Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Afghanistan conflict an 'information war'

It's called shaping the battlefield. It's not the traditional air
onslaught or artillery barrage designed to weaken an intended enemy
before the offensive goes in.
Instead it's now about shaping the information battlefield, because in
Afghanistan - and in modern warfare in general - information has
become the new front line.
At the very heart of Nato and the Pentagon, the disciples of the new
art of "strategic communications" know that perceptions matter.
Nato's top commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, made this
point explicitly in a recent interview.
"This is all a war of perceptions. This is not a physical war in terms
of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many
bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants."
Any information you send out carries with it a variety of messages.
'Telegraphed'
Take the current operation in Helmand. It has been broadcast widely in
advance. It even has a not-so-catchy title: Operation Moshtarak, which
in Dari translates as "together".
So there you have it, already three messages, if not more.
The operation's title is in a local language and it stresses the idea
of partnership - doubly signifying that this is a joint operation
between Nato and Afghan government forces doing the job "together".
The advance warning too sends a crucial signal - it is part of a
deliberate and explicit strategy to encourage civilians to take
precautions; to calm and inform tribal leaders; and perhaps to
encourage some Taliban fighters to make themselves scarce.
"This operation has certainly been telegraphed in advance far more
than previous operations," one Nato insider said, "but the alliance
has been doing this kind of thing for some time.
"The message is clear. We are determined to take the area, but in such
a way as to minimise violence", the official said. "But if we have to
fight for it, we will win."
'Psy-ops'
That sounds just a bit more like the traditional kind of message you
would expect at such a time, but the reality is that on the
information battlefield, just as in operations on the ground, things
have changed dramatically.
What began as inducement or encouragement for troops to lay down their
arms, or basic instructions to civilians not to get in the way of
military operations - think leaflets dropped by aircraft in World War
II - has blossomed into almost a social science of cause and effect.
Psychological operations or "psy-ops" of the 1950s have morphed into
information warfare.
There have been uneasy debates about where the boundary line between
this and the traditional press officer's role should be, because,
let's face it, the media is an involuntary actor in this drama too.
However the new discipline of strategic communications seeks to go
beyond information operations, press briefings and leaflet drops. It
is, in the words of one alliance official, "an over-arching concept
that seeks to put information at the very centre of policy planning."
When you are fighting wars within communities in an effort to secure
popular support for one side or another - the traditional struggle for
hearts and minds - you can see how central the concerns of the new
strategic information warriors have become.
In some ways, this is at the very core of modern counter-insurgency
strategy.
'No hiding'
However there are limitations, not least those related to the ubiquity
of the modern mass media.
As Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute in
London, said: "Strategic communications can only ever give out one
message. They've tried in the past to put out split messages and it
doesn't work."
So much of what people hear in Helmand province, they also hear in
Britain and in other troop-contributing countries.
"There's a positive side to this," says Mr Clarke, "It's a consistent
message, but the danger is that if things on the ground get messy,
there will be no hiding from it." The information frontline is in
effect everywhere.
This growing centrality of information and the need to shape
perceptions inevitably prompts critics to suggest that this is all not
so new after all - isn't it just one huge propaganda exercise writ
large?
Not surprisingly, one of the new Nato information warriors disagrees.
"In strategic communications, the messages you are sending must fit
the facts on the ground," he says. "The discipline is about bringing
perceptions and reality together to achieve an effect."
'Untidy end'
Many critics may remain unconvinced seeing the whole thing as a giant
spin-machine intended to accentuate the positive and present one
particular carefully-controlled narrative of events.
Because that, in a sense, is what is at stake - it is a battle for the
narrative.
Whose interpretation of what is happening is going to prevail? This
new focus raises uncomfortable questions for anyone involved in the
information business. Perceptions matter in another way too.
There is unlikely to be a tidy end to the Afghan conflict. Nobody
really can define what "victory" or "defeat" in the traditional sense
might mean.
So if it is to be an untidy conclusion then what people think about it
- how they judge the outcome - really does matter.
It used to be said that: "Britain won its wars on the playing fields
of Eton."
But now a new kind of warfare means that the information battle has to
be fought on multiple fronts by multiple actors.
From the fields of Helmand to the small towns of Kansas; from the
tribal areas of Pakistan to British cities where voters are girding
themselves for a coming election, the news from the Afghan battle-
front will shape perceptions - and these perceptions will inevitably
shape future policy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8511477.stm


#_Il bello, il curioso... l'interessante, in tutti 'sti rapporti dal fronte, 
e`che , malgrado continui a raccogliere il mercurio con un paio di 
chopsticks, la NATO recita goldonianamente a soggetto il copione "Tocca fa' 
f�ri O'Samma e i Latebbbbani!" e fa dell'Afghanistan il suo 'teatro' di 
prova delle nuove strateggggie! 

 *non* di invasione
lascia perdere, la guerra informativa lasciala fare agli esperti...