In particular, the MoD will decide whether to free deployed commanders from aspects of existing constraints which mean their operations are usually communicated through spokespeople.
A more decentralised approach is arguably overdue but not without risk both in terms of operations security and potential political fall out which may limit the impact of any changes.
The recommendations recognise that greater trust within the organisation needs to be built on the basis of training and the development of doctrine.
By giving staff media training and providing them with a sound understanding of the rationale behind operations, it is hoped the MoD will ‘set the music’ centrally but that their staff will be allowed ‘to find the right notes’.
The risk of empowering more communicators would be offset by discipline to a "guiding narrative".
At the moment, members of the Armed Forces and civil servants have to obtain prior permission to communicate in public through the chain of command.
This hierarchical approval process is proving cumbersome in an age of instant digital communication.
A more decentralised approach to communication was a key aspect of a recent Joint Doctrine Note on Strategic Communication issued in March this year.
"Our processes and philosophy must allow us to respond to feedback from audiences and to counter narratives from our adversaries in order to stay ahead in the information environment. This will require us to decentralise some of our communication activities."
The proposals are still under review.
]]>As part of their research for last night’s coverage of this story, BBC Newsnight wanted the figures for "significant attacks on coalition forces in Sangin". They were trying to work out whether violence in the area was dropping in order to assess what British forces had achieved.
Mark Urban, Newsnight’s diplomatic and defence editor, explains why the Ministry of Defence refused to give them the figures and the implications for war reporting:
"The MoD, however, when asked today by Newsnight for monthly figures for significant attacks on coalition forces in Sangin declined to provide them. Why, you might say, if these figures do indeed reveal any sort of positive trend? The answer seems to be that it is MoD policy not to release such figures because doing so would set a precedent. Naturally, there are many places where they would not show a positive trend.
"Such a policy underlines the difficulty of reporting the war, in trying to make an assessment of what is really going on in many parts of Afghanistan. So perhaps it’s not surprising that so many of those working on this conflict – from journalists to aid workers or academics – therefore welcomed the Wikileaks publication of secret files on the conduct of the war."
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‘British forces in Afghanistan have launched their first-ever mass blogging initiative, with dozens of personnel writing from the frontline on the Army, Navy and RAF websites.’
“We want more people back home to know what it is our men and women are doing in Afghanistan,” said Lt Col Carr-Smith. “And who better to tell those stories than the men and women themselves who [are] at the forefront of our effort, who operate in very demanding conditions with extremely difficult jobs.”
These blogs have already been available online for a few weeks now, but this is the official launch.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to this later this afternoon because I do have just one or two thoughts on the initiative.
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Independent journalist Michael Yon, whose vivid dispatches from Frontline military embeds have proved popular both in the United States and Britain, has said that a return to covering British forces in Afghanistan later in the year is a strong possibility.
A few weeks ago, on his Facebook fan page (one of those new news sources we hear so much about) Yon said he had received "a positive response" from the British Ministry of Defence about "a possible embed" with the Gurkhas.
He said organising the embed might "require a trip to London to meet with a key person".
Yon has embedded with the British Army in the past, notably with The Rifles Regiment, but there was something of a disagreement between Yon and the MoD over the end of an embed in September 2009 which suggested Yon might not cover British forces again.
Having said that, a rapprochement always looked possible given the popularity of Yon’s dispatches and his admiration for British troops.
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Ok, here at Frontline we don’t know exactly what will happen in the unpredictable worlds of journalism and warfare over the coming years.
But we can reveal how everyone will be describing the future.
Military and media experts have gazed into their respective crystal balls (or maybe they’re sharing the same one due to respective budget cuts) and have decided that whatever does happen in these uncertain times it will almost certainly begin with the letter C.
The Ministry of Defence’s Green Paper* on defence policy has identified "five Cs" to describe the nature of future conflict:
Photo: Leo Reynolds, Flickr.
]]>Yesterday, I suggested there might be an unlikely rapprochement between Michael Yon and the British Ministry of Defence after the row over the end of the journalist’s embed with the British Army in Afghanistan.
And that’s clearly what Nick Gurr, the MoD’s Director of Media and Communications, is trying to achieve with this post.
Written in response to Yon’s attack on British Media Operations, Gurr invites Yon "for a chat about how we go forward from here".
"…everyone in theatre is working under huge pressure which will sometimes generate friction and, as I said, I am sorry if Michael felt he was not being treated as he should be."
In between times, Gurr reiterates the line that has been held all the way through – that Yon’s embed with 2 Rifles was ended in August to allow Media Operations staff to focus on other incoming journalists. All Gurr adds is more detail on exactly which media organisations were due to embed with Task Force Helmand.
Despite Gurr’s conciliatory tone, it doesn’t look as if Yon will be taking him up on anything more than a chat in the near future. In an email, Michael Yon said he felt he could "not trust" Media Operations "to be truthful or to operate above the table":
"They are playing politics/spin and I am not playing at all. I don’t write about sports but about brutality and war. They seem to pretend this is all some kind of spin game but it’s no game and the real-life outcome of their actions will be felt in the media, which will affect real world operations."
In an echo of his recent blog post, Yon concludes that although some staff are "quite professional and competent", more generally, under the leadership of Bob Ainsworth, "Media Ops are failing at their mission".
]]>Around a month ago, I was following the saga of the end of Michael Yon’s embed with the British Army in Afghanistan from the initial much-debated nature of its "cancellation", through Yon’s explanation of the episode, to the MoD’s response and Yon’s decision to go it alone in Afghanistan.
Last week, while I was enjoying some lovely late-autumn sun elsewhere, Yon was busy writing a far more detailed post, entitled ‘Bullshit Bob’, about the end of his embed and the state of British Media Operations:
"Many soldiers in the British Media Ops are true professionals who strive constantly to improve at their tasks and work very well with correspondents. Their professionalism and understanding of the larger mission—ultimate victory—provide an invaluable service to the war effort. But there are a few who should not be in uniform and it takes only one roach leg to spoil a perfect soup."
What followed was a scathing attack on various aspects of British Media Operations. According to Yon, those who were allegedly spoiling the soup included the Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth (you may have picked up a subtle hint in the title of Yon’s post), and the spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Lt Col Nick Richardson.
But Yon also homed in on an unnamed Major who he alleged had been rude to soldiers and correspondents and caused him a variety of logistical difficulties.
Unsurprisingly, Yon’s piece sparked a not particularly satisfactory game of ‘name-the-Major’. Richard North at Defence of the Realm jumped in with this piece claiming that the Major in question was Major Ric Cole.
In the meantime other Majors were being misidentified as the Major in Yon’s piece. Paul Smyth, the Ministry of Defence’s man behind Helmand bloggers, was getting comments like this one sent to him:
"Hey Douchebag Paul Smyth, maybe you ought to take your fat head outside the wire once in a while. Actually see the fighting that’s happening rather than disparaging your countrymen who are doing the dirty work and outting themselves in harm’s way. Rear Echelon Mother F’er."
I had a similar comment submitted to me here at Frontline which I couldn’t publish because it was worse and quite probably defamatory.* As Major Smyth pointed out on the Helmand blog, Yon’s unnamed Major was unlikely to be him as he hasn’t been to Afghanistan since 2006:
"Since May last year I have been pretty busy working within Media Ops. I have served in Kosovo with 2 RIFLES and Iraq within MND(SE) and I am now a week away from a tour in Afghanistan, somewhere I have not been since 2006.
I am currently in the UK and am not the unnamed major Michael Yon refers to. With any luck I will have the chance to meet and work with Michael when he returns to Helmand."
Returning to Yon’s criticisms of British Media Operations a couple of follow up comments (which you can make your own mind up about) are worth reading at Defence of Realm including this one from ‘Psyoper’ and another from ‘Anonymous Mouse’.
I’m not sure whether this is the last we’ll hear on Yon vs MoD (and who knows, maybe they’ll be a seemingly unlikely rapprochement at some point), but expect to hear more on British Media Operations in Afghanistan, in one way or another, in the near future.
*(American commenters should note that libel law is stricter this side of the pond as this interesting BBC blog post demonstrates. And yes it does have implications for the principle of freedom of speech but it’s still me/Frontline that would be sued).
]]>He claims that the Ministry of Defence has been trying to have him removed from the area of Regional Command (South) and from Thursday he will be reporting unilaterally from Helmand province.
Yon was annoyed that his embed with 2 Rifles in Helmand was ended by the Ministry of Defence last week, and says his "days of covering British operations are over."
There remains some difference of opinion on the nature of the end of Yon’s embed. The Ministry of Defence left a comment on one of my previous posts claiming that they had "hosted Michael with British forces for five weeks, some two weeks longer than originally planned".
Yon who always said his embed was "cancelled" with "zero warning" now claims in his latest dispatch that it ended "about one month before we had agreed it would end".
Whoever you believe, Yon certainly does not appear to be in a conciliatory mood. In his piece entitled ‘Precision Voting‘ he criticises both the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence:
"The Pentagon and British MoD spin lies (though I have found Secretary Gates talks straight), but veins of pure truth can be found right here with these soldiers. The Pentagon and MoD as a whole cannot be trusted because they are the average of their parts. There are individual officers and NCOs among the U.S. and U.K. who have always been blunt and honest with me. Among the higher ranking, Petraeus and Mellinger come to mind, but for day-to-day realities this is where it’s at. Out here. Nothing coming from Kabul, London, or Washington should be trusted."
Yon also has something to say about equipment shortages in the British Army, providing more information than you will find in the official version on the death of Joseph Etchells last month:
"Several times, the events of Joseph’s loss were recounted to me, in clear hopes that important details would be told. I said not to worry, it will be told. The missing details were that soldiers had complained about not having enough ladders to scale walls to avoid dangerous compound entrances. During a mission the soldiers needed to get over a wall but were without a ladder, and so Joseph Etchells volunteered to go through the entrance, where he stepped on a pressure plate."
He pitches in on the helicopter debate too:
"Enemy control of the terrain is so complete in the area between Sangin and Kajaki that when my embed was to switch from FOB Jackson to FOB Inkerman—only seven kilometers (about four miles) away—we could not walk or drive from Jackson to Inkerman. Routes are deemed too dangerous. Helicopter lift was required. The helicopter shortage is causing crippling delays in troop movements. It’s common to see a soldier waiting ten days for a simple flight."
The question now is what and how will Michael Yon report. Yon’s coverage, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, has often focussed on combat; will it be possible for him to access the front line unembedded or will he have to change tack and chase different aspects of Afghanistan’s troubled story?
]]>In an email I received overnight, Michael Yon claims the Ministry of Defence "cut off" his embed with the British Army in Afghanistan with "zero warning and no chance for me to prepare."
As I highlighted yesterday, Yon had been embedded with 2 Rifles for the last five weeks. The MoD denied that Yon’s embed had been "cancelled" claiming he had come to the end of his allocated time period and that other journalists were waiting for embeds.
Yon, a former Green Beret, argues that "it’s silly to lump me in with the war-tourist sorts who come here for a month or two (usually a week or two).
"Among those who do come, most rarely if ever go on true combat missions to see what our lads are dealing with."
He claims there is "no journalist in the U.K. or the U.S. who spends more time in combat."
He remains specifically unhappy at what he felt was a lack of warning that his embed was ending: "It’s too expensive and dangerous" to operate in Afghanistan knowing that "amateur-hour is running the show" at the MoD.
Citing "thousands of dollars in direct costs, logistical headaches and lost opportunities," Yon says it’s not sensible to cover British troops when he did not know if his embed might end "from one hour to the next."
He said the problem could have been "easily solved by giving me even a few days notice," and he remains suspicious of the fact his embed ended hours after he had published a post entitled ‘Bad Medicine‘. (Update: Though clearly this is something the MoD want to dispel. Yesterday, they said they could not see an operational security problem with the post and just now @defencehq tweeted a link to the article.)
Yon had high praise for British soldiers saying they were "like his own brothers": "I can say with certainty that British forces are fighting courageously, they are fighting well…I would never hesitate to go into battle with them."
But Yon says the war in Afghanistan is "being lost" and his experience means he does not foresee himself embedding with British forces in the future. "The world is too big to play games with a few nameless bureaucrats," he says.
In future articles about the British Army in Afghanistan, Yon says the MoD will not be given a chance to comment: "If they wish to comment, they can do so separately in the form of a rebuttal, or however they chose. Access is a two-way street."
Speaking of which, I’ve now left two messages today with the MoD for their take on this latest development. Hopefully, they will get back to me some time this afternoon. (Update: Which kindly they did. See the MoD’s response in the comments.)
But whatever the wrangling about the whys and wherefores the sad fact of the matter is that a great source of reporting about the work of British troops in Afghanistan has been lost.
]]>Michael Yon is an independent journalist who has been spending some time with 2 Rifles in Helmand filing dispatches for his website.
After writing a post entitled ‘Bad Medicine‘ – a description of a British operation in Sangin, (neatly summarised at Defence of the Realm), he added a short piece saying his embed had been "cancelled" by the Ministry of Defence.
In this tweet, he suggested that this was a consequence of getting "too close to the truth of the war".
In his dispatch, Yon makes an interesting reference to operational security (OPSEC) concerns apparently pre-empting a discussion (like this one) of whether his embed had been cancelled because of an OPSEC breach:
"We set off down the market road. Some folks believe such reports are “security violations,” as if the thousands of people living here do not know exactly where the bases are, or do not know exactly where we came from and went to. Operations take place here every day. Civilians are everywhere."
And in a tweet earlier today, Yon went further alleging that the "British MoD [are] playing games after shutting me down. Perhaps they sensed I am preparing to report that they are underreporting casualties."
Yon’s claim that his embed has been "cancelled" has already sparked a number of comments on his blog and several commenters have apparently contacted the Ministry of Defence to complain.
But the Ministry of Defence deny that they have cancelled Yon’s embed stating that he has simply come to the end of his allocated five weeks. (A quick check of Yon’s blog reveals his first day with 2 Rifles was five weeks ago on 21 July.) An MoD press officer said most reporters only get two or three weeks with a unit and there are a lot of journalists that want embeds.
The press officer said he had read Yon’s post. While he suggested that some of the images Yon used (including pinpointing British Forward Operating and Patrol Bases on Google Maps) might "raise a few operational security eyebrows", he did not think there was a problem with operational security.
Echoing Yon’s own views, the press officer suggested the Taliban would already know where British bases were located in Sangin.
On the question of underreporting casualties, the MoD said casualty statistics are regularly reported.
The MoD are actively trying to contact Yon, who is already on his way to join up with the U.S. Marines.
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