Troops turning tables on Taleban in Afghanistan's propaganda war

Published on Tuesday 29 July 2008 22:57

BRITISH troops in southern Afghanistan are aping the Taleban's propaganda techniques as part of an increasingly desperate battle to win support of the local people.

Psychological warfare soldiers are using a series of subtle – and not so subtle – leaflet campaigns to turn the insurgents' messages against them.

The hardline militants routinely curse British troops in Helmand as infidels and foreigners who do not respect women and ignore local customs.

British soldiers insist that's not true, but they understand it resonates with ordinary people and they have responded with a series of leaflet campaigns designed to remind local people that most of the Taleban commanders are from outside Helmand as well.

"We place an idea in their mind and tell them what they can do about it," said Lieutenant- Commander Shamus MacLean, at the dedicated "psy-ops" cell in the British headquarters at Lashkar Gah.

"The Taleban understand the target audience far better than I ever can," he added. "If they do something that works particularly well, I am going to copy it."

Psy-ops is often known as one of war's dark arts.

Details of the campaign emerged after a major international think tank claimed the insurgents were winning Afghanistan's propaganda war. The International Crisis Group said people have an inflated view of the Taleban's strength and it urged the international community to highlight the insurgents' brutality.

British commanders are convinced they will never defeat the Taleban without first winning the support of the local people, most of whom are illiterate farmers. The insurgents, meanwhile, depend on the locals for the food, shelter, and disguise, which lets them blend in while they attack British forces.

"It's all about consent of the people," Lt-Cmdr MacLean said. "We need to have more of it than they do. Do we at the moment? In some places yes, in some places no."

The Taleban's top-level commanders fled to Pakistan after the regime collapsed in 2001. Many of their mid-level commanders were educated in Pakistani madrassas, or religious schools, and their ranks have been swelled with Arab and Chechen fighters bent on waging holy war against western forces. Intelligence officials have even found evidence of renegade British terrorists fighting for the insurgents.

"We're trying to plant the idea in their heads that the Taleban are under foreign leadership," Lt- Cmdr MacLean, from the Isle of Seil, said.

The psy-ops cell has produced a series of leaflets linking atrocities with foreign fighters. One leaflet shows a screaming baby that has lost both legs and a hand, with the message: "This is the foreign Taleban's gift for you. They don't care about your life."

Lt-Cmdr MacLean said some people had already turned on the insurgents. He said: "There's anecdotal evidence to suggest that locals haven't been happy with the way these people act around the local women, for example. We heard reports they caught people laying mines, beat them up and kicked them out. The best result is the rejection of the insurgents by the communities themselves."

Britain's psychological assault is seen as increasingly important because the fighting troops are suffering the worst attrition rate since 2001.

Major Ben Howell, one of 16 Air Assault Brigade's "influence" officers, said: "It's not divide and conquer as much as divide and defeat. If you can disrupt an organisation by using words, or using ideas, you don't have to disrupt it by killing people. We don't kill our soldiers and we don't kill the young men of Afghanistan who are its future."