Wadah Khanfar (وضاح خنفر) was the Director General of the Al Jazeera Network. He has been ranked by Foreign Policy Magazine in 2011 as the first in The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers, [1] and inFast Company as the first in the 100 Most Creative People in Business (2011) [2] and as one of the most ‘Powerful People in the World’ by Forbes Magazine (2009).[3] During his tenure Al Jazeera went from a single channel to a media network with multiple properties including the Al Jazeera Arabic channel, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Documentary, Al Jazeera Sport, Al Jazeera’s news websites, the Al Jazeera Media Training and Development Center, the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, Al Jazeera Mubasher (Live), and Al Jazeera Mobile.
On 20 Sep 2011, he stepped down as the head of Al Jazeera Network.[4][5]
Contents |
Wadah was born in Palestinian town of Jenin in 1968.[6][7] He obtained a Bachelor's degree in Engineering between 1985 and 1990 at the University of Jordan and went on to complete a post-graduate degree in Philosophy, a Diploma in African Studies from Sudan International University and an Honors Degree in International Politics.[8] During this time, Khanfar started a student's union that soon spread to several other universities [9] and started an inter-university dialogue group amongst students constituted from a range of political backgrounds.[10] By 1989 the student's union was playing an active role in debating the future of the democratic process, and Khanfar started making a name for himself as a charismatic and natural leader,[9] helping to organize forums, protests, festivals and demonstrations for student rights.[10]
When Al Jazeera was established in 1996, Khanfar was doing graduate study for his International Politics and African Studies qualifications in South Africa and was a researcher and consultant in Middle Eastern economics and political affairs. He was asked by the channel to provide analysis on African affairs, then became correspondent in South Africa until 2001.[7][11]
In 2001 and 2002 he reported on Afghanistan from New Delhi. Al Jazeera was unable to get its own correspondent back into the northern territories controlled by the Northern Alliance on the eve of the war, so New Delhi was used, India having a strong Northern Alliance diplomatic presence. As the Taliban regime was collapsing, Al Jazeera's presence in Kabul was threatened by problems including US fire[12][13] and concerns from journalists and diplomats that the then bureau chief and correspondent, Tayseer Allouni had become compromised as a partisan of the Taliban cause. Khanfar was brought in to replace Allouni as Kabul bureau chief and restored working relations with the new authorities.[12]
During the Iraq war he reported from Kurdish-controlled territory in the north[14] and after the fall of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath regime, he became Al Jazeera bureau chief in Baghdad.[12][15]
At this time the channel was widely perceived as playing to popular pro-Baathist and anti-Coalition Arab sentiment, despite being represented at the Coalition's Central Headquarters and having an Al Jazeera correspondent embedded within coalition forces.[11][12] US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publicly criticized Al Jazeera, Rumsfeld calling the channel's reporting "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable...",[16] while Wolfowitz claimed the station was "inciting violence" and "endangering the lives of American troops" in Iraq.[17]
This public criticism came amid attacks on Al Jazeera from US forces, including the shelling of a hotel in Basra on 8 April 2003 used solely by the channel's correspondents.[18] Nearly a week later, US forces bombed the station's Baghdad offices wounding one cameraman and killing a correspondent, Tariq Ayoub[17][19] on the same day that two Reuters journalists were killed when a US tank shell struck their office in the Palestine Hotel. In July, Khanfar wrote an open letter to Paul Bremer, the US proconsul in Iraq responding to his assertion that television stations or newspapers guilty of "incitement to violence" would be shut down.[17] Khanfar wrote that his offices and staff had been subject to "strafing by gunfire, death threats, confiscation of news material, and multiple detentions and arrests, all carried out by US soldiers", asserting that the channel's coverage had been consistently harassed for unfavourable reporting during the Ba'athist regime.[17] He also said that because Al Jazeera at that time was only available in Arabic, reliance on the channel's coverage came "from second-, third- and fourth-hand sources - half-truths and total falsehoods that make the rounds in Washington, Baghdad and elsewhere."[20]
Khanfar became Managing Director of the Al Jazeera Channel in 2003 and Director General of the Al Jazeera Network in 2006. He spoke at the 2011 TED Conference on the ongoing Middle East protests.[21]
On September 20, 2011, Khanfar announced on his official Twitter page that he was 'moving on' from Al Jazeera after leading the channel for 8 years.
Al Jazeera has been criticized by a range of people on a number of issues. A common criticism leveled at the organization is that stories and events occurring in Qatar, where the organization is based and whose government funds the channel, were slanted or never mentioned at all.
Wadah Khanfar has been accused by some of a pro-Islamist bias.[22] Responding to these accusations in a 2007 interview with The Nation, Khanfar said: "Islam is more of a factor now in the influential political and social spheres of the Arab world, and the network’s coverage reflects that. Maybe you have more Islamic voices [on the network] because of the political reality on the ground"[22] In June 2007, Hafez Al-Mirazi, Al-Jazeera’s Washington Bureau Chief, denounced what he saw as the station's "Islamist drift", and singled out Khanfar in particular, saying: "From the first day of the Wadah Khanfar era, there was a dramatic change, especially because of him selecting assistants who are hardline Islamists." [22]
During the Iraq War, Al Jazeera broadcast a report that American troops had raided Najaf and detained the religious leaders of the Shia Islamic community, which turned out to be false. Khanfar defended the blunder as an honest mistake.[23]
Al Udeid Air Base which served as a logistics hub for U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Saliyah Army Base, the largest pre-positioning facility of U.S. equipment in the world, served as the forward command center for CENTCOM personnel during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Israel trade office in Qatar. Khanfar is also criticized to favor and be biased towards the Hamas political party in the Palestinian Territories, as oppose to the Palestinian Authority run by Fatah.
In September 2011, the non-profit whistleblowing website WikiLeaks released a cache of leaked diplomatic cables highlighting U.S. activities overseas. Several of the cables implicated Khanfar in unduly influencing Al Jazeera's news coverage of the War in Iraq at the behest of U.S. embassy officials in Qatar. In one instance, the cables suggested that Khanfar removed images of wounded Iraqi civilians from an Al Jazeera report following pressure by the U.S. embassy. They also suggested that Khanfar was anxious to keep his behind-the-scenes collaboration secret.[24]
In September 2011, Khanfar announced to his staff and publicly on the micro-blogging platform Twitter that he will be resigning. In an emotional farewell to Al Jazeera staff he cites that the decision had been in his mind for sometime and that the target of establishing Al Jazeera as a global media leader has been met. This is also the theme of an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera where he addresses and refutes suggestions that Wikileaks and pressure from USA may have influenced his resignation.[25] He is succeeded by Sheikh Ahmad bin Jassim bin Mohammad Al Thani.
In July 2009, Khanfar was invited to the United States by leading political and media think tanks including the Middle East Institute, New America Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, and George Washington University. This was the first time that a Director General from Al Jazeera has visited the US. During the visit Khanfar also met with senior officials and advisors at the White House, United States Department of State and the Pentagon and perhaps signals a change in the inner circles of the government to dialogue with Al Jazeera under the new administration of President Barack Obama. On the visit to the US, Khanfar appeared on the Charlie Rose Show, NPR’s Diane Rehm show, and presented at the Paley Center for Media.
Khanfar spoke at the 2011 TED Conference on the ongoing civil uprisings in the Arab Spring.