Whether the interactions they depicted had been frustrating, troublesome or downright hostile, my messages as an information officer were always rosy.
Corruption littered our daily interactions, and a few months into our deployment, my PRT launched an investigation that ultimately uncovered a scheme that wound its way through upper-level government officials, including Paktia’s then-governor and chief of police
By Lauren Kay Johnson
Recently, Washington Post reporting showed that the conflict in Afghanistan has been an operation of deception, as the war’s architects knowingly misled the public about its objectives and progress. The “Afghanistan Papers” were not a revelation to me. I was one of the deceivers.
From July 2009 to March 2010, I served as one of the U.S. Air Force’s designees for a nation-building mission, and I witnessed the disconnect between what happened on the ground and the messages the public heard about it. As my team’s information operations officer, I played a direct role in crafting those messages. I employed “strategic communication” during events like the 2009 Afghan presidential election and directed embedded reporters to only the sunniest stories, keeping them away from disgruntled troops who might not stick to tidy talking points. But my job wasn’t only to mislead the American public: Our information campaign extended to the Afghan people and to higher-ups within the American military itself.
I arrived in Paktia province in July 2009, as part of a provincial reconstruction team (PRT). At 25, I embodied the kind of idealistic fervor that the military depends on. I wanted to make a difference by building support for the government, eroding support for the insurgency, increasing access to basic services and enhancing the rule of law. These initiatives seemed worthy, noble even, and each required local buy-in. If we were to win the war, we would do so with hearts and minds. And we would win hearts and minds with information.
With low literacy rates and minimal access to electricity, information in Afghanistan flows largely over the airwaves. We relied on hand-crank radios disseminated to Afghans by coalition forces, tuned to stations owned and operated by coalition forces. I wrote broadcast news copy for the team’s interpreters to translate and thought of it as a persuasive tool, rather than strictly fact-sharing. Local listeners were, in military lingo, the subjects of “nonlethal targeting.” As one of my military supervisors constantly repeated, “We control the message!” Read the rest of this entry »
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