PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
ON THE
PROPAGANDA
FRONT LINE
The men bearing weapons aren’t alone when they head into
war zones – alongside them are the psychological-operations
operatives trying to change the minds of those across enemy lines.
Simeon de la Torre meets the unhailed heroes
As a Lynx helicopter raced over
the barren plains of Afghanistan
en route to a Taliban stronghold
south of Kandahar, its occupants
began preparing themselves for
action. Psychological operations
(psy ops) specialist Sven Hughes
checked his security straps, while
two camouflage-clad special-forces
sharpshooters took position at
either door, rammed their rifle
stocks hard into their shoulders
and began scanning the ground
beneath them for targets.
“All hell was breaking loose
around me,” explains the 34-year-old
Londoner. “I took a look down – we
were only 150ft above a battered
town and I could see a swarm of
Taliban soldiers running from their
defensive positions into offensive
positions. We were so close you
could see their Kalashnikovs
glinting in the morning sun.
“Once there’s incoming fire,
the pilot obviously has to take
evasive action. And so the moment
that happened I just hung on for
dear life. I was strapped in, but
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we were rolling, pitching and racing
lower and faster than we were
before. Either side of me, the
gunners were desperately trying
to search out targets as the pilot
banked, swooped, darted and
buzzed across the rooftops in order
to evade the enemy.”
Bullets zipped across the sky, but
in an instant the firefight was behind
them and the Lynx had barrelled out
beyond the city suburbs and back
into the dusty plains of the Afghan
countryside. Meanwhile, the wind
pinned a brightly coloured leaflet to
the ceiling of the helicopter. Hughes
peeled it off and let it flutter out of the
open door without looking to see
what it was. He didn’t need to. Just 10
minutes earlier, he’d dropped tens of
thousands of them into the battle
zone and he knew exactly what was
printed on it: a gruesome photograph
of a bloodied and bullet-ridden
The psy-ops team distributed thousands of
leaflets like these via helicopter in Afghanistan
in order to “break the will of the enemy”
Afghan soldier accompanied with
the words, ‘Being captured or being
killed is for you to wait for.’
FRONT-LINE SUPPORT
Hughes’s day had begun in the
early hours of that morning at a
NATO-backed International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) base in
Kandahar. “I was part of a small
team made up of both civilian and
military personnel and we’d spent
the previous night building up box
after box of leaflets,” he says.
The December 2006
propaganda mission was crucial
because, as Hughes explains,
they were effectively starting a
battle. “It was called Operation
Baaz Tsuka, and the intent was
to clear a region in the southern
province that had become a
stronghold for ‘Tier One’ Taliban
leaders. Thousands of troops were
on standby, ready for a
huge push. Tanks were
primed and ready for action,
special forces guys had
been dropped into position
near the front line and
everyone was waiting for
us to do our job.”
There were a range of
lea leaflets: some warned any
remaining civilians to leave
the area immediately, others
told uncommitted ‘Tier Two’
Taliban fighters to put down
their weapons and return to
their farms, while the rest
painted the bleakest of
pictures for the fighters who
remained on the battlefield.
Soldiers can make inroads with
locals simply by extending
courtesy to them
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