A Canadian helping the infowar from Kabul

Love the Toronto Star headline:

Toronto woman behind Afghan ads

Western countries spend millions trying to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, only to throw it all away with a clumsy cultural gaffe.

That's where Mina Sharif comes in. She's 29, from Scarborough, and an expert in what sells in Afghanistan.

RICK WESTHEAD/TORONTO STAR

29-year-old Mina Sharif went from Scarborough to Afghanistan to make ads appealing to hearts and minds.

After moving to Kabul three years ago to help train local broadcasters, Sharif started a media company with two friends. Her main client is the U.S. Department of Defence, for whom she has created hundreds of ads that highlight the war's toll on civilians, explain how to detect roadside bombs and urge locals not to become suicide bombers.

And don't call her a propagandist.

"I don't look at what I do as psyops (psychological warfare)," Sharif says. "I think of it more as a health awareness program, like an anti-smoking campaign."

It's not easy for western forces to connect with Afghan communities. Sharif points to an incident two years ago when U.S. forces distributed soccer balls that were emblazoned with the Saudi Arabian flag. That was a problem since the Saudi flag features the Islamic declaration of faith and the name of Allah and the Prophet Muhammad.

"It was appalling," Sharif says, "that they put that on something you kick with your feet. But that's what we're here for, too, to help them understand the cultural differences."

Sometimes, cultural landmines aren't so apparent. The U.S. Army's in-house staff created a poster recently showing some Afghans above quotes from the Qur'an. Sharif and her colleagues suggested it was culturally insensitive to print scripture below someone's feet. A potential debacle was averted.

Sharif doesn't want to reveal the name of her company, fearful for security. The ads she and her colleagues have created are varied. Some feature bright-eyed children with a tagline underscoring that the country's future is reliant on its youth – 68 per cent of Afghanistan's 32 million population is under the age of 25.

Other ads are darker. One poster shows a woman with a stump where her hand used to be, a child at her side. "It's Photoshopped," Sharif concedes, "but that's the reality of what happens with a bomb."

An animated TV ad Sharif helped design is airing on stations in war-torn provinces such as Kandahar and Helmand. A young boy runs to his grandfather to say he spotted someone planting a bomb under a nearby bridge. The grandfather and child phone "119" – Afghanistan's version of "911" – and a fleet of Afghan national police trucks race to the scene, disarm the bomb and arrest the militant.

While radio is probably the most effective way of reaching locals, TV has made inroads in the past eight years. While owning a television was illegal under the Taliban, roughly one in five Afghan households had a TV set, according to a 2005 national survey. In another study of some provinces, roughly 66 per cent of respondents said they watched TV every day or almost every day.

Another of Sharif's ads features a mullah who refuses a request to perform a funeral because the deceased was a suicide bomber. The tagline: Suicide is un-Islamic.

Sharif's family moved to the GTA in the early 1980s when she was two years old, escaping the disaster in her country created by the Soviet invasion. She attended West Hill Collegiate and then went to the University of Windsor. After graduating, she worked for a Toronto-area counselling centre, helping Afghan immigrants learn how to use the Internet. She also worked with immigrants suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and later hosted an evening radio program for Afghans on Fairchild radio before moving to Kabul.

Her reasons for moving back to Afghanistan are complex.

"It hasn't been an easy job, but every time I want to get a ticket and go home, I see the motivation the people here have to do right for their country," Sharif says. "They have an ability to absorb things at warp speed. Helping someone here learn a skill like how to use the Internet seems much more meaningful than it does at home."..

Since then, western propaganda has become elaborate. Besides the effort to erect billboards and distribute leaflets, the U.S. has financed a local newspaper, assuring itself good coverage, and has distributed windup radios that are locked on frequencies used by U.S. and coalition forces for broadcasts.

Just recently, the U.S. began distributing glossy brochures that feature a history of mosques in America and highlight President Barack Obama's Muslim connection.

The Canadian military is also using psychological warfare tactics. The department of defence has started it own radio station in Kandahar – its Pashto-speaking broadcasters sit in a studio in Canada – and has tried to establish relationships with local journalists.

[From a post in October 2008:

...
Canada even runs a Pashtu-language radio station. RANA-FM broadcasts local music, talk and phone-in shows 24 hours a day [it's actually in Kingston; more here--jobs for Canadian Pashto speakers, and here--it's been around since January 2007]...]

The Taliban, meanwhile, spread their message through DVDs and websites, as well as through songs and poems. A recent cassette distributed through Afghanistan was titled "Let Me Go to Jihad" and featured songs such as "Convoy of Martyrs," and "My Mother, I am Going with your Permission."

Some Afghan officials are skeptical that prospective Taliban recruits can be swayed by U.S.-led public-service announcements.

"Most of these people who join the Taliban know that what they are doing is wrong," Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar told the Star in an interview. "They are poor, rural, uneducated, illiterate. They don't do this for ideology. They do it for money. The key to stopping it isn't a billboard. It's having better policing and providing them with an alternate livelihood."

More on the infowar here.