NYT: On the Air, the Voice of Sunni Rebels in Iraq

[Pirate Smile]

Images from Al Zawra, a pirate satellite television channel broadcasting propaganda for Iraq’s Sunni insurgents, which, according to the station, show (clockwise from top left): Sunni men being arrested, a mortar team in action, Sunnis killed by Shiites, and a destroyed American Humvee.

By MARC SANTORA and DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 21, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 20 — The video starts with a young American soldier patrolling an Iraqi street. His head is obscured by leaves, so a red target is digitally inserted to draw the viewer’s eye. A split second later, the soldier collapses, shot. Martial music kicks in, a jihadi answer to John Philip Sousa. The time and place of the attack scrolls at the bottom of the screen.

Such tapes, along with images of victims of Shiite militias and unflattering coverage of Shiite leaders, are beaming across Iraq and much of the Middle East 24 hours a day, broadcast by a banned Iraqi satellite television station that has become a major information center for the Sunni insurgency — and the focus of a cat-and-mouse hunt that has exasperated and infuriated American and Iraqi forces.

Making the situation even more galling for the authorities, American and Iraqi officials say that money stolen from the United States probably helps pay for the station.

-snip-
The channel’s founder, Meshaan al-Juburi, is a former Sunni member of Parliament who was indicted last February on charges of embezzling millions of American dollars meant to pay for a vast pipeline protection force he had been assigned to help build with recruits from Salahuddin Province. He was accused of collecting salaries for thousands of soldiers who did not exist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/world/middleeast/21sunni.html?hp&ex=1169442000&en=01381a6ef46462be&ei=5094&partner=homepage