Wadah Khanfar - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Wadah Khanfar was the Director General of the Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...

Network. He has been ranked by Fast Company
Fast Company (magazine)
Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility...

as the first in the 100 Most Creative People in Business (2011) and as one of the most ‘Powerful People in the World’ by Forbes Magazine (2009). 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.

Birth and student life

Khanfar (Youcef Yamma) was born in the Israeli

Israeli

Israeli may refer to:* Something of, from, or related to the country of Israel* Israelis, people from Israel, or of Israeli descent. For more information about the Israeli people, see:**Demographics of Israel**Culture of Israel**Israelites...

town of Rama

Rama

Rama or full name Ramachandra is considered to be the seventh avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism, and a king of Ayodhya in ancient Indian...

in 1966 to Arabic family immigrated from the village of Khanfar in south of yemen nearly 200 years ago. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in Engineering between 1985 and 1990 at the University of Jordan

University of Jordan

The University of Jordan , is a government-supported University located in Amman, Jordan...

and went on to complete a post-graduate degree in Philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, a Diploma in African Studies

African studies

African studies is the study of Africa, especially the cultures and societies of Africa .The field includes the study of:Culture of Africa, History of Africa , Anthropology of Africa , Politics of Africa, Economy of Africa African studies is the study of Africa, especially the cultures and...

from Sudan International University and an Honors Degree in International Politics. During this time, Khanfar started a student's union that soon spread to several other universities and started an inter-university dialogue group amongst students constituted from a range of political backgrounds. 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, helping to organize forums, protests, festivals and demonstrations for student rights.

Africa

When Al Jazeera was established in 1996, Khanfar was doing graduate study for his International Politics and African Studies qualifications in South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

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.

Afghanistan

In 2001 and 2002 he reported on Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

from New Delhi

New Delhi

New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...

. Al Jazeera was unable to get its own correspondent back into the northern territories controlled by the Northern Alliance

Northern Alliance

The Afghan Northern Alliance is a military-political umbrella organization created by the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1996.Northern Alliance may also refer to:*Northern Alliance , a Canadian white supremacist group...

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

Kabul

Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...

was threatened by problems including US fire and concerns from journalists and diplomats that the then bureau chief and correspondent, Tayseer Allouni

Tayseer Allouni

Tayseer Allouni is a journalist from the Al Jazeera news channel. He was born in Deir ez-Zor in Syria in 1955 then in 1983 he moved to Spain where he studied Economics, and has lived there ever since, adopting Spanish citizenship in 1988...

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.

Iraq

During the Iraq war he reported from Kurdish

Kurdish people

The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...

-controlled territory in the north and after the fall of Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

's Ba'ath regime

Ba'athist Iraq

The History of Iraq , referred to as Ba'athist Iraq, covers the period of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party's rule over Iraq. Ba'athist rule in Iraq first occurred briefly in 1963 under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr until overthrown that same year. Ba'athism was restored to power five years later after...

, he became Al Jazeera bureau chief in Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

.

At this time the channel was widely perceived as playing to popular pro-Baathist and anti-Coalition

Coalition of the willing

The term coalition of the willing is a post-1990 political phrase used to collectively describe participants in military or military-humanitarian interventions for which the United Nations Security Council cannot agree to mount a full UN peacekeeping operation...

Arab sentiment, despite being represented at the Coalition's Central Headquarters and having an Al Jazeera correspondent embedded within coalition forces. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

Donald Rumsfeld

Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...

and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz

Paul Wolfowitz

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank, and former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University...

publicly criticized Al Jazeera, Rumsfeld calling the channel's reporting "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable...", while Wolfowitz claimed the station was "inciting violence" and "endangering the lives of American troops" in Iraq.

This public criticism came amid attacks on Al Jazeera from US forces, including the shelling of a hotel in Basra

Basra

Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...

on 8 April 2003 used solely by the channel's correspondents. Nearly a week later, US forces bombed the station's Baghdad offices wounding one cameraman and killing a correspondent, Tariq Ayoub on the same day that two Reuters

Reuters

Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

journalists were killed when a US tank shell struck their office in the Palestine Hotel

Palestine Hotel

The Palestine Hotel , often referred to simply as The Palestine, is an 18-story hotel in Baghdad, Iraq located on Firdos Square, across from the Sheraton Ishtar. It has long been favored by journalists and media personnel...

. 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. 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. 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."

Al Jazeera executive

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

TED (conference)

TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....

on the ongoing Middle East protests.

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.

Criticism

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...

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. Responding to these accusations in a 2007 interview with The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.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" In June 2007, Hafez Al-Mirazi, Al-Jazeera’s Washington

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

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."

During the Iraq War, Al Jazeera broadcast a report that American troops had raided Najaf

Najaf

Najaf is a city in Iraq about 160 km south of Baghdad. Its estimated population in 2008 is 560,000 people. It is the capital of Najaf Governorate...

and detained the religious leaders of the Shia Islamic community, which turned out to be false. Khanfar defended the blunder as an honest mistake.

Al Udeid Air Base

Al Udeid Air Base

Al Udeid Air Base is a military base west of Doha, Qatar. It houses foreign coalition personnel and assets. It is host to a forward headquarters of United States Central Command, headquarters of United States Air Forces Central Command, and home to both No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group RAF and the...

which served as a logistics hub for U.S. operations in Afghanistan

Afghanistan

and Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

.
As Saliyah Army Base

As Saliyah Army Base

As Saliyah Army Base is a U.S. Army base located outside Doha, Qatar. U.S. Central Command uses the base to preposition materiel bound for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.-References:*Pike, John. "." globalsecurity.org, 2000-2008....

, 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

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

trade office in Qatar

Qatar

Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...

. Khanfar is also criticized to favor and be biased towards the Hamas

Hamas

Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...

political party in the Palestinian Territories

Palestinian territories

The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...

, as oppose to the Palestinian Authority run by Fatah

Fatah

Fataḥ is a major Palestinian political party and the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization , a multi-party confederation. In Palestinian politics it is on the left-wing of the spectrum; it is mainly nationalist, although not predominantly socialist. Its official goals are found...

WikiLeaks

In September 2011, the non-profit whistleblowing website WikiLeaks

Wikileaks

WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

released a cache of leaked diplomatic cables

United States diplomatic cables leak

The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began in February 2010 when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates,...

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

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.

Resignation

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

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...

staff he cites that the decision had been in his mind for sometime and that the target of establishing Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...

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. He is succeeded by Sheikh Ahmad bin Jassim bin Mohammad Al Thani.

First visit to the United States

In July 2009, Khanfar was invited to the United States by leading political and media think tanks including the Middle East Institute

Middle East Institute

The Middle East Institute is a non-partisan think tank and cultural center in Washington, DC. Founded in 1946, MEI is the oldest institution in Washington dedicated exclusively to the study of the Middle East. Its founder, architect and philanthropist George Camp Keiser, assembled a team of...

, New America Foundation

New America Foundation

The New America Foundation is a non-profit public policy institute and think tank with offices in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, CA. It was founded in 1999 by Ted Halstead, Sherle Schwenninger, Michael Lind and Walter Russell Mead....

, Council on Foreign Relations

Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...

, and George Washington University

George Washington University

The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...

. 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

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

, United States Department of State

United States Department of State

The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...

and the Pentagon

The Pentagon

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...

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

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

. On the visit to the US, Khanfar appeared on the Charlie Rose Show, NPR

NPR

NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

’s Diane Rehm

Diane Rehm

Diane Rehm is an American public radio talk show host. Her program, The Diane Rehm Show, is distributed nationally and internationally by National Public Radio. It is produced at WAMU, which is licensed to American University in Washington, D.C....

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

Arab Spring

The Arab Spring , otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18 December 2010...

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.