Wikileaks: Syria and BrownLoydJames

A few months back, I wrote a post titled K Street and the Arab Spring, looking at a variety of western consulting firms that were helping to craft PR strategies for both entrenched dictators (Gadaffi, the al-Kalifah monarchy in Bahrain), as well as opposition governments (The Libyan NTC that replaced Gadaffi.  That post was far from definitive, as the overall thesis turned out to be that if there is a government in crisis somewhere on the globe, there is a good chance a snazzy D.C. suit is assisting them via blackberry.

The first batch of Syria emails leaked to Wikileaks, and disseminated through the internet and Wikileaks'  media publishing partners, has exposed another high-powered PR firm, BrownLoydJames (BLJ), as being in communication with the Syrian government as recently as May 19th, 2011.  In an email, BLJ provided a three and a half page media strategy to Assad, where they advocated for the Syrian First Lady, Asma Al Assad, to "get in the game" in order to show "strength and sympathy," as well as the creation of a 24 hour news monitoring office to combat "the daily torrent of criticism and lies" from Syrian opposition figures living abroad.

BrownLoydJames is a major international communicates firm, based in London and New York, that specializes in high-level public diplomacy.  Founded by former Beatles manager_______, their biggest star and current President is Mike Holtzman, whose work at BLJ include China's successful 2008 Olympic bid and Qatar's 2022 World Cup bid.  Before joining the firm, Holtzman worked as a special assistant to the State Department's Policy Planning Staff during the Bush Administration, and in the office of trade representative Charlene Barlefsky during the Clinton Administration.  He also served as FEMA's on the ground media liaison for both the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

According to research done by Josh Rogin, a reporter for Foreign Policy magazine, BrownLoydJames:

was officially employed by the Office of the First Lady of the Syrian Arab Republic Asma al-Assad in Nov. 2010 for $5,000 per month to help arrange and execute the article, which appeared in the March 2011 edition of Vogue. The fawning piece, entitled, "Rose of the Desert," was actually scrubbed from the Vogue website out of embarrassment when Assad began a brutal crackdown on non-violent protests that month. But you can still read it here.

BLJ's contract with the Assad regime, signed by BLJ partner Mike Holtzman and Syrian government official Fares Kallas, expired in March of last year, according to documents posted on the Foreign Agents Registration Act website. The firm had claimed its work on behalf of the Assads ended in Dec. 2010.

The May 2011 media strategy is obviously past this date, and is the first sign that relations are closer than they appear between BLJ and the Syrian government.  In fact, the connections between BLJ and the Assad government go even deeper than contractual work, as a former employee of the firm Sheherazad Jaafari, who is mentioned as working for BLJ in a wikileaks emails from February 2011, was by December 2011 an employee of the Syrian government.  Moreover, another set of Syrian government emails leaked to the London Guardian earlier this year show that Jaafari remained in cordial contact with BLJ president Holtzman through January 2012.  

The Wikileaks email in question is from February 2nd 2011, sent by BLJ official Rachel Walsh to the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs.  Walsh describes the planning for the following weeks "Open Hands Initiative" event, part of a youth disability advocacy program in Damascus.  In the email, Walsh refers to Jaafari as her "colleauge," and one prominent enough to gain access to the event's VIP section along with Holtzman and Open Hands founder Jay Synder.

In fact, the "Open Hands Initiative" itself seems to be largely a product of BLJ's PR strategy, as it is a Washington D.C. creation, with Holtzman sitting on the advisory board, along with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk and media mogul Tina Brown.  The operation was founded in 2009 by Jay Snyder, a U.S. philanthropist who sits on the advisory board of the Brooking Institutions Saban Center for Middle East Policy, where Indyk is currently Vice President.  The "Open Hands Initiative" began operating in Syria in August 2010, hosting a major youth disability summit and a music exchange program.  The summit produced a collaborative, multi-cultural comic book The Silver Scorpion, which was honored by the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010.

The Syrian emails leaked by London's Guardian newspaper earlier this year shows that Jaafari soon left BLJ and went to work for the Syrian government's media office, headed by Hadeel al Ali.  But this did not mean that she stayed out of contact with her former firm, as a quite chummy email conversation between her and Holtzman took place on January 11th, 2012.  Holtzman congratulated Jaafari on organizing a speech by President Assad and his wife at a pro-government demonstration, stating "I'm proud of you, wish I were there to help."  Other emails concerning Jaafari's actions with the Syrian government are also contained in the Guardian's email set, including this, and this.

This is not the first time that BrownLoydJames has had their work with authoritarian governments exposed, although the first time was out of their own error.  When working on behalf of a Chinese lobbying group, the China-United States Exchange Foundation, BLJ mistakenly included their lobbying strategy when they filed their Foreign Agent Registration Act forms (h/t Janet Rubin, Washington Post).  BLJ's work (pdf here) included placing articles and op-eds in newspapers and arranging meetings in the U.S. for Chinese officials.  They also, more sinisterly, conducted a "textbook analysis" for four popular American high school text books, pertaining to coverage of the Tibet issue.

Samizdat deaths and births: Antiwar Radio has been cancelled, Wikileaks announces secret Syria cables

In a bad mark on the celebration of America's 246 years of Independence, Antiwar.com took the occasion of the fourth of July to cancel its daily radio program, Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton.  This hit me hard, as I have been a fan of the show for a number of years, and Horton has developed an incomparable roster of guests and sources.  I will deeply miss his interviews.

For those unfamiliar with the show, its archives are a treasure trove of Samizdat on current events and modern history, as well as economics, political science, and libertarian thought.  Horton has spent the past seven years interviewing top investigative journalists and historians, often speaking from foreign capitals and conflict zones.  Voices like Patrick Cockburn, Eric Margolis, Jim Lobe, Gareth Porter, Pepe Escobar, Greg Palast, Juan Cole, Gabriel Kolko, Robert Parry, and the late, great Chalmers Johnson are some of my favorites to have repeatedly graced Horton's show, as have hundreds of other minds of great worth.  If someone has penned a critical thought on American foreign policy in the past decade, there is a good chance Antiwar Radio has interviewed them.  In fact, it was Chalmers Johnson himself who turned me (and I'm sure many others) on to the radio show, when he mentioned in a lecture that it is not the New York Times that is his internet homepage, but Antiwar.com.

Random highlights that spring to mind from the show's history include an hour long conversation with investigative journalist Robert Parry about the history of U.S. support for Saddam Hussein, his many hours of interviews with National Security State whistle-blowers Sibel Edmonds and Karen Kwiatkowski, and his recent series of interviews on Egypt with Cairo-based IPS news reporter Adam Morrow.  But besides the distinguished guests, it was Horton's libertarian, everyman viewpoint that provided a refreshing coat of facts to the jargon and rhetoric-filled nature of modern political discussion.  Debunking the lies of the war party and advocating for peaceful freedom worldwide was Horton's m.o. As he put it in a farewell blog post, "Doesn't look like we stopped any wars, but at least we told people the truth about them."

But now, no more!  As Horton explained it the next day, his editor at Antiwar.com, Eric Garris, told him "I've got to cut 20% of the budget, and you are 20% of the budget."  Speaking on the phone to Hong Kong is an expensive business, especially when you hold 45 minute conversations that provide all the nuance that is absent from mainstream TV and Radio news.  And while Horton is hoping to keep up his work independently, he has little optimism that funding will emerge.  Horton's farewell blog post, and his further plans, are below:

Well, Antiwar.com is making budget cuts and so my gig doing Antiwar Radio and assorted assistant editor type jobs around the site is over.

My thanks to Eric Garris and the rest of the crew for having me these past 7 years. Doesn’t look like we’ve stopped any wars, but at least we told people the truth about them.

Also thanks very much to all the readers, listeners and volunteers who’ve helped me all this time.

I’ll be trying to keep the show going on the Liberty Radio Network and my own websites, but I’m going to need your help.

So, announcing the new Save the Scott Horton Show Donation/Sponsorship drive:

Have a company? Sponsor the show or advertise on the site.

You can PayPal scott@scotthorton.org, or stop by my blog Stress or email me scott@scotthorton.org for more information. I can also accept snail mail checks at 612 W. 34th St Austin, TX 78705.

I’m also open to suggestions.

And sign up for the show archive podcasts, interviews and the rest too at ScottHortonShow.com. My blog Stress, Facebook page, Twitter.

Thanks yall, very much

In other media related news, Wikileaks has announced that it will soon be releasing a batch of 2 million private emails from Syrian political figures, ministries, and associated companies.  According to Julian Assange, the embattled Wikileaks leaders, the material is damaging to both the Syrian government and opponents of the Syrian government.  Worth noting is the changing media partners of Wikileaks.  While Wikileaks initial high-profile releases, the collections of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and State Department Diplomatic Cables, were privately analyzed and published by major world news outlets like the Guardian, New York Times, and Der Speigel, Wikileaks new media partners are a bit less globally prominent.  According to the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, which is once again one of Wikileaks "co-publishing partners" (having worked on the "Global Intelligence Files" made up of leaked Stratfor emails), the full lineup of media outlets also includes Egypt's Al Masry Al Youm, Germany's ARD, Italy's L'Espresso, France's Owni, Spain's Publico.es, and the Associated Press.  


What is striking about this list is that it lacks any major Anglo-American press outlet besides the AP, which is a wire service.  While many papers heavily rely on the AP dispatches, they are able to selectively choose which articles to publish, and which to ignore.  My guess is that this will lead to little sustained interest in Wikileak's Syria emails in the U.S, even if they contain sensational information.  The Times and the Post do not have much incentive to continually splash AP scoops across their front pages, and only three of the "publishing partners" listed above have english language websites: al-Akhbar, Al Masry Al Youm, and Owni.  While the Syria emails will certainly be covered, one can be sure that the conversation will die off soon.   


As for the rest of the world, it is harder to say.  ARD, a German television station, is the second largest public television broadcaster in the world after the BBC, and L'Espresso is a leading weekly magazine in Italy.  However Publico, the left-leaning, Madrid based paper, was forced to cancel its print edition last year and now only maintains a website, France's Owni also operates only a website, and both the Arabic language papers sacrifice mass market popularity to maintain integrity and independence (a difficult task for Middle Eastern media).  Does this mean that the most recent Wikileaks files will be a preeminent talking point in Europe and the Middle East?  Probably not.  


Interestingly, RT, the English language, Russian owned news network formally known as Russia Today, is not a "publishing-partner" of Wikileaks, even though Julian Assange has his own interview show on the network.  RT's researchers are more than adept at uncovering malfeasance in governments, and considering that Russia has current and historical ties to Syria, it is odd that they are not grabbing hold of this major scoop.  Perhaps they are striving for DC "credibility" and as such are warming of the beltway opinion that Wikileaks and Assange are evil, criminal scum.  If this is true it would be a sad state of affairs, as RT has so far remained apart from the PR game of "respectable" and "unrespectable" American Media Opinion.  In the same vein, they may be staying away from the cables because of Russia's current support of the Asad government, knowing that the secret emails can only embarrass the Syrian ruler.  This would be an equally sorry state of affairs.

Uzbekistan leaves Moscow's CSTO (again)

Uzbekistan, one of the founding members of Russia's post-USSR "Collective Security Treaty Organization," just announced that it is leaving the organization, greatly diminishing bilateral ties between Tashkent and Moscow.

The CSTO has been Russia's main vehicle over the past twenty years to rebuild a sphere of influence over the geography of the former Soviet Union.  It is primarily a political alliance with an added military component, aimed at protecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of its members, while withholding judgement on "internal affairs."  Its current membership roll, however, is looking haggard.  Russia is joined by Belarus and Armenia as well as the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgzstan, and, until now, Uzbekistan.  Not quite even coalition of the willing, to put it bluntly.  And without Uzbekistan, the CSTO will lack a physical border with Afghanistan, where Moscow hopes to build significant post-war influence through the CSTO.

However, this is not the first time in Uzebkistan's 20 years of independence that dictatorial president Islam Karimov has decided to remove himself from the belly of the Russian bear, as he first did this in 1999.  The main similarity between then and now?  A period of intense courtship with Washington D.C.  In the 1990's, Uzbekistan took part in NATO's "Partnership for Peace" (PFP) military training program, which was joined by nearly all of the newly independent states of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.  The PFP, which was formally created in the fall of 1993, was part of a larger Washington and London scheme to turn NATO from a defensive collective security alliance into a expanding, globetrotting political alliance, a scheme that begun immediately after the collapse of the USSR.  It is clear that there was never to be a peace dividend planned for on the Potomac.

In July 1990, NATO leaders met it London, where they began the project of transforming themselves from a military alliance "into a political alliance building East-West structures of peace," according to diplomats quoted by the New York Times (NYT, 7/5/90). Following the meeting, NATO released what is known as the "London Declaration" a document celebrated as "historic" and "the Birth of a New NATO" by Brussels.  It read:

Our Alliance must be even more an agent of change. It can help build the structures of a more united continent, supporting security and stability with the strength of our shared faith in democracy, the rights of the individual, and the peaceful resolution of disputes...The Atlantic Community must reach out to the countries of the East which were our adversaries in the Cold War, and extend to them the hand of friendship.

It took barely a year for a new political group to be proposed by NATO, the "North Atlantic Co-operation Council," designed to include the states of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union (Economist, 10/12/91). In November 1991, NATO ministers assembled for an historic meeting in Rome, where they released for the first time ever a public document, a new "Strategic Concept." Within its dry and exhaustive prose is confirmation that NATO had already begun moving eastward:

The new situation in Europe has multiplied the opportunities for dialogue on the part of the Alliance with the Soviet Union and the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The Alliance has established regular diplomatic liaison and military contacts with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as provided for in the London Declaration. The Alliance will further promote dialogue through regular diplomatic liaison, including an intensified exchange of views and information on security policy issues. (Paragraph 28)

By the middle of the 1990's, an "intensified exchange of views and information" had transformed into large scale military exercises with former Soviet states. The first major exercise was Cooperative Nugget 95, held in August 1995 at Fort Polk, Louisiana, where 1,100 soldiers from 14 different countries came for a month of training from U.S. and British officers.  Uzebekistan participated in these exercises, as did their fellow Central Asian Republic Kyrgyzstan and a slew of Eastern European states.  Within months of these exercises, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan formed a "Central Asian Battalion" at the behest of NATO.

The 82nd Airborne Drops into Kazakhstan (Source: DoD, more pics at link)

In 1997, the Central Asian Battalion held their largest NATO exercises yet, this time in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.  Known as Centrazbat 97, the exercises begun with the longest flight in human history, a potent expression of the hinterlands U.S. foreign policy was now engaged in.   500 pararoopers from the 82nd airborne packed their bags in Fort Bragg N.C. and flew 8,000 miles (with two in-air refueling hook ups) to the deserts of Kazakhstan, eventually leaping out of the plane for the assembled Central Asian soldiers and press.  They then led a week of training exercises alongside Turkish and Russian troops, both air exercises in Kazakhstan and ground and logistic exercises in Uzebekistan.  When Kazakh President Nazerbayev and his defense minister visited Washington two months later, he signed an official Defense Cooperation Agreement with the Pentagon, calling for over 40 similar exercises and drills to take place over the following year.

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This was the context in which Uzbekistan first broke with Moscow's CSTO in 1999.  President Karimov had read the geopolitical tea-leaves and decided that Washington was a better security partner than Moscow, and accordingly signed on full tilt to the Pentagon consensus.  After the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan allowed the U.S. to base its soldiers there, heavily upgrading the old Soviet Khanabad-Karshi airbase, known as K2 in Pentagon parlance.  The U.S. maintained this base, as well as a tenuous alliance with Uzbek President Karimov for five years, until Karimov's human-rights conduct became too extreme even for the State Department.  And accordingly, Karimov moved back towards cooperation with Moscow, and rejoined the CSTO.

But now, Washington D.C. has once again been courting Uzbekistan hard, throwing all sorts of political concessions to Tashkent in the hopes of bettering their position in Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia.  The galvanizing development is the Northern Distribution Network, the logistical supply chain that has come into vogue as U.S.-Pakistan relations have deteriorated.  The NDN consists of two routes--one running through Russia, and one through the Caucasus--both meeting in Termez, Uzbekistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan across the great Amu Darya river, also known as the Oxus.  This has made Uzbekistan (along with the rest of Central Asia) the key to the Pentagon's Afghan strategy, and as such Washington has spent the last three years establishing more ties with the area.  Most recently, U.S. officials have promised Uzbekistan, Kyrgzstan, and Tajikistan a wide swath of U.S. military armaments used in the Afghan War.  Leaks describing these secret negotiations have been ongoing for half a year.  Most recently a leading Russian newspaper, Kommersant: 

Cited “well informed sources” as saying the three Central Asian states – all of them members of the Kremlin-led Collective Security Treaty Organization – would be given armored vehicles, tank transporters, prime movers, tank trucks, special-purpose graders, bulldozers and water trucks after US and NATO forces pull out of Afghanistan in 2014. Some of this equipment would reportedly be stored at local installations. In addition, the Pentagon plans to provide Afghanistan’s neighbors with medical equipment, communications systems, fire extinguishing equipment and even mobile gyms and other housing-related facilities.

The World Bank has also just guaranteed its first ever loan for Uzbekistan energy developments, especially important at a time when many Western multinational corporations are leaving Uzbekistan due to the repressive, centralized government.  In a tellingly hypocritical move, Uzbekistan has also managed to stay off of the State Department's tier three category for human trafficking, a major problem in the Uzbek cotton industry, staying on the tier two watchlist for a fifth consecutive year.  As the Central Asia expert Nathan Hamm wrote at his website Registan.net:

In 2011, Uzbekistan declared its intent to police itself to reduce forced child labor. In 2012, Uzbekistan has declared its intent to police itself to reduce forced child labor. It is hard to identify anything in State’s narrative for Uzbekistan that illustrates how Tashkent is devoting “sufficient” resources to implementing its written plan. Sure, UNICEF poked around, but even they say Uzbekistan’s government will not change. And some say they are going to probably be worse this year.

Perhaps hoping to extort as many concessions like this as possible from the NATO capitals, Tashkent has once again formally removed itself from Moscow's orbit, as well as distancing itself from the military aspects of the Chinese led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of which it is a member.  Uzbekistan did not participate in the SCO's 2012 "Peace Mission" military exercises, held in Tajikistan.  This itself was not that surprising, as Uzbekistan has only taken part in the annual exercise once, in 2007, however this year Karimov went as far as to prohibit Kazakh troops from transiting through Uzbekistan on their way to the exercise.