Through NATO's Glass, Very, Very Darkly

You may remember the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, in 2001, was conducted for two main reasons. The first, ostensibly, was to capture Osama bin-Laden and take vengeance on a foreign country for the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans. The perception was largely that 'someone has to pay', and in their blindly hateful haste, the US government was compelled to choose Afghanistan. 

The second reason, enunciated more loudly once the 9/11 bloodlust had faded somewhat, was that Afghanistan was under the grip of a powerfully oppressive and undemocratic regime, the Taliban. We were flooded with pictures of Afghan women wearing intimidatingly complete veils, and stories of them being beaten for trying to go to school, or even going outside unescorted by a family member. The war, we are now told, was always a war of liberation and salvation, a generous attempt to bring liberal democracy to the most disposessed reaches of Central Asia.

Today three NATO officials revealed that its public affairs office in Afghanistan, which deals with press releases and official documentation, will be merged with its information warfare and 'psy ops' office. This office has two categories. There is the Information Operations office, which publishes and distributes information designed to demoralise the opposition (examples of this include the leafleting back in WWII up until today, whereby millions of leaflets were dropped from the sky indicating that enemy combatants would surely lose if they did not give themselves up immediately.) Then there is the tres cool abbreviated 'psy ops' which deals with 'black operations', or outright deception and propaganda. These are the offices that will be merged with the organ of NATO that gives press releases and informs its constituents of what is going on.

This blog has talked a lot about building healthy democratic institutions and working at them even when it may seem counterintuitive or unproductive. Transparency is one of the most important building blocks of any democracy. Accountability is impossible without transparency, and true representative democracy is impossible without accountability. What NATO is doing now in Afghanistan may be expedient, but it is damaging the foundations of what they are trying to build in the country. Creating a liberal democracy ex nihilo in a country that until recently had no conception of either the State or democracy is a big enough job without frustrated military officials fucking it up for the politicians.