1 June 2010 3,380 word article - pg.

1 Defense and Security Analysis

Rambling with the Fo

Forces in Caubul
bul
Using Cartoon Propaganda to Sell the US:ISAF Occupation

By Peter Torbay

“‘Afghanistan’
‘Afghanistan’ is the perfect neo
neo-liberal tar
baby, and a perfect neo-conservative
conservative lab rat
rat,”
is a joke going around in political circles, as,
“We are spending ourselves into oblivion
oblivion,” is
a command joke in the US military these ddays.
How did we get into this ‘emergency funding’
cost-creep, now a $160 billion/year
year blowout!?
I will suggest in this article that the US:ISAF
occupation has failed to achieve its officially
officially-
stated objectives in Afghanistan, and while
America waits for the Global War on Terror
paroxysm to end before the US economy can
rebuild, that as Americans we at least owe the
Afghan peoples restoration of their dignity, if
not reconstruction of their homes and lands.
But first let’s define, what is ‘Afghanistan’?
Afghanistan’?
Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone, in his epic, An
Account of the Kingdom of Caubul
Caubul, mission to
‘Afghanistan’ in 1808-10, one undertaken on
behalf of the British East India franchise,
describes, ‘Taujiks,
Taujiks, Hindkees, Cohistaunees,
Burrukees, Poormoolees, Sirdehees, Juts,
Awauns, Paruanchehs, Hindoos, Deggauns,
Shulmanunees…’’ living there as an indication
of the ‘melting pot’ which ‘Afghanistan
Afghanistan’ had
already become under Shah Durrani’s rule, a
monarchy fully organized by 1747, some 30
years before USA achieved its independence.
Afghanistan was an historically stable nation!

It’s more than simply ‘strategic objectives’ or

‘situational analysis’. The US:ISAF
ISAF model for
‘standup’ central authority in Kabul, propped
up by an Afghan Army and provincial militia
is fundamentally flawed! If you want a crystal
clear prognosis, look at our neighbor, Mexico.
Their government, armyy and provincial militia
are powerless to control the international drug
cartels,, rampant kidnappings and executions.
Their economy is in ruins. That’s Afghanistan
Afghanistan.

Peter Torbay is active in international development,

writes for Arakozia Publishing Surghar Weekly
Weekly, and is
working along with Arakozia on media campaigns.
campaign His
forthcoming book Diminution and Development
Development, is in Figure 1 – ‘The King of Kandahar’ © Peter Torbay
final publication approval by Algora Publishing
Publishing, NY.
1 June 2010 3,380 word article - pg. 2 Defense and Security Analysis

Then why does Western media today refer to What is important for Singh is how the trope
Afghanistan with passive, jingoist slurs as a of discovery allowed the British to “gain … a
‘failed state’, ‘corrupt dictatorship’ or ‘narco- privileged epistemological position, whereby
mafia’? Self-proclaimed realpolitik media … they could claim new knowledge”
knowledge which
pundits should be imaging a ‘London
London Blitz’, could then be re-constituted
constituted as the colonial
‘Dresden Fire Storm’, even ‘New Hiroshima’
Hiroshima’. binaries of civilized / barbarous, tradition /
Thirty years of foreign occupation and civil modernity and Christianity / heathendom.
heathendom
war deliberately destroyed the Afghan state
state!
These binaries, as they appear in English
Like the quip goes: 'subject,
ubject, …verb, …
…‘9/11’.' travel writing of India, constitute a ““colonizing
imagination which ‘discovers’ new lands via
The real ‘failed state’ is the state of our Global demarcations of identity and difference …’ …
War on Terror, whose military sanctions were binaries such as ‘civilized’ and ‘barbarous’.”
‘
to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and ‘deny
al-Qa’ida sanctuary in the Afghan region region’.
That was State-Defense’ slogan, ‘We will stay
in Afghanistan until we capture or kill bin
Laden!’ So we are now obliged ed to worship the
Bin Laden Corpse Cult with tithe-tax tax dollars,
and indefinitely occupy Afghanistan as Neo
Colonialists, while the insurgency is growing
under our hegemonic ‘sanctuary’ framework
framework.

The colonial framework Britain constructed,

which Ben Hopkins terms in The Makings of
Modern Afghanistan as the "Elphinstonian
episteme', in subtle ways went on to shape our
own concept of ‘Afghanistan’,, and derives
from English preoccupation with colonialism
colonialism,
dating back to the AD 1600’s, which Aune
pointedly refers to in works of Indian political
historian Jyotsna Singh:
“In her book, Colonial Narratives/Cultural
Dialogues, Singh introduces and develops a
post-colonial
colonial model to describe the early
modern English encounter with Mogul India
(as well Afghanistan).. Singh begins her study
with an invocation of the ‘trope
trope of discovery
discovery’
deployed by European writers to depict distant
lands and cultures as open and receptive to
constructions of the cultural ‘other’’.
Figure 2 – Taliban Fighter © Peter Torbay
So who is civilized and who is barbarous? I’ve
extensively detailed in my Diminution and
Development how US:ISAF invasion employs
its own trope, that of the ‘failed state’, which
can only be saved by occupation, pacification
pacification,
then resource exploitation, masquerad
masquerading as
‘self-help
help redevelopment’, while it demonizes
Taliban insurgency as ‘Islamofascist
Islamofascist Jihad’ in
justification for a continued occupation
occupation, and
an inexorably growing US war appropriations
appropriations.
1 June 2010
‘National Security’ Emergency Funding
(Bs) $200
$150
$100
$50
$0
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Figure 3 - Congressional Budget Office Report 2008
In preparation for that prolonged occupation,
war propagandists laid out their plan described
in a US Army War College thesis by Peter L.
Burnett Jr., titled Information Operations:
“During the initial attack against Afghanistan,
the Afghan people’s views of America were
negative primarily due to a lack of knowledge
the people possessed regarding the attack. The
Taliban government and the leadership of al-
Qaida tried to convince the people of
Afghanistan that America was attacking the
religious faith of the Afghan nation. The
Taliban government and the al-Qaida
network’s goal was to gain the support of the
Afghan population, the political will of the
people, and to promote hatred toward any
American effort in Afghanistan.”
"Using PSYOP as a tool, America was able to
reach the people through leaflets, food,
broadcast coordination, use of coalition
forces, and ‘good deeds’ to prove America
was not attacking their religious faith, but was
attacking terrorist activities. The PSYOP
efforts cast a brighter light regarding
America’s efforts in Afghanistan, regardless
of America’s efforts or explanation.”
3,380 word article - pg. 3 Defense and Security Analysis
The problem with that is we believed our own
PSYOP! Americans are being led to believe
their own myths. An RT News stream from Al
Jazeera citing CBS News, says, “Corruption
is the biggest enemy in Afghanistan. It’s much,
much bigger than the Taliban. It’s much,
much bigger than al-Qa’ida.”
‘Corruption’, of course, isn’t an insurrectionist
movement. You can’t drop Hellfire missiles
from loitering UAVs on ‘corruption’, like you
can on an Afghan wedding party. You can’t
‘clear and hold’ as ~28% of Afghan national
income is skimmed for bahksheesh! And you
can’t rebrand ballot-stuffing as ‘certified and
legitimate’, ...even for the leading contender.
My point is not to belittle the US:ISAF effort,
even with the now $1 trillion in unfunded war
deficit that our children will have to refinance,
but to emphasize what Hamid Karzai himself
warned before his 2004 election – the problem
of corruption. Ashraf Ghani made the same
point in 2009. Customs tax levies are being
skimmed, perhaps 1/3rd never reaching Kabul;
looting of public lands by provincial and
security officials is in 1,000’s of jeribs every
day; imports are denatured, in the raw quality
of Afghan fuel; construction and purchase
contracts are awarded to government cronies
in the Karzai State media and primary industry
monopolies; and of course, the drug cartels.
International drug cartels have taken ~$560
billion out of Afghanistan in eight years post-
Taliban, (before which poppy growing was
prohibited), according to Ghani. Of this, $18
billion was skimmed off by drug warlords in
the ‘Group of Twenty’ Families, and the
Kabul Administration’s ‘Group of 100’.
1 June 2010 3,380 word article - pg. 4 Defense and Security Analysis

We have conflated the Taliban with al al-Qa’ida
and confused the Afghan peopless with Islamic
jihad. We have dug ourselves a great big hole
and poured $300+ billion
illion dollars into it. It’s
time for a visceral rebranding campaign,
campaign both
for ourselves, and for the Afghan peoples
peoples.
enemies’ physical features, and distilled into
black-and-white images their intent of ‘total
world domination’; as US:ISAF
:ISAF does at every
opportunity as a ‘beards, butchers and birqas’
meme and looming ‘Jihadi Caliphate’ threat.
threat

The essence of good branding is establishing

high expectations with your customers
ustomers, then
consistently meeting them. The early PSYOP
attempts by US:ISAF for OEF-A A essentiall
essentially
demanded that our ‘Afghan
Afghan consumers
consumers’ turn
over fellow Afghans, war heroes at thatthat, to
US:ISAF occupying armies,, in return for US
greenbacks, saying, ‘Render
ender unto Caesar his
due and we’ll throw you a sawbuck
buck; resist US
and we’ll carpet bomb you ... have a nice day
day.’

Figure 4 - US PSYOP leaflets used early on in Afghanistan

Figure 5 - 'What Hitler Wants' © Soyzmultfilm 1941
The flaw in that PSYOP was that more than
Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film
2/3rds of Afghans are functionally illiterate!
series convinced Americans to join the Allies,
Confronted by a ‘happy-up’ leaflet promoting
but nowhere is that ‘home front’ thematically
Afghan unity, rural Afghans had no idea what
represented today; this ‘Global
Global Contingency
it said or meant, they apparently
rently thought the
Action on Islamic Jihad’’ is a 6
6-o’clock sound
coalition’s ‘dove of peace’ logo, rampant on
bite, no need to get up off your couch! In that
an Afghan map, was a coupon for a pigeon!
passive vein, Afghan political cartoon
cartoonists deal
We’re missing a big propaganda opportunity. primarily
ly with satirical personality politics
Where the US and Soviet Union successfully within the overweening theme of corruption.
employed cartoon and cinematic propaganda
That Afghan sense of humor is a knife with
during and after WWII to indoctrinate their
which they cut through their wilderness of
populations towards the war effort and home
despair, as in their adherence to Pashtunwali.
front, they employed gross exaggeration of the
1 June 2010 3,380 word article - pg. 5 Defense and Security Analysis

the resource space for systematic exploitation,

and US:ISAF has no intention whatsoever of
doling out from a $100 billions//year franchise,
beyond bigger prisons, bigger bases and more
trucking contracts to warlord mafia monopoly
monopoly.
But what if that fails?? What if the US gifting
Karzai now ~50%50% of Afghan aid funds doesn’t
work, and corruption begins to drag on health
and human services as the dominoes fall, the
‘reconstruction’ becomes just a hollow joke,
rampant looting spreads and Afghanistan is
left just another drug cartel shooting gallery
gallery?

Secretary of State Clinton, speaking recently

to AIPAC before the Israeli-Palestin
Palestinian Peace
Talks, made that same cogent observation:
Hegemony is a stasis, unwinnable against the
inexorable long march of demographics.

Let’s look at some propaganda cartoon ideas.

Online streaming video (digitized film) found

at the University of Pennsylvania’s archive on
Figure 6 – Field of Dreams, Poppy – © Afghanccartoon.com Afghanistan, taken before Soviet occupation
Here is the issue: China and the Soviet Union, in 1979, clearly shows a pastoral land with an
whose populations were also largely illiterate
illiterate, untroubled, untrammelled village life.
successfully mobilized through tremendous
propaganda campaigns, using banner (patriotic
cartoon) and cinematic animation medias, to
accomplish truly unprecedented resistance in
the face of far, far worse wartime conditions
conditions.

In Afghanistan’s case, their population is aalso

largely illiterate, but there
ere is no propaganda
campaign to mobilize them in support
support! Neither
the Karzai government, nor US:ISAF, wants
the Afghan peoples activated, and ANA/ANP
gendarme are only in it for the afghani
afghani.

Marc Herold, in his Afghanistan As An Empty

Space,, argues to the same point, that our ‘war’
in Afghanistan is one of clearing and holding Figure 7 - 'Learn to Read' © Peter Torbay
1 June 2010 3,380 word article - pg. 6 Defense and Security Analysis

Afghan boys riding on burros, and one clearly

reading. Above them, a didactic Arabic hook.
Who wouldn’t ask, ‘What do thee words say?’
‘Learn to Read’, evoking in every Afghan the
desire for knowledge. Mission
ission accomplished.

National Geographic archives of agriculture,

husbandry and artisanal crafts, practiced pre pre-
occupation, show Afghanistan as a thriving
Central Asian economy, but 2/3rds of Afghans
are so young they have no memory of either
peace or prosperity. Soon that memory of
better times will be lost, as the elders die off.

Figure 8 – ‘Piety, Not Oppression’ © Peter Torbay

It’s important to recall the Islamic faith of the

Figure 8 - 'Care for Orphans' © RAWA.org
If we mobilize Afghan peopless now towards
homeland issues, diminution of the US:ISAF
US:ISAF-
Wahhabist ‘Warm War’ might take place, and
future rehabilitation of a stable and ordered
Afghan society would inevitably recommence,
benefitting tens of millions of war refugees
refugees.
Art becomes memory. This art should unite
and educate the people, inspire the struggle for
progressive freedoms and also marginalize the
jihadi reactionaries. Better than our candy
candy-
store obsession with technology, self
self-limited
by the lack of quality schools and trained
teachers in Afghanistan, is the opportunity to
reawaken human dignity using visual scaffolds
along with emotion-laden
laden language heuristics.
Afghan peoples served the Durrani aristocracy
for two centuries prior to the anti-God
anti Soviets,
whose pogroms inured the Afghan ppeoples to
(anti) religious interference in their commerce.
Re-emphasizing
emphasizing individual piety and direct
faith in God, as against the Taliban dogma of
oppressive mullahs and reactionary Wahhabis,
could marginalize jihadists, without directly
warring against the Islamicic faith itself.
That approach of promoting literacy with the
social mores of Pashtunwali,, the moral code
which guides everyday life in Afghanistan,
Afghanistan
counters the
he lure of easy money in poppies,
enabled by the narco-mafia
mafia driving that trade,
reaching up to the highest levels in Kabul and
international drug purveyors. But it requires a
propaganda campaign with heroic vision.
The Chinese Socialist Education Movement
propaganda poster format was devised as the
Central Party attempted to inoculate the
peasant class against any return to feudalism,
or the emergence of capitalism
capitalism, a monetary
draw like the Afghan drug trade today. If
1 June 2010 3,380 word article - pg. 7 Defense and Security Analysis

Afghan cartoonists like Bashir Bakhtiari were
motivated to create this heroic home
home-front
propaganda, what might that look like, using
Chinese models from poster media campaigns
promoting agriculture and industrialization?
industrialization
A well-made and heroic propaganda campaign
breaks down great, complicated concepts so
even children or non-literates
literates can understand
understand,
and presents this new ‘reality’ in an exciting
exciting,
captivating way. Probably the most popular
propaganda poster in history, until Obama, is
that of the young Chairman
airman Mao, shown as a
fearless revolutionary, full of charisma
charisma.
But President Karzai doesn’t enjoy Chairman
Mao’s charisma. He ‘fought’ as an expatriate
curbing corruption was replace
replaced by a sudden
renewal of popularity among Afghans
Afghans!
There is another reason to avoid hero worship
and emphasis abundant pride; Muslim faith
prohibits idolatry. You can’t turn down a side
side-
street in the US without seeing Jesus hanging
on a cross, or traverse an urban square in East
Asia without some smiling Buddha, and that
reliance gave Mao a ‘great leap’ advantage in
promoting his political agenda. But the Danish
experience with the cartoon slander of Prophet
Mohammed (pbuh) bears out a caution: no
propaganda with wild-eyed eyed saints or bearded
patriarchs, ...just focus on national pride.
chineseposters.net

agent in Peshawar and Quetta, at one point

joining the Taliban as their UN Ambassador
Ambassador.
No heroic figure there, just a savvy politician.
And iff Afghans held reverence for the
their Shah
Mohammad Zahir as a central figurehead, that
reverence must have died during the 30 years
of occupations and civil war, and been buried
with the Shah’s demise in 2007. Unless a new
charismatic leader seizes the helm, (and the
US:ISAF can’t wait until 2014), ), propagan
propaganda
strategies for Afghanistan should not focus on
personalities, (everyone versus everyone),
everyone but
on the collective memory as a former empire.

Economic survival is a primary concern and

war radically changed the Afghan personality.
personality
Giving attention, fame and recognition to a
particular person may cause other relative
relatives to
turn against them, even when there is no
disagreement. Likewise, turning agaagainst an
individual leader may provoke other peoples
peoples’
sympathy and support. The best example of Figure 10 - 'The vegetables are green…’,, Jin Meisheng, 1959
this is now that British and American news
As the Chinese art form advanced, exhorting
outlets have turned against President Karzai,
workers to ‘Produce more! Contribute more!’
his weaknesses and lack of leadership in
1 June 2010
during the ‘Building the People's Republic’
phase, high-quality
quality propaganda emphasizing
‘determined collective will’ became popular.
It may be the Chinese ‘Great Leap Forward’
time period which has the greatest potential to
mine for Afghanistan
istan propaganda, when the
primary emphasis mellowed from the heroic,
beyond collective will, to abundant pride:
pride
chineseposters.net
Figure 9 – ‘Walk the road...’, Qian Daxin, 1965
‘Imaging Abundance’ is a powerful model for
use in Afghanistan today, just as the ‘Law of
Attraction’ wealth propaganda accumulated
millions of faithful adherents in the West.
Weekly ‘broadsheets’ providing for news and
posters are used in campaign advertising. Yet
there’s no organized effort to mobilize the
Afghans towards that collective memory
memory, even
though the Karzai’s already consolidat
consolidated their
3,380 word article - pg. 8 Defense and Security Analysis
own ‘State-approved’ media arm.
arm He has no
need to use propaganda, as long as US:ISAF
protects him. That should not stop us trying.
As the situation exists, US:ISAF occupation is
supporting a corrupted national government in
Kabul, and building a mercenary police force
to protect it. The national government thrives
off of resource royalties and landlord taxes
taxes,
trade import tariffs, drugs and aid baksheesh.
baksheesh
Micro-scale
scale humanitarian accomplishments of
village schools, borehole wells and latrines
can’t solve the crisis of an entire society in
collapse, millions living in tents on alms, and
tens of millions living without jobs or income
income.
No matter how often our US State
tate Department
hectors that the Afghan presidential elections
were ‘certified and legitimate’ and ‘legitimate
and certified’, a likely outcome is for Karzai
compromise with the jihadis,, then the gradual
diminution of US:ISAF occupation,
occupation leaving a
colossal political vacuum, fraught with peril.
Ahead of that 2009 election, Afghan media
companies were ready to set up, print and
disseminate posters and broadsheets anywhere
in the country, at a saturation rate of 100,000 a
week and for as little as $1.00 apiece, based
on media proposals that I was involved with.
We hold the power to pre-emptively
emptively fill that
vacuum now, providing ing cartoon and cinematic
propaganda, in order to re-animate
animate the Afghan
Af
peoples towards voicing ing their own dialectic,
instead of passively accepting the Karzai’s, or
being subsumed by Talibs and Wahhabists.
America holds arguably the best educational
system in the world, the most sophisticated
media and most highly developed ed propaganda,
yet we’ve shared none of it with Afghanistan,
Afghanistan
at a time when they need it the most.
most
1 June 2010 3,380 word article - pg. 9
The US has already spent nearly $473 million
deficit war dollars building ‘simulated Afghan
villages’ at CAMOUT RG-220, at Twenty-
nine Palms Marine Base, California, a prop of
empty concrete buildings filled with Good
GoodWill
castoffs, make-believe market stalls, staffed by
trucked-in
in actors and catering trucks
trucks, where
US:ISAF troops can practice killing Afghans.
Figure 12 – ‘CAMOUT’ © Peter Torbay
The Afghan peoples’ social culture was totally
deconstructed from traditional agrarian norms
to a conservative Islamic Wahhabist stance, to
mobilize them against the former Soviets.
Now they are bereft of any cultural memor
memories!
We should demand that of the $1 $160 billion
slathered around for GWOT, that the Obama
Administration invoke the 1% for Public Arts
Law, and mandate $1.6 billion of that be spent
for cartoon and/or cinematic artwork for the
Afghan peoples, produced by the tremendous
talents of Disney, Industrial Light & Magic,
James Cameron, Peter Jackson, and expatriate
Afghans living and working in the US today.
All that collective talent could produce and
distribute Afghan collective memory film and
cartoon poster media that would make world
viewers weep, and put the Taliban to shame
shame.
Defense and Security Analysis
“This land is Afghanistan - It is the
pride of every Afghan
The land of peace, the land of the sword
- Its sons are all brave
This is the country of every tribe - Land
of Baluch, and Uzbeks
Pashtoons, and Hazaras - Turkman and
Tajiks with them,
Arabs and Gojars, Pamirian,
Nooristanis
Barahawi, and Qizilbash - Also Aimaq,
and Pashaye
This Land will shine for ever - Like the
sun in the blue sky
In the chest of Asia - It will remain aas
the heart for ever
We will follow the one God - We all say,
Allah is great, we all say, Allah is great
great”
Like much of 21st Century Afghanistan, the
new Afghan national anthem, even as their
new national leader and new Hydrocarbon &
Minerals Laws, were crafted by US:ISAF then
imposed on the Afghan peopless. The lyrics of
the anthem were written in Washington, DC,DC
and the music was composed in Germany
Germany. The
language of the anthem is Pashto, the same as
that of the Taliban, and not spoken in Kabul!
Wee have the talent to restore the Afghan
Dream. To paraphrase Gregory David Roberts
in his novel, Shantaram, the
he choices we make,
between hating the Taliban and forgiving the
Afghan peoples, (though neither had anything
to do with ‘9/11’), can become our Sunday
school morality tale of ‘helping the helpless’.
Or we can be remembered like the Soviets, a
lumbering, top-heavy
heavy Goliath, whose culture
and economy soon disintegrated in a morally
bankrupt blowout of police-state
state kleptocracy.
The choice is still ours!