TALIBAN BURNING (Afghanistan, 2005)
In October, 2005, American soldiers in Kandahar set the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters on fire. Using the speaker on their Humvee they broadcast the message that the Taliban were ‘cowardly dogs’ because they let their comrades be burnt with their face to the west. It turned out the action was the brainchild of the little-known Psychological Operations unit, and was intended to ‘smoke out’ the Taliban. Stephen Dupont was stationed with the combat unit involved as an embedded journalist, and recorded the incident. As a result of the international outcry about the incident, PsyOps of this sort were replaced by a politics of cultural sensitivity.
