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'Brutal psychological hit' against FARC

Audacious thinking, clever use of defectors, three-way electronic intercepts, copycatting precedents set by Hugo Chavez, exploiting broken command and control, and playing on the targets' egoes were among the elements of Colombia's successful hostage rescue this week, what a senior Colombian officer calls a "brutal psychological hit" against the FARC.

Today's Wall Street Journal captures these elements, showing how the skillful use of psychological means can defeat terrorists and other extremists:

• Taking advantage of a leadership crisis within the FARC, to compromise communications and make FARC units think they were transferring the hostages to the group's new leader;
• Infiltrating the FARC leadership and command structure with penetration agents;
• Copying Hugo Chavez's propagandistic recovery of hostages last January and February, by re-enacting a similar scenario with Russian helicopters painted with similar color schemes;
• Using deception to communicate between FARC leaders and the guerrillas' security detail guarding the hostages, disinforming the security detail to move the hostages to a location where they would be transferred by a helicopter under ostensible FARC control;
• Hollywood-style acting classes for undercover Colombian military intelligence officers, taught by American acting coaches and FARC defectors, to make the officers look and act like real FARC men - even mimicking the way the guerrillas walk and talk;
• Coaching to make a Colombian officer look like an Australian leftist;
• Dressing cameramen to look like they were from Chavez's Telesur satellite TV channel, copying Telesur's participation in the previous rescues (see video embed);
• Using "more cunning than firepower."

"The plan had a chance of working because, for months, in an operation one army officer likened to a 'broken telephone,' military intelligence had been able to convince [former senator and presidential candidate Ingrid] Betancourt's captor, Gerardo Aguilar, a guerrilla known as 'Cesar,' that he was communicating with his top bosses in the guerrillas' seven-man secretariat. Army intelligence convinced top guerrilla leaders that they were talking to Cesar. In reality, both were talking to army intelligence," according to the report.

Fruits of the operation include:

• Rescue of high-value hostages whom the FARC never had any intention of releasing;
• Provoking recriminations within the FARC, further splintering the organization and causing more desertions and defections;
• Further demoralizing the FARC and its supporters;
• Humiliating the FARC's strongest supporters, including Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, both of whom praised the rescue and criticized the FARC, with Castro calling the FARC "cruel" and Chavez telling the FARC to free all hostages and to disarm;
• Boosting the standing of Colombian President Uribe and the US strategy to assist Colombia;
• Increasing the domestic and international prestige of the Colombian military, which has made huge strides in its professionalism over the past decade;
• Causing liberal and left-wing groups to concede that their go-soft negotiations approach was wrong, and that Uribe's tough approach was the right thing to do.

The Wall Street Journal carries this precious quote from a top NGO leader who had criticized Uribe's approach and urged a soft line: "I have to recognize that the strong hand has prevailed," said Robert Menard, a liberal human rights activist and founder and secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders. "Our insistence on the need to negotiate with the FARC, hoping they would release their most valuable card, was foolish."

A textbook operation - one for the history books of how to do things exactly right. Notably, the US was closely involved with this Colombian operation. Now, if we can do this type of thing with the Islamists, we'll be doing just fine.

A sound spanking for crybaby terrorists

Widow Beats Terrorist with Shoe

With women enjoying near-subhuman status among most Islamist extremists and the sole of the shoe being a cultural metaphor for dirt and shame, Iraqis have developed a way to punish terrorists.

That's right: Allowing a woman to beat terrorists with a shoe.

It might sound odd to American ears, but for Iraqis and others in that part of the world, it's perfectly appropriate. This video is old - aired on Iraqi TV in 2005 - but given the previous posting I thought it worth highlighting.

The woman identified three terrorists as the murderers of her husband. She is apparently at a police station, smacking them around with a shoe. The terrorists are sitting on the ground, appropriately stripped of their ability to terrorize, sobbing like crybabies.

Overall an appropriate use of humiliation to tear down the terrorists' stature a notch or two, which is probably why Iraqi TV aired the clip in the first place. Too bad we Americans are too squeamish about such things, whereby we've worked ourselves up so much that hurting terrorists' feelings is now considered a war crime.

Shame and blame: Just the ticket

"I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools."

These aren't the words of a fringe anti-war politician here at home. They're from a Saudi man, a former al Qaeda terrorist and one-time Guantanamo detainee.

Khalid al-Hubayshi is living proof that former enemy combatants can have powerful psychological messages that can be used to undermine and demoralize al Qaeda and other extremist forces. From the perspective of the enemy a shameful, negative message that he is being defeated (and therefore is in disfavor with God) is more powerful than a positive message about the US.

The Washington Post interviewed al-Hubayshi in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the government apparently rehabilitated him from al Qaeda extremism (and presumably toward the regime's official Wahhabi ideology, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

Look at the excellent themes that emerge from al-Hubayshi's story:

• Al Qaeda doesn't help Muslims; it harms them. "I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools," says al Hubayshi.
• Local Muslims blamed al Qaeda - not the United States - for the deaths inflicted during the war in Afghanistan. "On Sept. 11, 2001, Hubayshi said, he was training Chechen fighters in explosives in the eastern city of Jalalabad. In October, when the first U.S. airstrikes hit Jalalabad, the Afghans 'blamed us . . . and forced us out of the city at night. We slept by the river for two weeks.'"

• Al Qaeda's ideology is shaky. Al-Hubayshi said he was attracted to al Qaeda during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but by 2001 "the fight had changed from defending Muslims to attacking the United States. I wasn't convinced of his ideology. And I wanted to be independent, not just another minion in this big group." 

• Bin Laden is a liar who uses his people. "'What are my duties toward you, and what are your duties toward me, if I join with you?' Hubayshi said he asked. 'That you don't betray us and we don't betray you,' bin Laden responded, and offered him a plot of land, Hubayshi said." Read on.

• Bin Laden is a coward who betrayed his own fighters. After the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden dug in at Tora Bora to fight the Americans, and called his fighters into the mountain fortress. The Post paraphrases al-Hubayshi's story: "As the airstrikes moved closer, and with the United States' Afghan allies advancing, bin Laden decided to retreat and left one morning. His aides told 300 Arab fighters to make their way to Pakistan and surrender to their embassies. Pakistani authorities stopped the fighters near the border and handed them over to the US military, which sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Hubayshi remains bitter about what he considers bin Laden's betrayal: calling the fighters to Tora Bora and then abandoning them there."
• Bin Laden is no hero. "There was no dignity in what he made us do."
• "Jihad" does not mean to attack innocent civilians. "Hubayshi said he is sorry that Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 attacks because they targeted civilians: 'That was wrong. Jihad is fighting soldier to soldier.'"

There's a lot more in this story. This blogger has discussed problems with Saudi ideology before and will do so again, and has warned against viewing only the immediately violent extremists as strategic threats when subversive Islamist threats remain. But for the time being, let's just look at the example of Khaled al-Hubayshi and the opportunity it brings us to undermine the most immediate violent threat.

A sound psychological warfare effort emerges

The New York Times is reporting on a new military effort to exploit the enemy's ideological and cultural weaknesses in a new mode of attack.

This is an exciting development, because it shows adaptation of a much more sophisticated approach that a handful of psychological warfare experts have been promoting for years. The very report in the Times is almost a psychological operation in itself, revealing what is almost surely a tiny effort and magnifying it into something big - and playing on the paranoia inherent in ideological extremist movements.

While I don't claim credit for any of the developments, as others were working on them apart from my efforts, it's striking to see how the details in the March 18 New York Times article closely parallel the policy recommendations in my book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War, and in the early drafts which circulated through the Pentagon and CIA since 2004. The ideas in the Institute of World Politics-sponsored book aren't new: They date from the times of the ancient Hebrews, Aristotle and Sun Tzu, and as the Times says, were practiced during the Cold War. But they're new to the war effort.

Here are some of the points in the article that the book advocated. The quotes are taken from the March 18 NYT story. The numbers in parentheses are the corresponding pages in the book.

• Sow confusion, dissent and distrust among the enemy. "To counter efforts by terrorists to plot attacks, raise money and recruit new members on the Internet, the government has mounted a secret campaign to plant bogus e-mail messages and Web site postings, with the intent to sow confusion, dissent and distrust among militant organizations, officials confirm." (65, 74, 130-131)
• Amplify voices of certain Islamic authorities. "At the same time, American diplomats are quietly working behind the scenes with Middle Eastern partners to amplify the speeches and writings of prominent Islamic clerics who are renouncing terrorist violence." (70-73, 122, 139)
• Plant seeds of doubt in terrorists' minds to exploit cultural shame and religious beliefs. ". . . if the seeds of doubt can be planted in the mind of Al Qaeda’s strategic leadership that an attack would be viewed as a shameful murder of innocents — or, even more effectively, that it would be an embarrassing failure — then the order may not be given, according to this new analysis." (123, 132)
• Fight the terrorists in their battlespace: Online. "Terrorists hold little or no terrain, except on the Web. 'Al Qaeda and other terrorists’ center of gravity lies in the information domain, and it is there that we must engage it,' said Dell L. Dailey, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief." (30-31, 144)
• Establish combat teams to exploit terrorist computers for propaganda purposes. "Some of the government’s most secretive counterterrorism efforts involve disrupting terrorists’ cyberoperations. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, specially trained teams have recovered computer hard drives used by terrorists and are turning the terrorists’ tools against them." (122)
• Make better use of captured intelligence to humiliate and demoralize the enemy. "Other American efforts are aimed at discrediting Qaeda operations, including the decision to release seized videotapes showing members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group with some foreign leaders, training children to kidnap and kill, as well as a lengthy letter said to have been written by another terrorist leader that describes the organization as weak and plagued by poor morale."
• Exploit local cultures and rhetoric against the enemy. "Even as security and intelligence forces seek to disrupt terrorist operations, counterterrorism specialists are examining ways to dissuade insurgents from even considering an attack with unconventional weapons. They are looking at aspects of the militants’ culture, families or religion, to undermine the rhetoric of terrorist leaders." (38-75)
• Amplify local voices to sow doubts and break the enemy's will. "For example, the government is seeking ways to amplify the voices of respected religious leaders who warn that suicide bombers will not enjoy the heavenly delights promised by terrorist literature, and that their families will be dishonored by such attacks. Those efforts are aimed at undermining a terrorist’s will. "'I’ve got to figure out what does dissuade you,' said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategic plans and policy. 'What is your center of gravity that we can go at? The goal you set won’t be achieved, or you will be discredited and lose face with the rest of the Muslim world or radical extremism that you signed up for.'" (32-34, 138-144)
• Widen rifts between terrorists and their friends. "Efforts are also under way to persuade Muslims not to support terrorists. It is a delicate campaign that American officials are trying to promote and amplify — but without leaving telltale American fingerprints that could undermine the effort in the Muslim world. Senior Bush administration officials point to several promising developments. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech last October warning Saudis not to join unauthorized jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraq to fight the American-led forces. And Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, a top leader of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of Mr. Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda official, has just completed a book that renounces violent jihad on legal and religious grounds. Such dissents are serving to widen rifts between Qaeda leaders and some former loyal backers, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats say." (123)
• Peel away at the concentric rings of support around the terrorists. "'Obviously, hard-core terrorists will be the hardest to deter,' [Pentagon special operations policy planner Michael G.] Vickers said. 'But if we can deter the support network — recruiters, financial supporters, local security providers and states who provide sanctuary — then we can start achieving a deterrent effect on the whole terrorist network and constrain terrorists’ ability to operate." (34-35, 76, 120-123)

Footnote: This is a very productive piece of journalism. I would be remiss in not pointing out that one of the co-writers, Eric Schmitt, was also a co-writer of the February 19, 2002 New York Times report that falsely branded the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) as a disinformation unit. That careless report was the product of a turf battle in which Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke leaked the false story to the Times with the intent of inflicting political damage on OSI and forcing it to be shut down. This is indeed what happened. Clarke has never been held accountable for this action (nor has Schmitt or the New York Times), which set back psychological and ideological warfare operations by three years or more.

Pointed critique proposes solutions for Iraq IO failure

In a blunt but productive critique of Coalition information operations (IO) in Iraq, an IO practitioner offers a way out of the mess.

Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) Senior Fellow Andrew Garfield writes in the Middle East Quarterly that US-led efforts to communicate with Iraqis have been unimaginative, disorganized, largely irrelevant to the target audiences, slow to anticipate or respond, and often wasteful of funds and resources. The bottom line, he argues, is that current IO strategy is not supporting the warfighters in Iraq. The enemy is running IO circles around us.

My read on Garfield's article is that our IO policy is getting our guys needlessly killed.

The "insurgents," Garfield says, have mastered various forms of political and cultural communication, from high-profile images and videos of their attacks to the simple stuff like grafitti, art, poetry, songs, leafletting, publishing and multimedia productions.

While US-led forces should reign supreme in all those areas - and monitor the enemy's visual imprint to diminish its psychological presence - the effort fumbles. "The slow speed of the U.S. military's clearance process—typically it takes three to five days to approve even a simple information operations product such as a leaflet or billboard—creates an information vacuum that Iraqis fill with conspiracy theories and gossip often reflecting the exaggerations or outright lies of insurgents and extremists," Garfield says.

The insurgents, terrorists and militiamen are adept at exploiting TV cameras to project their message globally, while "US authorities handicap themselves. US military lawyers fear 'blowback' to US domestic audiences, which they interpret as a violation of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibited domestic distribution of propaganda meant for foreign audiences. As a result, US commanders forbid coalition authorities to openly engage on the Internet. The decision has ceded this key tool to the Iraqi insurgents," he adds.

Indeed, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 pertains only to the State Department. Congress narrowly defined the law to pertain exclusively to State and to what became the US Information Agency, which has since been absorbed into the State Department. Military lawyers and PAOs who invoke Smith-Mundt to limit Defense Department information ops are flat wrong. This blog published an alert about Smith-Mundt last May.

Garfield identifies wastefulness in US-funded information operations: "While the coalition has spent a hundred million dollars on advertising in Iraq, the strategy of re-awarding huge contracts to advertising firms who spend tens of millions of dollars on nationally-broadcast radio and television commercials but who cannot demonstrate effective audience penetration is questionable. Local Iraqi firms have designed the most effective commercials at a relatively low cost. For example, one commercial showing the impact of an improvised explosive device on an Iraqi family cost only $15,000 to make. However, most coalition advertisements, perhaps one hundred times more costly, lack resonance and relevance among ordinary Iraqis, even as they saturate the airwaves."

Some US-funded ads, he says, have done more harm than good. Lack of IO coordination is another problem: "There is an interagency process meant to coordinate the coalition's information campaign but, in reality, this becomes a forum for information sharing rather than a mechanism for command and control."

Garfield calls for "a single command authority" to "guide and supervise all information and psychological operations and public affairs staff," rather than have the current competing structure with many chiefs and little grand strategy.

A slow message approval process has killed excellent initiatives. Senior officials, Garfield writes, "take days if not weeks to clear information operations products, even excellent products developed by Iraqis for their own ethnic groups." Approval of an advertisement for a newspaper in an Iraqi city like Fargo, North Dakota, requires passing through a colon of staffers, lawyers and senior officers up to the three-star level. Garfield proposes a quick approval process modeled after that of private news organizations.

Garfield provides a mother lode of observations and ideas to fix the current chronic IO problem in Iraq. Everyone in the IO community should read and debate it. To read the article, click here.

US Naval Institute Proceedings gives thumbs-up to war of ideas book

Proceedings, the magazine of the United States Naval Institute, runs a favorable review of my book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War.

In the August 2007 issue, Lt. Dan Reiher, USN, says that the book "clearly demonstrates that the new thrust in the war of ideas does not have to originate in US government releases."

The Navy reviewer concludes, "By focusing primarily on the offensive aspects of strategic communication, the author has made a worthwhile contribution to what must be a key component of U.S. strategy in the terrorism war. For those who find themselves in a position to affect U.S. communication efforts, or to influence our image among allies and adversaries, this book should be placed at the top of their must-read list."

Proceedings does not publish the book reviews in its current online editions, but the attached document contains a copy of the review: Download proceedings_review_aug_07.pdf

Odd hearts-and-minds logic from an Army instructor

How's this for an information operations tactic: Training American troops to increase their risk of getting killed in order to win over Iraqi hearts and minds. That's what one US Army JAG instructor appears to think. Consider what Bill Gertz reported July 20 in the Washington Times under the headline, "Deadly Hesitation":

"A U.S. military officer said the Army is still putting out rules of engagement (ROE) that are dangerous and could cause U.S. soldiers to get killed in the war on terrorism. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, recently expressed concerns that soldiers fighting insurgents and terrorists do not have clear guidance on the use of force.

"One recent session at the Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School in Charlottesville included an instructor who taught one class that 'we must hesitate and be careful when we pull the trigger,' the officer said.

"'They are teaching that even following ROE, while not illegal, may not be a good idea,' the officer said. 'They are teaching that to win the hearts and minds that we may have to take casualties through hesitations.'

"A Defense official said the problem with hesitation is that it is similar to saying that if a solider is confronted by an armed terrorist, he may have a legal right under the rules to fire but that he should hesitate on the theory that the terrorist could be won over through appealing to their 'hearts and minds.'

"The official said such advice is deadly.

"'As statistics show, hesitation in a situation like this gets a soldier killed,' the official said. 'Second, 'hearts and minds' in counterinsurgency operations refers to winning the hearts and minds of the innocent civilians through protecting them from terrorists.'

"The official said Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. should find the instructor and have him fired. 'Either that or teach him the words to "Kumbaya" and send him into al Qaeda territory in Iraq, unarmed,' the official said."

Smart counterinsurgency

It's more and more exciting to see the unfolding changes in our military strategy in Iraq. The military under Gen. David Petraeus is escaping the old-think and is fighting the insurgents in new ways - one of which is to help them to fight one another.

Just as we allied with the evil Joseph Stalin in World War II to fight the Nazis, so we will have to hold our nose and work with some of our enemies against other enemies. We can't take on everyone at once, and we can't come to a solution in Iraq without co-opting some elements that in a fairer world we would otherwise destroy.

After finishing off the Nazis, we dealt with the Soviets. And after years of dogged persistence punctuated by screw-ups and defeatism, ultimately we were victorious. Let's lay off the criticism of the new counterinsurgency innovations and give the enemy-of-my-enemy experiment a chance to work.

War of Ideas strategy now available on Amazon

My new book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War, is now available from online booksellers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Armed Forces Journal recently ran a profile of the book. Editor-in-chief Karen Walker writes, "this guide offers ways that could discredit, divide and ultimately squelch the enemy into a blob of irrelevance."

Smith-Mundt does NOT apply to DoD

Attention all Information Operations personnel: The Smith-Mundt Act does not apply to you!

Next time a Public Affairs Officer or JAG tells you that you can't run a good IO against the enemy because you might be "propagandizing the American people," tell her to read the law.

Time and again I've seen it in writing where military PAOs and JAGs sabotage wartime info ops by invoking the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act.

The law, which established US public diplomacy and international broadcasting as we know it today, contains a provision that bans the State Department and the former US Information Agency (USIA) from releasing information to Americans that is designed for foreign audiences.  USIA was an independent agency under the State Department.

The Smith-Mundt Act is officially known as Public Law 402. See Title 22 of the United States Code. The part that military public affairs officers and lawyers wrongly invoke is Chapter 18, Subchapter V,  "Dissemination Abroad of Information About the United States." The operative language appears in § 1461. The "Secretary" in that clause, as the rest of the law specifies, is the Secretary of State.

Smith-Mundt and its amendments in the 1972 Foreign Relations Authorization Act, the 1985 Zorinsky Amendment, and the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring act of 1998 refer only to the State Department and USIA. The law is written very narrowly. There is no mistaking that Congress did not intend for the law to apply to the Department of Defense.

If Congress wants the law to apply to DoD, it can amend the law. Until then, the Pentagon should stop acting like it's bound to Smith-Mundt. The Secretary of Defense should instruct all PAOs and JAGs from using the law as a pretext for shutting down IO, and should discipline those who fail to comply.