Albany Blog

Alastair Campbell, Gen Sir Mike Jackson and Edward Mortimer discuss Strategic Communications with Daniel Korski at Albany's recent Conference

 Reference was made on a number of occasions during the conference to the successful practice of strategic communications during Kosovo in the 90s, so why should the following decade be quite such a comparative failure? Currently, there is a growing clamour in the media about why the British are in Afghanistan, with 27 June 2009 having been instituted as the first Armed Forces Day to reassure the public – and the forces themselves – that the growing death toll figure in Afghanistan is not in vain.

To get a quick snapshot of how the campaign in Afghanistan looks, checking the coverage of Afghanistan is useful – in this case, say the week prior to the conference (17-24 June 2009). Of course, normally one week is not long enough to build up a composite picture, but this is only a brief inquiry and enough to provide material for a discussion.

The Daily Mail and the Sun are sufficient as sources – the combined circulation of these two outstrips that of all the other papers, including the broadsheets, by around two million, so as a sample they are considerable.  

Generally, considering the ‘two way’ imperative of stratcom, it seems that there is currently only one dominant way – all stories are about British soldiers. They are described as “those who risk their lives to keep us all safe from terrorism“ with their theatre, Afghanistan, being described as “that faraway country“ or “the badlands.“

Additionally, there is also space in the newspapers to report on the length of British soldier’s hair from an American’s point of view, and there was an interview with Princes William and Harry in which Afghanistan sounds a bit like a playground.

So there is plenty of ‘us’ in the narrative (even in a frivolous way), but the message (both for the domestic (political) audience and abroad) about why we are there is uncommunicated. In fact, if the Sun can run a story headlined ‘Page 3 girls lead salute to brave forces’, then surely this reflects badly on those whose job it is to strategise and communicate.  

It is in everybody’s interests to force greater explanation into the dominant narrative, and it is not too much of a stretch to aim to expand stories about British soldiers by (for example, these) 12 words:   

 “…who are there trying to build a better life for ordinary Afghans.”

From the brief analysis of the last week’s coverage, then, Afghanistan is said to be a “badlands”, where soldiers are keeping everyone “safe from terrorism.” These formulations are far too simplified and cannot hope to contain reason, given that they rely on vague language used in the absence of a clearer or more accurate idea. While this also has to do with the limitations of the media itself and the way in which it operates, it is not an area that should be ignored. 

There is no space for ‘ordinary Afghans’, which is the quid pro quo for which a public will accept a growing death toll. The concept of ‘ordinary Iraqis’ was better communicated for a while in the Iraq campaign, although a huge dose of ‘message creep’ set in there as well.

The tabloids are usually very receptive to the armed forces, and the growing clamour in the press about ‘why are we there’ demonstrates that there is an appetite for an answer. It shouldn’t be too hard to provide answers – even if the political reasons for deployment in the first place strike many as tenuous.

However, as the first ‘Armed Forces Day’ confirms, greater focus still is on the ‘us’ – in recent years, the tabloids have demonstrated increasingly vocal support, going as far as actual material campaigns, concerts, award ceremonies etc to raise awareness for British soldiers, who are uniformly referred to as ‘heroes’ whatever their actions or otherwise. This is clever marketing as much as it is a patriotic impulse, but nonetheless it represents a backlash against the hole that stratcomms should have been filling.

Various reasons have been offered as to why strategic communications have struggled over Iraq and Afghanistan, but if a power such as Britain (or equally the US or NATO) that is accountable to a varied number of often-conflicting constituents, is going to conduct extended military campaigns far from home, are any of these good enough reasons to accept this state of affairs? We must learn to learn, and keep the message in focus: Iraq and Afghanistan deserve that much, and would surely wonder why British citizens are reading in their media about the length of soldiers’ hair and cheerleading Page 3 girls instead.