ABSTRACT
In March 2010 Wikileaks, the website that specialises in publishing ‘safely leaked’ classified documents to the global public of the internet, revealed a CIA ‘Red Cell Special Memorandum’ which looked at how public opinion ought to be shaped in France and Germany in the wake of the Netherlands' decision to pull out Dutch troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2010. When the document was made public by Wikileaks, those who released it presented it as a scoop. Arguably the contents of the leaked document did not amount to more than a mediocre analysis of the different sensitivities of the German and French public, to identify ways of shoring up their support to sustaining the NATO effort in Afghanistan (CIA/RCSM 2010). With the opposite goals, the Taliban and other insurgent factions do very similar things on a regular basis. They closely monitor the discourse in several NATO countries, and shape messages in various languages to strategically communicate to key public groups, and possibly find out where the weakest links are (Giustozzi 2009: 25). This is reasonable from their perspective, as support for the war and the statebuilding effort has always been somewhat precarious, especially in a number of European countries that are present in Afghanistan. 1 US officials impatiently demand more contributions from European members of the coalition, time and again. In return, decision-makers in Europe, talking partly to their respective constituencies, often demand more of a ‘say’ in strategic matters as to how the Afghanistan mission should be shaped.
