Tag Archives: Information Operations

Stick that in your pipe…

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For some time, a  number of commentators, myself included, have been promoting peer engagement as a key factor in resolving insurgencies. By peer engagement, we mean like with like, which could be based on cultural grounds like the Pacific Island Countries (PIC) that contributed forces to the monitoring forces in Bougainville; regional grounds like ASEAN or the Organisation of African States that provides the greater proportion of peace support forces in Africa; religious grounds; or combinations thereof. This interesting article The Jihad against the Jihadis – How Moderate Muslim Leaders Waged War on Extremists-and Won arrived last night from one of my email distribution list sources. While I would argue that the war has yet to be truly won, it may be that the first paras are landing at Pegasus Bridge. The article is a very good example of both a comprehensive approach expanding well beyond the formal instruments of national power and also illustrates how Kilcullen’s Rejection phase can a. be overcome and b. backfire on the bad guys. It has an interesting insight into the law of unintended consequences perhaps being applied to Pakistan’s fence-sitting approach to the War on Terror…

Israel starts training its diplomats at an early age.

Peter @ The Strategist carries a great line on Israel’s latest attempt at biting the hand that protects it. It’s been 28 years since Israel’s adventures in the Bekaa Valley where it proved once and for all that it is no longer the helpless David surrounded by bullying Goliaths and that it can hold its own on its own, thank you very much….

Thomas Friedman, the newspaper columnist, wrote that instead of “fuming and making up” when wrong-footed by the announcement of new settlements, Mr Biden should have “snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left a note telling Israel: ‘You have lost contact with reality’.”

I couldn’t agree more. Both the US and Israel should have revised their relationship in 1982 – like the 1978 Camp David Accords weren’t a big enough hint. Israel has now become the bull in the local china shop that offers no more to regional stability than Hamas, Hizbollah, Syria or Iran – yes, that’s right, Israel, you’re now just another member of the dumb nutjob thug club (DNTC for short).

George Friedman @ STRATFOR also writes on the broader US-Israel relationship as does Chirol @ Coming Anarchy. It is well past time for Israel to spend some time in the international ‘time out’ zone to consider the error of its ways. Next time round, the Stars and Stripes might be riding alongside moderates like Jordan and Egypt…

In Other News

Peter has released the next part of the Doomsday Device He Is The Man Who Everyone Fears And, no, it doesn’t feature Rodney Hide nor Winston Peters….

On Facebook Michael Yon comments on the diminishing number of engaged journos in the AFG theatre…

Have been permitting online publications to publish these dispatches freely for a link-back. (Budgets are being cut and they cannot afford to cover Afghanistan.) Of the majors, only FOX is keen enough to make the move. Just had lunch with a couple ABC folks about a week ago — their staff is being slashed on order of 20-30%. Good reporters, tiny budget. CNN and the rest are not serious players here. Coverage of Afghanistan is perfunctory. At the going rate, there will be just me, the New York Times, a few others, and some passers-through…

After eight years, is this war no longer news money-worthy for the big networks? And/or is this part of the information oops plan for the 2011 draw down so that when it occurs, no one will really notice the last helicopter leaving the roof of the embassy, nor the first of the Afghan boat people…?

Michael Yon has just released a new Dispatch, covering the coolest of aircraft, the now venerable Warthog…

Open for Business (c) Michael Yon 2010

And way down the bottom, the US DoD has had a bit of a reorg and created a 4 star Cyber Command to “…unify and administer the U.S. Department of Defense’s vast computer networks to better defend against cyberattacks…” Jointness in Information Systems and Services should be a bit of a given but I can’t see this being an easy row to hoe. In addition to the two concerns raised in the article, I’d add a third…

How will someone balance the dual roles of CyberCom commander and NSA director?

Will the Defense Department have a source of future 4-star generals qualified to take on this challenge?

How on God’s green Earth are you going to get all those geeks to work and play well together?

Hitting the target

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Dartboard

Ironically, the Intentional Development website (edit 4 Feb 13: removed the link as it was dead as the proverbial door nail – managed to recover the image via the power of the Wayback Machine) from which I took this image specialises in…

Freeing the embedded wisdom of an organization’s most valuable assets (human resources) currently constrained by titles, roles, politics and procedures.

Mobilizing personnel at all levels to truly participate, become involved, and internalize objectives as their own so they willingly and eagerly contribute to solving their organization’s challenges.

Creating the circumstances and the environment to facilitate change.

Possibly there’s a job for them in Kandahar…?

The Canadian National Post has published Canadian Forces comment in response to Michael Yon’s criticism this week of security arrangements around an important bridge that was damaged in an attack near Kandahar this week. Interestingly, it is Michael Yon who disseminated the link to this article via his Facebook Page.

The release points out that “…all the land surrounding the airport has long been the responsibility of the Royal Air Force Regiment, a British infantry unit that specializes in protecting airports from attack. Most road checks in the area are carried out by Afghan National Police while sweeps for improvised explosive devices on the major highways in Kandahar are done by a U.S. Army Stryker brigade or by U.S. combat engineers attached to them...”

Although a whole three people have commented on the National Post Article, hundreds have offered comment on Yon’s items on his Facebook page, including this one on the RAF regiment in Kandahar…

Never seen this bridge Michael, but as a lowly British Inf NCO, am I making a fair assumption that as a natural/man-made choke point, this should have been identified as a weak point, in oh I don’t know…2 seconds? Therefore reinforced/defended accordingly?

On a slightly related note, there was some talk of the RAF Regt and their role. I personally have no love for them, being Infantry, but they do carry out a role that frees up our Army reservists who can get out and do their jobs. The RAF Regt’s mission is base/airfield protection and security up to 8km from the airfield. I believe this bridge was 10 miles out or something? Far from passing the buck, it should be asked then why this was not identified as an issue, and who was responsible for providing the security for a known high value choke point?

The article then goes on to link the Yon items with “…a growing frustration on the part of some Americans that NATO has put four U.S. battalions under Canadian command in Kandahar…the Americans answer to a Canadian who answers to a British major-general who in turn answers to an American. This is coalition warfare at its best…” At its best, huh? Sounds like an overly-complex recipe for buck-passing and gaps you could drive a LAV (or a VBIED) through…one mother’s comment on Yon’s Facebook page “…This was coalition warfare at its worst…a bridge was blown up! They should have to place the calls to us mothers…“

Funnily enough, after presenting the current command and control  environment around Kandahar as hunky-dory, the National Post concludes “…the issue of who commands what in Kandahar is particularly sensitive at the moment, with NATO planning a major offensive in the province later this spring…“

Meanwhile back in Kandahar…Michael Yon remains on the offensive… submitting two questions yesterday to Task Force Kandahar regarding the Monday bridge attack:

1) When will the bridge become fully operational?

2) What measures are being taken to prevent such attacks in the future?

A few hours later…Task Force Kandahar just answered the two questions I submitted yesterday. The TF-K answers beg for follow-up, which has just been submitted. Will publish in full when this is over. Something fishy going on.

And about an hour ago (all times are pretty lose as the Facebook clock leaves a lot to be desired)…

Bridge Update: Much information flowing. Just went through long conversations with key people. BLUF: the bridge has become an Orphan. TF-Kandahar says TF-K is not the father. We are waiting for U.S. Brigadier General Ben Hodges to say who is responsible for the bridge. BG Hodges is the Deputy Commander for RC-South. The British command RC-South. The Commanding General is Nick Carter.

My gut, based on what am seeing all over, is that this is between RC-South and TF-Kandahar. TF-K clearly has responsibility, as does their parent command RC-South. While the British command RC-South, the Canadians TF-K. The US is just sort of here under an obtuse command structure that can’t guard a strategic bridge ten minutes from the front gate of one of the biggest bases in Afghanistan.

Bridge situation — This smells like rotten fish. At a bare minimum, someone(s) at General Officer level dropped the ball. Going to take more time to sort this out and get the facts straight. One certainty: it’s not pretty.

A few minutes later…

Menard vs. Carter

Bridge failure heating up: TF-K has, for all intents and purposes, blamed RC-South for allowing the bridge to be attacked on Monday, resulting in the death of a US soldier and serious damage to a vital bridge. The controversy has reached the respective Generals at TF-K and RC-South. For those who understand the dynamics here, Brigadier General Daniel Menard (TF-K boss) has shifted the blame to Major General Nick Carter (RC-South boss).

This has become a dinosaur fight — Menard vs. Carter — wherein little people can get crushed.

If nothing else, ‘Bridgegate’ sends a clear message to ISAF that it needs to seriously up its Information and Influence Operations game…it is probably too broad a stretch to imagine that the Taliban planned or even anticipated this spatting between coalition partners but they must be loving it. It is a pretty simple question: who is responsible for the security of this bridge? Surely it must be in a clearly defined Area of Operations assigned to a specific formation or unit? That ISAF has resorted instead to bureaucratic tap-dancing and not released any comment on the issue is perhaps indicative of deeper rifts within the coalition. Jim Molan recounts in Running the War in Iraq that, prior to the final battle for Fallujah GEN Casey directed him “…in no uncertain terms to ensure that there was no more than a one-hour turnaround between an allegation appearing in the media and our response being fired back…the information fight required less physical courage and sacrifice, but was just as important as the combat on the ground…”

Certainly from many of the comments on Yon’s Facebook posts, there is considerable anger in the US at Canada’s stated intention to withdraw from Afghanistan and at those NATO partners who do not pull their weight (which would probably be most of them). This latter issue was a theme in Yon’s posts last week before the bridge attack and I do wonder if the US, or some in it, are not running their own IO campaign to expose those who are not holding up their end of the stick…?

New word of the day

Thanks to Dean at Travels with Shiloh for today’s new word ‘fobbit’, replacing ‘poug’ and ‘REMF’ as a term of endearment for those personnel that spend the larger proportion of their deployment in camps and bases. This is not to say that these personnel do not perform valuable and vital functions in support of operations nor that it is their fault that higher minds decide to introduce as many home comforts as possible into these facilities. I do think however that it behooves such individuals to always remember where they are, why there are there and who they are supporting before bemoaning the quality of the GoatBurger at BK-Kandahar…

Edit: Oh, the joys of working in the information age!! Just as I was writing up ‘fobbits’ and hit the publish button, Michael Yon posted this link to a great description of the Life of a Fobbit in Afghanistan. Although humorous in nature, it is a reminder of the vital role that ‘fobbits’ play and I think that this blog, on the adventures of staff in a currently deployed Forward Surgical Team will be well worth watching…

Acronym of the day

From Michael Yon’s posts, BLUF = Bottom Line Up Front, not to be confused with that ultimate hearts and minds tool, the BUFF:

b-52-bomber-2.jpg

BUFF

A Bridge Too Far?

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On Facebook, Michael Yon continues to raise concerns regarding the security on the Bridge near Kandahar that was the target of a suicide bomber attack a couple of days ago, and the disproportionate emphasis given to rear area comforts in the base itself…

Turns out the commander in charge of the bridge is General Daniel Menard (linked inserted by me). Have sent questions to his office. Receipt has been acknowledged. Meanwhile, missions continue to be cancelled due to failure to secure that bridge. While troops were glued to the Olympic Hockey, the enemy was closing in on the real goal: That Bridge.

While some troops were wasting time fixated on the Olympics, 10 minutes away a major target was left vulnerable. If we can persuade the Taliban to play Hockey, or if we can learn to play their sport — Guerrilla Warfare — maybe we can score some points.

Our combat operations have been severely hampered. Confidence in this General cannot be high. If he cannot protect nearby targets of obvious significance, what next?

(to date 79 comments)

Fire the Task Force Kandahar General

Yesterday at 0735 local, a suicide car bomb attacked a US convoy crossing a bridge only about ten minutes from the major base called Kandahar Airfield. The car bomb blew an MRAP off the bridge, killing a US soldier and injuring several others. Another bomb had been planted under the bridge. This bridge is easily defensible and of great significance.

Yet while some troops go weeks or longer with no showers, fighting in rough conditions with no amenities, many troops on this base play hockey or, just the night before, had stopped nearly everything to watch the Olympics. Meanwhile, a bridge of strategic importance sat thinly guarded just minutes down the road. And so now, the bridge is damaged and large military vehicles and fuel trucks cannot use it. There is no reasonable way around.

Today we talk about an offensive in Kandahar, yet there is a General here who cannot guard a single bridge just outside the gate. That bridge is our LINK TO KANDAHAR. Meanwhile, soldiers who are doing six month easy-tours complain about R&R and morale boosters, while many soldiers who serve full-year combat tours don’t take showers.

Why are live bands streaming into here? What is this, an Amusement Park or a War?

That General needs to be fired. Dead weight at the top cannot be tolerated.

(to date 76 comments)

This is interesting…here we have am embedded reporter publicly criticising the Canadian one-star responsible for security around the Kandahar Base. This is the third post on this topic that Michael Yon has made in the last 24-36 hours yet it does not appear that the US forces with whom he has been working have taken much, if any, action to curb his comments. One might wonder if there is a more subtle IO plan being executed here, that the US simply don’t care, or that this is an indication of a new maturity in the US military’s engagement with the information militia, in that they are comfortable with this style of robust discussion as opposed to the more traditional Public Affairs-fed party line…?

The whole Starbucks, Olympics, BK, etc etc issue really begs the question: is this a War, or merely a war….?

Michelle Lang was among the casualties that marked the deadliest day for Canada in Afghanistan since 2007. Photo by AFP.

In Bing-ing for some more information on BG Menard, I came across an article Death of an Embed on blogs.aljazeera.net…some interesting comments on Canadian involvement in the w(W)ar and the conflict itself…

Understanding Islam

Neptunus Lex carries a link to an interesting read explaining apparent hypocrisy in the application of Islamic values, specifically “Is it inconsistent for Muslim “holy warriors” to engage in voyeuristic acts of lasciviousness?” It concludes”…in this context, the problem is not Muslims frequenting strip clubs, but misplaced Western projections that assume religious piety is always synonymous with personal morality…” Once again, we need to understand the environment and our adversaries if we ever hope to be able to manage them – not blindly seek to inflict Western culture, values and systems onto environments in which they are alien…

Scooped

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But in a good way.

Like 14,691 others, I have been following Michael Yon’s Facebook page as he reports from Afghanistan and had intended to promote him again yesterday as a great example of the Information Militia in operation – Tom Ricks beat me to it with Learn how to be a war correspondent. His website is Michael Yon Online. I’ve commented on him a couple of times before in Doing the Business, following an item on Neptunus Lex on pararescue teams operating in Afghanistan; and slightly later when I thought he was a well-intentioned meddler pressuring US DOD to release a Haitian-born Army officer from service in Afghanistan to deploy to assist in Haiti.

So who is this guy, Michael Yon?

Michael Yon was born in Florida in 1964 (a good year for writers) and joined the US Army when he was 19. He remains one of the youngest soldiers to pass the Special Forces selection process. He left the Army in 1987, after only four years. This is not that unusual and is somewhat typical of what many young men were doing at the time in joining the Army and leaving once they had gotten it out of their system, and/or to take advantage of other opportunities, many of which may have resulted from that military service. I saw many good soldiers in the same period who joined up, completed basis recruit and infantry corps training, spent 6-12 months in 2/1 RNZIR before deploying to 1 RNZIR in Singapore for two years. Many of them left the service at the conclusion of that posting, older, more mature and with much broader horizons.

He drifted through various activities until he began writing in the mid-90s. However it was not until the War in Iraq began that his name came to the fore as a correspondent in December 2004. from that point he has gone from strength to strength as an embedded reporter although his relationship with the military has not always been that smooth. He “…supports embedded journalism over traditional reporting, believing that the closer writers are to events the less likely they are to repeat military public relations spin…” and this one of two common themes in his writing today. The other is an extremely strong compassion for soldiers and this comes through very strongly and effectively in his reports.

“Happy news for the Left was that U.S. soldiers were demoralized and the war was being lost… Happy news for the Right was that there was no insurgency, then no civil war; we always had enough troops, and we were winning hands-down, except for the left-wing lunatics who were trying to unravel it all. They say heroin addicts are happy, too, when they are out of touch with reality.” Moment of Truth in Iraq, Michael Yon, 2008.

The War in Afghanistan has truly begun. This will be a long, difficult fight that is set to eclipse anything we’ve seen in Iraq. As 2010 unfolds, my 6th year of war coverage will unfold with it. There is relatively little interest in Afghanistan by comparison to previous interest in Iraq, and so reader interest is low. Afghanistan is serious, very deadly business. Like Iraq, however, it gets pushed around as a political brawling pit while the people fighting the war are mostly forgotten. The arguments at home seem more likely to revolve around a few words from the President than the ground realities of combat here. ~ Michael Yon Online

His 2006 article in The Weekly Standard, Censoring Iraq summarises his views well although it led to a major falling out with the US military. He has been criticised often for an apparent naivety in some of his releases, which I think could be attributed to his short period of personal military service, his habit of launching into text-based upon misleading or incorrect information (hence my comments re Haiti), and releasing the names of casualties before next of kin have been properly notified. This last point is interesting as Michael Yon has been accused of doing this during the current operations in Afghanistan however has come back strongly, supported by others, stating that the in-theatre information has been that notifications had been completed.

There is some confusion within the military regarding timing of releasability of names of the fallen. This confusion stems from apparently contradictory sentences within the embed guidelines. The guidelines are being clarified to avert misunderstandings with media, and within the military…Yes. This stems from the Garcia episode. The PAOs, through no fault of their own (other than Garcia blowing a gasket and talking publicly), have some confusion about the embed papers. CPT Adam Weece showed me the sentences and I agreed that the sentences are confusing and seem contradictory. Insofar as my release, I was completely cleared and broke no rules. Was well within the guidelines and what’s right, but the episode revealed some rough spots that need to be ironed out. And so the military is on it and will get it fixed. Should be good soon. ~ Michael Yon Facebook, Feb 10.

This latter point is interesting as it may have uncovered a lag between what happens in the theatre and the actual notifications in the US. While casualty notification is not an easy nor a pleasant task, it has to be sharp – quite simply there can be no fumbles or ball drops – and possibly this is an area that could be put under the Lessons Learned spotlight to make sure we have got it right. One would like to think that the process has come a long way from the Western Union telegrams in We Were Soldiers….Like so many things in the military, this is a function that must be regularly wargamed to ensure that we have it right – and it IS one of those areas where metrics CAN be set to define the standard e.g. family notification in XX hours by XX means by XX individual(s), media release(s) in XX time (relative to family notification) by XX individuals, etc etc.

In Running the War in Iraq, MAJGEN Jim Molan discusses how he and his staff had to meet very tight times lines to be ‘first with the truth’ or, if not, counter dis- and mis-information from any source. I think that the same onus rests with the public affairs staffs everywhere. Embedded media like Michael Yon offer great potential to conduct our own information operations – a function we have historically be very weak in – but they come with risk. Michael Yon’s great attraction is that he comes across as ‘the truth’ and not as PA-spin – if you try to take away the ‘on the edge’ ‘right here, right now’ pulse of his work, you defeat the whole purpose of having an embed. Yeah, sure, there’s this OPSEC thing but I’m not sure how far you can go down that path when the official mouthpieces are telegraphing pinches a week ahead of time. One of the strongest criticisms of the current wars is that ‘truth has become the first casualty’ again – pragmatic shepherding of embeds like Michael Yon can go a long way to mitigating this perception…

A crew from the United States Air Force spent Saturday night and Sunday morning airlifting different groups of wounded soldiers from Kandahar to Camp Bastion to Bagram, back to Kandahar, then back to Bagram, and back to Kandahar. These patients were from Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Here, an Air Force nurse caresses the head of a wounded, unconscious Canadian soldier while whispering into his ear. (c) Michael Yon Online 2010

Those who don’t think like us, can leave anytime

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1930s Germany or 21C Britain?

Wootton Bassett is a small town near RAF Lyneham through which the bodies of soldiers killed overseas are driven on their way to the morgue at Oxford. It is now becoming a centre for ‘grief tourism’ in the UK but not only for loyal and partiotic Brits. An organisation called Islam4UK now plans to march through Wootton Bassett apparently to protest UK involvement in wars against Islam. If you are on Facebook, you can see the furore as it unravels – if you thought that the only nutjobs were on the Islamic side of the fence – think again…

There are a bunch of issues arising from this proposed march and the reaction to it. First and foremost, the outpouring of anti-immigrant emotion from opponents to the march can only serve to further any extremist cause as ‘a clear indication of the racist nature of white Britons’ – that’s how it will be portrayed anyway when 700,000 people join what can be easily portrayed as an anti-Islamic FB page. I think that if I was Facebook, I would just kill the whole page and be done with it. So far as the march is concerned, perhaps UK authorities SHOULD let it proceed: very possibly no one will turn up anyway and it will be a non-event; if rowdies on either side do turn up they should be treated equally by the law just as are hooligans from opposing footy teams – because that’s all they are…

On the moral outrage front, Neptunus Lex has an article on Iran’s response to the killing of Neda Soltan. It’s disgusting but a great example of taking the truth i.e. what really happened, and totally twisting it to suit your own purposes. Once again, we choose to take a back foot in the information battle…

Can you hear the bagpipes?

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piper bill millinThe relief column! It’s here at last…!!!

Royal Navy Commander Steve Tatham is the author of Strategic Communication: A Primer that I found in the Staff Collge library when I was in Shrivenham in October last year. At the time I commented that it was “…quite positively the best reference I have found for IO, Influence and Perception Shaping…it should be compulsory reading for anyone in the PR, IO or COIN games…” Well, the good Commander has just released another work which is even more required reading than Strategic Communications…Through the power of Facebook (don’t knock it!), Small Wars Journal advertised the release of Behavioural Conflict – From General to Strategic Corporal: Complexity, Adaptation and Influence The link goes directly to the College library site but, curiously, Small Wars Journal has yet to load the paper onto its main site – this is quite surprising as SWJ is normally very proactive in getting papers like this into circulation. It is interesting that there are currently two significant papers in circulation that have been produced by Major-Generals (the other being MG Flynn’s Fixing Intel) but of the two, I believe that this new paper by Steve Tatham and Major-General Andrew Mackay (the ‘other’ MG) is far more important and far-reaching in its implications – let’s be honest about it: the int world has been FUBARed since some Neanderthal first lined his tribesmen up and called them an army – his wife said he had to give his gammy-legged, drooling brother-in-law a job and that’s how the S2 came into being (nice to have on the orbat but no great loss if someone puts a rock through his head).

My opening lines re the relief column reflect a feeling that finally someone else has stated unequivocally that we need to take this Influence stuff seriously and not keep it as an afterthought on the opord after all the cool blowing stuff up and mandatory ‘hearts and minds’ buzzwords have been massaged to death.

More than that, we MUST change the fundamental mass-focussed industrial age emphasis of our training and start to empower individuals from Day 1 of getting of the bus at initial training institutions – I say training institutions because this is way broader than just the military: this approach must be implemented across government, and, eventually, maybe even into the general education system.

The big problem though is not changing the training – that is simple – but changing the mindsets of of more senior embedded generations to both truly embrace (lip service not accepted here) AND keep up with the shift from a focus on mass to focus on individuals (sounds like that Scheiern guy again…). When this shift reaches its tipping point, the natural flow-on effect will be seen in other functional areas like the much bagged intel sector…

That this paper has come from the UK is gratifying as well – it shows beyond a shadow of doubt that all is not lost in the land of Empire and the paper is open and honest in flagging the issues to be overcome for Influence to be truly implemented in the UK. If for no other reason, professionals should read this paper as a heads-up on the institutional problems that are endemic, not just in UK MOD, but across Western militaries…

I will do some more work on this topic later but it is Saturday today and Carmen comes home for the weekend tonight – so it’s off to tidy the house and grounds so it looks nice for her when she gets in…

 

Last Call for 2009

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Well, this is probably it for the year – we’re off on holiday from this weekend and aren’t planning on resuming normal services until the first week of 2010 although, if I get time, I may schedule some tuning signal posts over the close down period…

The misuse of the term ‘COIN’ for the environment we face today has always annoyed and as most will know my preferences are for the more accurate Countering Irregular Threats or, even better, Countering Irregular Activity. There is a great thread developing on Small Wars Journal on The Myth of Hearts and Minds [PDF: The Myth of Hearts and Minds – Comments – Small Wars JournalThe Myth of Hearts and Minds – Small Wars Journal] – I’ve already said my little bit and encourage you all to as well…I think this is important as the proponderant focus on COIN in the last four to five years has been a significant doctrinal red herring.

Both Coming Anarchy and Lex Neptunus offer comment on a recent Wall Street Journal piece on the alleged ability of insurgents to hack the feeds from US UAVs (drones are something totally different)…while it is simply so totally unamazing that the bad guys might target a weakness in the US comms hierarchy (you could build a whole doctrine around targeting weakness and call it ‘asymmetry’ – oh, yeah, they did that already…), this is not hacking: it sounds more like it is not much more than tuning into your neighbour’s unsecured wifi connection – more his problem that yours if he is too dumb/lazy/cheap to do the job properly…the Russians must be so upset that this $25 software, developed for legitimate and peaceful use, is being abused in this way…

On The Strategist, there is a note on the Brits punting up the success of their next big push in Afghanistan – before it happens – it’s either a cunning (of weasel proportions) information operations campaign – or just another sign of how much they just DON’T get it anymore and are still hankering for the halcyon days of the British Army on the Rhine where it was all so much simpler, lots of small maps, big arrows and bigger hands…I’m also not sure if you can have “…classic behind the lines fighting…” on the non-contiguous battlefield…?

And, finally, some food for thought from a Blunty of a few months ago: Are we better than them?

The Information Militia

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…it was really great to see former Chief of Army, Lou Gardiner, fronting for the recent launch of Crimestoppers NZ (0800 555 111). This initiative is the silver lining from the cloud of the December 2007 Army Museum VC theft that brought General Lou and Lord Ashcroft together and got the  idea fermenting (‘though the head of Crimestoppers NZ probably won’t have his own jet!!).

Initially I was a bit dubious about the whole idea of anonymous reporting and the opportunities to play ‘Dob Thy Neighbour‘ but I’ve been following the news reports this week and even if the Kiwi version is only half as effective as the UK one, that is still a 10% dent in the crime stats which is pretty respectable by anyone’s standards. More power to Crimestoppers and it will be interesting to visit in a few months to see  how the stats are panning out. In the meantime, I exhort everyone to pop across to Crimestoppers and plant a few words of encouragement on the Crimestoppers Blog. Consider this your personal contribution to domestic Info Ops for 2009: the more obvious public support there is, the more likely it is that ordinary people will use the site….away you go…

Defence Capability Centre 033 small

This mobile signpost is in one of the display areas at the Defence Capability Centre at Shrivenham – it was in this complex, which is absolutely packed with big boys toys for ambient effect, that the CLAW was conducted this year. At first, I thought it looked kinda dumb and just a big invite for a couple of rounds of ‘Dob Thy Neighbour‘ and other forms of neighbourhood score-settling and mischief. But then I thought about it some more from an information perspective. Clearly in any COIN, Irregular Threat or Stability environment – and when you get down to it, domestic crime-fighting is as much about stability ops as is providing security in an operational theatre – there is a very real risk or kickback and retribution for ‘narks‘ and ‘informers‘ thus anonymity is not only good but essential.

This is probably easier to effect in an operational theatre where the onus of evidence might not be as rigid as in a civil courtroom even though the process of analysis and decision may be no less rigorous or difficult. I’m about 2/3 of the way through Australian General Jim Molan’s Running the War in Iraq (top read – highly recommended!!) and he goes into considerable detail on the rigour that his staff applied before approving prosecution of a target, often under very tight time imperatives (which is why it’s called Time Sensitive Targeting). Instead of having to satisfy a judge a a jury of his/her ‘peers’, the operational requirement is to satisfy a specific decision matrix based on four considerations: (from Running the War in Iraq) proportionality, humanity, discrimination and necessity. So in this environment, the painting of a picture based upon all source information, including that from anonymous sources, is more directly linked to an actionable result.

In a domestic criminal environment, there remains an equal or possibly greater burden of analysis and validation on information from anonymous sources which ultimately may have to satisfy a formal legal evidential chain. But over time, what we develop is a complex and detailed picture of a society and its environment that is constantly enhancing and evolving. The key to this, is the reliance upon informal, part-time, intermittent information sources…uh-oh, it’s THE PEOPLE again and these are whom I am starting to think of as the Information Militia…they are often not formally organised, particularly reliable, or often even that useful but every little titbit they provide adds to the picture, even (possibly not even intentionally) their place in it…a resource that supports the campaign, even while perhaps attempting to further its own myriads of ends…

And then I thought, wow, what if you took this model and applied it to Afghanistan – could this be where the support of the people might actually make a difference? It is not realisitic, although we keep on doing it, to expect ‘the people’ to just wake up one day and decide ‘Enough!’ and turn in all insurgents and their supporters. Not realistic at all, and we’ve all seen it happen one place or another, where the insurgents/criminals  (the same or another mob) come back and dish out retribution. But what if we had Crimestoppers Afghanistan? Very specifically Crimestoppers and not any play on words like Talibanbusters, etc etc…the objective is to focus on crime and by very clearly unstated inference, insurgents because they are nothing but criminals…the Information Militia provide leads, feeds, rumours and whispers – all anonymously – which paint a picture which then informs counter-criminal operations – reducing crime is always a good start to getting the people onside – and as the picture evolves, oopsy-a-daisy, a counter-criminal feed ‘accidentally’ knocks off some insurgents…and on it goes…

Over time, as occurred in Northern Ireland, some insurgents will tire of the constant harassment in the face of growing public (‘the people’ again) confidence in government forces and disdain for the insurgents. I refer to ‘insurgents’ deliberately in order to decriminalise the Taliban associations, to encourage THEM to consider one by one coming to the talking table…

And there I was…

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…just standing in the library waiting for the nice young lady to log me into an Internet PC (I have 24/7 run of this magnificent library but have to get one of the staff to log me into a internet PC – go figure!) when I noticed a stack of papers and such on a table under a big sign “Please Help Yourself”…Always being in for a giveaway, I grabbed a couple of interest for later reading…

Some important people really need to have a serious read of Strategic Communication: A Primer, written by, of all things, a RN Commander, Steve Tatham…quite positively the best reference I have found for IO, Influence and Perception Shaping…it should be compulsory reading for anyone in the PR, IO or COIN games…

I would most interested to hear of anyone else’s thought’s on this treatise…

Another balmy (barmy?) day here at CLAWville – analysis and reporting is progressing well and I finally have a tick in the box to take photos of the big boys toys that are lined up all throughout the venue…