Mobile Phones Combat Taliban's Afghan 'Information Wastelands'

One morning last summer, U.S. officials meeting in Afghanistan on the rooftop terrace of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's Kabul residence had an "aha" moment.

Rear Admiral Greg Smith spread out two maps. One highlighted pockets of insurgent control; the other marked mobile-phone towers. Where the Taliban's presence was strongest, phone coverage was weakest, crippled by Taliban sabotage of the towers, recalled Smith and U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke in separate interviews about the July 27 meeting. "We found that Afghans in the most-troubled, insurgent- held areas lived in information wastelands dominated by militant propaganda," Holbrooke said March 17. "We are fighting back with a revamped strategy that puts the people and their ability to communicate at the forefront of our effort." The U.S. is betting about $263 million in 2010 that winning this campaign will help it prevail on the battlefield. The effort aims to turn public opinion against the Taliban and develop a network that lets Afghans contact government officials and authorities talk to each other, said Brigadier General John Nicholson, who runs the Joint Staff's Pakistan-Afghanistan coordination unit at the Pentagon.