Media War 2.0

Michael Hedges May 14, 2008

The Hezbollah faction fought its way across Lebanon’s capital Beirut with more death and destruction in its wake. One target was the pro-government media center Future TV, now in ruins. The militias now control through force of arms much of what moves. And its own media empire is spreading the news.

Warring factions have bloodied west Beirut and have now moved to the eastern suburbs in the worst violence since the 1992 civil war. This particular battle seems to have been ticked off, in part, by a Lebanese government decision last week (May 7) to cut or dismantle Hezbollah’s private telecom network. 

Future TV and news channel Al Sharq became prime targets for Hezbollah. Owned by Saad Hariri, son of assassinated former prime minister Rafki Hariri, Future TV is part of a media complex of television channels, Al Mustaqbal newspaper, radio and internet. Future Movement is the name of Hariri’s political party. Virtually all Lebanese media are controlled by one political faction or another.

By Friday (May 9) the Future TV building was gutted by fire and looting. The TV channels went dark. Al Mustaqbal ceased publication, distribution halted by Hezbollah.

Yesterday afternoon (May 13) local time Future TV resumed broadcasting from a facility in the inthe Sin al-Fil neighborhood. Al Mustaqbal is set to resume publication today (May 14).

Hezbollah is organized on many fronts and one is media. The Arabic language TV channel al-Manar is theirs. Originally a pirate terrestrial channel in Lebanon, it received a license in 1997. al-Manar took to satellite distribution in 2000. Radio station al-Nour was launched in 1988. Both al-Manar and al-Nour operate complimentary websites. While the al-Manar satellite channel has virtually no distribution outside the Middle East, the Web goes everywhere.

This global reach makes websites attractive for communications systems, terrorist message boards and blogs littering the information superhighway. Hezbollah’s hackers regularly troll for vulnerable websites to exploit, even if for short duration. As fast as counter-terrorist organizations find one and shut it down another springs up. One documented case, from 2006, shows that al-Manar hijacked an ISP in the US state of Texas, setting up an ‘extension’ for message traffic. When discovered and closed, the identical ‘extension’ popped up on an ISP in India.

All of this may seem very sophisticated – playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with intelligence agencies – but communications analyst Daniel Kimmage argues in a report on media use by jihadist groups that infrastructure limitations – such as the private Hezbollah telecom network the closing of which set off fighting in Lebanon – play a significant role keeping militant media rather low-tech. In a footnote to Kimmage’s report, The al-Qaeda Media Nexus – published by RFE/RL (March 2008), he writes:

“Infrastructure, of course, is still needed – from electrical power to network connections – but it is general in purpose and often shared. The same infrastructures that allows jihadist groups to ‘produce’ and ‘distribute’ their media products just as efficiently, and just as indifferently, serves many other media networks, from individual to the collective to the official.”

Control of infrastructures being a primary goal, the armed militias resort to low-tech means – bullets, bombs and threats. Station manager Nadim Munla said threats against Future TV continue. The destruction from a weeks’ violence seemed to backfire on Hezbollah, tension and war-weary Lebanese rallying. Street fighting in Beirut may have subsided but the media war – high-tech or low – continues.