Albany Blog

At Albany Associates 2009 conference on ‘Strategic Communications in countries emerging from violent conflict‘, Alastair Campbell shared lessons of his experience dealing with a number of crises.

He listed fifteen rules:

1.       Know the difference between a genuine crisis and a media driven frenzy. The former are rare, the latter common.

2.       Once you have decided it is a crisis situation, operate the OST rule. Set clear Objectives. Define the Strategy. Only then think about Tactics.

3.       Never lose sight of the big picture.

4.       Centralise.

5.       If the crisis needs new policy, structures or personnel to manage it, put them in place quickly.

6.       If it is a crisis playing out across the media, rebut with speed and aggression.

7.       Decide the single figure to whom people will most look for leadership. Usually the person at the top but…

8.       Horses for courses. Understand that sometimes the top person, e.g. in business/military, may be a dreadful communicator if not used to it .

9.       Agree basic messages and never tire of saying them.

10.   Organise every part of every day for the tactical implementation of strategy.

11.   Organise your communications as far as they need to go. Take account of possible different audiences.

12.   Put extra effort into the big moments.

13.   Ensure proper internal comms. Don’t forget your own people may get most messages through media. Make sure they hear from you first.

14.   Remember it will end.

15.   Throughout the crisis, have someone working on re-entry to normal strategy once the crisis is over.

Drawing on his experience of ten years alongside Tony Blair, and his considerable understanding of the modern media, Alastair brought to the conference a unique perspective and spoke of his experience of dealing with communications issues at the highest level during the wars in Kosovo, Iraq and post 9/11; he delivered a stimulating and challenging session.

As someone considered a leading international ‘spin doctor’, it was provocative that the central premise of Alastair Campbell’s address rejected the link between ‘spin’ and strategic communications, and attempted to dispel the often negative and mistrusting connotations associated with ‘spin’. According to Alastair, the concept of strategic communications is chronically misunderstood, to the detriment of government departments and intergovernmental organisations. Rather than being a force for manipulation, strategic communications is an essential process which allows policy makers the space they need to get from A to B.

He went on to present strategic communications within the context of an increasingly negative and aggressive multi-media battle for domination of the agenda, affirming that within this environment “the idea of planning what the government is doing, and creating a sense of order in the media landscape should not be controversial.”

As expected, the presentation inspired a diverse array of questions. In response to Alastair’s assertion that rather than setting policy, strategic communications presents policy to the public on behalf of policy makers, one commentator proposed a cyclical scenario in which something that starts as a policy message can then reinforce and further shape policy, citing communications on “the war on terror” as a possible example. Alastair maintained that strategic communications does not set policy; rather it presents policy set by policy makers. For strategic communications to work, policies must be sound and unanimously supported by the organisations that promote them.  Leading on from this, a UN representative highlighted the difficulties of communication when the relevant parties cannot agree on the message. Finally, it was argued that although new media has democratised communication and made it easier to galvanise support for or against a policy, the government doesn’t appear to respond. The protests against the Iraq war were given as an example. Alastair concluded that listening to the concerns of others must not distract politicians from the task of making difficult decisions. He said that Tony Blair believed his decision was right on Iraq, despite the loss of popularity.

The British public is used to Afghanistan, bored by Iraq and probably indifferent to Somalia. The benighted country in the Horn of Africa tends to enter our consciousness only when pirates pop up and kidnap British ships, sailors and the occasional naive yachting couple. And even when it does, it tends to fade away pretty fast. The media moves onto the next story. Life goes on.

Somalis using a public service vehicle in a suburb of south east Mogadishu

Yet the neglect of the country by the mainstream media is both surprising and disappointing. Although there is no lake of oil to protect, Somalia should grab Western policymakers’ attention for the very good reason that failure here is likely to have some extremely unpleasant consequences around the world. Don’t take my word for it. Just have a look at how many diaspora Somalis have been involved in suicide attacks in Somalia in recent months. It is quite possible that dual-national Somalis, having had a thorough terrorist training in Somalia, could launch future attacks in the UK, US and elsewhere. As the killers of the Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai understood, a British passport can be quite useful.

To summarise and simplify the position pertaining on the ground in Mogadishu today, on the one hand there is an alliance of local Islamists and their Al Qaeda allies, on the other there is the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom), grossly under-resourced both in men and materiel, together with the fragile Transitional Federal Government (TFG) headed by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. Neither side, at current strength, is able to overpower the other. There are enough deluded Islamists to hold much of Mogadishu and much of the country, but not enough to take over. Amisom is holding the breach. It is able to take more territory but requires more manpower to retain it. The result is a messy, bloody and thorough unsatisfactory stalemate.

One man doing an exceptional job communicating the parlous position in Mogadishu is Major Ba-Hoku Barigye, Amisom’s Ugandan spokesman. Google him and you will see all sorts of lucid and punchy commentary on attacks in the Somali capital. Like his Force Commander, Major General Nathan Mugisha, he knows that everyone could and should be doing better.

AMISOM Commander, Major General Nathan Mugisha

International donors could be honouring their pledges to assist this country that finds itself on the front-line of the war against Al Qaeda. In the latest UN report on Somalia, issued on 31 December last year, it was reported that of the $58m pledged to the TFG by foreign donors in Brussels last April, the government had received $5.6m. That isn’t good enough. African troop-contributing nations could, and should, be doing better, too. Nigeria has offered to provide troops, but recently had a loss of nerve, observing that there was no peace to keep in Mogadishu. So far, only Uganda and Burundi have stepped up to the plate. This is not enough to enable the African Union to deliver on its commitment – its very raison d’etre – to provide African solutions to African problems.

It needn’t be all that difficult. If Amisom is properly resourced – yes, we know that all generals want more soldiers and kit, but this mission really does need urgent reinforcement – Somalia could turn the corner. With more territory under its belt the TFG could exploit the opportunity to show Somalis, for the first time in two decades, that effective government is a real possibility. Amisom could accelerate the ongoing training of TFG forces, whose long-term responsibility it will be to provide security. The alternative, as we see every time a bearded fanatic self-detonates, is national implosion and an increasingly fertile base for Al Qaeda.

Communicating that challenge is not so difficult. Policymakers in America and Europe just need to listen.

Justin Marozzi is a Senior Associate of Albany Associates.

Until very recently, only Mauritania among the Arab countries attracted less attention in the British media than Yemen. Not any more: since 25 December 2009, Yemen is mentioned more than any other Arab country except Iraq. The past month alone has seen greater media interest in Yemen than the entire previous year. Although news moves in cycles and some in the media will lose interest, Yemen has now made an unwelcome, and for the foreseeable future, permanent entry into the Western media landscape, with 2010 certain to be a year of greater interest than ever before.

The threat from Yemen

When looking at how Yemen is represented in the media, the language and context provided are all-important. Many of the words being used to describe the significance of the failed Detroit plot have been in use in a particular context for almost a decade: ‘War on Terror,’ Guantanamo, Al Qaeda. In fact, a number of newspapers have suggested that the decade ended as it started – under attack from Al Qaeda – thereby drawing the events of 9/11 into the current focus on Yemen. This then gives a sense of timelessness, removing the need for specific detail as readers think they are dealing with a familiar subject. In addition, some suggest, without any substantiation, that this time there is something “more extreme” about this ‘new’ generation of Yemeni Al Qaeda.
In fact, the perceived threat is not always restricted to Yemen alone; virtually every country from Mauritania to Pakistan is mentioned as having some sort of nefarious connection to, or unspecified complicity in, transnational jihadism, whether it is as unintentional host or deeper involvement. A few European countries are also mentioned in this regard, including the UK and Germany, and parts of the coverage have focused on Britons who are said to have trained in camps in Yemen. The main problem lies in communicating a reasonable sense of proportion to the threat and what to do about it, which has always been a huge stumbling block in the ‘War on Terror.’
The need for calm analysis

The precise relationship between Yemen and Al Qaeda is of great interest, and consequently, so is the precise relationship between Yemen and the West. It is common to see such descriptions as “safe haven”, “breeding ground”, “major stronghold” that is “awash with al-Qaeda terrorists” who are allowed to flourish in “ungoverned spaces.” The reader, on hearing such key words, immediately realises what he or she is supposed to think: danger, although no one can be more specific. While few in the West disregard the possibility that danger to Western interests – as typified by an attempt to down an airplane over US soil – can originate in some capacity on Yemeni territory, some in the media adopt the ’shoot first, ask questions later’ approach, and take a more extreme line in their assessments than others.

Two such examples: Yemen “appears to be a land with an excessive capacity for violence” (Daily Express), and Yemen “is weak, and the country is deeply divided, tribalistic and violent” (Daily Telegraph). At the same time, it is important to make three main points. Firstly, not all Western media coverage is like this. Among the more cogent analysts, the need for communication and dialogue is seen as the priority, both out of principle and pragmatic necessity. Secondly, there is virtually no appetite in the media for any troops on the ground in a manner that would resemble Iraq or Afghanistan. Thirdly, in the coverage, particularly when trying to evaluate the threat level, speculation is always far greater than evidence, with near-hysteria often resulting, often making the same points: ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, nearly 100 Yemenis still in Guantanamo, and “failing state.” This often has the effect of multiplying the capacity of Al Qaeda, and its potential to inflict harm.

What the coverage tells Western readers about Yemen
Yemen is seen through the prism of terrorist threat, so the reader could be forgiven for concluding that it is only Al Qaeda in its international dimension that makes Yemen of any interest to Western audiences. Yemen becomes a place where all the fears and attributes associated with Al Qaeda in the Western public mind, whether rightly or wrongly, have found something solid around which to coalesce. Too much of this type of reporting has the effect of justifying to many readers, who have no other information sources, that Yemen rightly is to be feared, with nothing that can be done about it.

In many cases, the ideology and spark for jihadism is thought to be inherent in the country, particularly in the tribal areas, which then infuses the people, even visitors such as the Nigerian accused of the failed Detroit plot. Yemen is sometimes labelled simply a “sympathetic environment,” which is open to quite wide interpretation – ranging from ‘mountainous’ to ‘ungoverned spaces’ to ‘complicit government.’  This ignores the myriad factors and opportunism that often combine to provide a favourable environment. The Western media spotlight only focuses very weakly on the local factors that influence such groups, including poverty and corruption. The editorial line is generally interested in why the West is involved, and much less interested in the country caught in the crossfire. Extremism is thought to be much more commonly accepted than in reality, and readers hear very little about other sections of Yemeni society.
Despite considerations such as the Houthi rebellion in the far north, and the ongoing dispute with southern secessionists, it is assumed in the West that top priority should automatically go to fighting Al Qaeda, and suspicion arises if the zeal with which Al Qaeda is opposed by the West is not matched in Yemeni public statements. Increasingly, it now is.
The ‘either with us or against us’ logic of the ‘War on Terror’ suffuses the coverage, and Yemenis caring about their local or national disputes or conflicts – or even just opposing the West in a political sense – are very easily conflated with transnational jihadism, as typified by Al Qaeda. Identity is made to appear fixed, not fluid as in reality.

What the coverage tells the Arab world about the West’s approach

There are three main lessons to draw from this kind of coverage. Firstly, there is a huge gap in understanding the dynamics of Yemen. Secondly, Western interest, from the level of the media down, appears reactionary. Thirdly, the information flows are asymmetric, with very little Yemeni input in the media narrative. To approach the Al Qaeda problem in isolation and to the exclusion of other issues – which is what significant parts of Western media coverage is doing – has the effect of confirming to audiences in the Arab world that intentions towards Yemen are predominantly hostile. All of Yemen is painted as a threat, and there is little space for differentiation, dialogue, or to analyse common ground.

However, generally the West views Yemen as an ally (one “we can do business with”) in the ‘War on Terror,’ often meaning that the person, institution or country in question marks a point of focus where Western interests intersect. However, in this case, questioned commitment is also an issue for some. There is plenty of focus on Western policy towards Yemen, which is all said to be supportive of President Salih. This has two main effects. Firstly, foreign backing makes Salih seem incapable of effective rule. Secondly, Yemen runs the risk of having its legitimacy as a state conferred on them by Western endorsement, something certain to negatively impact the government’s domestic legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens.

Guy Gabriel is a journalist and adviser to Arab Media Watch. The article first appeared in today’s Al Quds Al Arabi.

Of the main outcomes to emerge from the London Conference, helping reintegrate Taliban fighters via support for a Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund and negotiations with the Taliban have taken centre stage. As the conference communiqué put it, there is a need to:  “offer an honourable place in society to those willing to renounce violence, participate in the free and open society and respect the principles that are enshrined in the Afghan Constitution , cut ties with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and pursue their political goals peacefully”.
As these latest plans were vaunted by the great and good at Lancaster House, it was left to those towards the fringes of Afghanistan’s political scene – a human rights campaigner, an ex-minister, a former British Diplomat, and a media mogul – to provide the serious debate and analysis. The foursome were speaking at a Carnegie Europe event in Parliament’s Grand Committee room, and the first to apply his not insignificant acumen to ‘current thinking’ was Nader Nadery of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). As someone who has made the pursuit of universal human rights in Afghanistan his business, his primary concern is the Taliban’s profound lack of respect for them.

“The truth of the matter is that the Taliban’s core principles are at odds with international law”, said Nadery with trademark phlegmatism. “With regards to women’s rights, they do not want to give women space or include women in the political process in any way. When we talk about bringing the Taliban into the process what it really means is giving up on democracy, women’s rights, and human rights in Afghanistan. “If you notice Gordon Brown’s and Barack Obama’s recent speeches on Afghanistan it is remarkable how they have suddenly stopped referring to democracy and human rights. There’s a reason for this. The Obama strategy is a military-orientated one, with the ultimate goal being defeating the Taliban – rather than the pursuit of the rule of law, good governance, or human rights”. Nadery went on to assert that you can’t successfully reintegrate members of the Taliban unless you have a strong state, particularly a state that is functioning at the district level throughout the country.

Rather the main aim should be to strengthen Afghan institutions and tackle corruption via vetting and by marginalizing the corrupt. Moreover, when they have been applied, such measures are beginning to reap dividends, “In Kandahar, for example, people are starting to have a higher level of respect for the Afghan National Army (ANA). This is because a very clear strategy was put in place for its development and there was rigorous vetting of the army. Unfortunately the same has never happened with the ANP [Afghan National Police]”.
However, it was another recently floated idea which provoked the strongest opposition from the Human Rights Commissioner – namely the suggestion that the International community should consider playing ‘the tribal card’ by cultivating and supporting specific tribes, particularly those which rival the Taliban in Afghan Provinces, to gain political or military advantage. “There is no tribal solution” said Nadery definitively. “We no longer have the same tribal structure in Afghanistan as we used to. Most tribal elders have been replaced by local warlords and more than 60% of the population is made up of young people. The warlords do not have popular support. And creating militia groups could increase conflict and could even lead to a civil war [in Afghanistan]”.
Meanwhile his co-panelist, Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan Interior Minister, argued that thus far there had never been any examples of successful reintegration [of the Taliban] in Afghanistan. “The question really should be who are they [the Taliban]? They are an assortment of different groups fighting for different reasons. Some of them are transnational and linked to Mullah Omar. Others are not. We are talking about different tribes, unemployed youths, drug traffickers… and the rest.
“What is certain is that if you establish good governance these people will go. We need the military to create the time and space to enable development to take place and we still need to convince ordinary Afghans that it is worth fighting for the government. On the tribal issue – you first need to build a state. Build it and they will come to you”!

For his part, Sir Hilary Synott, the former British High Commissioner to Pakistan, fundamentally disagreed with the idea of negotiating with the real or the ‘ideological’ Taliban. “If we think that negotiating with Mullah Omar is a solution, we should think again. You have to distinguish what you mean when you say Taliban. After that the following question remains. If you exclude the real hardliners, can any group you deal with bring you a proper deal? Let’s not forget Mullah Omar will not compromise and will not bring anything like what Afghanistan expects from democracy”.
Saad Mohseni, Director of one of Afghanistan’s leading media Companies the Moby Group, added his voice to the debate suggesting that there was nothing new about attempts to talk to the Taliban, “In 2008 there was a dialogue between King Abdullah and President Karzai, which was given the go ahead by President Bush. This culminated in the Ramadan dinner in Saudi Arabia last year. Taliban leaders met with the King and Karzai’s brother was present. The Saudi’s have taken over the dialogue now – although it never involved the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan. “Negotiating with the Taliban is not as simple as it seems” he added. “Who will host the meetings? Who will attend? Who will the Taliban negotiate with? The Russians say that the Taliban should negotiate with the Northern Alliance as the Taliban already represent the Pashtuns.
“However, you cannot exclude the Taliban. What is really needed is a Bonn two to bring them into the process and press the reset button for the Afghan government. But economic development and justice is just as important. You have to be very careful about negotiations. If there is some ‘grand bargain’ we [the media and civil society] will be the first ones who are sacrificed”.

It’s probably of little comfort to the ordinary Afghan, but as the politicians at the London Conference struggled to find a form of words to best describe their latest position on Afghanistan at least one room in the British parliament was witness to a meaningful discussion on the future of that country. Then again, the debate did seem to be worryingly at odds with the not-so-new strategy of negotiations with the Taliban and plans to forge further alliances with warlords.

Martin Battersby is a Senior Associate at Albany Associates

The media profile of Darfur shot up enormously once the label ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis’ was applied, although technically the phrase used was the “world’s greatest humanitarian and human rights catastrophe.” This is commonly standardised to ‘world’s worst…’

In a press conference in Nairobi on 19 March 2004, with the 10-year anniversary of Rwanda approaching, Mukesh Kapila, the then-United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, applied the label to Darfur.

This had the desired effect: to gain the media attention that was needed to counteract the lack of diplomatic interest Kapila felt he was getting in publicising Darfur. One explanation for this lack of interest points towards the fact that the situation in Darfur conflicted unhelpfully with the more upbeat direction that the North-South was heading in.

Around four months earlier, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland described Darfur as “one of the worst in the world” (5 December 2003), but this assessment failed to register particularly deeply.

In an interview a few years ago, Kapila described the difficulties he faced in 2003 in bringing the situation to the attention of the wider international community, and reported the resistance he met within the UN itself. According to him, “senior people in the Department of Political Affairs in the United Nations Secretariat accused [him] of being unstable and hysterical.” His stance on Darfur effectively ended his career in the mainstream of the UN, he suggests.

Nonetheless, Kapila describes the media response as “electrifying” – but added, referring to the subsequent diplomatic response:

“I consider that a failure because of course the job had been done…A mass murder was more or less over.”

Egeland suggests in his memoir, A Billion Lives, how Pakistan’s presidency of the UN Security Council kept Darfur off the agenda, as Sudan was an ally. He also criticises the unsustainability of the wait-and-see approach in Western capitals.

However, Egeland reports that while political pressure was still weak and ineffective, the “only positive development” was the generous funding that had been unlocked.

On 15 September 2003, the Greater Darfur Special Initiative was launched, which requested a comparatively modest $23 million; on 9 April 2004, the UN launched the Revised Appeal for the Sudan Assistance Programme (ASAP 2004) that requested in excess of $115 million, which included programmes to provide food aid, health care, agricultural assistance, relief supplies including shelter, water and sanitation, education, protection and coordination. The US was by far the largest donor.

Egeland describes how the “nothing less than heroic” efforts of almost 14,000 Sudanese and international aid workers have resulted in substantial improvements in malnutrition levels and mortality rates. Over half a million tonnes of food were delivered in 2006 alone.

Despite the undoubted success in unlocking significant funding, one observation is that such formulae in the media are quite resistant to change – the media tend simply to lower their voices rather than introduce a more complicated and nuanced view – giving the impression that unchanging situations exist in perpetuity, thereby ignoring successes which are a vital part of the evaluation process.

With Darfur being described as ‘the world’s worst’ as recently as last month, legitimate questions can be asked as to what does a descriptive, and sensationalist, formula such as this create in greater proportions: heat or light? Or at the very least, one can question whether the ratio of heat to light is balanced enough to promote the most effective response.

The inevitable requirement for triage in responding to natural disasters or complex emergencies means that the process is influenced by a number of factors other than need alone, such as media attention and pressure, resulting in the neglect of those upon whom only a weak spotlight is shone, if at all.

Darfur is not the first time that the label ‘the world’s worst’ has been applied. Below is a list of the last two decades’ hotspots, using examples taken from the British media, though none can seriously challenge Darfur for prominence. Notably, Somalia was described as ‘world’s worst’ as far back as 1992, and reappears now, almost 18 years later.

1990:  Angola

1992: Somalia

1994: Rwanda

1996: Zaire

2001: Afghanistan

2002: Zimbabwe

2004: Darfur

2005/ 06: Congo (less popular choice than Darfur, but UN said it all the same)

2007: Somalia

2008: Congo

2009: Somalia / East Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda).

Occasionally, non-African countries such as Tajikistan and Colombia are mentioned in connection with the ‘world’s worst’, but such a statement is normally qualified by a regional specification: “world’s worst…in Asia,” or “world’s worst…in the Americas.” Only Afghanistan in 2001 has been able to wrench the title of outright “world’s worst…” from the African continent.

One interesting counterview to mention is the tsunami that rose off the west coast of Sumatra on 26 December 2004. In the media, the description ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis’ was very uncommonly applied, which in a sense is counterintuitive, given the sheer scale of the disaster.

Egeland describes the global response to the tsunami in his memoir. At the first OCHA press conference at midday on 27 December 2004, the room was full beyond the usual UN accredited journalists – a “remarkable” turnout – with many approaching him at the end and urging him to conduct daily press conferences, which he did for the next 30 or so days. The story was automatically huge.

In terms of generosity of response, Egeland recalls “fund raising [was] setting new records each day,” such that they had “a hard time recording the rapid increase in relief funds.” This amounted to a total of $13.5 billion, meaning $7,100 for every affected person. By comparison, $3 dollars were spent on each person affect during the 2004 floods in Bangladesh. 

Although there were plenty of lessons that could be learnt from the response, The Tsunami Evaluation Coalition reported that “palpable evidence of recovery” was visible within a few months thanks to the efforts of all those involved.  In addition, following the immediate period of the aftermath, former US president Bill Clinton became UN special envoy for tsunami recovery, a very high profile figure that could keep the longer-term recovery and reconstruction in the world’s attention.

What this suggests is that the label ‘the world’s worst’ has as much to do with salesmanship, publicity-seeking (not in any negative sense) and advocacy as it does cold, objective statement of fact. Congo advocates (among many other candidates) have always wondered why the comparative silence on their cause.

The tsunami was not described as ‘the world’s worst’ because the magnitude of the disaster was painstakingly obvious, with no triage required for it to top agendas. On this occasion there was no obstructive hierarchy of sceptical diplomats, politicians, journalists, editors or readers in need of convincing of its newsworthiness. The world swung into action in a way it doesn’t to other, more complicated situations which, as Darfur has shown, really take some effort to publicise.

Guy Gabriel is a journalist and adviser to Arab Media Watch.

Yesterday the Somali Prime Minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmare spoke at length at Chatham House on two key issues facing his country – ‘terrorism’ and ‘piracy’. That one has attracted more media attention than the other has not been lost on the Prime Minister who suggested that;  

‘Captain Jack Sparrow has a great deal to answer for… even in the 21^st century piracy makes high drama on the high seas and is a news editor’s dream’.

That Somalia, plagued with insurgency, extremist groups, poverty and mass migration is better known for its modern day pirates is damning, but is the Somali Government now using this fact to its advantage?

Whilst acknowledging the recent capture of two British nationals, interestingly the Prime Minister also took the opportunity to re-appraise his audience on current perceptions of piracy. Namely, that piracy is widely regarded as ‘a criminal activity’ rather than ‘a desperate survival measure’ and in ‘many coastal communities the only job available and the only viable means of income’.

This is perhaps the first time we’ve heard exactly why there is piracy off the Somali coast. One argument is that many of these pirates were once fishermen – Somali fisherman who have witnessed the erosion of their livelihoods as a result of illegal fishing by foreigners in Somali waters. With so few fish to catch, they resorted to piracy to deter those who had ravaged their fertile fishing areas. The deterrent was to board and capture any foreign vessels in the area and ransom them for an alternative income.

The irony of the EU, NATO, Combined Maritime Forces, China, India, Japan, Malaysia and Russia having to police an area that has been devastated offshore by the self same international community is nothing short of astounding!

But what is more remarkable was the Prime Minister’s confidence to assert a different narrative, to enter the informational space with reason and credibility, that both terrorism and piracy are interlinked, that fishing in its waters has caused undue hardship resulting in piracy. That the loss of livelihoods and associated chaos, discontent and poverty onshore and inland are fuelling the current insurgency, that the ransoms are indeed funding wider regional instability; that AQ  and Al Shabaab are creating a pool of support amongst the anarchy. At last the two have been connected, that one is dependent on the other and that potentially without the agreement from the international community to observe international fishing licences, the country will further disintegrate and decay.

The new narrative is that Somali people must solve these issues, according to the Prime Minister, they ‘can and must’, there cannot be a solution that ‘entail years of open ended UN resources and commitment’. Them taking responsibility is commendable, that they’ve communicated their narrative with confidence and alacrity is admirable; but painful for an international community purveying a narrative of state failure and years of dependency in its rebuilding, identified as a cause of the problem rather than a solution.

Paul Gibbins is a Senior Associate of Albany Associates

The media space as a theatre of strategic communications over Afghanistan has been losing its efficacy. Sending the right message from Afghanistan – one which will be heard by an increasingly one-dimensional media – has become a daunting task.

In the UK, the tabloids note with mounting anger the continuing loss of British soldier’s lives, while sizable chunks of the commentariat see little reason for remaining. The voices that argue for continued deployment are getting quieter, as the language used to argue the case – borrowed from the lexicon of the fast-unravelling ’War on Terror’ – wears ever thinner.

All this is compounded by the experience of a politically violent election period in Afghanistan, widely seen as flawed and which in any case returned a corrupt government that the people of Afghanistan have little obvious reason to support. The recent NATO air strike in Kunduz that killed around 70 only entrenches Afghan opinion.

An interesting phenomenon has sprung up in the British tabloids both in reaction to the growing dissatisfaction with deployment, and in reaction to the vacuum created by a message badly expressed or late in arrival. The result has been that the space in which reasoned debate on the subject of British deployment in Afghanistan in the public conception should take place has narrowed so such an extent that the mountain for the message-senders to climb seems almost insurmountable.

A quick evaluation of the Afghanistan campaign in the British tabloids is instructive. Currently, all headlines at the moment are about running out of time, withdrawal and impending ’defeat’.  

Looking more closely, a narrow focus purely on British troops and their welfare dominates the narrative, almost to the exclusion of anything else. If a soldier has been killed, the Daily Mirror prints a photo of that soldier and his regiment’s insignia (or a bravery medal) in its editorial column, taking the place of editorial comment.

The Sun – and other tabloids – routinely substitutes the term ’hero’ for soldier to describe something personnel-related, irrespective of context, while the website of the Sun, for example, has a relatively newly-created sub-section titled “Forces” (in the same way that “Celebrities” and “Sport” have their own sections) under which stories related to Afghanistan are organised. Stories are about soldiers’ deaths, insufficient kit and the poor conditions in which returning troops find themselves living once back in the UK. Similarly, a gala-style award ceremony called ’The Millies’ – more officially titled ’The Sun Military Awards’ – now takes place, while The Sun is also a ’key supporter’ of the Help For Heroes campaign, a charity started in October 2007 to provide support for returning soldiers. 

As these cultural phenomena dominate the narrative as it is digested in Britain, there is very limited space for expressing the benefit – to NATO countries or Afghanistan – of the deployment – a concept which has long since been forced to the margins of the media narrative.   

Unsurprisingly, the broadsheets tackle the bigger picture better, but it is necessary to pay particular attention to the tabloids: according to August’s ABC circulation figures, both the Daily Mail and the Sun on their own exceed the combined circulation figures of the broadsheets, while the figures for the tabloids combined are over four times those of the broadsheets combined. The tabloids reach a lot of people.

However, it is not right to suggest that the increasingly narrow focus on British troops has been a unilateral move instigated by the media. It is more accurate to see this – at least in part – as a reaction to a vacuum (commonly filled with assumption and speculation for want of anything better) in the media space which was not being fed with stories the media considers publishable. The media can be pretty reactive, and do respond to the right prodding.

Afghanistan’s first national park, Band-e-Amir, was declared earlier this year in April. Given the current state of the media narrative on Afghanistan, how is this fact – positive, different – going to force its way into the narrative, if only for a fleeting moment? Duly, this fact passed under the media radar, but as this photo gallery on the Guardian website shows, the beauty of the park itself is a remarkable – and eminently publishable – thing. Were the media sufficiently alerted to it?

At the level of theoretical discourse, things have reached a point at which the way back is very difficult. Who would argue (effectively) that soldiers should not be called heroes, or that they are not ’Our Boys’? Slogans such as ’Support Our Troops’ are virtually unopposable, which is also why the media profile of the British forces has become almost sacrosanct.   

The problem for the strat comm professionals is that this kind of discourse forecloses the necessary option of encouraging public thinking about the issues behind the stories. As an entity, the media deals with consequences so much better than causes – you can photograph the former much more spectacularly than the latter, yet broad-based support among the British and Afghan constituencies require convincing of the causes for deployment, while the consequences should be seen as symptomatic.    

Given these difficulties, it has been interesting to note the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal’s recent media flurry. His pronouncements, in the form of a ’leaked’ report (available here), on the subject of Afghanistan are welcome. There is no use in pretending that things are not at a critical stage, so his message of ’escalate or evacuate’ is at least a clear signal of intent, something which has been lacking in recent times. 

It is also interesting to note how McChrystal’s prognosis on the next year of deployment made its way into the public domain – via the Washington Post’s veteran journalist Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame), which tells us that the story is being taken seriously and that the media will listen.

The commander of NATO forces warning of ’mission failure’ and ’defeating ourselves’ is something that will gain attention, but McCrystal’s emphasis on the operating culture of the NATO forces and protecting Afghans is also welcome. The General continues:

“Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. ISAF does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect the Afghan population.”

Photo: Jamil Danish (UNAMA). 

Although this represents an improvement in clarity and honesty of communications, many commentators, wary of the emptiness of what they call “buzz phrases”, have nonetheless pointed out that this is now eight years into the mission, and isn’t it a bit late to be releasing a report which includes the subheading “Getting the basics right”?

Faced with vociferous sceptics both in the US and Britain, calling for the slate to be wiped clean is a big ask of an increasingly protective public who feel its political leaders are not doing their duty in protecting their armed forces on a poorly-reasoned (or explained) deployment. The lionising of the Armed Forces in the tabloid media has been a consequence of this, but one which serves to narrow further the media space in which reason can be debated and expressed. 

Guy Gabriel is a Journalist and advisor to Arab Media Watch

To a considerable extent, crises in far-off lands are defined by foreigners and not by those living through them, which then creates a perceived moral imperative to do something about it. Darfur became Darfur when the West got involved, and continues to dominate its parameters.

The media were slow in picking up Darfur, and were led to the story by human rights organisations (HROs). Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Crisis Group provided much of the facts and background – and morality – that amounted to enough of a groundswell that the mainstream Western media felt emboldened enough to run another Africa story.

Of course, 2003 had been a very serious year in terms of conflict and bloodshed, but it is often the case that the Western media are slow (or reluctant) on the uptake, defining the crisis themselves and arriving once a lot has already taken place. Essentially, the media selected their narrative from the more complete story supplied by the HROs, leaving important ideas out and rendering an incomplete and essentialised picture.

Regarding the story of Darfur, there is a clear relationship between the media and HROs. In fact, from January – May 2004, which was very much the early stages of media reporting of Darfur in Britain, the Guardian, Independent, Times and Daily Telegraph had all reported Darfur, and each quoted from Amnesty, HRW and the ICG. To better appreciate the import of this, a few characteristics of the HROs need pointing out.

The developed branch of ethics that governs journalism has limited equivalent in human rights reporting. Such reports are a form of lobbying, insofar as the points they wish to make are not tempered by an ethics-mandated need for balance, or a journalist’s requirement to ‘tell both sides of the story.’

The organisations themselves are perfectly candid about what they provide: “strategic, targeted advocacy” and “moral groundwork” (HRW), “campaigning” and [the means to] “exert influence” (Amnesty), and “policy prescription and high-level advocacy” (ICG). No media organisation would officially claim such things.

Thus in reading these reports, the reader is led to a viewpoint in the absence of both moral ambiguity and the shades of grey that often characterise conflict. In the case of Darfur particularly, it is clear (and unchallenged) who is to blame (the Sudanese government), so in this sense such reports contain a prosecutorial element.

Such reports use extensive victim testimony, packaged for publication by the author in the majority of cases, which combine with the reportage to give factual and moral certainty to events. The single explanation offered gives the impression of a ‘complete’ picture, but contains no space for the accused to present their side of things as victim-perpetrator narratives usually do.

One further point is coverage; news is where the journalists are, not the other way round – and the same can be said of the HROs. They can, and do, also leave stories untold.

When looking at the genesis of a narrative that had hitherto been below the media’s radar but squarely in the NGO field, there are two main points to be made.

Firstly, the media were both unwilling and unable to do much fact-checking. Access and inclination was a problem, and so accepting at face value factual information contained was necessary. Much of the early reporting was clearly sourced to various NGO reports.

It is worth adding, however, that these reports were not necessarily or intentionally misleading or factually incorrect, although sincerity and distortion are not mutually exclusive. The most likely scenario is that the media simply were not in a position to check the facts given in these reports. That would imply considerable time and resource expenditure, which was very unlikely to be given the OK when the media were not keen on Darfur in the first place.

Secondly, the dominant narrative adopted by the media was selected from a fuller account provided by the HROs, meaning that parts were left out.

For example, a report from Amnesty (27 November 2003) contains ideas such as Arab non-participation in the conflict, and another (17 February 2004), also from Amnesty, reports allegations of abuses – such as killing, looting and kidnapping – committed by the armed rebel groups. Such ideas were lost under the weight of the essentialised narrative that, from a distant Europe and US, simplified the conflict to Arab vs African.

Similarly, when mentioned, Chad was contextualized as somewhere that borders Darfur and a locus of refugee camps housing Darfuris. Little mention was made of the complex, politically significant ethnography of the two areas and fractious history of Chad-Sudanese relations. These are the ambiguities and shades of grey that are more consistent with conflict.

The elements selected tend to fit in with the Western media’s broader iconography of an African disaster: distant, bloody, man-made and interminable. One of the Times’ earliest editorial headlines on Darfur (27 May 2004) was “Africa’s latest atrocity,” while the phrase “the horrors of Darfur” first appeared around mid-2004, and was still in use five years later.

Thus the media narrative has tended to render Darfur’s identity politics fixed as opposed to fluid, which is of course what they are. This then became fed back into the conflict, contributing to its perpetuation. 

Human rights reports fulfil a valuable role, but should be seen as complementary, not an alternative or identical to a journalist’s research. Even then, important nuances that appeared in the early Darfur human rights reports were overlooked.

The selectivity and essentialised conception that characterises the passage of Darfur’s narrative from human rights reporting to the mainstream media need not be anything particular to Darfur, for the media generally operates in this way.

However, Darfur stands out because it was (eventually) embraced remarkably fully by a media that described predominantly in black and white a conflict that simply could not be described in those terms.

Guy Gabriel is a journalist and adviser to Arab Media Watch.

Last week I went to Baghdad to work with the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights.  Albany are contracted via UNOPS to provide them with training in human rights, media skills and public relations.  The group of ten officials had already spent weeks in Jordan listening and learning from Cambridge’s own Jem Thomas and had gained some real expertise both in front of and behind the TV camera with Jordan Pioneers.  It was my job to turn this knowledge into action – to apply it practically and set the team off on a strategic campaign journey.

During the week we spent a lot of time exploring perception.  I began the week without introducing myself – instead asking the group to take a guess as to who I was.  I did not tell them how correct they were in the assumption that I was a 38 year old, Catholic, Irish, mother of two toddlers until later (I wonder how their perception of me affected the way we interacted?)  Despite throwing a wealth of information at the group, including a smart strategic campaign tool developed by imediate.org , I am convinced that I learnt more than them last week.  Perhaps with an assumption that I was Irish, or perhaps because they felt relaxed in my company – I understood the depth of mistrust many Iraqis feel for the British.  During a live session with American bloggers, my Iraqi friends were asked questions about how they viewed America, the invasion and George Bush.  There was agreement around the room that America was too stupid to have been the brains behind it all – and that Bush was Blair’s poodle, not vice versa as many of my fellow Brits are inclined to believe.  If I had known this perception of the Brits and of how deeply resentment was felt for the British post-colonial “abandonment” of Iraq in 1932, it might have made communicating with Iraqis three years ago in Basra a lot easier (and different).  Understanding what people’s pre-conceived ideas of your nationality, gender, age is crucial. 

Albany's Consultant, Caroline Jaine and the Media Unit of the Iraqi Min Human Rights

The perception in Britain of human rights issues in Iraq is largely driven by the media.  Before I touched ground in Iraq I had jotted down a number of key issues that I thought would be of concern.  My back-of-an-envelope-list proved to be just that, as a whole cacophony of abuses unravelled themselves onto wipe boards in the class room.  Human rights abuses in Camp Ashraf were suddenly set in the context of far wider-reaching abuses in prisons and general displacement in the region.  And the murder of a handful of homosexuals, although acknowledged as horrific, was immediately set in the context of vicious violence against women; the lost thousands who are anonymously buried in mass graves; and brutal terrorism which plagues the country – and seemed a minor distraction.  As if to prove it, whilst I was there the largest terrorist attack of the year claimed nearly 100 lives just a few hundred metres away and sent us scurrying into bunkers for cover.  I can imagine just how the British would be perceived if set against a backdrop of such huge scale murder and abuse they began to lobby the Iraqi Government to address Gay Rights.    

Clearly the perception of the rights afforded us by the Universal Declaration are moulded by our own set of values and our own agendas, but  I would urge every international actor working in Iraq (and elsewhere) to sit down with the people, gain their trust, and do more listening than talking.  The starting point is to understand how you are perceived, and then understand the perception of the issue you are working on – whether it is counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, women’s rights in Yemen or an HIV education in South Africa – unless you understand the local perception of the issue, communications will falter and your own campaign journey may lead you down a blind alley.

Caroline Jaine is a Communications Adviser and a long-term associate of Albany Associates.

There is a new rumor every week in what remains of Lebanon’s Nahr el Bared refugee camp.  The hearsay this week claims the Palestinian refugee situation will be one of the priorities of the country’s new cabinet.  Palestinian refugees will soon be granted civil rights preparing them for resettlement in Lebanon, says the rumor.

One could almost be forgiven for believing the gossip.  Prime Minister Designate Saad Hariri has meet with representatives of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee community since his recent election and has voiced his support for better living conditions for refugees.  Moreover, it appears Hariri has a level of personal compassion for the suffering of Palestinian refugees.  On the surface, it appears the situation for Palestinian refugees is set to improve.

Bumps in the road

There are spanners in the works, however, including the Maronite Christian opposition leader General Michel Aoun.  To date, Aoun has been the most outspoken critic of rebuilding the war-torn Nahr el Bared (NBC) refugee camp.  Yet his rhetoric indicates that he is not opposed to the concept of rebuilding NBC.  He is merely using his opposition as a political tool.  He knows the current government would like the refugee camp to be rebuilt.  Aoun pushes to stall the rebuilding process, thereby giving himself leverage for future horse-trading.  It is not only by working to stall the rebuilding of NBC that Aoun can complicate the lives of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

After finding success in the recent parliamentary elections, Aoun has been demanding a number of key ministerial portfolios for his political bloc, including the Ministries of Interior, Social Affairs, Telecommunications and Agriculture.  There could be further negative repercussions for Palestinian refugees if Aoun gets the Ministry of Interior because the Department of Palestinian Affairs is housed within this ministry.

Notably, the opposition politicians other than Aoun are not making much noise about the Palestinian refugee issue.  Prior to the parliamentary elections, a few opposition politicians tried to politicize the subject to little avail.  The ruling March 14 alliance did a good job of disarming the issue by touting their anti-tawteen (naturalization) credentials, which leads to a very important point.  On a deeper level, there is a tremendous, visceral opposition not only to tawteen, but also to Palestinians in general, by many of Lebanon’s Christians (including those affiliated with the March 14 alliance).  Hence, the March 14 victory in the elections does not necessarily mean the new parliament will be entirely friendly to Palestinian refugees.

Wider considerations

Although Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee issue does not appear to be something that must be defended at all costs, it is clearly close to Hariri’s heart.  Furthermore, the topic will obviously be a key element in the Obama administration’s Middle East peace efforts.  In fact, in light of Obama’s push for peace and the interests of regional actors, it is possible that Lebanon’s policy towards Palestinian refugees will be imposed on the country from the outside and not grown organically from within.   Considering the frailty of the Lebanese political equation, this may not be the wisest of policies.  Many Lebanese view the Palestinian refugee presence in their country as the catalyst for the 1975 civil war.

In conclusion, it is extremely difficult to anticipate what shape the new Hariri government’s policy towards Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will take.  It is likely that Hariri himself does not yet know.  With a hawkish government dominating in Israel and little political will for peace from other regional actors, it is likely that Obama’s Middle East peace plan will come to naught.  At that point, Lebanon’s Palestinians will do well simply to keep their heads above water.

John Redwine is an independant Media Consultant for Albany Associates

In response to the ever-increasing groundswell of voices in the media questioning the continuing wisdom behind the British role in Afghanistan, General Sir Richard Dannatt said on the BBC flagship Nine O’Clock news programme last week: 

“There are those out there who would challenge our way of life; they are challenging it in Afghanistan, they are challenging it in Pakistan.”

Who was that statement aimed at? A huge number of people around the world will have heard that and felt ever more certain that neo-colonialism or, at least, cultural imperialism is the aim behind deployment. People in Afghanistan and Pakistan should follow “our way of life”, to paraphrase what will be widely understood here.

However, Dannatt was a victim of very unfortunate editing. His statement above was taken from a longer interview, and was in fact the third point of a list of three which also included persuading “the people of Afghanistan that there is a better life than being under the influence of the Taliban.”

His soundbite was pared down by an editor in order to produce a yet more concise soundbite. The news editor asks himself why his viewers should care about what Dannatt has to say, and surmises that when time is scarce, only the point that is directly related to Britain is relevant. In practice, however, the audience is global, and damaging editing such as this makes the job that much harder.

This highlights a crucial tension in stratcomms when things get difficult; the relationship between domestic audience (who need to be convinced of continued deployment) and foreign audience (who also need to be convinced of the deployment, but for different reasons). The message given to one constituency will quite often be heard by the other, and in ideal times, this relationship should be as symbiotic as possible: both constituencies would be convinced of the need for deployment, and so talking to one is in harmony with the other. 

In the current reality, the two constituencies are approaching antagonism. In this case, now that the potential consequences caused by the dissonance of the message are looking to become more serious, the mutual siege that has characterised the campaign Afghanistan in recent times will gradually worsen, with the British people ever more inclined to sue for withdrawal and the Taliban more resolute. The political violence that has accompanied the elections will only entrench these positions.

The initial successes of Afghanistan have had a shadow cast on them by stories similar to ones coming from Iraq: suicide bombings, widespread political violence, kidnappings of foreigners, bombs at NATO headquarters: all in the service of a nation that caused uproar over laws that subjugate the place of women in society firmly to male whimsy. However essentialised this conception may be, the media often selects the most sensational characteristics of a story and this nonetheless what we have to work with.

At any rate, even when appearing in its full context, Dannatt’s statement smacks a bit of desperation, as it appeals for acquiescence from a population on a more existential level – a ‘way of life’ being ‘challenged’ [by terrorists, which is the inference]. This contains echoes of the discourse from the early stages of the ‘War on Terror’ when populations were fairly readily convinced that foreign wars were necessary in order to preserve the Western way of life from a terrorist onslaught.

Now this is much harder, especially given the reversals of Bush’s second term in which the ‘War on Terror’ floundered, and the grand narrative was found out for its naivety. The stains of Guantanamo, where the first prisoner was received as early as January 2002, and Abu Gharaib [among other things] have had a hugely detrimental effect on credibility. The inescapable message for the Muslim world was that it was all about foreign domination and double standards.  

Britain’s commentariat is now split between the ‘finish the job’-ers and the ‘pull out now’s, though the former rarely specify what the ‘job’ entails. When so much of the Afghanistan story and media focus – and support – is invested in the British forces largely in abstract and irrespective of their task, the editorial space for expressing the considerable non-military aspect of the campaign is limited. Dannatt did try to express this, but as if things weren’t hard enough already, an editor on the BBC news compounded the situation.

Is there a solution? Perhaps a soundbite that just can’t be edited? I have no real answers, but suggest a closer examination of the domestic and foreign constituencies: increased focus on the similarities and common ground between the two should provide a few clues as to why this deployment is of mutual benefit, not mutual siege. In addition, the relationship between military strategy and political success need to be linked in the public conception; currently, Afghanistan is about military deployment alone.

Whatever the best practice forward, the job is increasingly difficult and morale-sapping when the political wisdom that is supposed to underpin the deployment is patchy and under attack itself. It is crucial that the centre holds in any endeavour.

Guy Gabriel is a journalist and adviser to Arab Media Watch.