Photo: Chinook helicopters in Musa Qala. British Army photo.


A CIA think tank has produced a strategy paper for President Barrack Obama on how to manipulate public opinion in NATO countries on the war in Afghanistan. Recent public opinion polls show that in all the European NATO countries the majority is against continuing the Afghan war.

Just recently the coalition government in The Netherlands fell when the Labour Party withdrew its support over the decision to continue its military role in Afghanistan. The CIA and the U.S. government fear that this might encourage other governments to follow suit and start “listening to the voters.”

The classified confidential Red Cell Special Memorandum, dated March 11, 2010, was published by Wikileaks. The “CIA Report into Shoring Up Afghan War Support in Europe” reveals  particular concerns about France and Germany, where 80% of the population has indicated opposition to the war in recent polls.

CIA strategy for manipulating opinion
The report recommends that in its public relations effort the U.S. administration emphasize the restrictions on women’s rights under the Taliban government when addressing the French people. In Germany it should be argued that the cessation of the Afghan war could increase the influx of heroin, refugees and potential terrorists.

The secret agency stresses that when making appeals to the general public the U.S. government should fully utilize President Obama, who has a relatively high public status in Europe. The report notes that when those who responded to public opinion polls “were reminded that President Obama himself had asked for increased deployments to Afghanistan, their support for granting this request increased dramatically, from 4 to 15 percent among French respondents and from 7 to 13 percent among Germans.”

We have seen that this strategy has already been invoked in Canada, where President Obama is asking the Canadian government not to withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan in 2010 as directed by Parliament. The Canadian military and the political right are working hard to reverse this decision.

Apathy is not enough
NATO governments have been able to continue and expand their military roles in Afghanistan in spite of public opinion because of general public apathy towards politics. The CIA notes that apathy, a “warfighting tool”, is the strongest ally of the U.S. government at this time, although it may not be enough to sustain the military mission and U.S. geopolitical goals in Central Asia. There could be a public backlash if military casualties continue to increase.

In the past, the CIA has been directly involved in manipulating public opinion. It is now well known that they regularly planted false news stories in the mainstream media and subsidized magazines, journals and book publishers. Much of this was done through a series of front organizations and foundations. In the early 1970s they directly aided the Islamist radicals in Afghanistan through two of their front organizations, The Asia Foundation and American Friends of the Middle East.

Since the exposure of their clandestine operations during Ronald Reagan’s Administration, the U.S. government has mainly worked through the “democracy promotion” organizations financed by the U.S. State Department. These include the National Endowment for Democracy, the Free Trade Union Institute, The National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Canadian government officials have worked closely with these front groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The full text of the CIA report can be found at the Wikileaks web site:  http://file.wikileaks.org/file/cia-afghanistan.pdf

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