The Torch: Improving ISAF's infowar

It's taken quite some time for NATO to come to grips with the Taliban's (dis)information capabilities:

NATO targets Taliban's propaganda

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 said, while 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 [see "Taliban Propaganda Watch (RC-South)" at Milnet.ca], of course, with no fear of reprisal. They follow no rules, and are seldom held to account by Western journalists and war correspondents, who tend to focus more on coalition armies [emphasis added--see end of post].

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.

"We are being out-communicated by the Taliban," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to a Senate appropriations subcommittee in Washington this month. Clinton hinted at a new strategic communications counterattack under development, scheduled to coincide with the coming 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 social networking websites.

Fully equipped broadcast and print media "operation centres" will be established at coalition-run military bases in Afghanistan, and 129 U.S. public affairs officers will staff them.

The new resources are to be in place by the end of the summer. For now, the Canadian military is looking at ways to hook into local cellphone systems in Kandahar to transmit counter-insurgency messages to villagers via text-messaging.

Delivering pro-coalition informationis vital if Taliban propaganda is to be neutralized, ISAF sources say. Beating insurgents to the punch is the new imperative.

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.