Social scientists paid big bucks to "help contain the Taliban"

[Pat McCotter]

Should Anthropologists Help the U.S. Contain the Taliban?
By Jason Motlagh / Combat Outpost Hanson

Earlier this month Patrick Carnahan was out on a foot patrol with a squad of Marines, slogging in 110 degree heat from one adobe compound to the next trying to engage local residents. He was the only American without a weapon. As an embedded social scientist, his job is to help commanders get a better grasp of Afghanistan's dizzying local social and cultural dynamics so they can effectively lure people away from the Taliban.

Sometimes, however, the line between civilian and military is blurred. During one stop a man swore that his neighbor was working with the insurgents. Although the accusation could have potentially serious consequences for the person in question, Carnahan didn't hesitate to pass the information to company officers. "If we get something that's a threat to a unit, then we turn it over to them," he says. "One way or another, you're involved."

This kind of scenario lies at the crux of a running controversy over the Human Terrain System, a U.S. Army-funded program launched in Iraq and expanded in Afghanistan that pairs social scientists with warfighters. Its backers contend that civilian specialists - particularly anthropologists - with in-depth field experience are best suited to "map" the country's complex tribal structures and fault lines. In turn, they can identify key power brokers and projects needed to build public support that will marginalize the Taliban, advancing the Pentagon's counterinsurgency.

The program's outspoken critics from the academic community aren't buying that argument. They have long argued that human terrain teams are just another arm of military intelligence that violate the most basic ethics of their discipline: first do no harm. A December report by the American Anthropological Association concluded that because teams work with combat units and must conform to the goals of a military mission, their work "can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology."

The job has a $200,000-plus annual salary (and the appeal, for some, of a war zone adrenaline bump) but the prospect of getting blacklisted in U.S. academia has sapped the pool of seasoned anthropologists. Today recruits are more and more likely to have a degree in political science, history or psychology. Some only have a bachelor's degree. And though they might insist that they joined to help both Afghan and American lives, many of them make no apologies for their patriotic streak. "There's another school of thought that says when you're country is at war ... you support your armed forces in the vested interest of the country," says Brian Ericksen, a burly former Army ranger with a political science degree who also works with Marines in insurgency-wracked Helmand province. "For me, the politically motivated criticism just isn't valid."

It's the kind of hard-boiled take one might expect from an ex-soldier who has spent the past several years living dangerously in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, setting the ethical debate aside, the question persists: How much of an asset can trained anthropologists be in a place as perplexing as Marjah, where inter-tribal tensions have been exacerbated over the years by the drug trade and zero-sum politics?

There is also the communication gap; only a select few in the program have a working knowledge of Dari, a form of Persian prevalent in large parts of Afghanistan, or of Pashto, the language spoken in communities where Taliban influence is strongest. Even with a translator, the threat of violence often restricts the amount of time human terrain teams have with people living in the most critical areas. (So far, three have died in the field.) According to David Price, a member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, it takes at least a year of hands-on fieldwork for trained anthropologists to get their bearings. "Given [the Human Terrain System's] difficulty in hiring culturally competent social scientists," he argues, "seven minutes isn't even enough time for an ethnographer to get properly confused."

Lieut. Col. Brian Christmas, the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, disagrees. A self-described "naysayer" at first, he recalls feeling overwhelmed at a shura gathering with querelous tribal elders following the February offensive to clear the Taliban out of Marjah. The sight of hundreds of men in distinct tribal dress was hard to wrap his head around, he says. Then, a human terrain team member assigned to his battalion handed Christmas a cheat sheet minutes before the shura began. It distilled the chief concerns of local big men, their backgrounds and "other atmospherics" that gave him an edge. "[Human Terrain teams] take all the info that's out there, diagnose it, and come out with a useful product," he says, enabling battle-hardened Marines to focus more on enforcing security. He nonetheless concedes that other commanders he knows have not had as positive an experience, so it's a matter of "getting the right team."

Lawmakers, in a sense, reflect the overall divide over the program. Several years after it was created, the Human Terrain System's operating budget must still be approved and renewed by Congress each year. Concerns ripple down to the military as well. Two weeks ago, Steve Fondacaro, the retired colonel who managed and co-founded the program, was reportedly dismissed for reasons that are not yet clear. Still, the human terrain budget has swollen from $40 million in 2007 to nearly $150 million last year, with more social scientists making their way to Afghanistan's hotspots as talk of a "civilian surge" gains traction. Indeed, one development bodes well for the future of the program: Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of international forces in Afghanistan, is a staunch supporter.

This story was reported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

[Pat McCotter]

Human Terrain System Army website

   
HTS is a new proof-of-concept program, run by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), and serving the joint community. The near-term focus of the HTS program is to improve the military's ability to understand the highly complex local socio-cultural environment in the areas where they are deployed; however, in the long-term, HTS hopes to assist the US government in understanding foreign countries and regions prior to an engagement within that region.

    * HTS was developed in response to identified gaps in commanders' and staffs' understanding of the local population and culture, and its impact on operational decisions; and poor transfer of specific socio-cultural knowledge to follow-on units.
    * The HTS approach is to place the expertise and experience of social scientists and regional experts, coupled with reach-back, open-source research, directly in support of deployed units engaging in full-spectrum operations.
    * HTS informs decision making at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.
    * The HTS program is the first time that social science research and advising has been done systematically, on a large scale, and at the brigade level.

[MaineShark]

See, this is the sort of thing that tells you they've been there way too long.

Even if one believes that it's okay to invade other countries and kill a lot of folks because they might someday be a threat, or they have weapons you don't think they should have, or whatever... even if you can swallow that nonsense, if they're holding the country long enough that they need scientists to study its culture so they can hold it better, they've definitely been there way, way too long.

Joe