FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHARANA, Afghanistan — In this rugged province where news travels almost exclusively by radio, the man who calls himself DJ Abed Lawang is one of the biggest names on the airwaves, known for playing hit Pashto ballads, telling jokes and hosting a popular call-in show about farming practices.
But there’s one key fact the disc jockey has never told his listeners: He is broadcasting from a studio on a U.S. Army base, delivering messages written by American military officers.
He is one of more than 20 radio DJs in Paktika province, and dozens more across the country, who are engaged in what the U.S. military considers a crucial operation: persuading residents in an area dominated by insurgents to embrace Afghan and NATO forces.
In practice, that means he has to pause between Pakistani love songs and passages from the Koran to read about the heroism of Afghan and American armies, as well as the destruction wreaked by insurgents. The commentary is not always well received; he uses the pseudonym to protect himself, but he told a reporter that he would not mind if his real name, Noor Jan Mangal, were published.
In recent months, as the war has raged in Paktika, Mangal has been instructed to redouble his efforts, narrating the conflict from the U.S. Army’s perspective.
“Afghan and [NATO] personnel take every step to prevent civilians from being hurt while conducting operations,” he said on a recent broadcast, reading a note written by a U.S. officer here and translated into Pashto.
“Insurgents have no true cause. They pick and choose to enforce only that which benefits them,” he read in another message.
As American forces prepare to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the war against insurgents is as much about information as it is about fighting ability. It’s a contest that U.S. and Afghan government forces have often lost — unable to compete with insurgents who live and pray among residents. But American forces have recently discovered a new hope in an old medium.
In a region with one of the lowest literacy rates in the world, where the vast majority of families are unable to afford a television set, 92 percent of Paktika residents listen to the radio every day, according to a U.S. military survey. Officials have crafted their communications strategy around that statistic, investing heavily in new radio stations, dubbed Radios in a Box. There are now about 100 such stations across the country.
The radio campaign has been a boon to the U.S. war effort, enabling the Army to advance its own narrative after successful operations or destructive Taliban attacks. In recent weeks, when insurgents in Paktika attempted to attack a convoy of local politicians, or when Taliban members forced a telecom company to shut down local cellphone towers, Mangal was swiftly handed messages to read on the air.
Before insurgents were able to describe their actions as valiant attempts to vanquish foreign infidels, Mangal put a different spin on the news, explaining — in the words of U.S. officers — the senselessness of the attacks.
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