The recent report published by the American news website Daily Beast said the group, which the report called, Provincial Reconstruction Team attached to the British military, began to conduct a project in Afghanistan’s Helmand province three years ago.
In the first phase of the project, the British examined the region’s mosques, identifying about 10,000 mullahs (Muslim clergies) and muezzin (the people at mosques who lead and recite the call to prayer), who were working at the mosques.
“We knew that the mullahs commanded great respect in Afghan society,” said a British adviser to the campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“So we decided to get as much support as possible for the allied effort and the government from the mosques’ imams,” added the advisor.
According to the British source, the team was trying to make the mullahs understand that that its members were there to improve Afghans’ living conditions.
“We reached out to the imams and tried to build relationships with them,” the adviser said, adding “We were worried that they wouldn’t cooperate, but they did.”
The team also tried to further attract the mullahs by rewarding them with food, clothing, and shoes.
Soon after the team members managed to attract the mullahs, they also began to provide the clergies and their families with food supplies and clothes in Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled areas.
According to the advisor, the team even distributed large quantities of Viagra among the mullahs to cure their sexual inabilities.
However, some of the team members argued that the Viagra campaign could only lead to “producing more Taliban, meaning more kids who would grow up to be Taliban.”
Some mullahs who were using the Viagra were so helpful that the team could get the high command’s permission to take a number of the most helpful ones on a tour of the United Kingdom.
The so-called Project Mullah was, however, suspended at the end of 2010.
“Even with the Viagra we never got a clear sense that we had greatly improved the West’s image among Helmand’s mullahs,” the team’s advisor said.
“We’re simply not sure we have been successful in pacifying the region,” he added.
MKA/HN
Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/21/290179/uk-team-worked-to-lure-imams-muezzin/
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