Britain's latest weapon against the Taliban? 'Video diaries' filmed by mobile phone



The latest weapon against the Taliban has been revealed - and it's not a new type of gun, bomb or hi-tech missile system ... It's the humble mobile phone.

The Government is mooting using mobiles in a bizarre bid to beat the militants in a battle for the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans.

The scheme has been dreamed up after the Taliban circulated anti-Western films on Afghanistan's six million mobiles and the internet, seizing a virtual monopoly on propaganda in the war-torn country.

An Afghan woman talks on her mobile phone in Kabul. The Taliban has used the phone networks to circulate virulent anti-Western propaganda

The films include footage of the bodies of Afghans killed in an August raid by U.S. forces. Video from a mobile showed rows of corpses, including at least 11 children - seemingly refuting Pentagon claims that only seven civilians died.

Now, under an attempt to undermine the powerful Taliban propaganda, ordinary Afghans would be equipped with mobiles so they could film their own 'video diaries'.

The end result would be 100 short films for screening at a film festival next year.

It is not clear how a film festival - a concept that evokes cocktail parties and Hollywood glamour on the Riviera - might achieve a propaganda victory.

Nor is it known whether any measures are being considered to stop the freebie mobile phones from being used to produce yet more pro-Taliban footage.

Nevertheless, the Foreign Office is said to think the uncosted plan, devised by outside consultants, 'has merit'.

It's not the first time that hi-tech phones have been used in the Afghan war.

Taliban fighters have adopted Skype internet-based phones - which are heavily encrypted, unlike normal mobiles - to communicate in secret between cells strung across the country, it was revealed last month.

The idea of using mobile phones against the militants was revealed today as Nato chiefs urged defence ministers to let troops attack another pillar of Taliban power - the opium trade.

Supreme Allied Commander General John Craddock said there was no hope of establishing security in Afghanistan if the opium networks funding the Taliban are not destroyed.

Without such a plan 'more money goes into the coffers of the Taliban, more bombs are bought, more bomb makers are paid, more bullets are bought, more people who shoot the bullets are hired and more of our soldiers and our Marines get killed', he said.

The aim is to halt an opium trade estimated to net the Taliban at least £40million a year.

Germany has warned that the mission - backed by the Bush administration - could worsen violence and put troops at greater risk.

But General Craddock told defence ministers gathered in Budapest, Hungary: 'Nato is charged with a safe and secure environment. You cannot have a safe and secure environment with a scourge of narcotics rampant.'

If other nations opposed to the plan were to opt out, the U.S. could feasibly carry it out alone.