Al Jazeera Balkans is “Muslim" television". He concludes by saying that Al Jazeera's Arabic service played a key role in the Arab Spring and wonders "what sort of influence Qatar may want, or gain, in the Balkans". Writing in his blog on "The Weekly Standard" web site, Stephen Schwartz sees Al Jazeera Balkans (AJB) as "the revival of a “Yugoslav" television network", bringing up AJB news director Goran Milić's past affiliation with "Yutel", "a network that attempted to rescue Yugoslavia during its collapse, from 1990 to 1992". Schwartz concludes that "in entering the Balkans, Al Jazeera has opted for an attempted revival of
Al Jazeera controversies and criticism Reacting to this, Al Jazeera announced on 2 April 2003, that it would "temporarily freeze all coverage" of Iraq in protest of what Al Jazeera described as unreasonable interference from Iraqi officials. Contrary to some allegations, including the oft-reported comments of Donald Rumsfeld on 4 June 2005, Al Jazeera has never shown beheadings (beheadings have appeared on numerous non-Al Jazeera websites and have sometimes been misattributed to Al Jazeera). On 7 August 2004, the Iraqi Allawi government shut down the Iraq office of Al Jazeera, claiming that it was responsible for presenting a negative image of Iraq, and charging the