NATO Attack on Pakistan: Taliban PSYOP or Fog of War?

There is no question that relations between the US and Pakistan are in the crapper. The latest debacle was a NATO Attack on Pakistani forces on 26 November 2011. The incontrovertible facts are that at least 24 Pakistani soldiers died as a result of the attack. (See “Afghans say commando unit was attacked before airstrike was called on Pakistan - http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/afghans-say-unit-was-attacked-before-airstrike/2011/11/28/gIQAX6ZY5N_story.html)

Pakistan maintains the attack was deliberate, the US says it was not and the Afghans frankly don’t seem to give a sh*t . Conservative leaning publication, the Washington Times ran an article “US suspects NATO was lured into raid” (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/29/pakistan-calls-nato-raid-act-aggression/)

If it’s not the fog of war, it certainly is the fog of who can get their facts straight and their story out. A rash of other stories are circulating about whether or not the US will apologize, whether the mil to mil relationship between the two countries will continue and of course what does it portend for the region after the US withdraws the bulk of its forces as forecasted.

For the influence profession we can learn some powerful lessons:

1. If it is true that the Taliban were clever enough to orchestrate attacks or targeted fires to provoke an attack – this means that there are some pretty big holes in the ROE and the process of confirming your targets. It also means that once again a supposedly primitive foe has demonstrated some very sophisticated thinking

2. PAO and MISO/PSYOP must be on the same page. PSYOP may have the ability to provide PAO with input, insight, file footage and/or other help. Of course due care must be taken so that PAO’s integrity and credibility is not compromised.

3. PAO needs to counsel GOs and other senior leaders on what to say and perhaps, more importantly what not to say in fluid and uncertain situations.

4. As shown by the photo from the Washington Post, any excuse will be deemed a good one by our enemies to show popular sentiment against NATO and the US.

5. Bad news, unlike wine and chicken soup, does not get better with age. Speed is of the essence with regard to investigations and getting the word out.

6. Notwithstanding the most neutral of investigations people will believe that they want to so contingency counter propaganda and demonstration plans must be implemented.

7. The strategic importance of Pakistan as an ally mandates the diplomatic channels to include President Obama need to be engaged. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister for example is quoted in the Washington Post as being ready to pull Pakistan’s support of the US war on militancy. Ministers are influenced by diplomats, typically not by military personnel.

No matter what the truth is behind the attack, all of us need to consider the lessons to be learned and the ways and means to avoid a similar situation in the future.

The PSYOP of Protests - Occupy Wall Street Applied

There has been much ado about the “Occupy Wall Street” Movement here in the US during September and October of 2011. The late night news on 12 September had extensive coverage of how the ‘movement’ was spreading throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

As it turns out, I was attending the 1^st San Jose Cyber Security Summit at the San Jose, CA City Hall. After watching the news last night I was more than curious to see the extent of the protest live. I took the photo in today’s posting using my iPhone, so I can assure you it was not retouched in any way. It turns out to be a ‘long shot’ with the tent accommodations of some of the protestors in the foreground and a bunch of ‘protestors’ about 75 feet away near Santa Clara Street, the main thoroughfare near the City Hall.

If the effect makes the entire effort look sparse – it’s because it was! This is in stark contrast to the tight shots being used on TV last night which gave the viewer the impression that there were quite a bit more protestors than in reality.

What’s all mean? Gatherings of crowds can serve useful purposes of anyone who is astute enough to photograph them in a way that supports their case. Magnifying the size and scope of a gathering serves to amplify the message. This amplification can serve to stimulate recruitment, increase media coverage, provide useful ‘background roll” for later use or all of the above.

Merely showing a group of people protesting doesn’t prove anything by itself. Analysts would have to look at the objective size of the crowd, their demographics, trends in the previous days or weeks and compare this analysis with other similar situations.

For influence professionals it’s a gift! Images of various demographic groups, particularly individuals whose image clearly portrays a specific group can be very effective in promoting one’s cause. Counter propaganda analysts need to not only perform the objective analysis , but determine the potential uses our enemy could make of the images and recommend what the best counter messages might be.

In the Internet age the local protest can turn into the strategic message very quickly.

Information Support Operations An Afterthought At Best for Homeland Security

On May 21 & 22, 2011 I was an evaluator for an exercise which took place in a major city. The city is the hub of an 8 city Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI). Federal government grant money paid most of the bills and sponsors took care of most of the rest.

The exercise involved 4 Emergency Operation Centers scattered over the area and was a series of ‘lanes’ designed to test Police SWAT (Special Weapons & Tactics), Fire, Urban Search & Rescue (USR), Emergency Ordinance Disposal (EOD), Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Each lane was coordinated by one agency and evaluators came from far and wide.

By design, the event is overall very low key, although there was an initial press conference attended by the city’s mayor and other dignitaries which resulted in some coverage prior to the event.

Media access was limited during the exercise and there were scant posters or other indications of locations or tactical lanes. In short it was akin to a military operation where the name of the game is to keep the public out of the way to minimize interference with the operation and maximize Operational Security (OPSEC).

While I can understand this posture in terms of external information support, I felt I was in a time warp when it came to the exercise play. There was absolutely no attention to the potential negative effect of information operations either intentional or accidental. Just as in my early Army exercise (PRC-6 anyone?) days, guidance was put out that communications are not to be interfered with because it was hard enough to communicate during the height of battle without someone messing with you.

More importantly the notions of misinformation, hostile crowds and pesky reporters were not considered at all. As for presence, there was only a single Public Affairs Officer at the central EOC with a few of the agency PAOs training their principals, but not actively involved in the exercise.

On the Command information side, EOC communications were via a chat like software package called WebEOC. No video and not very much contemporaneous reporting from other sources contributed to the CDR’s situational awareness.

Given the 24 hour news cycle, the persistence of paparazzi, and the ubiquity of cell phone video cameras – this is a mistake. Our enemies are clearly not stupid and are likely surveilling soft targets as you are reading this. The inability to provide information support operations in homeland security is a vulnerability that is open to exploitation by our enemies. DOD and DHS need to take the initiative and incorporate the informational aspects of homeland security into their efforts and as key elements in the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) and a key factor in determining if the government got its money’s worth for its grant funding.

Counter PSYOP – The Hasan Matter

Bad news, unlike wine and chicken soup, does not get better with age. The murders at Fort Hood will haunt our collective consciousness for some time to come. Make no mistake, our enemies are pondering how to use the tragedy for their own purposes and we need to be ready with counter PSYOP, in fact we need to be sending messages right now. Photo credit: AP via Washington Post

Hasan’s links to ‘radical cleric’ (see Washington Post, 18 November 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/17/AR2009111703830.html?wpisrc=newsletter) is one of many Monday morning quarterback articles across the media. I won’t concern myself with the law enforcement aspects but point to the PSYOP aspect - -word of mouth, especially from credible (to their audience) religious leaders is a powerful recruiting tool and a means to keep their followers engaged against the perceived enemy.

From an enemy PSYOP perspective let’s honestly reflect on what they have to work with. First of all there is an incredible wealth of video and photographic imagery of the carnage at Fort Hood and pictures of MAJ Hasan in uniform. There is also a wealth of information on his alleged beliefs and even a PowerPoint.

The enemy is more than likely going to employ some of these on the Internet and perhaps even orchestrate the spider webbing of word of mouth showing how the jihad’s righteousness has been accepted by Muslims even in America and even by those who have mistakenly taken up the cause and worn the uniform of the infidel.

What do we need to do about it? First of all we need to reemphasize the message that we are not at war with Islam, but with terrorists. However, while there needs to be direct USG messaging from President Obama and Secret Clinton on down the line, American sources are not enough. We must enlist the aid of credible Muslim religious leaders to speak out against the atrocity and reiterate the criminal, anti-Islamic and abhorrent nature of the act.

We need to show that the defendant is assumed innocent until proven guilty. If appropriate messaging concerning his medical care after the incident along with the on-going story of the criminal prosecution may be of value.

It might also make sense to have messaging from Muslim Chaplains and individuals currently serving in the US military to underscore the fact that Hasan is an aberration and that serving in the US military is consistent with Islamic beliefs.

The point is we know the enemy is resourceful and employs a high degree of information agility – we need to launch an information offensive before we are caught flat footed once again.

Bad News And Commanders

Getting hit in the media can sometimes have more long term negative effects than physical casualties. The recent credibility debacle arising from airstrikes in Afghanistan is disturbing on many levels and a very good – bad example.

First of all CDR, especially senior ones, should know that, unlike wine or chicken soup – bad news does not get better with age. CDR should also know that sooner or later the ‘truth’ will come out. Consequently it makes sense to know where your bombs are landing and to be ready to admit when things going awry.

Commercial Public Relations (PR) experts will advise to get out in front of the event and take the moral high ground. Admit what happened, take responsibility, describe how you will help to set things right and then detail the steps you are taking to make sure it won’t happen again.

Of course this has to be in the context of not giving the enemy the feeling that you are abandoning the weapons systems and conveying that you won’t hesitate to bring air power to the fight whenever necessary.

Enemies With No Rules Need Counter PSYOP

The NY Times has been covering the Afghani popular backlash against American airstrikes blamed for the deaths of civilians. (see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?_r=1&ref=world) Photo from the article.

Protests erupted in the western province of Farah. The protests in turn spurred police response and generated support from some local government officials. The US government admitted that there were airstrikes but balked at responsibility for the civilian deaths.

The US information engagement response was an expression of regret and announcement of a joint investigation by Secretary Clinton and a statement by Gen David McKiernan: “We have some other information that leads us to distinctly different conclusions about the cause of the civilian casualties.”
The article continued with accounts of bodies and anonymous US forensics evidence that seemed to indicate the attacks were the results of grenades, not bombs. And from the Pentagon the world media heard: “We cannot confirm the report that the Taliban executed these people,” said Capt. John Kirby, the spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. “We don’t know if it’s true, and we also don’t know how many civilians were killed as a result of this operation.”
· Let me be clear that I am not, nor have I ever been in this theater so I really have no idea what ground truth is. However, this much I do know:
· Popular support will be even more important as more troops pour into Afghanistan.
· NATO forces ought to know where they bombs are falling and ought to be able to estimate the people and property damage to be expected.
· The local population appears to want to believe that the Americans are always the bad guys.
· Declarations of regret are nice but have no local effect.
· Joint investigations will take some time delaying their impact and their credibility will be in doubt unless they have insured local credibility through local leaders.
I have a few recommendations:
· Air strikes are common enough phenomena that the USG must have a proven SOP for dealing with their actual and perceived harm. This SOP needs to stress information engagement tailored to the local area.
· Technology should be employed with the entertainment value of the TV series. I would envision a Lawrence Fishburne or Dennis Haysbert type authoritative figure narrating a simulation that shows how the bodies were created by a Taliban attack. This computer imagery would be employed in the local area and if appropriate made available to regional and international media as well as on YouTube.
· Print versions of the simulation with local language translation should be made available. If there is no written local language then audio (like greeting cards) should be used.

Can Disinformation be Credible PSYOP?

Today’s Asian Times on line is featuring an article: “Disinformation flies as US raises Iran bar” (http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JB21Ak01.html). The article talks about the informational tug of war between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the US efforts to insure that Iran is the target of a new round of UN Sanctions. According to the author of the article: “a source close to the IAEA has called the US media reports "misleading". The source said: "Without going into the intelligence we may or may not have received, I can say that in my view, these news reports were misleading.”

At issue in today’s post is to offer a bit of analysis methodology to assess effect this ‘exposure’ of the alleged misleading nature of information provided will impact the battle for mindshare over the issue.

I’ve been often been accused of being a funny person, one who if life’s path were different, might have been a professional comedian. As a result, over time I have told people that “the best stuff is never made up”. This principle holds just as true in PSYOP as in comedy because the most effective PSYOP is the truth.

Another truth is that people believe what they want to believe. They tend to give more credibility to statements that prove their position than to efforts to discredit their position or change their mind. Consequently when information comes out that has in tainted in a credible way, that information is more likely to be disbelieved than it is to be considered by people holding opinions contra to that position.

The article author’s position is that Iran is within its rights to engage in nuclear ‘research’ and that the “IAEA must insulate itself from the disinformation campaign against Iran that has by all indications gone into a higher gear as we draw closer to the upcoming meeting of the IAEA’s board of governors, and it must ignore the intensifying American lobbying efforts and those of its junior partners such as France (at a recent meeting of France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and the IAEA chief, Mohammad ElBaradei, the IAEA was urged to "stay firm" on Iran).”

Let’s look at the PSYOP/IO problem here. The article quotes an alleged source within the IAEA. The source is never named. The main thrust of the article is to reinforce the pro-Iranian position of the author. The messages are:
1. The US and its allies are trying to improperly influence the IAEA.
2. They are employing bad data (intelligence purportedly obtained from an unreliable source – stolen laptop) to do so.
3. The IAEA must remain above this sort of chicanery.
4. Iran is within its rights.

Some questions arise:
1. How credible/important is the Asia Times on-line in the information picture?
2. Who reads the Asia Times?
a. Direct Audience
b. Media that would parrot their position
c. Infuencers
3. What efforts (if any) should be made to counter this article?
I’m not going to offer responses here, but will strongly suggest that analysis like this is an important mission and that a “corporate” repository of the analysis, along with the responses and a tracking of their effects needs to be as much a part of the PSYOP arsenal as the loudspeaker.