Winning the War of Words
A website in the name of the former regime – the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – is used as an international distribution centre for leadership statements and inflated tales of battlefield exploits. While fairly rudimentary, this is not a small effort; updates appear several times a day in five languages. Magazines put out by the movement or its supporters provide a further source of information on leadership structures and issues considered to be of importance. But for the largely rural and illiterate population, great efforts are also put into conveying preaching and battle reports via DVDs, audio cassettes, shabnamah (night letters – pamphlets or leaflets usually containing threats) and traditional nationalist songs and poems. The Taliban also increasingly uses mobile phones to spread its message.
The International Crisis Group have published a report on how the Taliban go about publishing propaganda, both in terms of the media used and the message within.
Beginning on page 13 of the report (17 of the PDF) there is more detail on “Spreading the Message” highlighting the different uses to which different media formats are put. The sending of threats is common to them all.
On DVDs:
This new media negates the need for the journalist as gatekeeper and offers the advantage of speaking directly to the audience. In an illiterate society, it also has obvious advantages over publications. The discs, and MP3s in urban areas, which are sold as well as being distributed to journalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, appear to be largely aimed at recruitment and morale.
And describing the Al Emarah (The Emirate) website:
While fairly basic – partly presumably to make it easier to move when taken down – this is no small-time operation. It has five language sections: Dari, Pashtu, Urdu, Arabic and English. The often poorly translated English section is the smallest, consisting almost solely of updates – now done several times a day – of inflated accounts of attacks and occasional leadership statements on policy or events. The Pashtu section – by far the most extensive – also largely focuses on inflated battlefield accounts, but includes poetry, interviews, extended articles and commentary, as well as links to magazines that appear to have some sort of official approval. Reaction to events is quick: stories on the June 2008 Kandahar jailbreak were up the same evening, though the reporting was confused
The report itself is pretty long at 47 pages, but the summary on the site including the reccomendations to the Afghan government and to the governments of countries with troops in Afghanistan is interesting.
Jason Burke in the Guardian wrote on The Taliban’s Dazzingly Modern Resurrection.