Word: talibans
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Goaded into action by mounting criticism from the U.S., the Pakistani military last week launched an offensive against the Taliban on its own soil. But it remains unclear whether the goals of the offensive are limited to containing the militants' most recent advances, rather than reversing their steady gains of the past year. The country's President, meanwhile, ahead of a trip to Washington, told foreign journalists that as far as his intelligence agencies were aware, Osama bin Laden was dead - though he readily admitted that they had no proof. The rituals recalled the days when General turned President Pervez...
High rates of illiteracy in rural areas compel the Taliban to rely on more traditional means of communication. Threatening phone calls to influential tribal elders are supplemented with pamphlets and audio cassettes containing pro-Taliban songs and poems. Those who would dare cooperate with the authorities are reminded they are likely to be killed...
...propaganda machinery extends beyond the borders of Afghanistan. In Pakistan's Swat Valley, Mullah Qazi Fazlullah, a firebrand Taliban cleric known as "Mullah Radio," has used unlicensed FM stations to effectively paralyze the former resort area, now under militant control. Last week, an editorial from the The News International, a leading English daily, called the Pakistani government's failure to "evolve a counter-narrative to the Taliban propaganda" that fills airwaves and newspaper columns a "dereliction of the highest order...
...Afghan government has hurt its own cause in the past by making little to no effort to engage the media, leaving the Taliban to dominate the narrative. While NATO typically issues a brief statement within a day or so of an insurgent attack, Rahimullah Samandar, head of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association, points out that the Kabul government stays silent, even as Taliban spokesmen reach out to information-starved media outlets with detailed accounts in real-time. "The Taliban has been filling in the gaps," he says...
...counter the Taliban advances in the propaganda war, the Pentagon has reportedly launched a broad "psychological operations" campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan to take down insurgent-run web sites and the jam radio stations. The Afghan government, for its part, has opened a new $1.2 million media center with international support. Staffed by a team of Western-trained spin doctors, the facility includes a high-tech media monitoring wing and an outreach department tasked with building better working relations with journalists...