Costs of War: Taliban Windfall
By Shaun Waterman for ISN
In the external pagevideo, released on Islamic extremist websites earlier this month, Pfc Bowe Bergdahl, a 23-year-old from Hailey, Idaho, says he is “scared, scared I won’t be able to go home [...] it is very unnerving to be a prisoner.”
Bergdahl, wearing traditional Pashtun clothing, is shown calmly seated, eating a meal. He says he is a guest of the Taliban and is being treated well.
He says the coalition military effort in Afghanistan “is not only not working but is failing very quickly.”
He charges that the US government “is misinforming the American people about the true facts and the reality over here in Afghanistan,” and urges Americans “to stand up against the politics and the military leaders and [...] tell them to bring [the military] home.”
In the years since the US invasion in 2001, the Taliban have grown increasingly sophisticated in their communications. Their videos, released in a variety of formats by a semi-official multi-media production house, now include slickly edited movie-style accounts of attacks on coalition forces, hagiographies of dead insurgents and faux interviews with group leaders.
If Bergdahl continues to cooperate with his captors, he could become a huge propaganda windfall for the Taliban. And he has already contributed to their efforts on at least one front.
At the heart of the campaign to shape perceptions of the conflict in Afghanistan - being waged both by the Taliban and the US-led coalition - is the issue of civilian casualties.
Earlier this month, the new US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, made public a external pagenew set of rules for troops about avoiding casualties among the Afghan population. The changes make avoiding civilian casualties a priority in ongoing combat - known as TIC, or troops in contact - not just in the pre-planning of operations. On a brief trip to the country 17 July, US Chairman of the external pageJoint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen acknowledged that the changes were overdue, according to Reuters. And he added, “Our troops right down to the very junior level understand what they need to do in a counter-insurgency - they've got to protect the people.”
But many in Afghanistan and beyond still harbor suspicions about US policy on this issue - suspicions that the Taliban are clearly trying to stoke.
In the video, coincidentally released within hours of Mullen’s comments, Bergdahl says US forces “are told that the civilian casualties that soldiers like myself inflict on the populace are simply something that we have to accept in a time of war [...] We are told that they don’t matter.”
Asked by his captors if he has a message for Americans, Bergdahl looks into the camera and says, “Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives [...].
“Please bring us home. It is America and American people who have that power.”
But according to experts, the primary audience for the Talban’s video is not in America.
Former FBI chief international hostage negotiator Chris Voss told ISN Security Watch that the message was instead aimed at “the people in [Afghanistan] and beyond trying to decide whose side they’re on” in the fighting between Taliban insurgents and the US-led international coalition.
“They [Taliban] have put a lot of thought into this,” he added, saying that their propaganda effort was “increasingly sophisticated, they are learning.”
He said that they had “watched the publicity battles in Iraq” and seen that the videotaped executions by insurgents there, for instance of US contractor Nicholas Berg, had “helped them lose the hearts and minds of the undecided people.”
Voss, now with New York-based Insite Security consultants, said he was concerned by the failure of US officials to speak out more loudly about the fact that the video was a violation of international law, which prohibits the use of prisoners for propaganda purposes.
“If you make no response, you let them frame the discussion,” he said of the Taliban insurgents, whether about civilian casualties or detainee treatment.
“Already you are seeing people saying this guy is being better treated than [US-held] detainees at Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib [...] if the US government remains silent, those observations will stand.”
Indeed, apart from a few brief comments in the first days after the video’s release, US officials have maintained a more or less complete silence.
They have steadfastly refused to comment - at least for the record - even on the row that has erupted over the circumstances of Begdahl’s capture.
Military blogger Matthew Burden, who runs the website BlackFive, told ISN Security Watch that Bergdahl had “walked off [his base] with a water bottle and [a military ration pack] on some kind of he-man expedition” and been captured unarmed.
Burden said he originally received this information from a contact involved in the massive manhunt the military has launched and had confirmed it with two other sources.
The same or similar accounts have been reported by other bloggers, and some news organizations, too, and this, combined with Bergdahl’s decision to cooperate in making the video - a choice that mirrors one made many years ago by Senator John McCain, then a young US pilot in the hands of the North Vietnamese - has led some to brand him a traitor, deserter or worse.
One commentator, retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, even external pagecalled on Fox News for the Taliban to kill Bergdahl, saying it would “save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.” (He has since said he “over-spoke” and regrets it.)
For the record, the Pentagon will say only that the circumstances of Bergdahl’s capture are under investigation. “It’s not wise at this point to reach conclusions prior to the investigation being completed,” Spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mark Wright told ISN Security Watch.
But off the record, some officials have obviously been more forthcoming. NBC’s chief Pentagon correspondent, Jim Miklaszewski, told viewers that external pagesenior officials believe “he's not a deserter,” although he had left his post alone and without his firearm.
“Military officials I talked to are quite outraged at Peters' comments,” added Miklaszewski, saying they saw them as “totally irresponsible.
"Here, you have a kid, 23-years-old, in custody. He's got to be terrified. And now, these Peters' comments could actually be used by his captors to get even deeper inside Bergdahl's mind and further erode any further confidence that he may have that he will ever come out alive,” said Miklaszewski.
He added that this was “why you don't hear military officials or even government officials talking much about this case [...] They don't want to say anything that could give Bergdahl's captors any ammunition.”
Burden also argues that the military’s public silence has to be seen in context. “The military is focused on one thing, and that is getting him back,” he said.