The American war to win the hearts and minds of the citizens of Iraq has surely failed, but the American government has been extending its tentacular reach into the Middle East through the preferred medium of intellectual warfare: the media.

During the summer of 2003, America launched Hi, a lifestyle magazine targeted at the 18- to 35-year-old age bracket for both men and women. The magazine, sponsored by the United States State Department, is produced by a firm based in Washington D.C. called The Magazine Group. The magazine enjoys funding from a bill, supported by the House of Representatives in the summer of 2003, for a variety of foreign projects in the Middle East. The president of the firm, Jane Ottenberg, perkily stated:

With its vibrant editorial and eye-catching format, we hope the magazine can serve as a springboard for greater dialogue and understanding between young Arab readers and young Americans.

The United States also runs the Arabic language Al-Hurra — which means “the free one,” — television network, along with Radio Sawa.  

Among the chorus of criticism from the Middle Eastern and Arabic language media that greeted the launch of Al-Hurra was a particularly well articulated voice of concern from Egypt’s Al-Akhbar:

The objective might be legitimate in normal circumstances. But seeking to achieve such objectives at a time when the US administration’s declared policy is to change ruling regimes – by force, if necessary – and to reform and discipline people through promises or threats, means we can only view this network with suspicion.

While it is doubtful that the chirpily titled Hi magazine will be popular, or even widely read, it is certainly competing against the local media, which includes Hezbollah’s satellite television channel, al-Manar, the highly popular Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite TV station, and the Saudi-backed Al-Arabiyya channel which broadcasts news. This intellectual battle of the media is generally less bloody than conventional warfare, although given the cycle of violence that erupted after the Coalition Provisional Authority shut down al-Hawzah, a weekly newspaper run by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric in Iraq, the dividing line between physical and propaganda warfare is becoming increasingly blurred.

Mimi Hanaoka