IN any other country Zainab Marouf would be a celebrity. As a strikingly attractive television news presenter with a regular slot on a satellite network, she should be finding it hard to avoid the pressures of public exposure.

Yet the last thing Marouf wants is public attention. She does not use her real name.

She has asked her family not to talk about where she works. These are dangerous times for Iraqi citizens who are seen to be working for the United States government.

A former presenter for state-run Iraqi television, Marouf moved to America last year to join a new Arab-language satellite station broadcasting out of the Washington suburbs. President George W Bush’s administration hopes that the Alhurra network, financed with $62m of US taxpayers’ money, will encourage Iraqis to vote in the January 30 poll.

From a state-of-the-art studio in northern Virginia, the Alhurra network broadcasts 24 hours a day to 70m satellite television viewers in 22 countries across the Middle East. Its special Iraqi channel, featuring regular programmes on the election process and the potential benefits of voting, is also available to terrestrial viewers.

The operation amounts to the most sophisticated and expensive US attempt to influence international opinion since the creation of the Voice of America radio network during the second world war.

It may also be the most controversial. Alhurra — which means “the free one” — is routinely dismissed as a US propaganda mouthpiece that is widely ignored in a Middle East media market saturated with anti-American broadcasters.

One former US ambassador to the region described the station as “a big waste of money” with no chance of competing with popular Arab stations such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and the London-based Arabic News Network.

“There’s no doubt we had tremendous hurdles to overcome,” admitted Norman Pattiz, a wealthy Californian broadcasting magnate who conceived of Alhurra after the successful launch in 2002 of Radio Sawa, a US-backed station aimed at Middle Eastern listeners.

“We are trying to establish ourselves in a media environment that includes anti-American hatespeak on radio and television, government censorship and journalistic self-censorship,” said Pattiz, founder of Westwood One, America’s largest radio empire.

“But we are attracting millions of viewers with what has proved to be reliable and credible news. We have effectively built a CNN in Arabic for the Middle East.”

At Alhurra’s headquarters there is no doubting the professionalism of the venture.

“People are really sick of Al-Jazeera,” claimed Malouf. “They want reality, not decoration.”

Iraqi election day coverage will feature live reports from 50 Alhurra correspondents and cameramen. “We want to be part of the local Iraqi media scene and I think we have managed to do that,” said Mouafac Harb, Alhurra’s Lebanese-born news director.

Harb insists he does not shy away from presenting bad news or from issues that might embarrass Washington. “On the contrary,” he said. “Showing bad news is how you convince people to go and vote. You want to tell them if they don’t vote the same people will come back to rule them.”

Alhurra correspondents are as much at risk from insurgent violence as their western counterparts. One Saudi cleric has issued a fatwa, or Islamic decree, banning Muslims from watching the channel, which was said to be staffed by “agents in the pay of America”. Flyers have been distributed in Baghdad threatening Alhurra staff. A grenade was thrown at one correspondent.

Viewer statistics show the channel is being watched by a third of Al-Jazeera’s audience in Iraq. An earlier survey found that at least 20% of satellite viewers in Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco and Saudi Arabia were watching Alhurra regularly.

Yet some Iraqi media figures claim the station shuns contentious debates over whether Sunni Muslims should boycott the elections or the poll should be delayed. “On a news level, everyone knows they are the mouthpiece of the coalition,” said one Baghdad journalist.

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