Qatar’s media empire is running full speed to destroy Sudan

Al Jazeera and its henchmen: made-up experts leading riots in Sudan

Sudan has become the main focus for Al Jazeera’s fake news

Sudanese protests have become a newsworthy occurrence for most of the world media. However, these news often resemble the whisper-down-the-lane game, where truthful information gets modified or is only covered in a lopsided way. Al Jazeera stands out among such information sources having developed a special system for producing this kind of news.

In 2011, Middle East was swept by a wave of protests subsequently called «the Arab spring». The beautiful name didn’t necessarily mean a new happy life, though. Many countries like Libya or Syria couldn’t control the intensity of the protests and a rather deplorable fate awaited them: the overthrow of their leaders and the subsequent decline. Countries such as Sudan have hold on until the very last.

Qatar, located closely to the rebellious states, has been making plans on how to destroy some of their leaders that it found undesirable. For that, the media tycoon Al Jazeera was created – the major information weapon of the country. In 2011, this news channel proved itself to be successful as a powerful propaganda tool. In their publications, Al Jazeera’s journalists would criticize the military in Egypt, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and many other politicians objectionable to Qatar’s sheikhs. Sudan has been no exception to this.

In its stories, Al Jazeera often uses an array of techniques – from simple fakes to people ready to only share the kind of information that Qatar’s sheikhs find advantageous. Thus, following the crackdown of the sit-in next to the General Staff building in Khartoum on June 3, the Al-Jazeera+ channel issued a story with two young people expressing their views on the incident. Let us look closely at their personalities for if one gets to know the details of their biographies, they are likely to find out a lot of interesting things. 

The first person is Safa Babikir, a young woman, presented in the video as a teacher. In plain English, she emotionally describes the Sudanese events. She speaks as if she was present in the epicenter of the riots. In reality, she is not linked to her country and has been long living in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

Safa is employed at Georgetown University based in Washington, but which has its branch in the Qatari capital. The information on her can be found in the public domain – she is mentioned on the web page of the Center for International and Regional Studies.

It should be noted that we have previously mentioned this university in our early publications as a place where symposiums by the Sudanese diaspora in the United States are held. There, activists are instructed on how to work in social media. This seems to be too much of a coincidence and an extremely convenient way for the US to conduct their anti-Sudanese policy. Furthermore, this is how American foreign policy operates, too, as well as its soft power institutes promoted through non-profit organizations.

In the same time, the Center where Safa is employed has conducted workshops on evaluation of the future of Sudanese protests. At one of these, on February 6, a discussion on the topic of “The future of peaceful democratic transition in Sudan” took place. But the discussion of riots in this American university in Doha was far from over. Only several days later, on February 15, a discussion panel entitled “Sudan: popular revolution” was held at the venue. There were banners with drawings of symbols of the Sudanese protest movement.

The second person from the video is Saad el-Assad. His occupation is quite peculiar, since he is described in the Al-Jazeera’s story as an «online activist». In fact, he works for Qatar Debate, where he sets up round tables and other events. According to official data, this platform develops and supports open discussions and debates among Qatari students and young people as well as around the Arab world as a whole.

It is worth pointing out that Qatar Debate belongs to Qatar Foundation for Education, which is under complete control of the members of the Qatar ruling monarch family. Qatar policy towards Sudan is lopsided and has nothing to do with the well-being of the country in crisis and its people. It is easy to imagine which frames are set by the supervisors of the platform and what tasks they face when coming up with ideas of discussion topics for youngsters.

Apart from common topics for young people debates, there are other common points between Georgetown University and Qatar Foundation for Education. In particular, it is known that the two has been collaborating with the supervision of the Qatari government, which speaks a great deal about the activity of these «educational» institutions. Interestingly, the US has repeatedly expressed its intention to close down the Doha campus since its activity proved contrary to the Jesuit spirit of Georgetown University in Washington.

And this is not the only case of lopsided coverage of the situation in Sudan. For instance, in another story by Al Jazeera on Sudanese protests the well-known to us Eric Reeves, renowned for his engaged opinion and getting grants, presents once again his allegedly expert view.

The same video features Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese woman, who has long ago left her home country. She left Soudan at the age of 18 months and has lived for a long while in Australia. She is most famously known for having defended Sariah Law during a live program on western TV. 

As we can see, collaboration between Al Jazeera TV channel an educational institutions in Qatar is going well. Young people raised on their policies do right comments and pretend to be experts when they are not such neither in status nor in professional activity. Pursuing such information policy results in Qatari TV channel’s deceiving its viewers and destabilizing the situation in Sudan.

Qatari sheikhs are concerned by the fact that Transitional Military Council seems to be oriented towards Riyadh, Saudi capital and main financial center, as well as towards the UAE center Abu Dhabi. Therefore, the question whether their stance on Sudan changes once civil government is formed remains open.