Fighting the Taliban with mobile phones

The US Army in Afghanistan is betting $263 million that a victory in the communication war will help it to win the war on the ground. The Army is spending the money on mobile phones or, more precisely, the infrastructure that enables Afghans to use mobile phones.

Where the Taliban's presence is strongest, in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, phone coverage is weakest, the army discovered. That's because the Taliban keep sabotaging all the mobile-phone towers. "We found that Afghans in the most troubled, insurgent-held areas lived in information wastelands dominated by militant propaganda," Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan, told The New York Times.

The US army plans to build 50 towers this year and to put another 20 on wheels in remote areas.

The Telecommunications Development Company of Afghanistan, known as Roshan, sends food-price updates to its 3.5 million mobile subscribers, and it is developing an online banking service. Investors in the Kabul company include TeliaSonera, Sweden's largest phone company, and Cable and Wireless Communications, Britain's no. 2 telephone company.