Canadians Plan Afghan Propaganda Campaign

(Ottawa, Canada) The Canadian military is planning a propaganda campaign. The effort involves tapping into mobile phones in Afghanistan, sending text messages, and running contests to gather listeners to its Pashto-language radio station.

The capability, to be set up this summer, will encourage Afghans to sign up for text-message alerts from defence officials and to enter military-run contests awarding prizes to lucky locals, according to public tendering documents.

It will also let Afghans send text messages to Rana-FM, a radio station set up by the military in 2006, and have them read on the air, half a world away at the broadcast centre in Kingston, Ont. The station, whose name means "light" in Pashto, is staffed by Afghan-Canadians, and mixes messages from Canadian and coalition officials with news programming and popular music aimed at teenage and young adult listeners in Kandahar.

John Adams, the boss of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's secretive intelligence agency, said that a quarter of his organization's workload is tied up in the Afghan spam project. CSE plans to track emails and other communications to glean nuggets of intelligence.

However, one intelligence expert, Wesley Wark of the University of Toronto, doesn't believe the propaganda campaign will be of any help in capturing bomb makers or Taliban biggies but it could be helpful in gauging the attitude and mood of the Afghan population.

Frankly, the effort probably should have been implemented before now. As to whether it will be helpful, who knows?

Companion post at The Jawa Report.