The cowardly and unprovoked terrorist attack on American soil on September 11th, 2001, left thousands dead at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as hundreds on the 4 hijacked passenger planes which were turned into weapons of destruction . The United States was left with only one response... a declaration of war on terrorism, and specifically against Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization, Al- Qaeda.
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The declaration of war on terrorism was not a rash act based on just the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But rather a statement that enough is enough and that we will not stand idly by while terrorists around the world take innocent lives. As for Osama bin Laden, the September 11 attacks were not his first acts of aggression against the United States of America. He has been linked to the June 6, 1996 truck bomb at Khobar Towers, a US military barracks in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 American military personnel and injured 500 more, the two bombings of August 7th, 1998, which exploded minutes apart at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing more than 224 people and wounding an additional 4,500 and the October 12, 2000 bombing attack on the Navy's USS Cole, while it was refueling in port at Aden, Yemen.
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Osama bin Laden has been living in Afghanistan where he supervises numerous terrorist training camps. The United States tried through diplomatic channels to have Osama bin Laden turned over for trial so that he is made to answer for his numerous crimes against humanity, only to be refused by the ruling Taliban government in Afghanistan. The United States then made it clear to the Taliban that if they continued to shelter Osama bin Laden and the terrorist organization, Al-Qaeda, that action would also be taken against them as the United States and the world will no longer stand idly by and let terrorist threaten the peace in the world.
A War of Information and Bombs
On October 7th, 2001, after negotiations failed, and after waiting nearly a month, the United States responded to the Taliban's sheltering of Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network by bombing known terrorist and Taliban military positions. In addition to the air war, the United States is engaged in a psychological war to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and to persuade the members of the Taliban to change their position on sheltering Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network.
On October 8th, Commando
Solo EC-130 aircraft of the 193rd
Special Operations Wing (SOW) began radio broadcasts into Afghanistan. The scripts for these broadcasts were prepared by the 4th
Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) to explain to the Afghan people that our
grievance is neither with them nor the nation of Islam, but rather it is with those who
would promote and support terrorism.
The role of psychological operations during this war on terrorism is going to be absolutely critical. It is at the same time going to be a difficult mission given these factors:
- The Taliban has had a stranglehold on the mass media in Afghanistan for the past 5 years. They have controlled both the local press and radio programs ( their primary source for news). There is no television as it was banned by the Taliban.
- Both the the Taliban Military and the terrorists supporting bin Laden have been recruited from a vast population of discontented youth, undereducated, unemployed, restless, resentful of their fate, and angry at the west for its riches and for abandoning them after we help them with the fight against the Soviets.
- The Taliban and/or Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, provides their members with meals, a weapon, a feeling of power and belonging and most important a mission, a purpose in life. Things many of them did not have prior to joining,
- We have to be extremely careful about "collateral damage". Although not intended and extremely difficult to prevent (especially when they hide military equipment and troops in residential areas and in and around non-combatant facilities), every civilian killed and every non-military target destroyed or damaged will immediately impact on our credibility that our war is not with the Afghan people, and at the same time, the collateral damage serves as a rallying call for more supporters to fight the US.
- Illiteracy is a major concern. When the Taliban took control of the government, women were no longer allowed to hold regular jobs. This directive by the Taliban reduced the number of medical professionals and more than half of the country's school teachers. Furthermore by restricting what and who (no women) could be taught in school, the Taliban further limited the education of the people. This decision coupled with the fact that many of Afghanistans's middle class left years ago during the conflict with the Soviets have resulted in a country of discontented youth, undereducated, unemployed, restless, resentful of their fate.
- There are multiple languages spoken with the two primary languages being Dari and Pashtu. Unfortunately, these are not languages that we have a lot of military personnel trained to speak, much less write. Because of the literacy limitations, the leaflets we use must get the message across to the target audience primarily though the use of graphics.
- The Taliban has the home field advantage and already have established credibility with the local population based on the fact that they were the sole source of information for such a long time. The United States on the other hand, must convince the Afghan people that much of what they have been told about bin Laden is a lie, no easy task.
- The Taliban through denial and deception operations will continue to try to prevent us from obtaining any credibility with false reports of wide spread collateral damage, food poisoning, and that America is out to destroy Islam.
Radios are widely available in
Afghanistan, where the Taliban has suppressed television, the Internet and other modern
sources of information. A survey two years ago found that 80 percent of Afghan males hear
a VOA broadcast at least once a week and 67 percent listen daily; there also is a strong
following for daily news broadcasts by the British Broadcasting Co
By knocking out the Taliban's radio capability and then broadcasting our own messages prepared by the 4th Psychological Operations Group, Fort Bragg, NC using the 193rd Special operations Wing's Commando Solo aircraft, The Unites States and the Coalition Forces now have a means to be heard by the Afghan people. Our struggle now will be establishing and maintain our credibility. We can accomplish this through leaflet drops and radio broadcasts telling the Afghan people the truth about Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and let them judge for themselves.
The outcomes that PSYOP must achieve:Make it clear to the Taliban leaders and their supporters that harboring terrorists is unacceptable and carries a price.
Develop relationships with groups in Afghanistan that oppose the Taliban regime and the foreign terrorists that they support.
Make it increasingly difficult for the terrorists to use Afghanistan freely as a base of operation.
To do this we must:
Alter the military balance over time by denying to the Taliban the offensive systems that hamper the progress of the various opposition forces.
Encourage the population to stay clear of likely military targets through leaflets and radio broadcastsProvide humanitarian relief to Afghans suffering truly oppressive living conditions under the Taliban regime.
Underscore that our grievance is with Osama, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban and not Afghanistan or Islam.
Now in order to conduct an effective psychological operations (PSYOP) Campaign, you must learn and understand everything there is to know about your target audience. Given that principle, below is some background information on Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Understanding Islam
It is important that we understand that many of the teachings and beliefs of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are not the beliefs and principles taught in the Holy Quran (Koran) of Islam. For example:
The Right to Life: The Holy Quran says "Whosover kills a human being without (any reason like) manslaughter, or corruption on earth, it is as though he had killed all mankind..." (5:32) "Do not kill a soul which Allah has made sacred except through due process of law..." (6:151).
The Right to Justice: "Do not let your hatred of a people incite you to aggression" (5:2). "And do not let ill will towards any folk incite you so that you swerve from dealing justly. Be just: that is nearest to heedfulness" (5:8).
The Prophet Muhammed said about the Islamic belief in equality of human beings: "No Arab has any superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a non-Arab have any superiority over an Arab. Nor does a white man have superiority over a black man, or the black man any superiority over the white man. You are all children of Adam and Adam was created from clay".
Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda
During the 1980s, resistance fighters in Afghanistan developed
a world-wide recruitment and support network with the aid of the USA, Saudi Arabia and
other states. After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, this network, which equipped, trained and
funded thousands of Muslim fighters, came under the control of Osama bin Laden. This
network was named Al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda ('The Base') is a conglomerate of groups spread throughout the world operating as
a network. It has a global reach, with a presence in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey,
Jordan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Xinjiang in China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia,
Myanmar, Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan, Kashmir, Sudan,
Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Azerbaijan, Eritrea, Uganda, Ethiopia, and in the West Bank and
Gaza.
Since its creation in 1988, Osama bin Laden has controlled Al-Qaeda. As such, he is both
the backbone and the principal driving force behind the network. Al-Qaeda is
organized with Bin Laden, the emir-general, at the top, followed by other Al-Qaeda leaders
and leaders of the constituent groups. Horizontally, it is integrated with 24 constituent
groups. The vertical integration is formal, the horizontal integration, informal.
Immediately below Bin Laden is the Shura majlis, a consultative council. Four committees -
military, religion-legal, finance, and media - report to the majlis. Handpicked members of
these committees - especially the military committee - conduct special assignments for Bin
Laden and his operational commanders. To preserve operational effectiveness at all levels,
compartmentalization and secrecy are paramount.
During bin Laden’s latest media extravaganza, broadcast by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera
satellite television station on 7 October, he reviewed the list of his enemies, all
designated as “the heretics and the infidels.” They are, naturally, the enemies
of God himself, bin Laden’s God; and bin Laden is speaking and acting on his
God’s behalf.
Bin Laden, like some of his psychopathic predecessors in history, justified his responsibility for cold-blooded murder. The slaughter of men, women, and children in Kenya, Tanzania, and the United States, along with the atrocities committed by his associates in Egypt, Algeria, Pakistan, and India were merely acts of retaliation for the actions of the U.S.A. and its proxy, Israel. “Millions of children [are] being murdered as I speak to you now in Iraq,” he claims, while “Israeli tanks are doing bad things in Palestinian cities.”
Bin Laden typically selects a few historical incidents, takes them out of their context and twists their significance, and uses them as a rational and moral pretext for his terrorist crimes. Like many culprits before him, bin Laden loves to use the supposed suffering and death of children as a trigger for moral outrage – an unholy misuse of a symbol of innocence for goals that are anything but innocent. Clearly, children – much less women – do not truly interest bin Laden or his associates. When asked about the innocent victims, women and children alike, who were killed as a result of their terror attacks, bin Laden and his cohorts explicitly stated that “Allah will take care of them” and that “there are no innocents in this battle.” Bin Laden has shown this same indifference to his own victims’ innocence even when they were Muslin women and children.
As to his enemies, the first and the most hated among them is America, the epitome of “heresy and hypocrisy.” The second is “The Sultanates” – that is, the Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, et al. The next are the “Corrupted Islamic States” like Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia. Syria, Iraq, and even Libya – states with regimes that are not at all Islamic in their orientation – are spared for the time being because of their anti-Western political stance.
Bin Laden’s ideology as expressed in this video is consistent with his former writings and declarations, and is based on his perception of a simple and massive struggle between good and evil. Bin Laden describes the attacks on the U.S. as part of an inevitable clash between two parts of mankind: “the part of Belief without Hypocrisy versus “the part of the heresy.” He openly exposes the superficiality of his moral viewpoint – his side of the conflict is entirely righteous, and his adversaries are entirely corrupt.
In the video, bin Laden spells out his primary goal in initiating the outrageous September attack on the United States. The attack was meant to trigger a chain of events which would inevitably escalate to an all-out confrontation between “Islam of the true believers” and “the camp of the heretics”. Bin Laden hopes to force all Muslims in every corner of the world to choose sides; he believes that most Muslims will ultimately come to support his struggle.
But the great majority of the Muslims seem to know better. They may have reservations about Western culture, and occasionally they overtly reject its norms; but they do not believe that Islam justifies mass killings and indiscriminate terrorism. Therefore, in spite of the mass pro-bin-Laden demonstrations in Arab and Asian countries – demonstrations that represent a small minority among populations of many millions in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia – the silent majority understands that nothing the West has done justifies bin Laden’s crimes.