Kandahar, Afghanistan - As tens of thousands of NATO troops battle it out with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan for the seventh year, a handful of soldiers are waging their war armed with little more than slogans, leaflets and loud music.
They are the members of the psychological operations, or psyops, teams deployed by Western armies to help sap the will of the enemy and win over the local population without firing a shot.
'Psyops has negative connotations, like 'get out the tin foil hat, we're going to mess with your head',' said Captain Thomas Neil, one of around 30 Canadian soldiers currently specialising in this field around Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
'But think of it as marketing, you pick a target, decide what effect you want to have and create a campaign based on a medium that will be most suitable.'
In addition to obvious means like placing billboards by the roads to illustrate the dangers of unexploded ordnance or opium poppies, the specialists can be called in more dramatic means.
Just as US troops hounded Panamanian President Manuel Noriega with blaring rock and roll during the 1989 invasion of the Central American country, psyops teams have blasted Taliban compounds with the work of heavy metal artists like Rob Zombie for hours before an assault.
'We can move in with our loudspeakers and hammer them and wear them down,' Neil said.
Today, the US Department of Defense defines psychological warfare as 'influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes and behaviour of hostile foreign forces in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives.'
While you could broadly call this propaganda, commanders through the centuries have supplemented military power with cunning.
The 13th century Mongol leader Genghis Khan demoralised enemies through the illusion of greater force. His soldiers would dangle objects from their horses' tails to raise clouds of dust and suggest huge numbers, or carry three torches each at night.
'We call ourselves a force multiplier and say that we can make any (military) unit seem larger through our techniques, deceptions and campaigns,' said Herb Friedman, a retired US army psyops specialist, Vietnam War veteran and author on the subject.
How far specific actions contribute to military success is often contentious. In the 1990/1991 Gulf War, around 100,000 Iraqi troops lay down their weapons before advancing Coalition troops amid surrender calls.
'That would seem a great victory for psyops,' Friedman said. 'But the doubters will say it was the months of bombing and the lack of food, water, sleep and communications that drove them to quit. You can't win.'
More recently, such methods were used in the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Iraq, and other countries including Britain, Germany and Holland are currently active in Afghanistan.
Here, the psyops assault began in earnest on October 18, 2001, five weeks and two days after al-Qaeda terrorists crashed hijacked passenger jets into targets in New York and Washington.
'Attention Taliban! You are condemned. Did you know that? The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death,' harked one US government message beamed onto Afghan public radio while the radical Islamic militia still held Kabul.
More than 100 million leaflets were showered on the country from the air in the first year of the conflict alone. Some conveyed messages of friendship to the population, others warned Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters of their impending doom if they didn't capitulate.
According to Neil, intimidating leaflets and one huge aviation bomb as a demonstration of power prompted hard-core Taliban defenders to abandon their positions in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif in late 2001.
Leaflets also announced rewards for the capture of enemy leaders, including 25 million US dollars for the Taliban's Mullah Omar and al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, although both men still remain at large.
Western armies are not the only ones engaged in psyops.
The Taliban effectively use the internet to disseminate footage and photographs of attacks on Coalition troops, and bin Laden made several propaganda videotapes that were aired on global television networks.
Leaflets calling for a holy war against the United States and its allies were also circulated in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
'Their psyops are very well coordinated and very well financed,' said Neil.
The insurgents know the value of such influence operations, even if the range of media at their disposal is restricted.
'We cannot run TV or radio stations or newspapers because the American forces will destroy them, so internet websites are the only means of conveying our messages and highlight our activities,' Taliban spokesman Zabeeullah Mujahid said by phone from a secret location.
'The main aim is to show the world and the Afghan people that we can fight and defeat the foreign troops in Afghanistan,' he added.
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