Anne Aly: Why we should beware of the Taliban’s attempt at rebranding

Twenty years ago, the world watched in horror as the September 11 attacks unfolded before our eyes. It is often said that the attacks changed the world. In many ways they did — they were the catalyst for a long and protracted war on terror that started in Afghanistan. “Attention Taliban! You are condemned. Did you know that?” In 2001 Commando Solo, an airborne radio station, intercepted local radio transmissions in Afghanistan and replaced them with messages from the US and allied commands. The message continues: “The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death. The armed forces of the United States are here to seek justice for our dead. Highly trained soldiers are coming to shut down once and for all Osama bin Laden’s ring of terrorism, and the Taliban that supports them and their actions.” The messages were part of the psychological operations used in the war in Afghanistan. Psychological operations are planned to spread a specific message designed to weaken the resolve of the enemy and boost the morale of the troops. The use of such propaganda during wartime is not new. During the Cold War, the Voice of America radio station broadcast anti-communist propaganda to a global audience. Radio Moscow fulfilled a similar function for the Soviets. Alongside Commando Solo, psychological operations in Afghanistan dropped millions of leaflets offering rewards for information and warning the Afghan people of the Taliban. One such leaflet depicts Afghan women being beaten, with the caption “Is this the future you want for women and children?” Now, 20 years on from the 9/11 attacks, we are bearing witness to horrific scenes as Afghanistan falls to the Taliban: the deadly bomb blast of August 26 at Hamid Karzai International Airport, the images of desperate Afghans clinging to the wheels of evacuation planes, the stories of Taliban brutality, the countless emails and phone calls from distressed Afghan-Australian community members who know all too well what the Taliban is capable of. That image — women swathed in black, cowering in the corner, as a man with a stick beats them into submission — is not just a faded picture on a 20-year-old leaflet, lost somewhere in the dust of the mountains in Afghanistan. Today it is a reality. How did it come to this and where did it all go wrong? For Australian veterans of the Afghan war, it must seem like the long war on terror was a futile exercise. Defeating the Taliban and rebuilding a nation ravaged by well over 20 years of conflict was never going to be an easy task and all Australians should be proud of the efforts of our defence force personnel and grateful to the local Afghans who worked alongside them and who now face certain death at the hands of the Taliban. The initial intention of the war on terror was also a complex task — to eradicate terrorism or at least confront it in response to the September 11 attacks. It started with an understanding that winning the war on terror would require winning over the local population — hence the extensive psychological operations campaign. But millions of written leaflets were dropped in parts of Afghanistan where the locals could not read or write. That, in itself, was a massive blunder — it is just one of the many mistakes the US and allied forces made in approaching the Afghanistan operation using traditional military strategies developed for traditional warfare scenarios. While the US and allies went into Afghanistan with a clear intent, it didn’t take long for the Taliban and al-Qaida to take control of the narrative and use the war as a central driver in their recruitment campaigns. In 2010, almost a decade after the start of the long war against terror, the Obama administration made a strategic decision to change the way the US government talked about terrorism — announcing that the US was not at war with “jihadists”, “Islamists” or “terror”. In place of the “war on terror”, Obama began referring to the war on al-Qaida, referring to it as the enemy and its Muslim victims as friends. The new terminology reflected a much-needed, and long-neglected, understanding of the importance of language in counter-terrorism. According to documents obtained from bin Laden’s compound, he was concerned about the damage to the al-Qaida brand and media image that would result from specifying it as the enemy. At the very least, re-branding the war on terror as a war on al-Qaida would make it more difficult for its ideological affiliates to claim that the war on terror was a war on Islam. However, this shift in language came too late. By 2010, al-Qaida’s ideology was well-entrenched, and polls revealed an increasing wave of anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East and other parts of the world. US diplomatic efforts to change negative perceptions in the Arab world largely met with failure. Changing some terminology more than a decade into a prolonged military campaign was simply not enough. It seems trite to talk about lessons from the war on terror on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks when so many will be remembering lives lost in a senseless and heinous act of violence. But we must talk about it. I hold grave fears for the women, children and minorities in Afghanistan. I do not for a single second believe the Taliban’s claims that they will respect women’s rights. Their promise that women will still be able to access education has proved hollow as women are shunted to the dark corners hidden behind screens and their voices eradicated from the political leadership. The Taliban has been wooing the Western media and parading its young guard — men with Western education and American accents in a bid to convince the world to trust them. But that is not the Taliban the people of Afghanistan have come to fear and despise. If that is the lesson we take away, then it is a lesson worth learning. Dr Anne Aly is the Labor MP for the Federal seat of Cowan