This so-called "war on terror": I don't actually know what it is. As a journalist, whenever I switch my television on, whenever I read a newspaper, that term is bandied about everywhere.

For me, the war on terror is an attempt by this government - by the Blair government, by the Bush administration, by governments around the world - to demonise people, to criminalise behaviour, to stoke up fear, stoke up hatred, and create tension for people: everyday people, people like you, people who look like me, asylum seekers, the list goes on. If we just focus on the events of the past 48 hours - a truly horrific thing happened in Madrid - nearly 200 people were killed, thousands of people have been injured. And already we see journalists rubbing their hands with glee, trying to find a connection with al-Qaida. Now, for all I know, al-Qaida could have been responsible. There's absolutely no evidence to support that, yet before I came here today I was watching Sky News and a caption kept flashing up saying that police in Madrid had revealed that the terrorists used copper material which has never been used before. Well, what does that mean? Well, what they're saying is that ETA has never used copper before in bomb-making activity - and they were absolutely desperate to find a link to al-Qaida - and the words "Islamic militants" have already started coming out, within 4 hours of the event actually happening. I heard somewhere that a Koranic tape had been found in a white van - how very convenient! It's completely hideous, and nowhere is anybody asking, "well where is the evidence? where is the proof." I've heard things like "there's a large North African community living in Spain," and the disgraceful thing is not only are governments such as the Bush administration and the Blair government involved in stoking up hatred and tension, but journalists as well, have fallen into this trap, and I find it absolutely appalling.

Driving up to London today, I was listening to a report on PM on Radio 4 and they talked, obviously, about what happened yesterday in Madrid. And then they went to their correspondent, Wyre Davies in Jerusalem, where he was talking about security at a bus terminal in Jerusalem: "the Israelis know what terror is like, the Israelis know what terrorism is all about." Nowhere in the report did the word "occupation" come out, nowhere did the Palestinians emerge in that report: absolutely disgraceful. Basically the media is behaving in the same way as these governments in terms of stoking up hatred.

For Ariel Sharon, after September 11th was a dream come true. He started talking about the war on terror: "this is our war on terror, now the world knows how we feel." The media is playing, literally, into the hands of these, in my opinion, mad people. I remember watching the bombs falling on Baghdad on the rolling 24-hour news channels in the UK and the term "shock and awe" was being used. I heard words like "fireworks are lighting the sky." Those fireworks were bombs dropping on a massive civilian area, killing thousands of people. Yet what we saw was sanitised news coverage.

We had hundreds of journalists embedded with the military. I couldn't tell the difference between a soldier and a correspondent when I was watching my television, trying to figure out was going on, because the journalists were wearing the same camouflage gear as the soldiers. They were using military language. They wonder why they are targeted, why people don't greet them with open arms: it's because, unfortunately, people are now beginning to see the military and journalists as one and the same. And they have to realise why that is.

I've just come back from Doha. I was working for Al-Jazeera. I left the UK to go and work for Al-Jazeera because as a practising Muslim, working in the mainstream news environment, I found it very very difficult: the level of ignorance, the racism. I wouldn't call it deliberate racism, but those middle-class white journalists - and that's what most of them are in newsrooms - they've never really dealt with people like me, they've never really come across people like me. Then September 11th happened and they realise "oh, there's lots of people who look like her, floating around," and now there's this whole climate of fear because they don't understand people like me. So I find it very difficult, and I won't try to explain all the dilemmas and problems I had because I would be here for a long time! However one of my reasons for leaving the BBC, which is where I used to work, was because I was absolutely disgusted, for a long time, by coverage of the bombing of Afghanistan, the continuous distorted coverage of the situation in Palestine - and then, to top it all off, the invasion of Iraq.

I don't like to call it a war because it wasn't a war, it was basically straightforward invasion and occupation, and a year on, we are still not really being told about what's happening. That's my reason for going to Al-Jazeera. However, when I got to Al-Jazeera, I discovered there were similar problems going on at Al-Jazeera. To most of us here (I think I am preaching to the converted!) we try to find alternative media sources to find out what's going on in the world. And for me, Al-Jazeera represented something unique - it was refreshing, it was new, it was the only news organisation in the world that had journalists in Afghanistan, in Iraq, as opposed to in a Marriott hotel in Islamabad broadcasting from the roof of the hotel! However, they have paid a heavy price. They have paid a price in terms of the journalists who have been killed: Tariq Ayoub was killed in the Palestine hotel in Iraq, everybody knows about that. However, things I didn't know about were, for example: an Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Haj, who's a Sudanese cameraman - he's been locked up in Guantanamo for over two-and-a-half years.

He was picked up in Pakistan where he was filming. He was doing his job, and he was lifted. He was taken to Bagram, and from there he ended up in Guantanamo. Now, this guy is a journalist and a couple of phone calls would tell them who he is. Whilst I was working for Al-Jazeera, there were at least four journalists who were arrested and detained continuously, perhaps as many as four times. We would be told "the journalist has been lifted, the cameraman's been lifted, been detained" - and this was going on constantly.

Last May, George Bush was in Qatar. He was in Doha for a meeting, and a month later, the head of Al-Jazeera, Mohammed Jasim, was removed from his job. No explanation was given but he's gone on record to say that he believes it was due to interference from the Bush administration. When I was working for Al-Jazeera, we had visits from US Embassy staff: we had three visits in three months. We had staff coming in and out of the office, walking around, never talking to journalists but talking to management. On the anniversary of September 11th a cartoon was produced on the English language website which basically showed the twin towers crashing, and two petrol stations emerging with a dollar sign. And our management told us, basically, that they had received a phone call from the White House who had said "pull that cartoon" - so it was pulled. So that was what was going on when I was there. I've since been in touch with friends and colleagues and they've been telling me that things have been getting a lot more heated: the bureau chief in Baghdad has been removed, a new guy has been put in place; my former colleagues who work in the bureau in Baghdad tell me that they have been told that they will not be first on the scene of an explosion, which was the reason the US troops kept given for arresting Al-Jazeera staff.

So that is the kind of pressure journalists are under, and I wanted to share it with you because I'm sure you're not going to be hearing it anywhere else.