Mind-Munitions

Information-Age Conflict in the Post-Cold War Era 305
Peace, which became The Herald of Progress under SFOR with a
circulation of around 100,000 by 1997. The German component
of the Psychological Operations Task Force contributed a monthly
magazine with a similar circulation, Mirko, targeted at younger
audiences. Following IFOR’s use of five radio stations, SFOR
continued with three, particularly Radio Mir, broadcasting news,
information, music and entertainment for eighteen hours a day.
Spot bulletins were also produced for television while millions of
posters and handbills were peppered throughout the region. As in
the aftermath of any modern civil war, unexploded landmines
remained a constant menace and so a major campaign of mine
awareness was launched to inform the local populace, especially
the children, of the dangers of wandering into minefields or how to
identify different types of mines. Join-the-dot colouring books depicting
these were issued to schools, and DC Comics was commissioned
to produce a special issue of the Superman comic warning of the
perils of playing near minefields. A classic example of how such
well-intentioned propaganda can backfire, this comic had to be
withdrawn when it was discovered that some young children were
deliberately walking into minefields in the hope that Superman
would come and save them.
Nonetheless, Bosnia revealed the possibilities of what could be
done with information as a ‘tool’ in the same way that Desert
Storm had revealed the significance of information as a ‘weapon’.
But in the new international environment, the major obstacle to
realizing this were old and increasingly inappropriate Cold War
structures and ways of thinking about what the role of the military
should be when war fighting was now to be but one of its functions.
Intra-state conflicts may be battlefields for the indigenous
warring parties but, when international forces are deployed to do
something to stop the fighting, they become ‘operational spaces’ in
which communications skills become key. Prior to an intervention,
it is essential to explain in advance why external forces are coming
to counter any indigenous propaganda that they are in fact invading.
This was a major challenge in Somalia in 1992. Once troops were
on the ground, communicating with locals in a country where local
media were either hostile or absent was conducted mainly by
PSYOPS personnel. In Somalia, Radio Rajo (‘Hope’) was established
to do this, to explain when and where humanitarian convoys
were distributing food relief or to give even more basic messages