned towards predicting what would happen next, particularly about the continuing devastation of the civil war in Syria and as Israel and Gaza began heating up in a dramatically altered Middle East.

“I think Syria is headed for a deepening war … some kind of sectarian fragmentation and going through the sort of horrendous experience that Lebanon went through in its 15-year civil war with the capacity too, to destabilise other parts of the region, you are already seeing it in Beirut … Turkey, in Iraq,” he said, adding that Israel is conducting an operation in Gaza now in a different world than that of Cast Lead.

Also looking to the future, Farah noted that amid the uncertainty one thing is for sure; Big change is coming.

“The Middle East will never be the same,” he said.

Watch the full discussion here:

Followed by a Q&A with undercover reporter Hanan Khandagji

BBC Arabic investigation has uncovered cases where children had been seriously injured in Jordan’s private care homes for the mentally disabled. The film also uncovers allegations of sexual abuse at one private care home. Hanan Khandagji is the undercover reporter who produced BBC Arabic’s investigative documentary Jordan’s Secret Shame. The film explores care homes abuse of disable children in Jordan, which received massive media coverage as well as a reaction from the public and the Jordanian government alike.

Following the first broadcast of the investigation a press release was issued on 13 May and on Monday morning, the King of Jordan, Abdullah, has made a surprise visit to some of the home cares in Jordan. He later commissioned an investigation, which includes all care homes for disabled children, elderly homes and nurseries among others. Two weeks later, the investigation committee submitted its final report and found additional evidence of child abuse. Some care homes were announced closed and some others have been given warning notices. Several care workers were referred to court, some were jailed.

Hanan Khandagji holds Palestinian nationality, she was born in 1989 in Saudi Arabia and raised and lives in Jordan. While finalising her BA in Business Administration, Jarash University, she worked with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), BBC Arabic partners in producing the investigative documentary on Jordan. She also works as a volunteer in Al Balad Radio and Amman Net website, in the investigation Affairs Department.

In a year of unrest that began with the Arab spring and spread to Russia and the Ukraine, the spotlight has been on the role of the internet and social media in challenging power elites and their capacity to control what the outside world sees.

But as with China, the use of social media also raised questions about the relationship between the big global companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google with not only the activists who used them, but also with the regimes they were challenging.

We saw too that decisions made in the US and Europe about mobile phone security levels and government access to social media sites had consequences for those who were tracked down and imprisoned not only in Egypt but also in Iran.

As westerners face greater surveillance in the name of security, including threats of increased controls in the wake of the August 2011 riots, we will be joined by Timothy Garton Ash and a respected panel of experts to discuss what the historian and commentator has set out as the first principle of free speech: That all human beings must be free and able to express themselves, and to receive and impart information and ideas, regardless of frontiers.

Is it time to create a new global code that governs freedom of speech? We will be discussing this vital issue and examining what such a code would include.

Chaired by Sina Motalebi, editor of Persian Online and Interactive at the BBC World Service. He has worked for BBC since 2004 in various capacities including an online editor and director of Iran projects for World Service Trust (now known as Global Media Action), editor of interactivity and Head of Output on BBC Persian TV.

With:

Timothy Garton Ash, the director of Free Speech Debate, a multi-lingual online platform for discussing freedom of expression. He is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and he writes a weekly column in the Guardian.

Marie Gillespie, Professor of Sociology at The Open University and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change. She researches transnationalism and diaspora cultures comparatively and historically. Recent projects include an exploration of the new politics of security via a collaborative ethnography of transnational news cultures in eight UK cities, a national survey with the BBC on the changing face of British humour and a large-scale study of the BBC World Service as a multi-diasporic institution. She was recently awarded an AHRC Public Policy Fellowship to assess the potential of social media for opening up transnational political debate, specifically in relation to the BBC Arabic Services.

Khaled Fahmy, professor and chair of American University in Cairo’s Department of History. He is author of several publications including Mehmed Ali: From Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali Pasha, His Army and the Founding of Modern Egypt and The Body and Modernity: Essays in the History of Medicine and Law in Modern Egypt.

Kirsty Hughes, the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship – an international freedom of expression non-governmental organisation. She is a commentator on European and international affairs and has worked at Chatham House and written for Friends of Europe and the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.  She contributes to international and European media including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post and others.

This time last year, when we witnessed uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, Shaimaa Khalil’s curiosity took her to the streets of Saudi Arabia to investigate what was happening in one of the world’s richest oil-producing countries.

The resulting documentary, An Arab spring in Saudi?, is a study of the authoritarianism of the Saudi government and was screened last night at the Frontline Club in front of a captivated audience.

While the ‘Day of Rage’, advertised on popular social networks saw many Arab countries in the grip of mass protest, the demonstrations in Saudi Arabia were much more muted in comparison: security, helicopters and media outnumbered the fearful protesters.

But why the difference? As one interviewee in the film put it:

“If people have everything, why would they want to revolt? They have stability and unity."

However not all Saudis are of the same opinion. A victim of injustice, featured in the film, is Khalid whose son is autistic and yet has no support from the government.

As the film ended asking the question: ‘Where is Khalid?, the same thing resonated on everyone’s mind.

"He is in prison, half an hour after his drive home from his interview with BBC Arabic, he was arrested. I tried to keep in touch with his family. They have tried to block his Facebook page to prevent us from knowing about his whereabouts. His health is not in very good condition and he is deteriorating," Khalil said.

Another audience member asked: "Why did he choose to do what he did?" 

"The situation is fluid and tense at the same time. He was a 40-year-old teacher and it was more of a personal motive than a political one. There was no institution for his son’s education and he was frustrated, " Khalil said.

One asked her reasons for making the film:

"I was curious to find out what the people wanted for their country…when I would sit at the majlis in Jeddah and meet fellow young bloggers in a coffee shop, I saw a stark difference between what the young Saudis want and how complacent the elders and tribal leaders were."

Khalil recalls the filming experience being daunting at times:

"Women on the street talking to people is seen as antagonistic."

On several occasions her own personal safety was at stake because of her Egyptian passport:

"If you are carrying a Western passport, its relatively easier," she said.

On being asked about Khalid’s families’ thoughts, she said:

"They just want to see him again. When he went to prison, his wife was expecting another child so he has not yet seen his newborn; it’s eleven months now."

Several questions were raised on the possibility of an uprising, and foreign intervention:

“From what we have seen to date, there isn’t a consensus with the general public, and if the Saudis want reform, it has to come from internally. People who are demanding change are not necessarily the ones who are suffering financially. It’s not only about the money, because how much can you do with it? They genuinely feel in this day and age they are left far behind than most other countries."