Doug brought this to my attention, and it is a very interesting look at the speed in which the Taliban was able to distribute their propaganda about this raid in Afghanistan. It really doesn’t matter if the guy was a bad guy or not, the perception was that he was not, and that the raiding party was in the wrong. Although I am sure if our military media machine was able to pre-plan the media release and information distribution about this raid before the Taliban did, like Doug was telling me, then they could have controlled the message better. The enemy is able to twist the details, and do whatever they can to make us out to be the bad guys, and that is exactly what they did here. They could say ‘of course this man had an AK 47 in his hand, there were men that came in the middle of the night, and he had no idea who they were’. No mention that he was a bomb maker.
With that little twist to the details, the Taliban could easily promote a concept that this guy was innocent, and that the Americans are the Russians incarnate. We must do a better job of defeating the Taliban propaganda machine, during raids like this. And yes, maybe it would have been better to find a different way of nabbing this guy. Like using the local police, or just sitting the guy out until he moves away from the village.
Either way, if we are to do any actions in these villages, we must look at it from their perspective, and from the Taliban’s perspective, and figure the best way to navigate that deal. The information operations effort must do better than this, to stay ahead of this enemy.
I will even take it a step further. The Taliban could easily take a new media approach, and I am sure they have. As soon as a raid happens, a Taliban info warrior blogs the crap out of it, and gets that info out to their network. That network puts their slant on it, and keeps expanding the net. New media has the potential to spread this fast, and spread it amongst a key group of opinion leaders out there in the jihadist networks. And then guess who monitors this kind of stuff? The anti-war and human rights crew, and the pure gold of Info War for the Taliban, is to get the international community thinking that they have been wronged, or that the ISAF forces are committing the next ‘Mai Lai Massacre’.
PMC’s and PSC’s need to be aware of the Taliban media machine as well. They would love to create another Nisour Square situation, and pull start the population hate machine against western security contractors. Things to think about. –Matt
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Tactical success, strategic defeat
Afghan outrage at U.S. raid highlights challenges facing new military push
By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post
March. 1, 2009
FORWARD OPERATING BASE ALTIMUR, Afghanistan – The U.S. soldiers entered the sleeping village in Logar province in the dead of night on Feb. 20, sure of their target and heavily armed. They surrounded a mud-walled compound, shouting commands, and then kicked down the gate as cries of protest erupted within.
Exactly what happened next is disputed, but shots were fired and a man inside fell dead. Four other men were grabbed and arrested. Then the soldiers departed, leaving the women to calm the frightened children and the rumors to spread in the dark.
By midmorning, hundreds of angry people were blocking the nearby highway, burning tires and shouting “Death to America!” By mid-evening, millions of Afghan TV news viewers were convinced that foreign troops had killed an unarmed man trying to answer his door.
“We are afraid of the Taliban, but we are more afraid of the Americans now,” said Abdul Ghaffar, a truck driver in the raided village. “The foreign forces are killing innocent people. We don’t want them in Afghanistan. If they stay, one day we will stand against them, just like we stood against the Russians.”
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