Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE LONG WAR - Year 8 - 2009
NATO moves to counter Taliban propaganda machine by B Hutchinson 
NATO moves to counter Taliban propaganda machine By Brian Hutchinson, Canwest News ServiceMay 30, 2009 KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban ``never lie.' So says one of the insurgent group's usual spokesmen, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, speaking via cellphone recently from an undisclosed location. The insurgents are agents of peace, he declares. Meanwhile, Canadian and other coalition soldiers in Afghanistan ``kill innocent civilians, especially women and children. They are the cruelest in the world.' The Taliban and their adjuncts can say whatever they like, of course, with no fear of reprisal. They follow no rules, and they are seldom held to account by western journalists and war correspondents, who tend to focus more on coalition armies. Yet Taliban media strategies are becoming more sophisticated. They work hard at getting out messages to local populations, and at shaping public opinion, here and abroad. Even their most outrageous claims can become conventional wisdom. Once accepted by Afghan civilians, Taliban propaganda often filters into western media stories where it can be interpreted as fact. It's a problem for the coalition. Indeed, many observers agree that insurgents are winning the information war in Afghanistan. ``We are being out-communicated by the Taliban,' U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to a Senate appropriations subcommittee in Washington earlier this month. Clinton hinted at a new strategic communications counterattack under development, scheduled to coincide with the upcoming U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan. She did not elaborate. But Canwest News Service has been given exclusive details of the multi- faceted ``stratcom' surge to be implemented by the coalition's multinational International Assistance Security Force in Afghanistan (ISAF). It's an elaborate plan that requires the installation of new satellite transmitters across Afghanistan. These will be used to move anti-insurgent messages across the country as quickly as possible. Targets are to include traditional information sources and new media, including popular social networking sites such as Facebook. Fully equipped broadcast and print media ``operation centres' will be established at coalition-run military bases in Afghanistan, and 129 American public affairs officers will be deployed to staff them. There are now 80 American ``paffos' in Afghanistan, plus dozens more from other ISAF countries, including Canada. The new resources are to be in place by the end of the summer. In the meantime, the Canadian military is looking at ways to hook into local cellphone systems in Kandahar, in order to transmit counter-insurgency messages to villagers via text-message. The initiative is still in the early procurement stage, according to officials here. Delivering pro-coalition information to as many sources as possible is vital if Taliban agitprop is to be neutralized, ISAF sources say. Beating insurgents to the punch is the new imperative. ``When things happen the Taliban can very cleverly come up with whatever story they want,' said U.S. Brig.-Gen. Michael Ryan, the new director of strategic effects for all coalition forces in Afghanistan. ``We've got to get past this reacting stuff.' Besides using new media, ISAF is turning to traditional word-of-mouth methods, tapping trusted Afghan government sources and local district leaders such as village elders and mullahs and asking them to pass along pro-coalition messages. Of course, trust must be established before Afghans will accept and pass along ISAF information. That means telling them the truth, something coalition forces have been accused of avoiding. There are recent examples. In an interview with Canwest at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Ryan discussed several incidents involving coalition troops, especially controversial U.S. air strikes that claimed the lives of innocent Afghans. These were catastrophic events that also damaged U.S. and ISAF reputations, because their officials bungled their communications with media. They hedged their responses, delayed the release of information, contradicted themselves and, some allege, wilfully misled reporters and the public about civilian casualties. One major incident took place last August in the village Shindand, in the western province of Herat. After coming under insurgent attack, American Special Forces and Afghan soldiers requested air strikes. U.S. warplanes responded with an aerial bombardment. As sometimes happens with air strikes in Afghanistan, scores of civilians were killed. Afghan and United Nations officials put the civilian body count at 90. For weeks afterwards, the U.S. military insisted - to an increasingly skeptical public - that only three or five or seven civilians had died. Eventually, it conceded that dozens more had been killed by U.S. bombs. ``We screwed that up like you couldn't believe,' said Ryan, who was not in command of ISAF Strategic Effects at the time. ``We were saying only three were killed, when it was 90, and we finally admitted that yeah, OK, it was 33. Those were the bad old days, when we were not getting in there and checking stuff out. ' Ryan cited a more recent example. On May 4, U.S. air strikes ended a large insurgent attack on American and Afghan forces in Farah province. Once again, there were immediate reports of mass civilian casualties. This was soon front-page news, in Afghanistan and around the world. Ryan flew to the scene a day later. He was joined there by senior Afghan government officials and by Farah's governor. A joint U.S.-Afghan investigation was launched to determine how many civilians had accidentally been killed; early claims were that the toll approached 100. A parallel investigation by Afghans only was also initiated. There was little, if any, forensic evidence left on the ground. It is customary in Islam to bury a person within 24 hours of his death. ``The place belonged to the Taliban for a period of time,' said Ryan. ``They used it wisely by essentially scrubbing the scene.' The investigations continued but politics interfered. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai happened to be meeting with U.S. politicians in Washington at the time of the incident. He spoke to reporters there on May 6, and demanded an end to coalition air strikes in Afghanistan. The Afghan president also seemed prepared to accept that more than 100 civilians had been killed. The Afghan government settled on between 140 and 147 casualties. ``Well, he just framed the entire thing for the Afghan government, right there,' said Ryan. ``While an investigation is going on . . . That was problematic. A little upsetting . . . I'm going, `what did he see? What investigation did he look at?' ``Who are you going to believe? You going to believe an Afghan, or are you going to believe some foreigner? I think (Mr. Karzai's comments) unhinged the Afghan side (of the investigations), because they were stuck with that, even though privately they will tell you, `Yeah, 147, you've got to be shitting me. '' This week, Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission said that ``as many as 97 civilian casualties may have been killed' in Farah. Most of those killed were likely children, it added. Ryan said the ongoing U.S.-led investigation likely will demonstrate that the civilian death toll was about 25 to 30, and that 65 to 70 insurgents were killed. He expects more information will be released soon, but will many believe the U.S.? It hasn't helped that two weeks ago, Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Conway said he believed ``there were families who were killed by the Taliban (at Farah) with grenades and rifle fire that were then paraded about and shown as casualties from the air strike.' This is no longer the American position. ``We did believe at the time (that there had been Taliban grenade attacks), ' said Ryan. ``That has not panned out and we're not fooling with that anymore, unless we have some more compelling evidence. On the grenading, all we've got is hearsay.' |