Whatever changes have taken place are not guaranteed by any institutional framework and could be reversed from one day to the next on the order of the leader; some already have been. Media, which proliferated over the past twenty years, are not all under direct state control, but the authorities have placed them under surveillance and issue warnings about undesirable or prohibited reporting. According to one report, media representatives were summoned to the office of the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) and told that they risked violent reprisals if they reported on fighting, insecurity, or civilian casualties of suicide attacks.
