The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2015 63 U.S. government’s star-crossed effort to compete in that space, Al- Hurra. Satellite channels proliferated. After the war, Iraq alone had dozens of them. There were broadcasters and talk shows of every sort, hungry for content and viewers. Under the able leadership of Frank Finver, we constructed a little cell to try to provide official voices who could speak to these audiences. We were empowered by the vision and insight of Under Secretary Karen Hughes, a controversial figure who did a far better job than she has been given credit for. Hughes had been forced to take a group of journalists along for her first visit to the region, a “listening tour,” and the coverage had been brutal. But it was Hughes who, despite understandable uneasiness from the Public Affairs Bureau, encouraged PD officers to speak out more frequently, especially on broadcast television. She also pushed through the first of the regional media hubs, in Dubai; set up a rapid response unit; worked to realign PD positions overseas to reflect new realities; and funded the first practical workshops in Arabic to prepare FSOs to speak live on television. Engaging Middle East Audiences Meanwhile, our modest operation in NEA flourished. While our goal was to get the most senior department officials on the air, it usually fell to me to fill in when they begged off at the last moment. Satellite broadcasters wanted content and were eager for American guests, especially anyone who could engage audiences in Arabic, without filters or delays for translation. From 2005 to 2007, I carried out 71 percent of all NEA press appearances (426, most in Arabic), often subbing at the last moment for others. We aimed to engage almost everyone in the region: local stations, Arab regime media and the Arabic service of Qol Israel, Islamist stations and the lively Lebanese stations tied to a particular party or confession (we did avoid stations connected to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iraqi insurgent groups, of course). But priority was given to the most popular stations: Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and BBC Arabic Radio. Several years later, while serving as chargé d’affaires in Sudan, I was greeted at the Kalma Internally Displaced Persons Camp in Darfur by enthusiastic young refugees who claimed to have listened to me on BBC Arabic for years. By far the most challenging of all venues were the shows featuring hourlong debates on Al-Jazeera. Ghassan Ben Jeddou’s “Open Dialogue” program (on which my notorious October 2006 interview occurred) from Beirut; Syrian Faisal al-Qassem’s “The Opposite Direction,” which often descended into shout- ing matches; and the more sedate “FromWashington” program, hosted by Abderrahim Foukara from the station’s studios on K Street, were the most-watched programs on the most-watched channel in the Arab world. I was not the first diplomat to venture into such forbidding terrain, to be sure. Veteran Arab-American PD officer Nabeel Khoury had begun doing those interviews at the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War. But I believe I was the first official American non- native speaker to go on the debate shows and operate entirely in Arabic. Imagine going on live on “Crossfire” or “McLaughlin Group” in a language not your own, to debate a native speaker on the most contentious issue of the day! It was both exhilarating and terrifying. Although I often had little time to prepare for “standups” (brief interviews on a breaking news item, usually done stand- ing up and often at the mezzanine of the C Street entrance in the department), I usually had at least a few hours to prepare for the talk shows. I would take the latest press guidance and translate it PD offices in geographic bureaus—the direct descendants of what had been USIA area offices—had struggled for relevance. Alberto Fernandez with President of South Sudan (and, at the time, First Vice President of Sudan) Salva Kiir Mayardit at the January 2008 inauguration of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army headquarters. Fernandez served as chargé d’affaires in Sudan from 2007 to 2009. COURTESYOFALBERTOFERNANDEZ