PSYOP
Close-up of PSYOP leaflet depicted on PSYOP Tees by BIBI STAR.
Mission of PSYOP
"PSYOP" is an abbreviation for Psychological Operations, a U.S. military term referring to planned and coordinated efforts to influence the attitudes, opinions, and behavior of targeted populations. These operations aim to achieve specific military and national objectives by creating and reinforcing desired behaviors in foreign individuals and groups.
PSYOP involves conveying selected information and indicators to target audiences to influence their motives and reasoning, ultimately affecting the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and foreign powers. Note specifically that U.S. PSYOP forces are generally forbidden to attempt to change the opinions of "U.S. persons" (citizens, residents, or legal entities), in any location globally. Though, commanders may use PSYOP forces to provide public information to U.S. audiences during times of disaster or crisis (see White PSYOPs).
The way it works is essentially achieved through a process of analysis, activity, and adaptation. First, specialists analyze target audiences and environments, advising commanders on who is most beneficial to target & how to best influence them. In order to figure this out, analysts must determine the vulnerabilities of these groups and what they would be susceptible to. The analysts also determine the attitudes of the targets toward the current situation, their complaints, ethnic origin, frustrations, languages, problems, tensions, attitudes, motivations, and perceptions, and so on.
Once the appropriate target(s) have been determined, the PSYOP can be created. Then, they plan and develop influence activities, such as message delivery through various media like radio, television, leaflets, and loudspeakers. To ensure they’ve done the job, they assess the effectiveness of their efforts and adapt their strategies as needed. It’s important to note, psychological operations do not accomplish missions alone. They work best when they are combined with and integrated in an overall theater campaign plan.
Black, White, & Grey
PSYOP can either be categorized as White products used in overt operations, or Gray or Black products for covert operations. It is essential that these messages are consistent and present a credible “truth” - any gap between the product and reality will be noticed and mark the message as untrustworthy.
White is acknowledged as an official statement or act of the U.S. government, or emanates from a source associated closely enough with the U.S. government to reflect an official viewpoint. The information should be true and factual.
Gray information is information whose content is such that the effect will be increased if the hand of the U.S. Government and in some cases any American participation are not revealed. It is simply a means for the U.S. to present viewpoints which are in the interest of U.S. foreign policy, but which will be acceptable or more acceptable to the intended target audience than an official government statement will be.
Black PSYOP activity appears to emanate from a source (government, party, group, organization, person) usually hostile in nature. The interest of the U.S. government is concealed and the U.S. government would deny responsibility. It is best used in support of strategic plans.
The Art of Influencing the Enemy
Several handbooks have been developed over the years by US military personnel to disseminate the teachings and foundations of PSYOP and beyond. Several of which are referenced at the foot of this article - I encourage you to scroll through them yourself. The main hub for PSYOP trainings is at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, a place associated with many conspiracies. I find it interesting how publicly available all of this information is in laying out our military strategy.
Though the names of the game may change - from “Propaganda”, to “psychological warfare” aka PSYWAR in 1920, to “psychological operations” PSYOP in about 1945, to the broader use of the term “information operations” aka IO in about 2003 (which started to blur the lines between PSYOP, military deception, operational security, electronic warfare and computer networks operations), to most recently the term “military information support operations” aka MISO in 2010 - the intention, methods, and personnel employed remain the same. In the current umbrella of military terms, PSYOPs fall under CS or Communication Strategies, within the subcategory of Information Operations.
Airborne leaflets have been used for military propaganda purposes at least since the 19th century. They were first used on a large scale by all parties during WWI. However, with the rise of tech advancements in satellite, television, and radio, leaflets became less popularized. For instance, during the Korean War 1 billion leaflets were dropped while only 31 million were deployed during the Iraq war. Despite this, analog methods still proved successful, such as during the first Gulf War in 1991, where 87,000 Iraqi troops who surrendered were found possesing US dropped leaflets that encouraged troops not to fight back. Metrics like these help the US government determine the effectiveness and efficacy of PSYOP missions.
As directly described in the Army’s April 2005 Psychological Operations Handbook:
Roles of PSYOP listed in the Army’s April 2005 Psychological Operations Handbook.
“Behavioral change is at the root of the PSYOP mission. Although concerned with the mental processes of the targeted audience (TA), it is the observable modification of TA behavior that determines the mission success of PSYOP. It is this link between influence and behavior that distinguishes PSYOP from other capabilities and activities of information operations (IO) and sets it apart as a unique core capability.
PSYOP help shape both the physical and informational dimensions of the battlespace. PSYOP provide a commander the means to employ a nonlethal capability across the range of military operations from peace through conflict to war and during postconflict operations. As information delivered for effect during peacetime and conflict, PSYOP inform and influence. When properly employed, PSYOP saves lives of friendly and adversary forces, whether military or civilian. PSYOP may reduce the adversaries’ will to fight, morale, and efficiency. PSYOP discourages aggressive actions, and creates dissidence and disaffection within their ranks, ultimately inducing surrender.”
This approach is also illustrated in the Joint Publication 3-13.2 Psychological Operations 07 January 2010 as follows, “PSYOP create and reinforce MILDEC (Military Deception) actions that are executed to deliberately mislead adversary military decisionmakers about US military capabilities, intentions, and operations. MILDEC operations that integrate PSYOP targeting provide the JFC (Joint Force Commander) with the ability to influence the adversary to take specific actions (or inactions) giving the joint force the advantage.”
Battle of the Narrative
As written in the Commander's Handbook for Strategic Communication and Communication Strategy published as Version 3.0 by the US Joint Forces Command Joint Warfighting Center on 24 June 2010:
“The battle of the narrative is a full-blown battle in the cognitive dimension of the information environment, just as traditional warfare is fought in the physical domains (air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace). One of the foundational struggles, in warfare in the physical domains, is to shape the environment such that the contest of arms will be fought on terms that are to your advantage. Likewise, a key component of the “Battle of the Narrative” is to succeed in establishing the reasons for and potential outcomes of the conflict, on terms favorable to your efforts. Upon our winning the battle of the narrative, the enemy narrative doesn’t just diminish in appeal or followership, it becomes irrelevant. The entire struggle is completely redefined in a different setting and purpose.”
During the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, Friedman points out, “President Bush declared a war on terrorism and stated that they would be found and attacked regardless of where they were hiding. The operation was originally named "Infinite Justice," but was altered when it was discovered that Islam reserved infinite judgment for Allah. The name was immediately changed to "Enduring Freedom." Iran, in its usual anti-American posture remarked that the operation should be called “Infinite Imperialism.””
Just comparing the names “Infinite Justice” to “Enduring Freedom” captures the power of subtleties in framing the conflict and masking the true reality of a forever war designed to exploit nations. As a Pashtun Afghan with most of my family living in Kandahar, where imperialists and extremists alike create battlegrounds, I found myself living through the Battle of the Narrative from the opposing end. I often wondered why so little was known or understood about my people after the longest war in US history. The more I tried to understand the war myself, the more I saw other people whose lives had become lost in the mess of it all. The victims of 9/11, countless dead American soldiers, and their friends who survived them all were only a fraction of the casualties who emerged from the war, and yet their lives were the only ones accounted for.
The misinformation around my country was deliberate. How else could they keep funneling through soldiers into a forever war and make the American public pay for it? It’s important to note that as previously mentioned, PSYOP are to be aimed strictly used towards foreign government’s. Yet, the government claims to understand that in the Information Age that is increasingly difficult to separate, and has little to no regulation on keeping boundaries between the domestic and foreign audiences. Even if Americans didn’t see PSYOP leaflets, they had more or less a general consensus on the War on Terror, and were subjected to the same level of fear mongering that allowed mothers to send their sons off to die for petroleum.
War on Terror
Considering that initially most Afghans, especially in rural areas, had no idea about the events of September 11, let alone what the Twin Towers were or even the basic concept of a skyscraper, atop of the high illiteracy rates among Afghans after decades of war and instability, and the fact that no Afghans were directly involved in the events of 9/11 - the Psychological Warfare used on these peoples is particularly interesting as it reflects US manipulation of a vulnerable region and how everyday innocent civilians were forced to pay the price indefinitely for something they didn’t do. Through these tactics, the US was able to uphold the longest war in US history.
Despite the very obvious and well documented schemes and intentions of the US government and CIA prior, the “War on Terror” was marketed around an abstract and intangible concept of all western resistance. It took advantage of the broken education of everyday Americans, to the same effect that Filipinos were manipulated through social media to vote in a former dictators son. Mobilizing around 9/11, whether that was an inside job or not, made use of fear, patriotism, and revenge to essentially set an example. Somebody had to pay the price, and despite Osama being killed in Pakistan, those people had to be Afghan. Pakistan of course is a US ally, and somehow is one of only nine countries that posses nuclear weapons. If Pearl Harbor meant a nuke on Japan, for some odd reason 9/11 meant 21 years plundering Afghanistan.
It didn’t matter what side of the narrative anyone was really on. Whether or not Afghans decided to work with Americans, they were all left behind for dead in the end. The virtue signaling behind the slips of paper are meant to dissuade the enemy and disorganize them. The micropolitics of the war exploited these people in many ways, bombarding them with messages to distrust local governments while they still struggled to regain their national consciousness following the Soviet & civil wars.
The Soviets had assesed during their nearly 10 year occupation of Afghanistan that the region had over $1 trillion worth of resources. The US by that point had been intimately involved with Afghanistan’s resistance against Soviet occupation since the start of the war in 1979. Understanding the fact that PSYOP is intended to shift a foreign audience to serve US based interests, and acknowledging the fact that the US historically reports to money above humanity, it is obvious that the intentions for Afghanistan were beyond the War on Terror. Osama was a CIA agent once upon a time after all.
One of the most profound tools the Civil Affairs/PSYOP group shared with the Afghans was a video that the group played for villagers on a laptop or portable digital video camera. The video was a compilation of scenes from the events of September 11, 2001, and the days following, with a Pashtun narrative explaining what happened. This proved to be the one thing the Afghans were interested in the most. None of them knew what had happened, and upon seeing the video, they understood and further supported our presence in Afghanistan. The video helped further their dislike of the Taliban and Al Qaida, and support for U.S. forces in Afghanistan grew.
The International Council on Security and Development in 2010 indicated that 90% of men in Helmand and Kandahar provinces did not see a link between the 9/11 attacks and the American invasion of Afghanistan. While a slight majority of those questioned could recognize photos of the World Trade center being struck by aircraft, they could not connect it to the 9/11 attacks or the justification for the military entry into Afghanistan."
The text on the front and the back of this leaflet is:
20th September, 1380. World Trade Center
The Coalition Forces came to arrest those responsible for the terrorism against America. They also come to arrest anyone that protects them.
More than 3,000 people in the United States of America were murdered in these attacks.
"The Rand Corporation monograph U.S. Military Information Operations in Afghanistan - Effectiveness of Psychological Operations 2001-2012 agrees with the military assessment. It says that most Afghan viewers would not understand the images on the screen of airplanes exploding into tall, glittering buildings. A proper target-audience analysis would have revealed that most rural Pashtun audiences had never seen a skyscraper and could not associate the drawings or photographs of the World Trade Center with buildings full of people. The target audience had never seen a jet airliner, either and did not realize that those planes were also full of innocent civilians. Most Afghans had never seen a television set, and certainly has no knowledge of New York City. Rand implied that the leaflet was ineffective.
Backwashed Brainwash
As Saad Khan mentioned during the launch of his book America War Propaganda Leaflets, the US government clings to these pieces of paper as an alibi, covering their ass before War Crimes committees. Considering as mentioned, Afghanistan has extremely high rates of illiteracy especially where most of the US backed attacks took place, many Afghan people couldn’t even understand what the leaflets were saying. The suggestion that they warned civilians of their fate is not much different from the empty evacuation warnings heeded by the IOF soldiers in Palestine.
These falling pieces of paper from the skies - like bird shit from war hawks - capture the animalistic nature of war and the power hands at play hovering over everyday people. The same B-52 planes that drop bombs overhead deliver these little leaflets. Even worse are the ones they play like video games miles away with pilotless murder machines. The distance between us and these pieces of paper is the distance of the American consciousness. What letters does our country send to the people of this world, especially the ones we have made our enemies.
These gestures of communication leave us with a time capsule of a war that bridged two entirely disparate worlds from a position of power and military strategy. As the 9/11 generation grows up and sees the so-called conclusion of the War on Terror, the regretful actions of many military officials who felt misled, and Afghan people who felt manipulated and abandoned, it is no wonder that the US government wishes to leave no paper trail. Just take into account what happened to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after he leaked the diaries detailing the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan.
U.S. PSYOP Leaflets dropped on Afghanistan
U.S. PSYOP Leaflets dropped on Afghanistan
I pressed these images on the front and back of t-shirts as a reminder to the American people of the messages they have left behind. Why should my people be the only ones to see these pictures? At least they’re not paying any regime to support brutality abroad. More than we can say for ourselves. These stains on our history against Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and all other peoples of such brutalized nations - can not be forgotten, or erased.
It is my hope that in wearing these once falling pieces of paper in front the western public, we will create jarring reactions and controversial conversations. The American public cannot continue down this sheltered path from the wars we pay for, and the false missions we send our soldiers towards. This propaganda has fallen on us all in more ways than one, inciting the Islamophobia that enabled the west to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims around the world and normalized the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Countless people blown to dust with their histories. If these images scare you - they should. That was integral to their intention. The same fear-mongering that allowed for the slaughter of my people and millions of other innocent civilians. It’s time to stop pretending these issues don’t exist, and as if we’re not the ones paying for it.
American War Propaganda Leaflets by Khajistan Press, available for purchase here.
More about PYSOPS can be found in the following book by Khajistani Press. The documentation of PSYOP leaflets dropped during the wars in the Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
This incredible compilation of leaflets was put together by Saad Khan with the help of Herbert A. Friedman, who we thank for documenting and historicizing this subject through his publication. Without work like this, these pieces of paper would easily disintegrate with the war crimes committed alongside them.
