Taking on the Taliban in the media battle space

Washington Post:

The United States and its allies in Afghanistan must "wrest the information initiative" from the Taliban and other insurgent groups that have undermined the credibility of the Kabul government and its international backers, according to the top U.S. and NATO commander in the country.

"The information domain is a battlespace," Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal wrote in an assessment made public last Monday, adding that the allies need to "take aggressive actions to win the important battle of perception."

As an initial step, McChrystal wants to change the goal of public relations efforts in Afghanistan from a "struggle for the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan population to one of giving them 'trust and confidence' " in themselves and their government. At the same time, he said, more effort should be made to "discredit and diminish insurgents and their extremist allies' capability to influence attitudes and behavior in Afghanistan."

One way to accomplish that, McChrystal wrote, is to target insurgent networks "to disrupt and degrade" their effectiveness. Another is to expose what he calls the insurgents' "flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran," including indiscriminate use of violence and terrorism, and attacks on schools and development projects.

McChrystal's approach mirrors one that U.S. intelligence operatives are taking covertly, with some success, in the Middle East, where direct and indirect support is being given to Islamic leaders who speak out against terrorists. Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said last year the goal is to show "that it is al-Qaeda, not the West, that is truly at war with Islam."

Echoing that idea, McChrystal recognized in his report that Afghans traditionally communicate by word of mouth. He called for better exploitation of those "more orthodox methods" -- getting "authoritative figures" such as religious leaders and tribal elders to deliver the messages "so that they are credible."

One of the main changes from the current approach should be creating "opportunities for Afghans to communicate as opposed to attempting to always control the message," McChrystal wrote.

Another element he wants changed is the military's public responsiveness to incidents involving U.S. or allied forces that result in Afghan civilian deaths. Overreliance on firepower that kills civilians and destroys homes "severely damaged" the coalition's legitimacy in the eyes of Afghans, he noted, saying such incidents were well publicized by the Taliban.

New procedures must be developed for sharing information about such events, he wrote, so that when they happen, "we are first with the truth."

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The biggest failure is that of not labeling the Taliban war crimes for what they are. Their camouflaging themselves as civilians is a war crime that endangers civilians. Their use of human shields is a war crime that we rarely call them on. Our people rarely even mention the Taliban war crime while we act defensive when they accuse of us of deliberately killing civilians. We should do these things rather than expose our troops to hostile forces and not allow them to respond because there may be civilians among them. All that does in encourage the Taliban to use more human hostages when they attack. It is not a smart way to deal with the problem.

I have been critical of our efforts in the media battle space for years. We are too often too slow and defensive. We are constantly allowing the enemy to exploit the inside of our OODA loop when it comes to the media battle space.