Sucks to be unarmed. Glad I'm an armed American.
http://www.cphpost.dk/get/103197.html
Insurgents apply home front terror to soldiers’ families
Internet telephone directories make it easy for insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan to track down family members of soldiers
A growing number of families of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are receiving calls in the dead of the night that include loud shouting and expletives yelled in English.
According to the Danish Defence Intelligence Agency (FE), insurgent groups in Iraq have managed to tap into soldiers’ mobile phones to call Denmark and hack into email accounts, enabling the groups to trace soldiers’ family members and issue the threats.
The calls signal a shift in tactics by the insurgent groups, according to Steen Kjærgaard, a captain at the Defence Academy who has conducted research in psychological warfare.
‘They realise that if they want to have success, then they need to win the fight in the arena of the Information Age,’ Kjærgaard told Nyhedsavisen.
‘By contacting family members, the groups hope to spread so much fear that the soldiers are incapacitated,’ he said.
‘The terrorists hit the soldiers hard by contacting their families because they can’t help them when they are in Iraq or Afghanistan,’ Kjærgaard said. ‘It shifts the soldiers’ focus from the task at hand and creates unease. So the strategy is actually quite effective.’
According to Ralf Clemmesen, a soldier who served in Iraq and has received such calls, the tactic worked on him.
‘I couldn’t fight when my family was threatened,’ said Clemmesen. ‘I can take care of myself, but it was unbearable to think about what could have happened to my family.’
Although the calls have taken their toll on soldiers and their families, the defence minister, Søren Gade, said Denmark would not follow in the footsteps of the US and Great Britain and ban their soldiers from using mobile phones.
‘We could of course shut down all communication, as some countries have done, but that would violate the soldiers’ right to talk with their families,’ said Gade.
The Danish defence forces have instead recommended that soldiers limit their communication to the military’s secure telephone lines to protect their privacy.
