"The Trust Deficit" - Afghan Perceptions of the Coalition Forces

A new report has been published by the Open Society Foundations entitled "The Trust Deficit: The Impact of Local Perceptions on Policy in Afghanistan" (October 7, 2010).  It is posted on the Soros.org website at the link below (an Adobe Acrobat PDF file).  The document, based on interviews and research, has highlighted the fact that we (the coalition) are NOT executing our "information operations" campaign very well; and as a result, we seem to be losing the fight for Afghan public support.  In addition to a faulty Information Operations (IO) campaign (or are we calling it "strategic communications" now?) we are conducting operations and activities that alienate the Afghan population (airstrikes that kill civilians, night raids on innocent families, support of corrupt Afghan officials, detention policies, etc.).  After defining the problem the report then goes on to make several recommendations on how to improve the situation.

http://www.soros.org/initiatives/mena/articles_publications/publications/policy-afghanistan-20101007/perceptions-20101007.pdf