Taliban getting public relations advice: expert
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 | 9:28 AM ET
CBC News
The Taliban's increasingly sophisticated use of media in Afghanistan is likely
the result of public relations advice from al-Qaeda, says an expert in
international relations.
"I think al-Qaeda has been coaching them," Doug McArthur, a political
scientist at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University, told CBC News. "They are getting
expert advice.
No question they are working together."
The now-ousted Taliban regime banned all forms of modern media even
photographs but the militant Islamist group is now recording messages on
video which it posts on the internet.
Some of the same Taliban leaders who ordered televisions smashed on the
grounds that modern media is a satanic innovation are now giving their phone
numbers to selected journalists and routinely assigning cameramen to record
roadside bomb attacks.
McArthur says the new media strategy is working. "It's happening quite
quickly and they are getting a big payoff for their efforts," he said.
Last month, for example, the Taliban filmed a graduation ceremony for suicide
bombers in which a Taliban commander urged scores of young men to launch
attacks on four Western countries, including Canada.
The footage was given to American television network ABC to guarantee maximum
exposure in the West.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said last week the ABC report was a
public relations move by a terrorist group that knows it's losing the fight in
Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda's in-house production company, ah-Sahab, has begun uploading footage
shot by Taliban cameramen to the internet and slickly produced recruiting DVDs
are readily available in the bazaars of northwest Pakistan.
In one video, Taliban fighters gather on a hillside and fire 20-metre-long
rockets into an American military base. The videos are recruiting tools that
depict Taliban fighters as heroes fighting the hated Westerners.
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