The BBC is running a piece today on IO in Afghanistan, as used to shape the battlespace for Operation Moshtarak. Take the current operation in Helmand. It has been broadcast widely in advance. It even has a not-so-catchy title: Operation Moshtarak, which in Dari translates as "together". So there you have it, already three messages, if not more. The operation's title is in a local language and it stresses the idea of partnership - doubly signifying that this is a joint operation between Nato and Afghan government forces doing the job "together". The advance warning too sends a crucial signal - it is part of a deliberate and explicit strategy to encourage civilians to take precautions; to calm and inform tribal leaders; and perhaps to encourage some Taliban fighters to make themselves scarce. The article mentions the older discipline of PSYOP, and the newer one of STRATCOMM: What began as inducement or encouragement for troops to lay down their arms, or basic instructions to civilians not to get in the way of military operations - think leaflets dropped by aircraft in World War II - has blossomed into almost a social science of cause and effect. Psychological operations or "psy-ops" of the 1950s have morphed into information warfare.... However the new discipline of strategic communications seeks to go beyond information operations, press briefings and leaflet drops. It is, in the words of one alliance official, "an over-arching concept that seeks to put information at the very centre of policy planning." When you are fighting wars within communities in an effort to secure popular support for one side or another - the traditional struggle for hearts and minds - you can see how central the concerns of the new strategic information warriors have become. Well, there's no such thing as a "social science" -- the term is one of those misleading things we ought really to abandon for the sake of clarity. It is an art, not a science. Communicating to tribal cultures is also somewhat different from communicating messages to an enemy army in the field, or to a population in an industrialized country. For one thing, written messages are less powerful; for another, radios may not always be available. (Cellphones seem to exist everywhere, though; PSYOP ought to find ways to text message to every cellphone in a given region, if they haven't started doing that already.) For another, messages in honor cultures are honor-based in their credibility, and credibility is effectiveness in STRATCOMM. The word of a man known to you is important and may be credible, if the man is credible. A newsletter is not the same. Is the word of a US military officer credible? We should make sure that it always is. That is the biggest force-multiplier for IO in such places as Afghanistan. (H/t: COL David Maxwell)
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Posted
Feb 12 2010, 01:56 AM
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BLACKFIVE