In praise of Aljazeera.

The following is an article by Panu Aree:

Even though the news about the air strikes on Libya by a coalition of Western allies may not be as big as the attack on Iraq 10 years ago, the most interesting aspects are the fact that France, not the US, has been the leader in the operation, and the participation of Qatar, a small, wealthy Gulf nation that has exerted its role in the world prominently.

Qatar stepped up the campaign to make its presence felt in the mid-1990s, with the establishment of Al Jazeera, the cable news network that has since grown to become a distinctive voice in global broadcasting. When it was announced, Al Jazeera was quickly sneered at as nothing more than a rich man's toy, a spare change distraction of oil billionaires who had too much money and time in their hands.

But less than two decades later, the detractors have been silenced. Al Jazeera is now one of the highest quality news channels in the world. It did a praiseworthy in-depth report on 9/11 _ providing an alternative perspective to the domination of US networks. Right now, when the Arab world finds itself in great turmoil, Al Jazeera has been the first on the ground, the first to zoom in on the nerve centre of the conflict and dispatch the latest updates, from Libya, Yemen and Bahrain.

Al Jazeera is often noted for its neutral coverage and its focus on the smaller voices. The Qatari channel has rarely been accused of biased reporting, or of being a mouthpiece of vested interests, a charge that even respected networks like the BBC or CNN sometimes face. The obvious example is the coverage of Thailand's political riots last May. While both sides clamoured to assert their versions of the story, while CNN, the BBC and local stations struggled to get the truth out, Al Jazeera was the only channel that was more or less accepted by all parties in the conflict for its fair and insightful coverage.

The Al Jazeera multimedia section, featuring short documentaries on a wide range of social and political issues, provides a very good example of how a news agency uses moving images to explore sensitive issues and explore their hidden implications. For instance, the network's coverage of Thailand's southern conflict has been eye-opening; take a look at the recent video reporting on the allegation ''from human rights groups that Thailand's military have been torturing prisoners.'' The title of the report is ''Thailand's Tropical Gulag.'' We haven't seen this from any other news agency, especially local ones.

Thus the current situation in the Arab world will continue to highlight the role of Al Jazeera _ and of Qatar as a serious player in global geopolitics. But the oil-rich country seems determined to be more than that. In the world of sports, Qatar showed its potential first by hosting the Asian Games in 2006, and recently, it scored one of the biggest surprises in the world of football when Doha has been picked by Fifa to stage the World Cup in 2020. On top of that, Mohammad Bin Hannam, now the president of the Asian Football Federation, is pushing for the top Fifa position. In the following years, it's possible that Al Jazeera will put more effort into sports, now that its headquarters have received one of the highest honours in the sports world.

When Qatar first rose to our attention, some observers credited that to its wealth and oil reserves that enabled this small nation to invest in risky projects, Al Jazeera included. But look closely and we can see that the main difference between this Bedouin state and the rest in the Gulf is Qatar's unique stance on the map of world's politics: While Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or the Emirates choose to follow the lead of the Western power, Qatar remains independent in terms of policy. That's perhaps one of the reasons it has gone far ahead of other bigger nations with Western allies.

When the bubble burst in Dubai, Qatar was selling its fanciful dream of building a massive air-con system that would turn its desert climate into European springtime for the comfort of players and fans in the World Cup 2020. When 2020 actually comes, Qatar might become a member of the UN Security Council. And we may all be watching Al Jazeera instead of CNN.


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Panu Aree is a documentary filmmaker.