Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a journalist and expert on the Middle East. He currently works as a correspondent with the Kuwaiti daily Al Rai and lives in Washington DC.Abdul-Hussain also works for the Congressionally-funded Arabic television channel Alhurra,Alhurra, as news producer
There is one thing in common between Congress-funded Arabic TV, Alhurra, and countries of the Arab Spring. Both have unaccountable leaders, who have been in place since forever, and who look like they are staying indefinitely.
Alhurra and its sister Radio Sawa are operated by the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN), a presumably independent organization and grant recipient from Congress through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an eight-member bi-partisan president-appointed Congress-approved board headed by the Secretary of State.
In early 2002, a 9/11 scarred America was set on conquering the world using both hard power, its formidable military, and its soft one, such as Voice of America (VOA) that was created in the 1940s to broadcast to regions like Eastern Europe and counter Soviet propaganda.
VOA Arabic had a respected Arabic Service, but the Bush administration decided to replace the federally-run Arabic radio and its serious tone with a more "hip" Radio Sawa, whose popular songs on FM, more than its news bulletins, won it considerable following among young Arab listeners. A year later, the same Radio Sawa team was tasked with launching an Arabic satellite TV: Alhurra went on the air in February 2004.
Since then, the leaders of Alhurra and Sawa, none of them a journalist, have remained in place and have outlasted administrations and Congresses.