SPERWAN GHAR, Afghanistan - It's not just heavily armed insurgents and improvised explosive devices that Canadian troops are battling here - it's also the Taliban propaganda machine in a fight to win the trust of local Afghans.
Progress often moves at a snail's pace. People live as their fathers and their father's fathers did before them and attitudes seldom change. It takes a long time for the people of this barren land, with centuries of warfare behind them, to accept -- and especially trust -- outsiders.
"With all the weapons we have in our arsenal the one thing we don't have is the local influence, the local knowledge. Intimate knowledge of the village pretty much is limited to what we can see on the outside," said Sgt. Tyson Martin of Ottawa, a leader of the Psy Ops (psychological operations) tactical team in the Panjwaii district.
While the Taliban have made intimidation and propaganda almost an art form, it's the job of Psy Ops to visit village leaders to try to undo the damage.
Psy Ops is not as much about military intelligence as "influence peddling" -- a sales job aimed at getting the impoverished local people to accept the Canadian Forces.
"You've got a trade that kind of requires a specialty, you know interactions with the people - it's very much like a sales job if you will," said Martin, who has worked as a sales manager in his civilian life.
"We don't like the word propaganda because of all the negative connotations about that but our primary mandate is influencing the population and influencing the enemy," he said.
Psy Ops might be considered an anti-propaganda unit, Martin suggested.
"Counter-propaganda falls into that as well. We're out there trying to sell the IO (Information Operations) messages, trying to influence and in return get information and when we do come across insurgent campaigns we're out there to formulate a plan to counter that."
In addition to spreading fear the Taliban spread rumours about NATO forces. It can be something as simple as telling Afghans that Afghan soldiers are not being allowed to pray or a recent incident in Tarin Kot in Uruzban province where villagers were told that a soldier had bayoneted a Quran.
Getting past the fear is the first step toward gaining trust, said Martin, but the fear is a difficult opponent.
"A lot of people we've dealt with have been murdered. That includes contractors working in our camp who were murdered and left outside our camp as an example to those in the village," he said.
"Of course the body was boobytrapped. The level of intimidation and fear out there imposed on the people is very real and it's by far the biggest challenge we face."
The Taliban know when the Canadians enter a village and meet with locals. That often results in "night letters" or leaflets being nailed to the doors or handed out by the Taliban, warning locals of the consequences of betraying them.
If the Psy Ops team are in sales then they are door-to-door salesmen. They seldom stay in any one area for more than a couple of months.
"We talk about how much we move around and it's the differences even within one area from village to village to village," said Master Cpl. Stephen Oliver, of Owen Sound, Ont.
"Sometimes you have to gain confidence through little things like showing that we're not that different from them and sometimes we have to gain confidence by coming back and visiting them over and over and over."
