A new “strategic framework” for U.S. Public Diplomacy has at long last been released. Oddly, it is a slide show rather than a paper, but perhaps that’s because it is to be the basis for a briefing today. My colleague Phil Seib has already expressed disappointment in the new proposal:

It is so lacking in imagination, so narrow in its scope, and so insufficient in its appraisal of the tasks facing U.S. public diplomats that it is impossible to understand why its preparation took so many months.

One particular way in which this is true is the plan’s conception of narrative.

The number one objective in the strategy is to “shape the narrative.” Its authors reckon that we are not dealing effectively with new media, that inaccurate information shapes our story before we have a chance to do the shaping ourselves, and that too little information is available to audiences around the world. Accordingly it specifies the following tactics (paraphrasing):

• Rapidly respond to inaccurate information and shape stories through engagement with international media
• Expand platforms for shaping dialogue, communicating our perspectives and countering misinformation
• Use new modes of communication

The slides say these goals are the first phase of developing a more detailed plan, which will be taken up by working groups. Fair enough.  But the framework will guide the way the working groups think about the problem, and the guidance seems to be based in an outdated message influence model of strategic communication that fails to take account of the rugged landscape on which U.S. public diplomacy operates.

First, the framework clearly conceives the narrative problem as one of inaccurate information. But this misses the point; narratives are not about facts, they are about how facts are framed and interpreted. Extremists work tirelessly to tie U.S. actions in the Middle East to a master narrative of the crusades. The facts of the crusades are not really in dispute. Western/Christian powers aimed to seize lands from the Arab/Muslim people–especially Jerusalem–and in doing so served their economic and political interests.

Many facts of present day U.S. actions in the Middle East resonate with this account. We provide military and economic support to Israel, which is determined to keep Jerusalem out of the hands of the Arabs. We have recently invaded an Arab country and maintain a large number of troops in the region for the purposes of protecting our interests. Our leader said in 2001 that we were on a crusade. Our soldiers have bible references inscribed on their weapons. I have first-hand reports that active duty military personnel are wearing this patch on their uniforms in Iraq, and maybe Afghanistan too. None of these facts are inaccurate.

The U.S. offers a couple of counter-narratives against the crusader portrayal. One is that we are involved in a fight between Good (represented by us) and Evil (represented by violent extremists). But one can imagine crusaders saying something similar, and the extremists simply argue that these roles are reversed.

We also say we are trying to bring democracy and freedom to the lands where we are fighting (something reiterated in the new framework). But extremist ideologues like Abu Yahiya al-Libi, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and Abu Bakr Basyir argue forcefully that democracy is a form of polytheism that is part of the crusader plot to weaken the foundations of Islam.  Thus they turn our “gift of democracy” narrative against us.

Second, “shaping the narrative” is the wrong concept to use in the new strategic framework. It imagines that we can take an existing narrative and gradually use messages to alter its form. But in the case of the crusader narrative this is more akin to shaping a balloon. We press in one place and the balloon expands in another place to compensate. When we let go of the spot where pressure is being applied the balloon snaps back to its original shape. This happens because, as we have argued, the communication system has taken on a great deal of inertia such that new messages are readily assimilated to the existing structure.

A better goal would be to try to disrupt the existing narrative system–to pop the balloon–so a new narrative could be formed where our messages could get some purchase. With respect to the crusader narrative, a significant disruption would be some kind of breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would demonstrate that we are no longer complicit in the long-term project of the crusades. Needless to say, that is a tough nut to crack. But such is the nature of the challenge, and this or something like it is the only realistic way of changing the narrative.

Finally, the strategic framework seems to rely heavily on the idea of mastering the means of transmitting messages. It calls for better application of the tools of marketing, better utilization of new media platforms and social networking technologies, and better coordinated communication efforts. None of these are bad ideas in themselves. But they imply that the main problem is that we are not good enough at sending messages through newly available channels. If we could only do this better we would be more successful at shaping narratives. Yet in the absence of a more fundamental change in our communication strategy it is unlikely to do much good. Indeed it could make things worse if we more efficiently deliver messages that can be assimilated to the crusader narrative.

The narrative gap in the new stragegic framework lies in its assumptions that the problems are inaccurate information, lack of  shaping efforts, and inadequate use of media channels. In reailty the problems are that existing facts resonate better in the target audience with a crusader narrative than the alternatives we are offering, that the communication system is locked in a pattern of iterpretation that favors the extremists, and that just doing a better job of sending messages will do nothing to change things.

Related posts:

1. Obama’s Speech Didn’t Close the Narrative Gap by Bud Goodall Yesterday’s speech by President Barack Obama at...
2. The Afghanistan Narrative Gap and Its Consequences by Bud Goodall One of the important challenges of President...
3. Obama’s Nobel Speech Opens Narrative Possibilities by Bud Goodall In Thursday’s Nobel acceptance speech, President Obama...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In his book Fighting the War of Ideas like Real War: Messages to Defeat the Terrorists, J. Michael Waller argues that the United States already has a “secret weapon worse than death,” and it is cheap, readily available and easy to deploy. That weapon is ridicule.

Although the suggestion that ridicule and satire are legitimate tools of strategic communication might receive some – dare I say it – ridicule, Waller’s argument is a good one. Ridicule and satire have a long history in warfare, and they have been deployed both offensively and defensively. In the U.S., ridicule was used in the Revolutionary War, both to mock the British troops and to raise the morale of the American fighters. In WWII, domestic use of ridicule targeted Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito. In a more contemporary example, Waller cites Team America: World Police as an example of effective parody of Islamic terrorists and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.  While a movie that features graphic sex between puppets might not have universal appeal, Waller is correct in pointing out that prior to the movie, American audiences would likely not consider the Korean dictator someone to laugh at.

Nor is humiliation merely a Western conception. In pre-Islamic society in the Middle East, law breakers were often mutilated – either whipped or dismembered – as much for purposes of humiliation as pain. They became living symbols of what befell criminals in the community. Ridicule was also used as a weapon of war in both pre-Islamic and early Islamic society and poets were often assassinated because of their power to create and spread ridicule. Today, Waller argues, “many extremists equate ridicule with pain or death.” Bin Laden himself has been quoted as saying he fears humiliation more than death. Well known strategic advice says ‘know your enemy.’ If your enemy fears humiliation over death – which would serve to make him a martyr – then the use of ridicule seems highly appropriate:

In nearly every aspect of society and across culture and time, ridicule works. Ridicule leverages the emotions and simplifies the complicated and takes on the powerful, in politics, business, law, entertainment, the media, literature, culture, sports and romance. Ridicule can tear down faster than the other side can rebuild. It can smash a theoretical or intellectual construct (p. 95).

Jarret Brachman makes a similar argument:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about jihadis in my career it’s this: they are our secret weapon in the fight against jihadis… they are more than happy to point us in the directions of their weaknesses.

Brachman has coined the term ‘jihobbyists’ to refer to a growing number of armchair terrorists, who cheer on extremism from the web. The term, and the attitude that accompany it, have ‘stirred the pot’ in a most revealing way: “What you find by doing this is that the jihadis can’t not respond. And what they respond to is what they are most sensitive about.” And as Brachman points out, what really gets under the skin of these jihbbyists is not an insult to their ideology or religious beliefs, but the suggestion they still live in their mother’s basement. After all, it is very difficult to maintain a serious and terrifying self image when you get compared to this guy.

Waller’s suggestions regarding the strategic use of ridicule are an expansion of arguments he and others have made about the importance of language use in ‘the war of ideas.’ In ‘buying into’ terrorist’s language – especially by using terms such as jihad and mujahidin – Waller argues that the U.S. and its allies, “ceased fighting on our terms and placed our ideas at the enemy’s disposal” (p. 54). If this is a war of ideas, and words are weapons, then we need to be using the right ammunition, so to speak. More than that:

Being a declared adversary – even enemy – of the United States is a status symbol among the world’s terrorists, dictators, and political extremists. By taking that enemy too seriously, by hyping it up as a threat, the United States is unintentionally credentializing a heretofore insignificant individual or group, and giving it the stature it needs to rise above its own society, establish itself, attract recruits, and gain influence. Ridicule can cut the enemy down to size (p. 104).

According Waller (p. 109), ridicule is vital because:

• It sticks;
• The target can’t refute it;
• It is almost impossible to repress;
• It spreads on its own and multiplies with each re-telling;
• It boosts morale at home;
• Our enemy shows far greater intolerance to ridicule than we;
• Ridicule divides the enemy, damages its morale, and makes it less attractive to supporters and prospective recruits; and
• The ridicule-armed warrior need not fix a physical sight on the target. Ridicule will find its own way to the targeted individual. To the enemy, being ridiculed means losing respect. It means losing influence. It means losing followers and repelling potential new backers

While Al Qaeda and its ideological offshoots are certainly not insignificant, one recent event that would seem to support Waller’s case and would have been an excellent opportunity to ‘deploy’ ridicule is that of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, commonly known as the ‘underwear bomber.’ Although nothing these days drives the current 24-hour news cycle like the mention of terrorist activity, the facts are that the would-be bomber of the Christmas day flight quite literally sewed explosives into his underwear… and then couldn’t ‘get it off.’

Also, given Waller’s arguments, the appropriate response to Bin Laden’s (alleged) praise for the attack – nearly a month after the fact when intelligence analysis suggested that the video was an example of Al Qaeda struggling to maintain relevance – came not from major media outlets, but from The Daily Show. Snore indeed.  Another, more general example of ridicule that is aimed at the idea of the suicide bomber is a ventriloquist routine by comedian Jeff Dunham, titled Achmed the Dead Terrorist, an example Waller points to in his own blog.

This is not to suggest that the threat of terrorism is non-existent or a call to underestimate Al Qaeda’s ideological appeal or material capabilities, and Waller is quick to point out (correctly) that ridicule can be as dangerous as any kinetic weapon when improperly deployed. In the nine years since September 11, however, far more people in the United States have died of heart failure, diabetes, or car accidents than terrorist attacks. Given this, pointing out that Americans statistically have more to fear from a cheeseburger than a ‘guy in a cave’ is not only true, it’s good strategy.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In the war of ideas for the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world, cultural diplomacy can go a long way. The US government may not be very popular abroad, but our cultural products certainly are. Many Muslims hate our policies, but they still love our movies, listen to our pop music, and cheer for our athletes. Extremists, on the other hand, actively try to disseminate monolithic images of “the other” to their audiences. Al-Qaeda loves to reduce Americans to the archetypal “Crusader” with a singular malevolent purpose. Our films, music, arts, and athletes, can profoundly disrupt and subvert such efforts.

In the age of twenty-four hour news networks, websites, blogs and YouTube, there is no shortage of information out there for inquiring minds to consume. To command a sizable audience amidst such a saturated media landscape (mediascape), many outlets have resorted to promoting outrageous opinions and personalities to garner public attention (i.e. ratings and readers). Thus, the outrageous polarized voices of inflammatory right-wing pundits and snarky left-wing cynics have become a daily fixture of our mediascape and the “old school” journalism of Walter Cronkite has been relegated to the News Hour on PBS.

Even a casual glance through the headlines of the major news sites and magazine stands reveals a disturbing preoccupation with stories about people with names like “Snookie” or “J-Lo.”  Judging by these sorts of headlines, one might not think there’s much going on in the world. But according to UNICEF, some 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes (1 every 6 seconds). The world spends well over $1 trillion dollars each year on military expenditures.  Every twenty minutes another species goes extinct. And despite the recent attention, people were suffering and struggling in Haiti long before the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010. So why is the vapid cast of “Jersey Shore” still getting front page attention when the world has no shortage of urgent and horrific matters to report?

People love (even worship) celebrities.

This is nothing new, of course. Some celebrities have even used their cultural deification for good in the world and lent their names and images to important causes. Some of them might adopt causes for publicity or to fix a sullied public image (e.g. Paris Hilton), but I like to believe that most do it out of real compassion for their fellow human beings and the environment they live in. I guess I have “faith” in a few of these “gods.”

Last month, I was part of a planning committee for a grant proposal that would create a major conference on our campus featuring keynote speakers from academia, government, journalism, and the wild world of celebrity-activism. The core idea behind the conference was making specialized academic expertise about Islam accessible to public policymakers and the public-at-large. The inclusion of a celebrity-activist in our proposal was a response to the public’s preoccupation with celebrity-culture and how “ivory tower” intellectuals struggle to get their ideas and perspectives out into the crowded mediascape. After all, how many Americans would even know where Darfur is located if George Clooney hadn’t traveled to see Sudanese refugees with a film crew following him? The “bread and circuses” of the first world are too distracting for most people.

Communicating to a large public audience seems to require the aid of a celebrity spokesperson, ideally one with some credentials and intellectual clout who cannot simply be dismissed for adopting a “pet project.” A lot of NGOs and charities understand this concept. So why doesn’t our government?

No matter how hard they try to be “stars,” congressmen, senators, governors, and other politicians, are not “real” celebrities – although some admittedly exist in both worlds (e.g. Schwarzenegger, Franken, Reagan). President Obama certainly has celebrity status. But if the United States is truly interested in reaching out to the everyday people of the Muslim world and subverting the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric of Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Awlaki, we need to bring out the big guns of celebrity firepower through cultural diplomacy.

Even people who hate the U.S. government and its policies love American cultural products, including our movies, music, and athletes. It’s easy for Bin Laden to talk about waging holy war on the land of the “Crusaders” George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but it’s another thing to convince a kid in Cairo or Riyadh to wage jihad on Leonardo Dicaprio, LeBron James, Will Smith, and Johnny Depp. People in the Muslim world, many of which remain under authoritarian regimes, are understandably distrustful of governments and politicians. It’s easy for the Arab and Muslim street to dismiss the promises and claims of a Secretary of State or U.S. Ambassador reading a speech off of a teleprompter beside representatives of an unelected regime. An American movie star visiting a Muslim city with a charming smile and polite handshake would probably do a better job at disrupting the “Crusader” image constructed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates than a thousand government speeches and photo-ops. In 1971, we used table tennis or “ping-pong diplomacy” to improve U.S.-Chinese relations; what are we doing in the Muslim world today?

I propose a large-scale U.S. cultural ambassador program to university campuses and cities throughout the Muslim world. In 2007, the State Department conducted a program in China that featured Cal Ripken Jr. and organized youth baseball clinics in four cities. This was too brief to be truly effective. And as much as I love baseball, it is not a popular U.S. export to the Muslim world. So an extension of this program to a country like Syria or Jordan would likely be ill-advised. In terms of athletes, we’d be better off sending stars from the NBA – maybe the kids in Amman would enjoy seeing a dunk contest. Basketball is much easier to set-up and play than baseball – especially in crowded, impoverished and arid cities. Movie stars also need to be enlisted. American movies are everywhere. When I lived in Cairo, there were American movies on broadcast television a couple of times a week. The biggest obstacle might be convincing American movie stars to participate between awards ceremonies.

It is equally important to point out that this sort of cultural diplomacy needs to go both ways. There are a lot of people in the United States who – out of fear, ignorance, or anger – carry disturbing attitudes about Muslims that influence our public discourse and the conduct of our elected government (for the worse). These folks likely won’t listen to an informed professor down at the local university or pick up a copy of his or her over-priced academic hardcover at the bookstore, but they might show up to hear Natalie Portman talk about these issues and share her personal insights as someone who has worked and lived in the Middle East (Portman is Co-Chair of a village banking program with Queen Rania of Jordan). People might also sit down in a theater together to watch a play performed by American and Muslim actors, like the brilliant Ghassan Massoud of Syria. American audiences would undoubtedly find it hard to see the zealous jihadi of their fears in an actor creating a work of art on stage beside their fellow countrymen.

In all, the last thing America needs to do is allow U.S.-Muslim relations to be dictated by or restricted to the events on the battlefield when we are all a part of so much more than the characters imagined by both sides of the “War on Terror.”

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Yesterday the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan over the last year.  It concluded that “2009 proved to be the deadliest year yet for civilians since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.”  The surprise is what it says about the causes of these deaths, which in turn identifies an under-exploited opportunity to amplify ideological contradictions.

Sources of conflict-related civilian deaths in Afghanistan, 2009

Of the 2412 conflict-related deaths in 2009, 67%  were at the hands of “anti-government elements,” whereas 25% were attributable to ISAF and other pro-government forces.  Eight percent “died as a result of cross fire or by unexploded ordinance[sic].”

The anti-government figures represent an increase of 41% over 2008.  According to the report this is attributable to an increase in suicide and IED attacks.  Militants are also killing people they believe to be government supporters.

The pro-government numbers represent a decrease of 28% over the same period.  A report by Dexter Filkins in the New York Times attributes this welcome news to a tightening of restrictions on use of airstrikes.  To maintain the downward trend, American commanders also plan to reduce their use of night missions into villages, which often lead to unintended firefights with locals.

The state of affairs signaled by this report presents the UN/NATO/ISAF forces with a crucial opportunity.  As we argued in a white paper published last year, one of the critical functions of ideology is to smooth-over contradictions, like the one between the realities of extremist operations and the Qur’anic prohibition on killing innocents (especially when they are Muslim).

This function of ideology is why we were treated last month to a desperate video by Adam Gadahn, in which he said his buddies are not killing civilians, and are sorry for any civilians they have killed by accident. His dissembling is a clear sign of worry about the issue, and these new numbers show that there is good reason for worry on their part.

The pro-government response should be to push this contradiction into the open.  Norah Nilan, Chief Human Rights Officer for UNAMA, took a small step in this direction by saying in today’s release

Anti-Government elements remain responsible for the largest proportion of civilian deaths, killing three times as many civilians as pro-Government forces. It is vital that determined efforts are now made by the insurgency to put into effect the Taliban “Code of Conduct” that calls on them to protect the lives of civilians.

She added that “Anti-Government elements must realize that they too have obligations under international law.”

To me this statement is too tepid and deferential to the Bad Guys.  It more or less says that they have good intentions but have problems with execution, and they need to do better.  This is not unlike Gadahn’s argument.

Yet this assessment is at odds with facts stated in the same report that a number of the casualties are from cold-blooded political executions.  And isn’t killing 70 adults and children (and wounding 65) by bombing a volleyball game in Pakistan something more than a failure to stick with policy?

A better statement would be that the extremists are insincere in their claims that they want to protect civilian lives.  The Good Guys should be putting Gadahn saying “we don’t kill Muslims,” and quotes from the Taliban “code of conduct” about protecting civilians, side-by-side with press reports about and images of the innocent civilians who they are killing.

They should ask how the extremists can say they value and protect civilian lives when they bomb volleyball games and execute people.  And how could it be true that the extremists value innocent civilians while the Western forces hate them, as Gadahn claims, when the extremists’ deaths are going up and the Westerners’ numbers are going down?

Muslim allies in the region should be branding the extremists al-Munafiqin (or perhaps an equivalent in local languages).  Because like the Hypocrites of Medina they say they accept the word of God, but then act contrary to it when they see some advantage in doing so.  They are pretending to be devout Muslims for the sake of political expediency, but they are not acting like devout Muslims.

These kinds of efforts would help amplify the extremists’ contradictions and show them for what they really are.  Chiding them about their obligations under international law, not so much.

Related posts:

1. Gadahn Signals Gi-normous Extremist Say-Do Gap by Steven R. Corman Jarret Brachman just did a post...
2. Growing UK Turmoil Over War Casualties by Steven R. Corman A colleague in the UK military...
3. New White Paper on Extremist Ideology The Consortium for Strategic Communication has just released a new...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Recent headlines revealed that video feeds from the Predator, the US unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used for surveillance and targeting in both Iraq and Afghanistan, have been intercepted by insurgents in Iraq.  Early follow up analysis focuses on whether the intercept of Predator video feeds qualifies as a “hack” or whether that term has over-sensationalized the situation.  This attention to semantics strikes me as a repeat of the “how are men in caves out-smarting us” debate with much hand-wringing about whether Islamic militants really have sophisticated skill and technology or not, and whether Iran must be involved supporting the militants with advanced technology.

The logic of this debate breaks down like this:  If it’s a “hack” then the insurgents have significant cyberwarfare skills and technology and are thus increasing their capability (and in a related version, they must be receiving Iranian support).  If it’s not a “hack” then they remain primitive fighters in caves, opening up criticism of the US military for allowing such an exploitable vulnerability to remain.

This attention to whether “hack” accurately describes the militants’ actions, loses sight of some important strategic communication ramifications of this intelligence breach.  Whereas I’m fully aware of the power of language to shape thoughts and perspectives, in this case the debate over terminology is just not an important issue.  Nor, really, is how the militants accomplished the intercept.  According to news report linked above, the Pentagon has indicated they’ve operated the Predator drone with unencrypted video feeds since the 1990s, assuming that unsophisticated opponents would not know about the vulnerability nor have the access to the technology (apparently a $29.95 box and some patience) to exploit it.  The same report indicates the DOD is already at work encrypting the video feeds, but I’ll address the apparent hubris evident here below.

While I think the “hack” or “not hack” debate is unimportant, I don’t mean to diminish the tactical importance of these intercepts.  Obviously, it is a huge intelligence coup for the insurgents (and reports indicate that it is not an isolated incident but rather an on-going activity of unknown scale).  But there is more here.  Beyond the ability for insurgent leaders to see what US and allied commanders were seeing, beyond the possibility of knowing where US attention was focused at any particular time, and beyond representing a minor cyberwarfare victory  for the insurgents, this situation points to two strategic communication victories for them as well.

First, it is well known that the insurgent and extremist spin machines, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but across the world where Islamic extremists seek to discredit the US, are adept at transforming news reports, images and videos of US actions into anti-US propaganda (or, for that matter non-US actions: here,  an Indonesia-based jihadist blames an Al-Qaeda bombing in Pakistan on Blackwater).  What better way to document the violent, brutish ways of the imperialist, crusading aggressor than to show the US military’s own tactical video?  Even seemingly innocuous surveillance video could easily feed the insurgent media machine.  Simple surveillance video of a village becomes  “Look how the Crusader targets civilians, women and children!”  Targeting video becomes proof of US violence.

Intercut some actual intercepted Predator surveillance video with some generic grainy footage of missile strikes easily obtained on YouTube or a thousand other sites, and an insurgent information operator has powerful, damning “evidence” of US violence killing righteous and/or innocent Muslims.  In a strategic communications environment where the US and its allies are struggling to close the say-do gap (for more see here and also here), having access to first hand video of US actions only fuels the insurgents’ abilities to exploit and perpetuate that gap.

Second, this intercept of Predator video is an act that fits into a broader narrative system.  It becomes a story as it circulates in the media and is retold by Western news media and insurgent mouthpieces.  In a recent post I discussed how  narrative works and what it does:

A narrative is a system of stories that hang together and provide a coherent view of the world.  People use narratives to understand how their world works.  Narratives contain patterns that fit the data of everyday life (events, people, actions, sequences of actions, messages, and so on), explaining how events unfold over time and how one thing causes another.

Osama Bin Laden has been telling stories of US imperialism and invasion, but also of US over-confidence and lack of resolve.  The stories of weakness include the 1993 defeat in Somalia, the bombing of the USS Cole, and 9/11, of course.  These stories all revolve around the central figure of the US as an over-confident monolithic force that is weaker in actuality than its image portrays.  I mentioned “hubris” above.  Here’s a quote from the Wall Street Journal report linked above:

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it, the officials said.

This assumption belies a degree of US hubris, and even if the assumption was based on fairly solid intelligence it would play in the insurgents’ narrative system as a story of American over-confidence, arrogance and under-estimation of the skills of the militants.

Another key component of these stories is the clever and righteous mujahid warrior:

• In Somalia a combination of Al-Qaeda fighters and Somali militiamen defeated US Rangers and Special Operations forces.
• In the case of the USS Cole, clever fighters used an innocuous looking boat to approach the complacent warship.
• In the 9/11 story, the Al-Qaeda team crafted a creative plan to bring down a symbol of US decadence and excess.

With the number of these stories in circulation, a pattern develops creating the expectation in the intended audience that the US is weak and that clever mujahideen can, will and do defeat the Americans.  With the Predator drone representing as feared an asset as the Russian Hind attack helicopter was in the Soviet-Afghan war, this hack story fits the same pattern as the mujahideen defeating the Soviets with resolve, piety and righteousness (oh, and some Stingers).

Complementing these contemporary stories of clever Muslim soldiers defeating the American forces are older stories from Islamic traditions wherein a seemingly overmatched righteous warrior defeats a seemingly invincible power.  The David and Goliath story is one recognizable to Christians and Jews, but is also revered by Muslims.  The clever David eschews bulky armor and close-in weaponry, using speed, agility and an easily available supply of rock ammunition for his sling to defeat the over-confident and fear-inducing imperialist Goliath. The David and Goliath story establishes a pattern repeated with IEDs:  Clever warriors use unsophisticated and easily obtained weapons to defeat heavily armored warriors of a conquering government.

Another clever victory story by Muslims comes in the form of the Battle of the Trench.  Salman al-Farsi advises Muhammad to dig a trench around Medina to defend it against a massive Meccan confederacy of some 10,000 warriors.  The force of 3000 Muslims thwarts the Meccan assault and effectively ends the Meccan threat against the developing Islamic ummah.

Thus, these Predator video hack events contribute to a robust narrative system.  This system is made up of coherent and similar stories, across a range of time periods from the ancient to the contemporary.  In this consistent system there is a Crusading force, oppressing and/or invading the land of the innocent and righteous and pious.  Through a combination of righteousness, piety and cleverness, the oppressed (and after the Battle of the Trench this narrative system narrows its protagonists to Muslims) warriors defeat the overbearing, overconfident and seemingly all-powerful invaders.

So while we’re all paying attention to whether the video intercepts constitute a “hack” or not, we should be spending equal time, at least, in thinking through the strategic communication ramifications of this intelligence breech.  Commanders in the field should be screaming bloody murder about this counter-intelligence vulnerability, but so too should those charged with maintaining an effective strategic communication campaign.

Related posts:

1. The Afghanistan Narrative Gap and Its Consequences by Bud Goodall One of the important challenges of President...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In Thursday’s Nobel acceptance speech, President Obama delivered the powerful narrative I had hoped to hear in his previous West Point address on Afghanistan.  I was critical of the West Point address due to: “the absence of a compelling narrative that links who we are, as a people, to what we are trying to accomplish over there.”  In this post, I want to examine the Nobel speech in more detail to explain why I think this speech succeeded and why it deserves to be taken seriously by anyone interested in the role of narrative in strategic communication.

First, let’s look at the role of the audience and context for the speech.  Our President offered a sober but inspiring war narrative before an elite international audience in Oslo.  These elites–leaders, dignitaries, high achieving academics, and even a few celebrities– were expecting, perhaps, the usual summation of thoughtful, poetic, “Nobelic platitudes” inspiring, as they usually do, a rhetorical if illusory bliss of peace.  What they heard instead from our Commander-in-Chief was a realistic assessment of the need for a strategic use of military force by the United States framed as a “just war” whose goal is “a gradual evolution of human institutions” to a lesser ideal state than world peace, but perhaps one that humankind may attain: “global security.”

The President’s audience was obviously not limited to the elites in Oslo.  It also included a vast mediated international audience watching either a broadcast of the speech or a replay of it on the Internet.  The two audiences, however, shared two sentiments that needed to be addressed early on in the speech:  (1) that Barack Obama did not necessarily “deserve” the prize, and (2) that a prize given for peace shouldn’t be awarded to a president who had committed his nation to two wars.  Obama, in a rhetorical moment both humble and effective, addressed both issues head-on:

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela – my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women – some known, some obscure to all but those they help – to be far more deserving of this honor than I.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries – including Norway – in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.

In the flawed West Point address, President Obama did not cite a moral or political imperative strong enough to support committing more troops, and more lives, to the effort.  This time he succeeded brilliantly, professing a philosophical allegiance to the non-violent leadership of Gandhi and MLK, Jr., while locating our military commitments to Afghanistan and Iraq within clear instances of intractable historical conflicts that could not have been resolved by peaceful protest or continued negotiations: “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Effective persuasive speeches rely on a speaker’s ability to narrow possible alternative actions needed to solve a problem down to one action favored by the speaker.  Usually this is done with a combination of reason and emotion that reveal the character of the speaker to be one who is, as Cicero expressed it, “the good man speaking well.”  For Obama, this rhetorical end  is well accomplished by situating his plan for military action within the universal human struggle against tyranny, genocide, and oppression that could not be resolved in any other way, and then by outlining three goals that all nations must join together to accomplish in order to achieve global security:

1. A call for unity in opposition to threats against global security:  ”Intransigence must be met with increased pressure – and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.”  His example of “increased pressure” includes a continuing commitment to nuclear disarmament, continued pressure on rogue states, and the application of that same call for united action to places such as Dafur.
2. An continuing commitment to freedom and human rights:  ”So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal.”  Obama points out that support for human rights is not the imposition of Western values on other nations, but the realistic application of methods for peace that work–the freedom to speak, to worship, to choose their own leaders, etc.  He uses Europe as the example of a region that only came to peace after instituting freedom.
3. A continued commitment to economic development:  ”a just peace includes not only civil and political rights – it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.”

Beyond cultivating with the audience the Ciceronian ideal of “the good man speaking well,” the speech reveals what Kenneth Burke calls “identification” between the speaker’s values and attitudes and those held by the audience.  In addition to the general theme of finding ways to replace war with peace, Obama uses this need for identification by seizing the opportunity to find common ground among all the world’s faith traditions:

… we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint – no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one’s own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith – for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

The above abbreviated analysis demonstrates why the speech was effective, both as a Nobel prize address and as a strategic use of the occasion of the award to justify America’s leadership in the struggle against violent extremism.  History may record this speech as one of his best–which I believe it is–but for those of us studying strategic communication there is one additional lesson we can draw from it.

This speech opens narrative possibilities.  Throughout the address Obama juxtaposes binary oppositions built from the war/peace trope, showing those terms, in fact, to be not binary oppositions but part of a larger and more complex dualism that defines the human condition, and for which we are still seeking solutions:  ”the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. … So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths – that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human feelings.”  In other words, war and peace are not necessarily in opposition to one another.  They are as inextricably bound together in human history as our emotions are bound to our ability to reason.

Furthermore,  Obama challenges the idea that peace may be accomplished without sacrifice: “I also know this: the belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice.”  Having already admitted that his moral compass was heavily influenced by the non-violent work of Gandhi and King, Jr., he complicates the rhetorical divide of peace/violence with this observation: “we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place.”

At the end of the speech he returns to the theme of war and peace–never far removed from the substance of the talk–and says this:

We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that – for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

Notice that he turns all binary oppositions into mutually dependent dualisms or tensions, a ying and yang of the human condition.  In so doing, President Obama offers us a way to think about a way to move the narrative that was defined by binary oppositions (us versus them, Crusaders vs Islam, etc.) to a new ternary framing.  Perhaps in his stark and compelling narrative on war given to an audience for peace, he found the perfect context to complicate our thinking about strategic communication in new and productive ways.

Related posts:

1. Obama’s Speech Didn’t Close the Narrative Gap by Bud Goodall Yesterday’s speech by President Barack Obama at...
2. The Afghanistan Narrative Gap and Its Consequences by Bud Goodall One of the important challenges of President...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A debate has once again re-ignited over the relative meaning of Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication, sparked this time by a keynote by Bruce Gregory at GWU on October 5.  It was rejoined by Amb. William Rugh in an email exchange with Bruce, both of whose comments were posted and re-rejoined by Craig Hayden.

Reading these posts I got a strange feeling of deja vu.  Checking on this, I found that–sure enough–last year at about this same time we were discussing the same issue.  My contribution is here with links to the other debaters.

Hmm.  Methinks there could be a pattern here.  More evidence:

• Constance Philipot has been blogging on SC/PD over the last month.
• The Wikipedia page on Strategic Communication (which mentions the definitional debate) was last edited on October 24, 2009.
• Blankley, Dale, and Horn did a piece on PD/SC at Heritage in November of last year.
• Dennis Murphy published an issue paper dealing with SC/PD in January 2008 (meaning he must have been writing it in the Fall).
• Richard Halloran discusssed the issue in Autumn of 2007.
• James Jones’s JFQ piece on Strategic Communication was published in the 4th Quarter of 2005.
• The Congressional Research Service published a report on PD that addressed its relationship to SC on Oceober 31, 2005.
• The 2004 DSB Task Force report on Strategic Communication was released on September 23.

So there clearly seems to be a greater-than-chance tendency to debate PD/SC in the fall.  What could explain this?  I offer a handfull of postulates (from least to most serious, and not necessarily mutually exclusive):

1. Astrological alignments:  The autumnal equinox happens at this time of year.  According to this page, “Mercury is Retrograde, conjunct Saturn, and square Uranus. In order to make the changes we want to make, we need to take care of business. What we will need to do– again– this Autumn is: Review details we glossed over, judgments taken out of context, listen more carefully, and make the distinction between words spoken for the effect and the real meaning. Then, when we have fulfilled our word, we can make changes.”
2. Change of seasons:  Our colleagues in the cold-weather states, realizing that winter is setting in, get cranky/contentious.
3. Academic calendar:  Energized by summer break and relieved that the beginning-of-the-semester crush is over, academics get frisky and start debating, drawing-in people from the government.
4. World events:  Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan heat up this time of year, making SC/PD a more salient topic.
5. Issue-attention cycle:  Downs (The Public Inerest, Vol 28, 1972) theorized that public attention to an issue follows a set of stages in which an “alarmed discovery” figures prominently.  So every year there is some alarmed discovery with respect to PD/SC in time to heat up debate for the fall.

Without giving the evidence (you can check for yourself), I note that there also seems to be a counter-peak of discussion of PD/SC following the vernal equinox each year, and these same postulates might be applied to that.  Your comments and additional postulates are encouraged.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

One of the important challenges of President Obama’s administration is to sell the continuation of our “overseas contingency operation” (or perhaps FATAVE) in Afghanistan to an increasingly disenchanted audience at home and abroad. But there is a worrisome absence of a good narrative–a coherent collection of stories–about why we are there and what we hope to accomplish.

In recent press conferences and briefings, President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates have maintained a consistent posture of support for a continued U.S. military presence, despite polls showing a growing lack of popularity for that posture. In a recent (September 22. 2009) Pew Research Center poll, the results were striking:

The poll shows that even though 76 percent of Americans see a Taliban takeover of the country as a major threat to U.S. security, 43 percent favor pulling out all U.S. and NATO troops as soon as possible. The number of those advocating withdrawal has increased five percent in just three months (from 38 percent in June), while the ranks of those set on ‘staying the course’ shrank by seven percent during the same period.

Since that poll was released there has been an upturn in debate over direction and policy in the White House, including a plea from General Stanley McChrystal for an additional 40,000 troops. As a Washington Post story about the apparent disagreement between McChrystal and the White House put it yesterday:

Obama may take weeks to decide whether to add more troops, but the idea of pulling out isn’t on the table as a way to deal with a war nearing its ninth year, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “‘I don’t think we have the option to leave. That’s quite clear,” Gibbs said.

With due respect to Mr. Gibbs, I think nothing about this decision is yet “very clear” and much of the storyline is simply “missing.”

What is missing from reports about the ongoing debate over the future of our military mission in Afghanistan? From a strategic communication perspective, it is any mention of narrative. As Scott Ruston pointed out in a previous post:

A narrative is a system of stories that hang together and provide a coherent view of the world. People use narratives to understand how their world works. Narratives contain patterns that fit the data of everyday life (events, people, actions, sequences of actions, messages, and so on), explaining how events unfold over time and how one thing causes another.

In other words, what the Obama administration is missing is a collection of stories that provides a clear explanation of our military mission in Afghanistan. We don’t have a well-imagined view of the future of the world with our troops active in Afghanistan, or absent from it. We lack a firm (or better yet passionate) resolve among our leaders not only to accomplish our mission, but also to enact a particular storyline.

Without such a coherent system of stories to provide a clear and credible narrative storyline, American and overseas audiences are left with what narrative scholars call “the presence of an absence, and the absence of a presence.” That is, what we lack is the knowledge that there is, in fact, a believable, credible storyline guiding the trajectory of political decisions and military actions in Afghanistan.

What fills this gap for audiences is increasingly made up of competing narratives, which further fragment the issues and divide citizens and politicians from each other. Our public discourse about Afghanistan is a disconnected series of conflicting news accounts and press statements, daily political opinion polls, the (often inflamed) rhetoric of commentators on the left and right, and the rantings of our opponents overseas. The gap is also filled by widespread public and political anxiety. We fear what we do not know, and in this case, what we do not know is the narrative guiding vital decisions and actions.

Meanwhile, are left with one consistent pattern, one coherent, credible and disturbing storyline. Our leadership seems impotent as an undeclared war goes on, Americans continue to die, the leadership in Afghanistan remains corrupt, the Taliban grow stronger, and our treasury is drained of resources.

This narrative–constructed out of the noise of media stories and images–is eerily similar to the one that corroded support for the White House during the Vietnam War. It eventually led to political defeat, military withdrawal, and a resulting genocide as insurgents sought revenge on those who had assisted U.S. efforts.

It does not have to be this way. The American people expect a believable, credible narrative from this White House. We have learned to expect it. We want a story that closes the gap and provides us with a hopeful view of the future, whatever policies that future must embrace. More importantly, we want to have confidence in the resulting storyline. We want to understand where and how this story ends and have some way of accurately assessing the effectiveness of the steps taken to accomplish those ends.

We will not be satisfied by “a never-ending story.” Notice how short-lived was Secretary Rumsfeld’s rhetoric of “a long war.” Nor will we be content to support characters who don’t demonstrate what we expect from our national leaders/heroes. Bravery, honesty, and justice are all qualities that depend on connecting the narrative to desired ends.

Finally, there is an important principle from narrative theory that ought to guide the reinvention of America’s role in Afghanistan: The story determines the content, not the other way around. Translated into political language this simply means that until our leadership has settled on the narrative, there should be little discussion of specific policies (those smaller stories that make up the system) in the public sphere. A narrow focus on policy absent a compelling narrative will only confuse the popular audience and anger the pundits, leading to a further division of citizens from whatever the resulting storyline might be.

So, to fill the dangerous narrative gap, our leadership must first get the story straight. Then they should keep to it, measure success against it, and demonstrate those qualities of leadership, and leadership communication, that we associate with stories worth living, fighting, and/or, even dying for.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Executive Summary

Ideology is often ignored or deemed irrelevant to strategic communication because it is an old, possibly leftist, idea that is associated with academic social critique. It is treated as something that lives in the heads of individuals, driving them to radical action. From this point of view the concept is not really practical because by the time someone has adopted an ideology, it is too late.

We advocate a different view of ideology, as a system of ideas about how things are or ought to be that circulates in social discourse. This is a more practical view because it treats ideology not as an idea stuck in someone’s head, but as something that is subject to influence through strategic communication. To be effective in these efforts we must understand culture and narrative, and have a clear grasp of what ideology does.

Ideology has four functions. We illustrate these with detailed examples. Naturalizing means turning socially constructed, politically-motivated, and fluid ideas into taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs, and meanings. Doing so makes them seem fixed, objective, and “naturally occurring.” Obscuring is denying or hiding contradictions in ongoing systems of meaning, making them seem to be seamless, coherent, and unified worldviews. Universalizing means presenting the interests or concerns of those in power as the interests of all group members. And structuring involves creating rules and resources in a social system that preserve an ideology.

Adopting this point of view we can see that the way to resist ideology is to interfere with its functions. To undermine naturalizing we can focus on challenging assumptions, beliefs, and meanings behind an ideology. To fight obscuring we can target contradictions, pushing them into the open. To target universalizing we can engage subgroups and their leaders, politicizing the differences in interests that ideology tries to smooth over. And to resist structuring we can place stress on the structures and/or promote alternatives that might replace, undermine, or circumvent them. We provide several examples of each of these ideology countermeasures.

Of course these same methods are used by extremists against us. This makes it imperative that we avoid at all costs giving adversaries ammunition with which to challenge our assumptions, target our contradictions politicize our groups, and breach our structures.

Related posts:

1. Let’s Amplify Extremist Contradictions by Steven R. Corman Yesterday the United Nations Assistance Mission...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Admiral Michael Mullen’s recent essay in Joint Forces Quarterly criticizing “strategic communication” lambastes the US government for its failures of strategic communication and the growth of a bloated bureaucracy fueling an agency-funded, contractor-filled cottage industry.  We have previously flagged Admiral Mullen as someone who “gets it,”  and it is welcome news that a US government official with his level of respect and stature continues to bring attention to the myopia that pervades US strategic communication.

We agree with the Admiral’s call for better listening. We should listen to not only what the locals say, but also to what extremists say, and how they say it in a manner the locals already understand. And, we should get back to the basics, understanding what narrative is and how our opponents craft their narratives. This knowledge will help build trust and relationships.

Admiral Mullen does not dismiss strategic communication as a process, technique or as a tool for decision makers and operators. But he does critique the bloated bureaucracy that has become strategic communication within the U.S. government, with its numerous, uncoordinated efforts that are disconnected from actions on the ground (both meritorious and unfortunate).

Presumably within the field of fire of Mullen’s critique is the recent announcement of new counter-propaganda efforts by the Obama Administration in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This new initiative funds (possibly up to $150 million) new communication infrastructure investment, new programming, training and “pamphlets, posters and CDs denigrating militants”.  Admiral Mullen suggests that relationships and trust are the key, not new programs:

We need to get back to basics, and we can start by not beating ourselves up. The problem isn’t that we are bad at communicating or being outdone by men in caves. Most of them aren’t even in caves. The Taliban and al Qaeda live largely among the people. They intimidate and control and communicate from within, not from the sidelines.

Mullen advises that we refocus efforts on operating within the communities and build relationships and trust, rather than lobbing “information bombs” over the walls of a metaphorical (and literal) Green Zone. Here he is fighting an outdated view of the communication process, that is unfortunately still deeply entrenched in government and the military.

But when Admiral Mullen says the Bad Guys are operating from  “within,” it is important to recognize that this does not solely mean physically or socially within the community. It also means culturally within, another area where we need to spend time, energy and resources for listening and understanding. Admiral Mullen notes:

Only through a shared appreciation of the people’s culture, needs, and hopes for the future can we hope ourselves to supplant the extremist narrative.

Admiral Mullen’s desire to supplant the extremist narrative echoes the consternation circulating throughout the DoD, Dept. of State, and strategic communication profession, that somehow the US message machine has been outflanked by unsophisticated operators.  Mullen identifies a fundamental component largely missing from US rhetoric: Cultural understanding.

Why is the extremist narrative more successful than the American narrative?  Because our strategic communication has so far failed to listen, failed to understand that the issue is not our story but their story.  To correct this problem, significant attention needs to be paid to not only “extremist narratives”, but also the deep cultural narratives that circulate in communities and sub-cultures within which the extremist message (in narrative form) is deeply intertwined.  More on that in a moment.

Strategic communication professionals, diplomats, and warfighters need to get back to the basics and understand what a “narrative” is.  Part of the reason the extremist narratives are more successful than American narratives is that the American messages are often not narratives at all. “The Taliban have archaic values” (to paraphrase Ashley Bommer, advisor to Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke) is not a narrative. It is an opinion, forged within a particular worldview, a worldview itself shaped by certain narratives that valorize equality, a free market regulated by law rather than pecuniary circumvention, the role of women as leaders in society, etc.

What then, is this slippery term “narrative”?  A narrative is a system of stories that hang together and provide a coherent view of the world.  People use narratives to understand how their world works.  Narratives contain patterns that fit the data of everyday life (events, people, actions, sequences of actions, messages, and so on), explaining how events unfold over time and how one thing causes another.  For instance, President Obama’s speech in Cairo wove together these patterns by discussing his own biography along with a notion of mutual progress between the Western and Muslim worlds.

Narratives consist of two components, the data (the stories, what is told) and the pattern (how they are told and what is not told).  The process of matching data to patterns happens repeatedly and continuously. People acquire the patterns through upbringing, culture, education and experience. A pattern might specify that a story includes opposing forces, that these forces cooperate (or fight), that what happens earlier always influences what happens later (or not), and so on.

As people hear stories, they acquire the data and distribute it into roles and relationships according to the narrative patterns they already know and understand.  If the story doesn’t fit the pattern, they try an an alternate pattern (or perhaps a different ordering of the pieces of data) until they can understand what is happening.  This process occurs not just in individuals, but in groups and societies too.

A quick example is 9/11, and your reaction to it.  If you are like most people, images and reports of airplanes flying into buildings made no sense to you. This probably caused much confusion and disbelief at first. But then a narrative pattern was applied (probably coming from news reports): Terrorists (antagonists) hijacked airplanes full of innocent people (victims) to use as flying bombs (tools) to attack (conflict action) U.S. society (protagonist). Suddenly it all made sense.

It made sense (to most Americans) because it tapped a narrative in which an organization and an ideology are at war with the United States–not unlike the Cold War narrative of conflict between the USSR and the US. The similar narratives of the Cold War and the Conflict Formerly Known as the Global War on Terror (now Overseas Contingency Operation, or perhaps FATAVE) explains why we have such a hard time seeing the differences between them–we are blinded by the similarities we have constructed by our method of making sense of these actions.

The critical point here is that narratives shape our understanding of the world, and recurrent patterns help make new situations familiar (despite, perhaps, some significant differences). This is why extremists routinely refer to US forces as Crusaders or liken former President Bush to the Pharaoh (not a Pharaoh, but the Pharaoh). These terms reference deep seated cultural narratives that are familiar to individuals and sub-cultures across the Muslim world.

Taliban communication also integrates deep-rooted cultural narratives to aid their audience both in understanding their message and subconsciously constructing affinity. It is widely reported that their shabnamah, or “night letters”,  contain threats warning against cooperation with US and Afghani government forces.  But what is often overlooked is their eloquence and careful crafting of a narrative that unites citizen and Taliban together.

Dr. Thomas Johnson at the Naval Postgraduate School offers an insightful analysis of the night letters.  In one of his examples, the night letter invokes hero narratives from Afghan history.  It draws on particular Ghilzai-tribe heroes thwarting incursions dating from the dawn of the second millennium all the way through the anti-Soviet jihad.  By using this narrative, the Taliban imply they are the inheritors of this Ghilzai heroism, blurring distinctions between ideological or theological affinities and tribal loyalty. Thus, in communicating to a Ghilzai (or Ghilzai-friendly) audience, the Taliban position themselves as allies of the audience. Together, they oppose Crusaders, invaders, and their tribal enemy the Durrani–who just happen to be a significant part of the base of Hamid Karzai’s government.

The tribal, cultural and political situation is far more complex than this forum can accommodate. But the point is that narrative has a common function wherever it is applied.  In the West, recasting the conflict between the US and terrorist groups as a war of Western versus hostile ideology makes the situation familiar and understandable (i.e., like the Cold War). Likewise in Afghanistan, playing on existing narratives of tribal loyalty, heroism and national origin simplifies the Taliban’s message and makes it familiar.

What to do? The strategic communication landscape, of course, cannot be abandoned, nor put on the back burner.  Rather, it needs to be foregrounded and integrated into Strategic, Tactical and Operational levels of planning and decision-making. But as Admiral Mullen said, we don’t need a branding or marketing campaign, based on a 20th Century hypodermic model of message injection. Instead strategic communication needs to focus on getting a handle on the culture of the region. It must understand the narrative patterns by which actions, messages and images will be organized and understood, and figure out which part of the extremists’ actions contradict the prevailing patterns.

No amount of new radio stations, cell phone systems or mobile trivia games will sway the Afghan populace to supporting the Karzai government and US interests until the government and US presence becomes integrated into the narratives that govern the individual, tribal, regional and national world views.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.