The USFOR-A entity within Facebook just issued yesterday a corrective of the account of a suicide attack on a base in Orgun-E District of Paktika Province. It is professional, well-written, and it came out about 24 hours after the attack itself, which is blazingly fast for a PAO.
I’m glad they’re doing this—and I’ll be trying to see if that colors any news coverage of the attack this week. My only question about this is the same it has been for a while: the military is not really hurting for venues to get its message out. The messaging problem is inside Afghanistan, and inside the Muslim world, and that’s no PAO’s job. The grander issue of PSYOP and Strategic Communications (important to note they’re not the same) isn’t addressed by a quick thinking, rapid-fire PAO in Kabul.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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