ISLAMABAD – I met the spokesperson for Mayor’s office Manhattan in 2003. Seeing a young bright boy in his twenties was quiet a surprise for me, specially, when we in Pakistan are used to grey-haired spokespersons for our important offices. I asked them how this young boy handles vicious and clever media of USA.
I was told that a complete team of seasoned grey-haired experience backed him up behind the screen, however, media having a friendly young contact, usually don’t show aggression and hostility as they can exhibit while interacting with an older one from government’s side.
Great approach, strong sense of media handling, I would say. These days while terrorism remains a challenge for both international and regional security experts, and we see a conflicting war of words causing confusion leading to criticism, thus, increasing the gap between the government’s stance and public perceptions.
With respect to terror acts our emphasis has remained on surveillance, physical counter-terrorism techniques and pre-emptive assessment to identify potential groups or individuals likely to be involved in future terror acts, however, we see that terror blasts occurs at the will of the suicide bomber, who is a low-cost precision smart bomb exploding at the right time and right place leaving behind victims and visuals to haunt the audience for days.
“Kill one and frighten thousands,” Chinese proverb is what modern terrorism is; a complex fusion of mind war, media, communication and physical tactics where media can play a key role. Counter-terrorism strategy cannot work without the vigilant participation of masses and a strong communication strategy, i.e. making public an effective partner in the counter-terrorism strategy.
This is where media and educational institutions need to be on board across the country. An act of terrorism not only inflicts physical injury but also causes psychological chaos, and to counter this, educational programmes tailored to students of different age groups to immunize students against personalisation of terror are needed to start immediately.
Effective system for public awareness on terror threat warnings along with recommendations needs to be set up to strengthen the psychological endurance of the civilian population. Post-disaster approach requires inclusion of educational campaigns to bolster the psychological resilience of the civilian population against the demoralizing effects of terrorism, and an effective media campaign to prevent terrorism.
From Pakistan’s perspective there is a strong need for setting up an independent counter-terrorism authority under a non-conventional warfare expert. Directly under the Ministry of Defence, the authority, having a vibrant research cell, should consist of military, information operation, security, psyop experts, journalists, educationalists and senior researchers from social sciences.
The body should have a 24-hour information centre while traditional counter-terrorism tasks should work on mass-awareness campaigns, trainings, bringing youth’s voices on board, carrying out research to preempt and profile the nature of acts, and fortnightly media briefing to strengthen the media’s understanding and to report accurately.
Offshoots of this federal body reaching out into provincial setups connected in real time should share information and intelligence with all stakeholders. The strategy should have a conflict media strategy component to keep media and political leadership on board ensuring strong communication between civil and military authorities and public.
Until and unless terrorism is taken as a psychological warfare, and our actions, preparation and communication do not include mind warfare techniques, the war against terror will remain a war for ever.
The writer is a clinical psychologist, analyst
