Quote Originally Posted by IntelTrooper View Post
Awesome.

1-The Taliban are locals, and they know what messages/delivery methods resonate with the locals. How many ISAF propaganda videos are for sale in the bazaars? How many Taliban propaganda videos are for sale? What's the content of those videos? Why/how does it appeal to rural Pashtuns? Oh, and by the way, posting stuff on USFOR-A's Facebook page, or other Internet sites doesn't count. The vast majority of Afghans don't use the Internet.

2-Where are the radio stations? Why isn't one located on/near every FOB? And don't try to pull the AFN gloss job on the news. Afghans are smart, and they know when someone is trying to manipulate them.
What's killing us in Afghanistan is not that we are failing to respond effectively or in a timely manner to the Taliban propoganda. We are, of course, and failing badly, but that isn't the problem, only a symptom.

And the radio, while not a panacea, could be an instrumental part of the conditions of victory. We are better than we were at building and staffing radio stations, but not in employing them. The Taliban are beating our teeth in in that arena as well.

The problem, the real problem with our use of radio stations in Afghanistan is that we have a catastrophic lack of imagination in creating content for them and a seeming unwillingness to grasp to grasp how vital it is for us to completely and utterly dominate the airwaves and capture the imagination of the Afghan people.

For a nation that was once so glued to our own radios in the decades preceding and during the Second World War, we have completely forgotten what a powerful influence it can be. Now that we have moved beyond television to the internet, we don't think of what magic there can be in a little hand cranked box in a country almost wholly dominated by agriculture and darkness. Our collective memory forgets how much of our grand parents lives were informed and influenced by the images they conjured up in their own minds as they sat listening to the voices, the sounds and the stories that came from those primitive speakers.

Those who would drag Afghanistan back to the dark ages are very aggressive about using the radio and they are no doubt finding their audience in the vacuum we have left in this medium. For 1% of what we are wasting on CERP projects that achieve little or no effect and with that talent available among the Afghans themselves, we could begin taking back the airwaves and engage the Afghan people with the most powerful weapon we have available: Hope.


I'm working on a paper on the topic for the NDC. Let me know if you want to see it when I'm done.