Hearts and Minds?

[ilots]

Their information campaign is pretty effective when they are on the attack, but it was woefully inadequate when the Taliban were being over thrown and when Ethiopia was roaring through Somalia. Zawahiri's scramble to urge jihadis into Somalia came at a point when the remains of his allies were backed into a corner by the sea in Ras Kamboni.

There is a lesson here in the ineffectiveness of information ops in the face of sustained use of force.

I don't thing you could have read that in a way further from the truth. Their IO was almost none existent during the fall of the Taliban, however their IO has had amazing effects in the post OEF invasion period - as the increase of insurgent relevance (and operations) has reflected. Likewise, "Hey, Jihadis head to Somalia" really is NOT an IO campaign. If any lesson should be learned (as we also learned in OIF) is that IO must be incorporated as early as possible to be effective, not as a post operation action, emergency action, or stop-gap - the idea is to alter the battlespace prior to the battle. Further, the global propogation of the jihadist ideology, even among disparate groups, is a reflection of the effectiveness of their IO ability.

I would further opine, as history has shown (and in Somalia the future also likely will) that in the "face of sustained force" (as we used in OIF and OEF) IO is critical to a terrorist organization and/or insurgency when it comes to maintaining their ideology, legitimacy, relevance, support, and core movement, in spite of tactical defeats.