....Canadians are trying to work more closely with Kandahar's lively media landscape, which includes newspapers, radio and TV stations.
Local media outlets are invited to Kandahar Airfield to discuss the flow of information with Canadian officers. Afghan reporters say they're eager to get information from western sources on everything from security incidents to development projects as quickly as they can get it.
Canadian money, too, buys ads on all local media.
"Some of the small radio stations are only surviving because of our advertising," says Davis.
Canada even runs a Pashtu-language radio station. RANA-FM broadcasts local music, talk and phone-in shows 24 hours a day**.
In the field, soldiers on operations are accompanied by psyops teams, which brief commanders on the local cultural landscape, says Capt. Shawn Stewart.
"They try to find out who they are, where they're from, what village ... We try to paint a picture of affiliations."
Such information is crucial to sorting out the good guys from the bad.
"We've had situations where people have offered up others as being insurgents, but it was actually a historical rift between tribes. They were taking an opportunity to inflict some retribution."
Canada now has two psyops - psychological operations - teams, up from one. By next spring, there will be a third. Even the Afghan Army is developing its own psyops teams and information officers....
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