Shock! Good News from Pakistan! The Taliban's Strategic Communications Reek Almost As Badly As Ours!

Londonstani is off doing his undercover journalism thing and can't blog at the moment but sent this story along, saying it was one of the more insightful articles he had read in some time on Pakistan.

For a long time the Taliban presented themselves as the lost link to a pure past, a conduit to a simple life and eternal salvation.

 

Only four weeks ago most Urdu television channels were acting as cheerleaders for the Taliban.

 

Most Urdu columnists in newspapers were presenting the Pakistani Taliban as the reincarnation of early Muslim warriors.

 

Now in a rare consensus they are all clamouring for an all-out war against them.

 

Even the people who were sitting on the fence - or considered the Taliban a localised problem - have suddenly realised that actually the Taliban are out to destroy their way of life.

 

Every single opinion poll carried out in Pakistan has concluded that the country is a hotbed of anti-Americanism.

 

But now, faced with a war against the Taliban, the nation seems to have united behind the most American of slogans: they are threatening our way of life.

 

How did we change our minds so quickly?

 

More than the government or the media, it is the Pakistani Taliban who are responsible.

 

Read the rest here.

On the other hand, readers of this blog will not fail to note that the country which perfected advertising still somehow can't craft an effective message -- or media capable of delivering a message -- in Iraq.