Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread) [Archive] - Page 4

Steve the Planner

05-26-2009, 04:49 AM

120 mm. Congrats on the assignment. My Mom, who was a computer programmer, always taught me that life is problems and the fun is solving them. I'm sure you will have plenty of the kind of fun that our acquired tastes will enjoy.

I'm still scratching my head about all this ethnographic mapping stuff.

Prior to the demise of the old foreign service (1960's), each embassy had a mapping attache whose job it was to scurry around and collect maps, census, ethnic stuff and send it home---to a State geography department that knew what to do with it. Compile it for future reference in the event it was needed (war? foreign assistance program design? trade negotiation?).

In Iraq, the embassy was blind (and the other two monkeys). It knew less about the country and its people than most geographers in the US could pick up from a night of internet searching.

Now, State's excellent geography office is limited only to monitoring international boundaries, and couldn't tell you where or how many districts exist in Kirkuk even six years into a war where Kirkuk remains a big issue. There is nobody there at State studying this stuff in Iraq or any other country. US AID's contractors can't help you either. NGA has great physical and terrain mapping, but can't tell anyone how many people are in any area (basic census data), let alone fine-grained stuff about those people.

I spent a lot of time last year trying to get the mil system to integrate basic demographic and property tracking data from civilian sources (Min of Planning/CoSIT), and Land Records---the stuff we all use in the civilian world in the States was all available in Iraq)---but could never find anyone interested. Note: I have the complete Iraqi census records (including all the tribal and ethnic data (by nahia) dating to the 1930s sitting on my civilian hard-drive and nobody ever asked for it (One day, I'll get around to assembling and publishing it, but now, I only look at it for spot references).

But without the basic knowledge of a country and it's people on the front end (before war), how can the US expect to establish credible foreign policy (of which war is only a piece).

While it is true that the military needs it NOW, and nobody else has it unless HTS brings it to them, the reality is that HTS is a short-term fix, as others have said, and much that it does will have limited effect and will disappear soon as the game stops.

How do we create a fix that will allow national and sub-national ethnographic, civilian economic and infrastructure, and political administrative tracking and reporting in a manner that folks can no it pre-emptively, rather than something 120mm has to try to track down in the field after it is needed and the bullets are flying?

Steve

marct

05-27-2009, 02:20 PM

Hi Steve,

I'm still scratching my head about all this ethnographic mapping stuff.

One of the big problems with "ethnographic mapping" has always been the tendency of people to assume that it is static. I suspect that some of this comes out of the 19th - early 20th century habit of colonial administrators and anthropologists to put the maps out in a "snapshot" setting; basically an "at this point in time" picture. That made a lot of sense when it was happening, and most of the theoretical models they were using required it, but what is forgotten is that those models required it because it was nigh on impossible, at the time, to get decent historical depth.

One of the truly humongous problems with the static maps produced was that people looking at them tended to essentialize the groups that were put on the map - basically "freezing" the groups in both time and space. Consider, by way of example, how people outside the US would think about the US if the only maps they ever saw were of the 13 colonies or, conversely, of the current boundaries.

This habit of essentializing the mapped groups also played in to a sub-conscious desire to construct a lot of these groups as "traditional" or "pristine" cultures; groups that "have always" been "here" and "like this". Big, BIG mistake!

Let me just give you one example of why dynamic maps can be useful. In a lot of situations, groups migrate from one area to another - frequently under pressure of other groups. The experience of this type of migration is often caught in cultural stories (myths, legends, etc.) that constructs concepts of "ownership" and, often, resentment that can be maintained for 100's of years. So, if we had maps that were dynamic over time, we could infer from movement patterns where certain types of resentments would exist and then test those inferences by looking at current folk "histories".

As a case in point, I'm reading Kilcullen's Accidental Geurillas right now, and he has a great vignette about Damadola in the Bajaur Agency (p. 227-232). One of the key points he makes is from the actions by the British in the area in 1897 where the village was destroyed by the British and, also, later Predator strikes against it in 2006 and 2008. If there was a time sequence set of maps that marked "Western" assualts against villages, it would probably correlate heavily with potential support for the Taliban.

I spent a lot of time last year trying to get the mil system to integrate basic demographic and property tracking data from civilian sources (Min of Planning/CoSIT), and Land Records---the stuff we all use in the civilian world in the States was all available in Iraq)---but could never find anyone interested. Note: I have the complete Iraqi census records (including all the tribal and ethnic data (by nahia) dating to the 1930s sitting on my civilian hard-drive and nobody ever asked for it (One day, I'll get around to assembling and publishing it, but now, I only look at it for spot references).

Unbelievable! You know, that is the type of data that graduate students (and profs!) would kill for. If you ever want to make it available, I know a lot of people who would be interested ;).

But without the basic knowledge of a country and it's people on the front end (before war), how can the US expect to establish credible foreign policy (of which war is only a piece).

In short, and being cynical, by adopting a "wogs don't matter" attitude. The fact that such an attitude will backfire on the politicians that adopt it doesn't really matter; if they can use it to manipulate the eloctorate at home, then its feasible.

While it is true that the military needs it NOW, and nobody else has it unless HTS brings it to them, the reality is that HTS is a short-term fix, as others have said, and much that it does will have limited effect and will disappear soon as the game stops.

Honestly, the HTS is not the only source, nor should it be. The HTS should have been an in theatre, high level interpretive group. As currently constituted, there are some serious drawbacks to the program, not the least of which being that many commanders just don't know what to do with them :wry:!

How do we create a fix that will allow national and sub-national ethnographic, civilian economic and infrastructure, and political administrative tracking and reporting in a manner that folks can no it pre-emptively, rather than something 120mm has to try to track down in the field after it is needed and the bullets are flying?

Some of that is already happening, rather quietly, but it carries its own problems (e.g. the risk of alienating friendy or neutral groups, the risk of the US being perceived as acting unilaterally in the international arena, etc.). Again, Kilcullen deals with some of the risks (cf Chapter 5) associated with this activity, and I think he is quite correct in identifying the political process in DC as the main problem area.

In the purely military context, there is a set of institutional problems that also go with it. One of these problems is the fight over the identity of a warfighter - the "War is/is not armed social work" argument. A second institutional problem is that if an institution has a set of capabilities, there is a tendency to want to use it (airpower in COIN debates anyone?). So, if the politicians in DC believe that the military has the capability to use this type of data to achieve political ends, it may lead to a situation where the military becomes the preffered institution for dealing with "situations" vs., say, State or USAID. That feeds into the growing international perception of the US as an imperialist power that is out of control; basically a "rogue state" in the international system which, in turn, makes it that much more difficult to construct coalitions for operations. For me at least, it brings to mind the old saying that those whom the Gods would destroy, they first drive mad.

These extrapolations may seem odd in light of the basic point which was about the HTS and the military use of ethnographic data but, I assure you, they aren't as crazy as they seem ;). Last November, I put together a paper tracking the use of the ethnographic knowledge in Greek-Roman-Byzantine military PME (available here (http://marctyrrell.com/uploads/TFCT.pdf) for masochists).

One of the things that became pretty clear was that there was a serious problem with political stability tied in with the adoption of detailed ethnographic knowledge by military forces; basically, it destabilized the entire Roman political system by increasing the likelihood of local revolts. This destabilization was so bad that Diocletian had to withdraw detailed ethnographic knowledge from the military and place it in the hands of what later became the Skrinion Barbaron ("Office of Barbarians", sort of similar to the old OSS). This, in turn, had its own problems - it solved a large part of the political stability problem by somewhat reducing the probability of a successfull regional revolt, but it also led directly to later disasterous military defeats (e.g. Adrianople).

Well, I'm going to stop rambling and get back to writing :wry:.

tribeguy

05-28-2009, 05:46 PM

I agree with you on this. Having had some direct visibility on the issue, an MI officer's bandwidth is mostly taken up by having to deal with the myriad of administrative issues. They definitely want to do a good job, but for them to be able to think outside of the box, they have to be able to escape from it in the first place. Also, there is the tendency to discount anything that is outside of the classified world as not being true nor actionable.

slapout9

05-28-2009, 05:55 PM

Kivlonic

09-18-2009, 07:04 PM

Could any one tell me if a component of HTS work directly with or for PRT's.

marct

09-18-2009, 07:05 PM

Could any one tell me if a component of HTS work directly with or for PRT's.

To the best of my knowledge, the answer is officially "No", but unofficially "Maybe, depending on circumstances".

Kivlonic

09-18-2009, 07:59 PM

Reason I ask is I'm researching the role "ethnographic mapping" in stabilization, security, transition and reconstruction (SSTR) operations in Iraq. Any insight in how PRT's develop operational information, i.e how do they determine the most productive reconstruction efforts - the who, where, and what of development, and what role HTT or HTS like programs might play? Also are is there any plans to transform PRT's in regards to the SOFA agreement.

marct

09-19-2009, 01:35 PM

Hi Kivlonic,

Reason I ask is I'm researching the role "ethnographic mapping" in stabilization, security, transition and reconstruction (SSTR) operations in Iraq.

There is a pretty serious difference between ethnographic mapping and ethnographic knowledge. If you are limiting yourself to mapping, then you are dealing with a very small sub-set of ethnographic knowledge.

Any insight in how PRT's develop operational information, i.e how do they determine the most productive reconstruction efforts - the who, where, and what of development, and what role HTT or HTS like programs might play? Also are is there any plans to transform PRT's in regards to the SOFA agreement.

Part of the reason I mentioned the distinction between mapping and knowledge, is that the who, what and where is quite different between the two. For example, what makes perfect sense to someone on a PRT using mapping only may well make absolutely no sense to someone on the ground - a situation that has happened a number of times I'm afraid :wry:.

Having said that, i also need to point out that I haven't been on a PRT or one of the HTTs, so my actual first hand knowledge of how they operate is extremely limited.

From what I have heard, however, there does not appear to be any uniform use of either ethnographic mapping or ethnographic knowledge by PRTs - it seems to vary wildly, and to be driven more by personal choice and foibles. The same appears to be true of HTTs - they appear to vary wildly but, in general, they appear to influence CERP fund expenditures rather more than PRTs. As to other programs similar to the HTS or HTTs, I don't have enough information on how they operate.

If I were you, i would try to arrange to interview some of the people who have been on PRTs and HTTs.

Steve the Planner

09-22-2009, 06:39 PM

Marct has it right:

"From what I have heard, however, there does not appear to be any uniform use of either ethnographic mapping or ethnographic knowledge by PRTs - it seems to vary wildly, and to be driven more by personal choice and foibles."

Understanding PRTs, and to a great extent, HTTs in Iraq is to understand a haphazard experiment---a lot of trial and error, and a lot of mistakes, relearning, and lost lessons.

I was assigned as Senior Urban Planning Adviser, PRT Salah ad Din, co-located with MND-North at Camp Speicher. One of my specific tasks was to implement civilian GIS systems, which I worked on in partnership with another Senior Adviser, MND-N/MNC-I Terrain, NGA, USAID/RTI, and Iraq's Ministry of Planning and MoD (DMA).

In Septemebr 2008, I was seconded to the UN's Disputed Internal Boundaries (DIBS) team as the cart/demo expert.

What exactly are you trying to understand?

Steve

omarali50

09-23-2009, 03:11 AM

Oh, I don't know... If they were all in the same place at the same time, there are some great possibilities :D.

but if the gas spreads, it may also kill some innocents.
Philip Roth had the opposite joke in one of his books: Some Nixon's advisor suggests using poison gas against anti-war protesters, but then gets the thought that this being Washington, if the gas spreads it may also kill some guilty people...(an army general then objects that gas is not a good idea because it does not give the individual soldier the sense of participation that comes from shooting someone)...

Kivlonic

09-24-2009, 03:11 PM

Steve,

What exactly are you trying to understand?

Broadly, How do PRT's analyze the population they're working with -what methodology do they use?

Thanks.

Steve the Planner

09-24-2009, 04:44 PM

Kivlonic:

Bear in mind that the military-led PRTs in Afghanistan and the State Department-led ones in Iraq are materially different.

From my experience in Iraq, it was a very haphazard affair with sometimes profound schisms between the military and State. Each PRT was a mini-embassy the activities and results of which were determined by the local PRT itself, usually on a piecemeal basis, so there was no uniformity.

Against that backdrop, there was a lot of reliance on military maps and data which, in practice, proved to contain little relevant details for reconstruction planning. Mil maps (all from NGA) are optimized for geophysical targeting and manuevers---every rock is mapped---but usually contains material errors in political/administrative/economic/infrastructure boundaries that would be relevant for reconstruction planning. Cadestral mapping (property boundaries) are usually ignored even though, as in Iraq, they directly link to land records containing a wealth of critical information that never got used.

Moreover, NGA maps are typically classified documents, and particularly the electronic versions (GIS shapefiles and meta data). Every soldier has a toughbook with GIS on it, but few PRTs could even open that data on their State laptops, nor were PRTs, with a mix of uncleared civilians and local nationals, an open environment for digital mapping data. No digital product could be provided to Iraqi provincial governments except in paper form, and with an UNCLAS label.

So, in early 2008, the provinces were using old, hand-drawn "shiek" maps, sometimes from the early 1950's, and the PRTs were either working with Iraqis on their maps, or toting military maps around with inaccurate provincial, district and sub-district data.

I was one of two planning Subject Matter Experts originally assigned to Salah ad Din Province in December 2007, and we were uniquely charged with mapping and system assessments. The first PRT Team Leader was very supportive, but left after three months. The next was cold to it, but later got on board.

To accomplish our work, we literally became embeds to the Division, and miltary construction battalions, and, therefore, had a unique opportunity to travel extensively, and collect information from many sources. In the end, once we completed Northern Iraq with huge help from MND-North and NGA, we were seconded to the UN where we worked exclusively to address the boundary, population and minority issues for the Disputed Boundaries Team.

Problem, from scratch, is that PRTs operate under a transitional authority under State, and were targeted at province-by-province activities. From experience, State's substantial geographic resources were never used/committed to PRTs the way they were in Eastern Europe---PRTs were just experimental/exploratory missions outside serious State departmental commitment.

In summary, no traditional planning, mapping, or demographic tools were ever used on a systematic basis by PRTs. Just a lot of chasing immediate needs and "low hanging fruit;" it was never a seriously planned and implemented endeavor. Bear in mind, too, that a lot of PRTs, unlike the military, had profound movement limitations so they might only get in a few quick trips off the base to the provincial headquarters a few times a week; not much to see or know.

US Institute of Peace (USIP) has an online archive of "after-action" interviews that explain a lot of what PRTs did, and why and how they did it. It makes sense to survey them all to get the complete and highly varied picture.

As for the military (and PRTs), I often hear that traditional planning, mapping and demographic data doesn't work, but what they are really saying is that the data and accuracy of the information they have been relying on is so poor that it is useless and counter-productive. Especially in a post-conflict area, everything is likely to change all the time, so the 1950's-1980's data that underlies their products is probably pretty useless.

Back to actual mapping:

It took an act of God, and a huge commitment by NGA/MNC-I to get a declassified GIS civilian mapping base layer cleared for Iraqi ministerial and provincial uses, but, thanks to those huge efforts, it got released in October 2008. Step One.

Step two, which is one reconstruction program the US did right, was to get provincial and local governments equipped and trained on GIS.

By October 2008, provincial and local governments had access to a baseline civilian GIS system, to which CAD drawings and other engineering data could then be transcribed. Still, PRTs had no access to GIS, CAD or any other systems, and few PRTs understood what mapping and geographic data is about or how to use it.

Next, was to improve the base layer to correct huge boundary discrepancies, and to reconcile that data to ancient and modern population and public service data. PRTs were, by and large, unaware of any of this, and did not use traditional planning and resource allocation methods.

Having said that, in 2008, the military and NGA were hugely cooperative in trying to build MND-level mapping and data systems to bring modern planning systems on line, and individual Subject Matter Experts in the PRTs were clamoring for the common base line information needed for their professional work. But the PRT system, and PRT leadership in general, never did understand this stuff.

Through the UN, we spent a lot of time with the Ministry of Planning, and using UN field offices, MND-N, MNC-I Mapping, NGA, and PRT SMEs in relevant provinces, assembled a huge data base of historical and current political/administrative/demographic boundaries and data, and data sources, that could have been converted to a viable GIS framework similar to what we use in most modern planning and public information processes.

But, my tour as 13-month appointee ended in January 2009, and I came home. Left the data with NGA and MNC-I Terrain, but the folks I left it with rotated out shortly afterwards, too.

Two things I learned as deep lessons: (1) the US Civilian Reconstruction side does not understand foundational modern planning and public administration tools, and does not use them; and, (2) the military has huge need for traditional GIS, mapping, infrastructure, demographic data, but has no system to create it on a routine and reliable basis.

That's my short answer.

Steve

Surferbeetle

09-24-2009, 04:57 PM

Two things I learned as deep lessons: (1) the US Civilian Reconstruction side does not understand foundational modern planning and public administration tools, and does not use them; and, (2) the military has huge need for traditional GIS, mapping, infrastructure, demographic data, but has no system to create it on a routine and reliable basis.

Steve,

Thank you for expertly and succinctly stating the facts.

Regards,

Steve

Steve the Planner

09-24-2009, 06:21 PM

Kivlonic:

Looking back at your prior question about using Ethnographics as a decision tool, there are mixed results.

PRTs were usually headed by "diplomats" charged with establishing and maintaining direct relations with the local official leaders.

In Northern Iraq in 2008, that, necessarily meant Kurds as a result of the Sunni Election Boycott.

Thus, in most provinces in the North, PRTs worked very closely with Kurdish elected officials, which was also very easy since Kurdish custom and affinity was generally pro-western and pro-US.

Something about "the money flows to the folks that are around you when you give it out" that created an inherent bias toward pro-Kurdish projects.

As a practical matter, however, a lot of PRT-based US largess, and most of the big waste, flowed through embassy programattic---we have to spend $50 million for schools or lose it; each PRT has 14 days to submit requests for these funds, and they must be committed to spend within 30 days after approval. The PRTs in the hard-pressed provinces usually could assemble a project or two, but some poor southern provinces didn't even have a PRT, so they got nothing.

The big PRTs (Salah ad Din had some 75 people, and a permanent Project Officer to chase the program funds), would file a blanket request for 23 schools, get the funds, then commit them randomly, even if the local province didn't want or need the schools. One infamous incident occurred last year in Samarra where the PRT obtained funds to build a new 6 classroom school in this major reconstruction town. When the Corps of Engineers showed up to build it, a serious conflict arose because, to build the new 6 classroom school they would have to knock down the current crowded 12 classroom school. Oooops!

As a practical matter, the PRTs' routine structure as a mini-embassy assigned to serve the elected officials usually created, implicitly and explicitly, a substantial bias towards Kurds in Northern Iraq, and at the expense of others, including the majority Sunnis in places like Ninewa and Salah ad Din.

This is one of the jump balls that is still bouncing after the Jan 2009 election. The PRT's implicit Kurdish bias, now resolved by elections in which Sunnis heavily participated, leaves a lot of unanswered questions that will remain for the history books.

Meanwhile, the provincial technocrats (the national ministry staffs assigned to local provinces) had their own tussles, province by province, for funds flowing out of the national ministries, with substantial biases based on the particular group that controlled that ministry.

From my experience, the military tried to play an "honest broker" for needs it saw throughout the North, which sometimes caused schisms with the Kurd-tied PRTs (especially re: Kirkuk and Ninewa).

MG Hertling, now up for a well deserved third star, initiated helicopter diplomacy to bring provincial officials and national ministries up to the site of a problem, and push and cajole Iraqis to create and implement solutions.

Specifically, unlike the PRTs, the military was out among the minorities, refugees, and big problems. The PRTs had very little movement and visibility to, for example, small Christian and Yazidi towns, and their unique, and sometimes unfathomable, situation. Hertling would put provincial and ministerial folks on the ground at the source of the problem.

More than anything, I believe Gen Hertling's efforts at helicopter diplomacy, and direct Iraqi engagement forced major and enduring improvements in the region which would never have been achieved by the PRTs---especially as relates to ethnographic distributions of services and projects.

Of course, he was notorious for being miserly with US funds if Iraqi funds were available, and probably won the award for least CERP funds ever distributed in a post-conflict setting. Still, we always joked that he deserved a third star for that::::I guess we were right.

From my UN perch, though, we particularly studied and tracked ethnic and minority issues, with international experts on the team who brought deep understandings and history to every issue. There were days in Iraq, where I was so disheartened from research on ethnographic issues like the constantly assaulted Christians, or the successive oral histories of Turkmen butchery, teh Turkmen/Kurdish eradications in Kirkuk, and documenting the remainders of the Anfal, that I just wanted to hide my head in shame for my fellow humans. But we researched and documented as much as possible, and there were big days like when our team got minority set-asides in the 2009 elections.

One critical dimension for the UN was the analysis of allocation of resources, services and projects to minority needs. What you often found, however (with exceptions like Samarra where major international funding and focus was applied), was that even if resources were allocated equitably, they were not allocated appropriately. The minority communities often were severely damaged, and under-resourced, but, at best, got the same allocations as wealthy and undamaged majority communities. And for many, like communities in Diyala, they were too kinetic to begin reconstruction. They just could never catch up to "reconstruction."

As is evident from the above re: minorities documentation, sometimes going back to a BUA and just hearing about regular war fighting was a relief. It gives the appearance of propriety against a backdrop of years of successive insanity to man against man, as is played out in the ethnic and minority histories in these areas.

Not much of a clear answer, but that's what I know.

Steve

PS- In civilian life, I am a mapping, planning and boundaries expert for nasty little sub-population issues like school redistrictings, and physical allocation of public infrastructure and services. Iraq really made what used to be compelling almost a bore by contrast.

Surferbeetle

09-24-2009, 06:51 PM

PS- In civilian life, I am a mapping, planning and boundaries expert for nasty little sub-population issues like school redistrictings, and physical allocation of public infrastructure and services. Iraq really made what used to be compelling almost a bore by contrast.

Steve

Day job is a civil engineer which allows me to play with GIS (Arcview 9.3) and AutoCAD (Civil 3D) while leaning upon our GIS and drafting guru's in order to get the hard work done.

Back to your points. The USG needs to get deadly serious about applied geography, our current failure to systematically train and resource the force on this issue is symptomatic of the deeper failure of understanding how to work with a local populace towards success by engaging with them through their language and culture...I believe it was the New Yorker that made a recent point about the importance of internalizing that inhabitants of foreign countries are not playthings...make a commitment and see it through..

Regards,

Steve

Steve the Planner

09-24-2009, 07:07 PM

Steve:

I spent the better part of a year trying to get this across, and got to the top ranks in the right places. Lots of nodding heads, but it just never got resources.

NGA does geophysical mapping.

HTT does anthropology.

CAs do the folks in front of them.

DoD does military stuff.

Intel does spooky stuff.

Nobody does traditional applied geography, political/admin boundaries/resource allocation, or aggregate or sub-population demographics.

Lots of piecemeal stuff, no systemic framework.

All said and done, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

And it ain't likely to change.

Steve

Ken White

09-24-2009, 07:07 PM

The USG needs to get deadly serious about applied geography, our current failure to systematically train and resource the force on this issue is symptomatic of the deeper failure of understanding how to work with a local populace towards success by engaging with them through their language and culture...I believe it was the New Yorker that made a recent point about the importance of internalizing that inhabitants of foreign countries are not playthings...make a commitment and see it through...Step 1 in doing that is to restore Geography, History and 'Social Science' plus Civics to school curriculums. The near elimination of those subjects and physical education has done two generations of Americans a great disservice. Lot of cultural sensitivity but no cultural knowledge to speak of, excess of self esteem but little self respect because they know they know not...

Note that the current crop of Flag Officers is from the first of those two generations. :wry:

Ken White

09-24-2009, 07:39 PM

I spent the better part of a year trying to get this across, and got to the top ranks in the right places. Lots of nodding heads, but it just never got resources...Lots of piecemeal stuff, no systemic framework.

All said and done, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.Again, change the educational process -- the over emphasis on 'specialization' -- an educators dream because it makes their job easier in most cases. They find it easier to school a Planner than they do to school a Manager who can plan in addition to doing a host of other things. Not picking on planning, the same thing can be said of many fields.

The Army used to produce good generalists who after 20 plus years made good Generals. Currently all have acquired 'secondary specialties' at which they will often spend more time -- and thus develop more intangible loyalty to -- than their primary role of commanding troops in combat and they are not really generalists, they are dual track specialist and their primary reason for existence is subsumed by bureaucratic requirements.

Specialists are needed, no question but in typical American fashion, we have just overdone it. One would think Management courses would teach integration of specialty products and of course they do but most are properly civil society and market oriented. One would also think the War Colleges would teach integration and multi spectrum, multi agency operations in the governmental operations sense. They may, don't know, haven't been to one.

Whatever, your comment is valid and that inability of left and right hands to keep track of each has always been present to a minor degree but in its current almost total form really appeared at the tail end of Viet Nam and it got progressively worse during my civil service time. That trend caused me to retire from my second career earlier than planned because I tired of putting Band aids on PPPP. :eek:

FWIW, it is not restricted to the Armed Forces or the Federal Government. I saw it in State and local government in the last three states in which we've lived, I saw it at Hughes Aircraft where I worked briefly and I see evidence of it daily. We just returned from a trip -- road construction in and around Atlanta is ample evidence... :D

Particularly the idea of charging a toll for to be built, elevated HOV lanes... :rolleyes:

A lot of it goes back to the self esteem bit -- if one has a bunch, one does not take advice from subordinates much less ask for any as one is omniscent. I've never seen so many people with great self esteem and NO self confidence. If they had any, they'd beg for advice from anyone and they'd experiment. Can't do that nowadays, demeaning to ask and a failed experiment is seen as a death knell... :(

jmm99

09-24-2009, 07:54 PM

never disappeared. But, if they have in your local school district, send your kids to HCH - Home of the Bulldogs (p 9 of Student Handbook (http://www.hancock.k12.mi.us/uploads/handbook_2009-10.pdf)) - we can use the extra students:

The following is a list of HCH graduation requirements beginning with the class of 2011:

8 credits English
8 credits Mathematics (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II)
6 credits Science (Physical Science, Biology, Chemistry or Physics)
6 credits Social Studies (Western Civilization, US Hist., Gov’t./Econ.)
2 credits Visual, Performing, Applied Arts
2 credits PE / Health
2 credits Computer Science
10 credits Electives

Total: 44 credits

2 credits = 1 full year of a course (so, 4 years of English) - required courses in ()s. We (back in 50s) had 4 yrs of PE or participation in organized school athletics.

Probably a dinosaur, but that's the way we are up here. No presently active or retired flag officers that I know of (O-6 and down) - more than a few SNCOs, however.

Steve the Planner

09-24-2009, 07:59 PM

Ken:

I think you are very right about education, but I see positive signs like my 16 year old's International Baccalaureate program where they really are teaching them deep generalism first and foremost.

I grew up in that shadow of the delusion that all the world's problems were basically being solved. The good news for her generation is that we have left them plenty of problems to solve.

On the management side, the problem is that we are where we are, in large part, because of the lack of a comprehensive view and understanding---just stovepipes, silos (and, OK, Steve, pipelines), but, as I learned first hand, there really is no integrated thinking or understanding about these regions, sub-regions, and the people, economics and systems that are driving this stuff.

In 2007, I ran into an early DoD HTTer, and he was interested in a Systems Dynamics model for regional growth in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro Area. It was hard to explain that the spaghetti bowl of causal loops and linkages in the model were not buttons to be pushed and levers to be pulled, but just linkages and relationships to weigh, and open-ended interactions wyet to play out.

Since then, I've seen a lot of people trying to reduce social sciences to buttons and levers, but with no consideration of the real linkages and consequences.

Planning is about choices and consequences, not yes or no, and sometimes, like going down the road of rebuilding tribal systems through warlords, the consequences will adversely affect another, perhaps, more desirable goal. It is, therefore, best to first establish a reasonable systems map before you set off to pull levers withy potentially unknown results.

But, that's me....

Steve

Ken White

09-24-2009, 08:31 PM

Good points also. You are right that the Education system is starting to get rid of some of the 60s to 80s idiocy and the future looks better on that score. Much better (now if we can just tune down the PC aspect...).

Unfortunately, the two generations that were adversely affected are, respectively, just finishing and just starting their day in the Sun. Of the two, the former was and is the more dangerous or less competent, Gen X is a bit smarter. It'll be a while yet before those improvements started in the 90s take hold and Gen Y runs things.

So we'll bumble about for a bit longer but we'll survive that. ;)

Ponies everywhere...:cool:

Steve the Planner

09-26-2009, 03:08 AM

Ken:

We've been talking about how to bring the breadth of social sciences to the table, and the need for better education---fundamental geography, history, and actually knowing things about the things behind the things we are trying to accomplish.

In that context, I've been re-reading a September 5, 2009 Newsweek Article by now-retired Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and looking at the breadth of his experience and knowledge re: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the current lessons he offers on Afghanistan:

"Americans tend to want to identify a problem, fix it, and then move on. Sometimes this works. Often it does not. Of course, imposing ourselves on hostile or chaotic societies is no solution either. The perceived arrogance and ignorance of overbearing powers can create new narratives of humiliation that will feed calls for vengeance centuries from now. What's needed in dealing with this world is a combination of understanding, persistence, and strategic patience to a degree that Americans, traditionally, have found hard to muster."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214988/page/1

As they say, he has forgotten more than most "experts" have learned about this region. More than anything, this article speaks directly to your educational comments.

Let's hope that somewhere in current generations, there are some young grad students like Ambassador Crocker and Rory Stewart setting off to walk across a region and really learn it's ways and byways. We are sure to need them later.

Steve

PS- I had the unforgettable opportunity to sit with him in Baghdad. The same as watching General Petreaus out for a walk around the lake at Al Faw---two physically unassuming men bravely, competently, and relatively quietly, carrying the weight of the World on their shoulders. And Tom Ricks says "Dave Does Dull"????

marct

09-26-2009, 03:17 AM

Hi Steve,

We've been talking about how to bring the breadth of social sciences to the table, and the need for better education---fundamental geography, history, and actually knowing things about the things behind the things we are trying to accomplish.

In general, I would agree, but I would also add in some others: mathematics, languages and some form of the study of culture at the minimum. The crucial one, however, would be in applied epistemology or "how to think about what you are thinking about". Without that, we are stuck with factoids....

Let's hope that somewhere in current generations, there are some young grad students like Ambassador Crocker and Rory Stewart setting off to walk across a region and really learn it's ways and byways. We are sure to need them later.

Funny you should mention that, I have one right now :D. The problem is getting the funds for them to do their research and all of the structural problems with it as well (e.g. ethics boards [IRBs], supervisory and university approval, field access, etc.). Tricky, that...

Steve the Planner

09-26-2009, 03:33 AM

Marct:

Right---How to think about things.

I assume that's what you are trying to inculcate through Interdisciplinary Studies.

First get some subject area background(s). Next, what does it mean, and how can you discover that?

A constant task in a world that's driven by stovepipes, administrative and political imperatives, and very narrow cognitive lenses.

Steve

Steve the Planner

09-26-2009, 03:57 AM

Marct:

I hope someone goes for a walk through Turkmenistan and westward. Some day, some time, our world might have much to be revealed there.

I spent a lot of time studying Khanaqin and the surrounding areas. Passes and population movements that go back to the dawn of time, and the Silk Road.

But that northern leg intrigues me the most. Ah, Samarkand...

Steve

Dayuhan

09-28-2009, 08:10 AM

Let's hope that somewhere in current generations, there are some young grad students like Ambassador Crocker and Rory Stewart setting off to walk across a region and really learn it's ways and byways. We are sure to need them later.

I have to wonder if the graduate students that periodically and cluelessly stumble across my own chosen remote region of the developing world will someday be looked to as experts on our ways and byways.

The horror, the horror...

William F. Owen

09-28-2009, 08:39 AM

NGA does geophysical mapping.

HTT does anthropology.

CAs do the folks in front of them.

DoD does military stuff.

Intel does spooky stuff.

Kind of implies that actually a lot of folks have no idea what they are doing in terms of overall purpose. Very brave and very committed, no doubt, but why five separate functions to do what the British did with two for 250 years? - and it worked.

I will not say that making "Anthropology" part of so-called COIN, or thinking in terms of "Human Terrain" were acts of gross stupidity, but I do believe them to extremely misguided, and now part of the problem.

Backwards Observer

09-28-2009, 12:35 PM

From Wressley Of The Foreign Office (1888) by Rudyard Kipling:

If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.
Even the secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an over-driven Executive Officer to take census of wheat-weevils through a district of five thousand square miles.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wressley_of_the_Foreign_Office

Steve the Planner

09-28-2009, 01:21 PM

Backwards Observer:

Love the quote. Not to appear to overly reliant on prior hard-learned lessons of just the British, I bet the Russians learned or re-learned a lot, too.

William:

The big problem, as I see it, is the inter-reliance on uncoordinated and unverified components. NGA, for example, obtained some vague notion of Iraq's provincial structure in 1992---pretty inaccurate, but as good as it got then. This data was transcribed to the UN. Most sources then cited and relied on either the UN or NGA data, and it became memorialized as gospel.

Then, when it came time to create district and sub-district lines for these supposed provinces, somebody else (God knows who) created another set of lines that they thought looked OK, and in turn pushed them into the NGA/UN data sets---another gospel source.

Problem one: As with Afghanistan, provincial, district and sub-district lines in conflict areas are, in fact, a locally dynamic factor, as national and local actors vie for increased status, or seek to diminish an opponent's status. Unlike the US, where political/administrative lines are stable and consistent, these political/administrative boundaries are, in fact, highly dynamic parts of the conflict. Not stable, not set in stone, and, in many instances, highly contested.

Problem two: Factual basis of boundary changes is a source and evidence of conflict. Tracking native legislative history of formal governmental boundary line changes in conflict areas is, in effect, a forensic analysis of the gamesmanship preceding conflict. Some official did wrestle the controls to formally challenge another official's fiefdom by actually adopting a governmental change. Is the formally adopted present structure, therefore, a cause of the conflict which, if enforced, perpetuates it? How do we reconcile these boundary disputes and key conflict elements if we don't recognize them?

Problem three: Facts disagree with figures. If you obtain copies of the prior Iraqi census data, and attempt to reconcile it with more recent projections, you must follow the flow of changing boundaries and governmental relationships or you are just missing the point. In 1976, for example, Sadaam substantially restructured Baghdad, Kirkuk (Tameem), Diyala, Irbil and Ninewa Provinces by transferring districts, quaddas, and lesser units from one area to another. Thus, the census records for Ninewa (previously Mosul Province), may or may not include any number of different configurations (including the de facto later separation of Kurdish areas). What I routinely see in all US and derivative map sources, is, for example, an inaccurate arrangement of provincial and lesser units, which, in fact, means that US maps sources are incorrect, and cannot be reconciled with Iraqi census data, or other related political/admin civilian data. It doesn't take any speculation to know that profound mapping errors directly correlate to inaccurate collateral data, such as census and pop figures. Garbage in/Garbage Out.

So the question is, when is the US going to understand this? How can you hope to master the people, land and resources of an area when you don't even know where and what it is?

Geophysical accuracy, like remote drone-based intel, does not tell you what is going on down there, what the nature of conflict is, or how to plan and implement effective solutions. For that, the US needs to integrate a reliable and real-time data source with actionable information, which, to date, it does not have.

Steve

Steve the Planner

09-28-2009, 01:31 PM

PS:

Against the context of egregiously deficient overall civilian mapping errors, and inaccurate/irreconcilable data, the inception of piecemeal anthropological studies, as currently applied, only adds to the confusion, blinding decision-makers from reasonable understandings of the relationship between more important levels of societal interaction across the conflict space.

Nice to know stuff, but no relevant context to incorporate it into.

Lost balls in tall grass. Unfortunately, as Defense Secretary Gates notes, the only way to know about the place is by being on the ground---but you have to know what you are looking for. Sending an accountant into the kitchen of a restaurant may give you a good handle on cost control but it is not going to improve the quality of the food.

marct

09-28-2009, 02:00 PM

One of the truly frustrating things, for me at least, is the compartmentalization of "Anthropology" along extremely narrow lines. Some of us use the older definition of the discipline, which is much wider - The Science of Man [Humanity]. I'll admit, it has gone out of vogue with a lot of my more "post-modern" colleagues but, hey, I've always defined myself as a "pre-modernist". Back when I was teaching Intro to Anth, I would use one of the "modern" text books and, as a way of contrasting it, I would use a "textbook" written for the "intelligent layman" back in 1885 by Daniel Wilson (available here (http://marctyrrell.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/wilson-anthropology-1885.pdf) if anyone is interested).

Steve the Planner

09-29-2009, 02:55 AM

Marct:

Same with planning.

If you are in the US, Canada or Europe, lights safely turn on in your house, garbage gets picked up, and roads function because of planning.

But most people never see it.

But their views come from perceptions of planning failures, conflict, and bureaucracy. Negative stuff.

What are you gonna do?

Steve

Van

09-29-2009, 03:28 AM

... the older definition of the discipline, ...- The Science of Man [Humanity]. ..."post-modern" colleagues but, hey, I've always defined myself as a "pre-modernist"...

What the U.S. DoD wants and urgently needs is the nineteenth century ethnographers, rather than the twenty-first century, post-modernist cultural anthropologists. The XXIst Cent. folks are (mostly) so busy arguing how the mating habits of the Carjackistani indigenous peoples are a proof of the Neo-Post-Feminist-Gender-Roles relationship to Marxist revolutionary philosophy and ethnocentric hegemony when considered with a heuristic model, that they are unwilling to make themselves useful.

They appear a lot more concerned with what is "in vogue" than what is practical.

Keep fighting the good fight Marc!

Steve the Planner

09-29-2009, 04:11 AM

Van:

I think what you are really talking about in earlier days is classical Geographers that were out mapping the world, its land, people and infrastructure. More the people/place side of Geology which, at that time, was scouring the rocks of the globe to find minerals and resources.

Even geography, in later years, evolved its own schools of Marxist Geographers, Economic Geographers, Demographers, etc... (Tower of Babel)

I agree with your point however, that what the military needs, is a consolidated source for the people, land and infrastructure information (classical people, place, thing geography) that drives the conflict zone. It is a product that has not been produced, to date in the areas that matter.

Prior to the 1960's when the State Department began to dissolve (budget cuts), every embassy had a geographic officer whose job was to scour his AO for maps, studies, reports, census data, tribal and religious affiliations, and send them home for consolidated study. It just doesn't happen any more, but the info is still needed for the same reasons.

Steve

Van

09-30-2009, 01:34 AM

Steve,
I was being very specific, and thinking of colonial England of the Victorian era. Usually, "Victorian" is used as a derogatory term, but the ethnographers of the colonies often performed strategic intelligence collection, while aiming at an FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) or FRGS (...Geographical Society).

I'm still trying (not very hard right now, but it is on my 'to-do' list) to get a copy of Margaret Mead's proposal for regional ethnogeographical specialist training (saw a reference to it in Anthropological Intelligence (http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MUZPPR2KS0DW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)). She outlined a two year course of training, and from the reference, it sounded exactly like what we need. And as important as regional specialists are, we must plan on guessing wrong about which regions matter, and keep a lesson plan for how to train soldiers to become ethnographers.

I say 'soldiers' because in the social sciences, American academia goes out of its way to present itself as anti-military. So they can go do something primative and ethnic with themselves while we train reliable people to use their tools the way we need them to. To quote Roberto J. Gonzalez in American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain (http://www.amazon.com/review/R190FPMYGPR3QX/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm), "If at times my words carry traces of bitterness, it is unintentional", but from where I sit, the social scientists started the hostility (c.f. "Anthropological Intelligence"; discusses WW I era contention and hostility).

Steve the Planner

09-30-2009, 01:58 AM

Oh, yeah. Margaret Mead's Training Manuals.

In Iraq, we used Amazon to track down the old British ag studies from the 1950s.

With the UN DIBS Team, we had folks going back and forth to the Cambridge Library for the British Colonial Records, although they are available on disk for about $3,000.

Maybe Amazon would get you Margaret Mead?

Steve

Van

09-30-2009, 02:29 AM

I've tried Amazon, Google Books, and other web searches. As far as I can tell, I need to write to an institutional collection that holds the original.

The British Royal Society appears to have a lot of their stuff on line, might be worth checking for anthro material.

Steve the Planner

09-30-2009, 03:22 AM

As I recall, there was like an East-West Institute in Hawaii, very sociological.

Maybe inter-library loan through an institution like East-West.

Steve

marct

09-30-2009, 03:55 AM

Hi Guys,

(sorry, I'm on and off with my day jobs...)

I was being very specific, and thinking of colonial England of the Victorian era. Usually, "Victorian" is used as a derogatory term, but the ethnographers of the colonies often performed strategic intelligence collection, while aiming at an FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) or FRGS (...Geographical Society).

Back when I was teaching Anthro theory, I used to "request and require" that my students actually read Victorian Era work. Some of it is off, some is weirdly biased to our present views, and some of it is freakin' brilliant stuff. Despite the wide range of material, what is crucial about the era is the generalist or renaissance breadth of data collected and methods used.

I'm still trying (not very hard right now, but it is on my 'to-do' list) to get a copy of Margaret Mead's proposal for regional ethnogeographical specialist training (saw a reference to it in Anthropological Intelligence (http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MUZPPR2KS0DW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)). She outlined a two year course of training, and from the reference, it sounded exactly like what we need. And as important as regional specialists are, we must plan on guessing wrong about which regions matter, and keep a lesson plan for how to train soldiers to become ethnographers.

If you've got the reference and where it is located, I can try and get a copy for you - shoot me an email....

I say 'soldiers' because in the social sciences, American academia goes out of its way to present itself as anti-military. So they can go do something primative and ethnic with themselves while we train reliable people to use their tools the way we need them to. To quote Roberto J. Gonzalez in American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain (http://www.amazon.com/review/R190FPMYGPR3QX/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm), "If at times my words carry traces of bitterness, it is unintentional", but from where I sit, the social scientists started the hostility (c.f. "Anthropological Intelligence"; discusses WW I era contention and hostility).

Hmm, I'll reserve comments on first causes until we can sit down and chat over beers :cool:. You are certainly right that there is a fairly strong anti-military bias in North American anthropology and many other academic disciplines. I should point out, however, that that is often coupled with a fairly extreme political bias as well and the two are often confused by everyone including the academics :wry:.

Cheers,

Marc

Van

09-30-2009, 06:37 PM

Hmm, I'll reserve comments on first causes until we can sit down and chat over beers .:cool:

Next time you're on Oahu, the first one is on me.

The citation from Anthropological Intelligence:

Mead, Margaret. 1943. "On the Use of Living Sources in Regional Studies: General Considerations." Suggested materials for training of Regional Specialists Army Program, prepared in collaboration with the Council on Intercultural Relations, n.d., MM, Box 25

MM= Margaret Mead Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Damn college professors! You offer to help and force me to figure out the answer. I hadn't chased down the "mm" acronym before.:wry:

But if you know of a PDF or other soft copy, that would be excellent.

Thanks!

marct

09-30-2009, 10:17 PM

I'll see what I can find. No promises, but it's worth a shot.

Cheers,

Marc

Van

10-08-2009, 01:59 AM

Surferbeetle

10-08-2009, 09:38 AM

I was being very specific, and thinking of colonial England of the Victorian era. Usually, "Victorian" is used as a derogatory term, but the ethnographers of the colonies often performed strategic intelligence collection, while aiming at an FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) or FRGS (...Geographical Society).

I'm still trying (not very hard right now, but it is on my 'to-do' list) to get a copy of Margaret Mead's proposal for regional ethnogeographical specialist training (saw a reference to it in Anthropological Intelligence (http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MUZPPR2KS0DW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)). She outlined a two year course of training, and from the reference, it sounded exactly like what we need. And as important as regional specialists are, we must plan on guessing wrong about which regions matter, and keep a lesson plan for how to train soldiers to become ethnographers.

Van,

Maybe it starts early...Mrs B., my sixth grade home teacher, was very committed to her geography and she made it fun...:wry: Here are three references that might be of use to you:

I have no financial interest in Biblio (http://www.biblio.com/), however I appreciate their offerings and customer service. Here (http://www.biblio.com/search.php?author=Mead%2C+Margaret&format=&title=&keyisbn=&program=1002) are their current Margaret Mead offerings.

The East-West Center (http://www.eastwestcenter.org/research/) Library at UH-Manoa was always an enjoyable place, when I lived on Oahu.

As an overview of the importance of geography/history The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Nations-Some-Rich/dp/0393318885) by David S. Landes is a fantastic read.

marct

10-08-2009, 01:27 PM

Hi Van,

Library of Congress has been amazingly (for a gov't agency) helpful. A copy of the Margaret Mead document is on the way. I'll be receiving it as a hardcopy, but will be more than willing to share for academic purposes.

I'd definitely like a copy!

Cheers,

Marc

Kivlonic

10-08-2009, 08:58 PM

Van,
Any way you could post the Margaret Mead doc, I really like a copy to.
Kivlonic

Van

10-08-2009, 10:41 PM

Marc & Kivlonic,
The document is copyrighted material, and I don't have a copy yet. Let me see the paper and the copyright date before I go making promises. If you assure me there is academic purpose, I don't have a problem.

marct

10-09-2009, 06:11 PM

Hi Van,

Marc & Kivlonic,
The document is copyrighted material, and I don't have a copy yet. Let me see the paper and the copyright date before I go making promises. If you assure me there is academic purpose, I don't have a problem.

No worries on that score from my end - I am an academic, and one of my research areas is anthropology and the military.

Cheers,

Marc

Billy Ruffian

10-18-2009, 06:41 PM

Library of Congress has been amazingly (for a gov't agency) helpful. A copy of the Margaret Mead document is on the way. I'll be receiving it as a hardcopy, but will be more than willing to share for academic purposes.

The practitioners of the Librarian's craft are always helpful or else we execute them at our Free Mason/Library meetings.

Steve the Planner

10-18-2009, 06:49 PM

Or, like the uber-librarian, Mao, they schedule us for re-education.

Steve

Disclosure: Married to a librarian.

slapout9

10-18-2009, 08:31 PM

The practitioners of the Librarian's craft are always helpful or else we execute them at our Free Mason/Library meetings.

J. Edgar Hoover was a Librarian at the Library Of Congress (I think) the original FBI Intelligence system was based on the card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System.....then they went to computers and have been going down hill ever since:wry:

Steve the Planner

10-18-2009, 11:31 PM

Sometimes, organizing information on a systematic basis creates its own insights and connections.

I was just looking back to an issue for the on-going Iraqi drought. Seems like the best reports and recommendations assemble and organize the work of expert, rather thanbeing the work of the experts themselves.

Rory Stewart's group estimates that there are 5,000 foreign Afghan experts in Kabul these days. Wonder how to orchestrate them?

Ain't it grand.

Steve

marct

10-19-2009, 02:03 PM

Hi Steve,

Sometimes, organizing information on a systematic basis creates its own insights and connections.

And other times it creates its own reality where none existed before ;).

I'm putting the finishing touches on a presentation that goes into this, but we just had an interesting short article show up that illustrates it nicely (see here (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/10/widening-the-spectrum-of-insur/)). Still thinking about that one, but there are some extremely interesting points coming out of it.

Cheers,

Marc

Rex Brynen

12-03-2009, 10:18 PM

Panel Criticizes Military’s Use of Embedded Anthropologists (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/arts/04anthro.html?ref=global-home)

By PATRICIA COHEN
New York Times
Published: December 3, 2009

A two-year-old Pentagon program that assigns social scientists to work with military units in Iraq and Afghanistan has come under sharp criticism from a panel of anthropologists who argue that the undertaking is dangerous, unethical and unscholarly.

The committee, which released the report on Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, the discipline’s largest professional group, has been studying the program since its inception in 2007.

The panel concluded that the Pentagon program, called the Human Terrain System, has two conflicting goals: counterinsurgency and research. Collecting data in the context of war, where coercion and offensive tactics are always potentially present, “can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology,” the report says.

The full 73 page report of the AAA Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities can be found here (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/arts/04anthro-report.pdf).

davidbfpo

12-03-2009, 10:57 PM

I am sure anthropology was around in the World Wars and since 1945, did anthropology have no relevant use then? I suspect not, the subject has not changed, just the people. This type of comment annoys me.

Van

12-03-2009, 11:47 PM

David,
Read Anthropological Intelligence (http://www.amazon.com/Anthropological-Intelligence-Deployment-American-Anthropology/dp/0822342375/) by David H. Price. He does a good job of explaining the history of the antipathy between the military and academic anthropologists, and how it goes back to WW I, based on events going back to the 19th Century British Empire.

Steve the Planner

12-04-2009, 04:45 AM

Perhaps I'm the odd duck in this bunch, but I spent a lot of time studying the inherent conflict issues in Northern Iraq from a number of different socio-economic, demographic, ethnic, religious and historical perspectives, and I just believe that whatever HTS was doing, it missed the mark by such a wide margin that the question has to go far beyond simple ethical and competence issues---all too often, the work and advice was just the poor quality you would expect from taking some anthropologists and throwing them, based on short visits, a handful of first hand interviews, and, all too often, as the report indicates, asking these folks to speculate on answers far beyond their capabilities and competence. Too often, the results were GIGO, and, in many instances missed both the right questions, and the meaningful answers to those questions.

Lately, I have been reading a lot of Gertrude Bell's works to try to peel back the myth that she and the wily First Sea Lord invented Iraq in the post-WWI Treaties. Personally, the more I study that myth, the more it looks like the rest of the mythologies from that era, especially related to Bell and Lawrence.

Instead, what I increasingly see is that Bell was a good observer of social, political and administrative patterns, and an agressive researcher and observer. But, when you break up the boundaries of Iraq that she supposedly "made up," all were pretty self-defined, self-defining, or undefined, both before and after her mythical whimsy in 1920.

The southern boundary between Kuwait and the Ottoman Empire pre-dated 1920.

The Iranian Border to the West was, according to Bell even, defined by the pre-existing Iranian boundary which, after the war, Russian troops were guarding at the time of British occupancy. The British Colonial instruction, upon contact with russians, was don't go there.

The Eastern Border was never a border, but a well-defined historical corridor between Baghdad and Jerusalem/Jordan. The Hashemite Empire, to the East, was not a drug-induced fantasy of Lawrence and Bell, but a substantial fact on the ground, born of ancient routes and connections, including access for the substantial Baghdad Jewish population and Jerusalem. In fact, the desert boundaries between Saudi Arabia, to the southeast, and Iraq weren't established until decades after Bell's death, and, quite frankly, nobody cared because they were just open desert.

The northern boundary, which I'm still studying, appears to be a wash of conflicting boundaries, all related to ancient Central Asia moving from loose confederations to the highly-defined physical boundaries of modern nation-states, along with, at that time, the background conflicts and ethnic purges of the Ottomans (and, by occupation, the Brits) in that region---the genocides went far beyond just the Armenians (who had played footsy with the russians, but extended to the Kurds and Turkmen). One could argue that, to a great extend, the Northern Boundary (beyond Mosul Province) was, while grounded in pre-existing Ottoman provincial boundaries, an unwilling division of problems by all parties.

I'm still hunting down the long run history of Turkmen and Kurds (including their Persian and Afghan links), but the only conclusion so far is that it is very complicated.

In one Bell report, she explains how, as the British occupied the Ottoman Empire's three Iraqi southern provinces (Mosul, Baghdad and Basrah), the Ottomans took all their maps and records and hit the road, leaving few if any records. The Treaty of Sevres maps show intricate details of villayets (provinces) and districts.

In fact, though, the Brits turned to the locals, who were already hard-wired by the previous Ottoman systems of sub-districts, districts and provinces (villayets)---so the British Colonial officers suggest that they worked out the sub-provincial structure, but, I believe that the reality is that they were primarily just relying on the locals to re-bound the ancient nahias, qaddas and villayets that were both well-known and logical.

There was, in fact, a great map-maker in Iraq---Sadaam. Especially in 1976,he took a meet-axe to the ancient and well-settled provincial boundary systems, carving up Irbil among Ninewa and Tamim. Butchering Tamim and Baghdad province, and leaving everyone confused and in disarray (his purpose). Behind that, he did similar violence to the integrity of district boundaries in places like Sinjar.

Last, after manufacturing, from the whole cloth, his new maps of Iraq, he proceeded to change the facts on the ground to match his maps. Bulldozing tens of thousands of homes, hundreds of villages, and, if they were lucky, resettling the populations (the less fortunate just disappeared).

In Bell's time, most of these "places" like Tikrit were little more than cattle stops at the time she went through (not that they di not have authentic ancient histories), as most of Iraq was before the huge urbanization trends (another big sphere of underlying social destabilization continuing today).

We built the econ, market and infrastructure maps in 2008 through MND-North and NGA (the stock in trade info of any Bell Era mapmaker), so it was a gap that, incredibly, no one had gotten around to it in five years of occupancy... just a lot of tribal touchy-feely stuff that Bell and Lawrence would have looked at as useless.

I've been gradually grinding through the reams of old census data I came home with last December, but the stories told by all the numbers define the patterns and flows of all this stuff played out over the social, political and physical landscape.

So we stand here today in 2009, and these maps and that bloody mapmaker are the key and continuing conflict drivers in much of Iraq's disputed areas today and into the future.

The US missed this entire sphere of what was driving much of the conflict and confusion in Iraq, and still doesn't know it today.

Of course, these field anthropologists missed a lot.

Sorry for the negativity, but, from what I have seen, and continue to study, the HTS system provided little useful real analysis.

Beelzebubalicious

12-04-2009, 11:42 AM

It was an AAA panel so definitely not un-biased. I haven't read the report but I wonder where their data comes from. The question to me is not whether they provided rigorous scientific analysis and advice (not really possible) but whether they were able to further understanding and help commanders make better decisions. Lastly, it's like those USG IG audits. Hard not to find a lot of fault. Much harder to think in context and evaluate practical effectiveness.

I'll take a look and see, but I wouldn't give much credence to a report written by the AAA on this subject.

Rex Brynen

12-04-2009, 12:32 PM

I'll take a look and see, but I wouldn't give much credence to a report written by the AAA on this subject.

It is a rather thoughtful report in many respects, IMHO.

As is evident from the report, part of the tension between the AAA and the HTS arises from portrayals of the latter as "anthropology" when much of what the HTTs do meets neither the methodological nor ethical expectations of the scholarly field. In this regard, it is hard to think who can speak more authoritatively on the issue than the AAA.

The value of the HTS and the larger normative questions concerned are not issues that the report attempts to address, other than in passing.

Steve the Planner

12-04-2009, 01:04 PM

The report looks like what I saw a lot of from disconnected civilians dropped on a FOB without a whole lot of movement/access resources, clearly defined missions, or good translators.

They didn't see much, couldn't go out much, generated a lot of powerpoints, though, surfed the net, and sent a lot of emails home. Always billed overtime.

One of my PRT colleagues at a faraway satellite in Northen Iraq was visited upon by a CIA team. He said he was surprised by their questions; suggested they really didn't understand what was going on or what to ask.

If a CIA team couldn't effectively engage the problem, how could you expect a "windshield" anthropologist, often with little contact or support from the military, to reach it?

As just a dumbass technocrat, I would look at the quality and character of translations and just scratch my head. I read one report requesting urgent repairs for electrical generators that demonstrated the problem. The provincial DGs were asking for funding for enclosures to protect their generators from dust and heat. The translator turned ity into "porches" which the US civilian funders thought was something unnecessary for the Iraqi's to sit out on while watching the generator.

The sadder mistranslation stories, which most of you know first hand, suggest that even if you were told the right answer, you may not have gotten it.

More often, too, we got two answers---the first at a meeting with others present, and the second later in private (180 degree difference).

You have to be pretty good to punch through all of that as a visiting civilian.

Like the AAA report indicates, there were buck sergeants on their second tour whho knew more than most of the reports they got.

More important, the HTS after-action comments sound pretty reminsicent of the PRT de-briefs done by USIP. A tremendous amount of wasted human resources, there at great very great costs (not just monitary).

Van

12-04-2009, 04:41 PM

The AAA's positions and leaders are so rabidly anti-military and anti-U.S. government, that any report by them will be a hatchet job. They may have made valid criticisms, but their own extremism ruins their credibility.

Note that in the executive summary the AAA stresses HTS as a de facto intelligence asset. For the most vocal members of AAA, this is like stating that HTS requires its members to violate babies, drink human blood, and oppose gay rights. In the AAA's world, the Intelligence Community is the standard of evil.

The AAA sees an opening to attack the U.S. military by claiming special expertise and insisting that they are the only ones with the real authority to be the arbitors of what right and wrong are for HTS. The phenomenal arrogance of this position is beyond rational discussion.

Look at their sources: the Open Anthropology blog, (now Zero Anthropology) authored by a guy who openly celebrated the murder of Paula Lloyd; American Counterinsurgency by a guy who passes judgement on current programs based on his opinions of things that happened decades ago and insists that anything an insurgent does is morally justified; and "anonymous sources" (as easily some nutjob in his mom's basement as someone with genuine information).

And on the lighter side, Small Wars Journal was cited as a source for the report... :wry:

marct

12-04-2009, 05:17 PM

Well, after slogging through the entire report, I do want to make a few "rebuttal" comments, Van :D......

The AAA's positions and leaders are so rabidly anti-military and anti-U.S. government, that any report by them will be a hatchet job. They may have made valid criticisms, but their own extremism ruins their credibility.

First off, the report wasn't written by the AAAs leaders. When you look at the list of authors, several jump out who would be very hard to call "rabidly anti-military", i.e. Kerry Fosher (MCIA) and Laura McNamara (http://est.sandia.gov/staff/laura.html) (Sandia). There are, of course, several noted "anti-military", or at least anti-HTS people on the committe (e.g. David Price).

Note that in the executive summary the AAA stresses HTS as a de facto intelligence asset. For the most vocal members of AAA, this is like stating that HTS requires its members to violate babies, drink human blood, and oppose gay rights. In the AAA's world, the Intelligence Community is the standard of evil.

Unfortunate, but true. It is reflective of a general misunderstanding both of what "intelligence" means in a military context and what Boas was opposing (which was covert intelligence gathering under the cover of being an Anthropologist). The report itself does deal with the first issue in a fairly decent manner.

The AAA sees an opening to attack the U.S. military by claiming special expertise and insisting that they are the only ones with the real authority to be the arbitors of what right and wrong are for HTS. The phenomenal arrogance of this position is beyond rational discussion.

As a professional association, the AAA has an obligation to be concerned with how its profession is being constructed and construed in public debates. Arguing otherwise would be to argue that the AMA should say nothing about how medicine should be practiced. I'll also point out that organizations are not capable of action - they are vehicles (and covers) for people taking action, so ascribing a motive to an organization is tricky at best.

As an organization, the AAA has a limited control over the practice of its discipline, much less control than, say, the APA or the AMA. One of the really interesting discussions in the report is in the conclusion: "Is it Anthropology"? to which they basically argue that it isn't.

Look at their sources: the Open Anthropology blog, (now Zero Anthropology) authored by a guy who openly celebrated the murder of Paula Lloyd; American Counterinsurgency by a guy who passes judgement on current programs based on his opinions of things that happened decades ago and insists that anything an insurgent does is morally justified; and "anonymous sources" (as easily some nutjob in his mom's basement as someone with genuine information).

And on the lighter side, Small Wars Journal was cited as a source for the report... :wry:

And a whole bunch of other ones too such as Military Review, Foreign Policy, etc. and, yes, us :D.

Personally, I thought it was quite a decent report given the constraints of their data (see section 3. Sources of Information on the Program). It is also crucial to remember that the audience for the report was the membership of the AAA and other Anthropologists, so of course it will use our disciplinary frameworks and language.

I need to think about it for a few more days before I put anything solid together on it, though.

Cheers,

Marc

Steve the Planner

12-05-2009, 08:05 PM

Van:

The AAA sees an opening to attack the U.S. military by claiming special expertise and insisting that they are the only ones with the real authority to be the arbitors of what right and wrong are for HTS. The phenomenal arrogance of this position is beyond rational discussion.

I did not read the AAA report as an attack on the military, per se, or its' legitimate interest in collecting or using relevant background research, including kinship and cultural connections.

They draw the line, however on calling this anthropology, and trying to key the type and quality of HTS field work it into a relationship with their professional sphere and legitimate academic arena.

As a geographer, and demographer by training, I found nothing in their report that remotely suggested any negativity about the use of mapping, demographics, etc... Notwithstanding, my experience with "windshield" anthropology (informal and often inaccurate/misleading) of the kind they reviewed, is the same---it lacks a professional standard for reliable decision-making,and sucks up valuable resources and "headspace" that should be directed to more technical amd fact-based analysis.

As a professional civilian planner, and member of the American Planning Association, and its professional association---the American Institute of Certified Planners, we have very specific professional standards, and an adopted Ethics standard which, in part, requires professional approaches to analysis and opinions provided.

Although few professional civilian planners are engaged in Iraq or Afghanistan, either on the civilian or military side, I could certainly understand a circumstance where, as with HTS/AAA, one group was claiming a planning study was done in a professional manner, while an actual AICP provided a contrary position based on actual standards that contradicted the first---and that became a professional dispute as os the HTS/AAA matter.

In Iraq, Research Triangle Institute (RTI), through LGP/USAID, worked in support of development of Provincial Development Plans in 2007. Some of the work was of very poor quality, attributable to ground conditions and a lack of relevant facts, but where those conditions allowed (such as in the KRG areas), the work was remarkably good and in conformance with the professional standards expected of a planner anywhere in the World: Step 1: Background Assessment of Current Conditions, including Populations to Be Served; Status of Current Systems, Services and Conditions; and Structure of Governance and Government Capacity; Step 2: Identify Intended Goals/Visions; Step 3: Based on 1 and 2, Identify Factors which need to be addressed; Step 4: Identify a Plan, Process, Schedule, and Preliminary Budgetary Requirements Needed. Behind every step was the highest level possible of public engagement (sometimes very little, and sometimes a great deal, dependent on the province's condition).

Notwithstanding that later conditions allowed for substantial refinement, and, sometimes, complete re-write, I still believe that those 2007 PDS snapshots developed by RTI/USAID were significant documents prepared in complete adherence to APA/AICP professional standards. And based on the best information available to an uncleared civilian effort.

In part, my regret, however, was that that civilian process in 2007 was not, in most instances, informed by the best available information and condition assessments that could have been obtained had the US Military understood and supported the activity. It would, in my opinion, have avoided substantial delays in civilian reconstruction, and avoided wasting billions of US tax payer dollars, and have provided the substantial opportunity for synchronization of US and Iraqi efforts.

But that is not a criticism of RTI/USAID, but, in substantial part, a criticism of the military's need to substantially change it's civilian engagement process, CMO capabilities, and HTS program---they missed the human terrain that mattered, and it was all in the professional technical space of technical evaluation and planning. Traditional APA/AICP standards and methodology should have been used, and not disputed "windshield" anthropology---but they sucked all of the air out of the room (and budgets and staffing), and the military remained, in many instances, blind to other more obvious and straight-forward Ways Forward.

All that aside, I have comparitively reviewed the work of routine US contractors like Berger/USAID/DoD for "windshield" planning at the outset of the War and throughout. Oftentimes, you wonder why that type of product was actually paid for, and shake my head when, in some instances, it was actually used.

I'll take legitimate professional APA/AICP approaches like RTI used anyday.

Steve

Surferbeetle

01-12-2010, 03:42 PM

From the January 18, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 17 Weekly Standard, Getting to Know You: (http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/getting-know-you) The U.S. military maps the human terrain of Afghanistan BY Claudia Anderson

They are also reminders that human terrain is always complex and elusive terrain, lacking the stable definition of a mountain pass or valley floor. The Human Terrain Teams and other innovations by which the U.S. armed forces are lessening their ignorance of the Afghan people are no doubt imperfect, even crude, instruments for meeting the challenges of a war where the enemy is at home and we come from far away, geographically and culturally. Regardless of the magnitude of the challenge, the HTTs and the rest will be judged by their success on the ground. Still, it is not too soon to recognize the energy and imagination with which the armed forces are working to apply their lessons learned.

Rounding out the morning was Professor Michael Bishop, expert in something called Geographic Information Science. He showed a rapt audience how using remote sensing and computer maps of Afghanistan they can display numerous physical features of the country—soil quality, vegetation, water, snow, cloud cover, and many more—at high resolution at the click of a mouse. This capability has myriad applications, from the design of irrigation systems to prediction of floods to the location of safe construction sites. It will be made available via a “reachback” system now being developed to allow HTTs to consult distant experts and databases by email.

During their time in Omaha, HTT trainees have classes in the history and politics of Afghanistan in the 20th century, Pashtun society and culture, women in Afghanistan, religion in Afghanistan, the Afghan Army and its evolving structure, the globalization of religious extremism, medicine in Afghanistan, and the role of drugs in international terrorism. Six of their ten instructors are Afghans. It’s during their longer stay at Fort Leavenworth that they receive basic survival training and concentrate on social science methods and analysis. Some are sent to participate in exercises at a simulated Afghan village in Death Valley.

Steve the Planner

01-12-2010, 07:06 PM

"Does Iraq have anything like the US Postal Zip Code System? "

Yes, it does.

The most astounding thing for many folks is that it has the same types of property tax registration system as the US, too. State, County, Tax Map and Parcel. All keyed to the adopted administrative boundary maps.

Seeing those in early 2008 reminded me that, if they hadn't had one like ours, there would have to be one pretty similar. But there was.

And it all keys into the Land Records and cadestral maps, and census maps. How many goats and internet cafes per census block?

A beautiful system for data mining on a property/person specific basis.

On of the things the Embassy DOT Attaches was working on last year was the formal naming system for roads/place names needed for international road mapping and directional signage systems/standards.

In and around the census, you will see the formalization of many of these things with some pretty worthwhile tweaks.

After international naming standards are adopted/applied, a lot of the changeable/multiple names for places will go the way they did in the US when the railroads came through.

Steve

Steve the Planner

01-12-2010, 07:37 PM

PS- As one provincial census counter explained, the consequences of an error in the Saddam Era could be pretty significant, so everything was always accurately counted and reported higher (to Minisitry of Planning Census staff).

They had also been substantially uptrained by the UN pre-2003, so the census folks were pretty good.

The first "real" census, as you will often see it referred to, was 1957. This is the first one done with surveyed maps (British field surveys). The district, subdistrict/nahia/blocks are all numbered by hierarchical systems keyed into each higher admin. unit.

Basic governance structure stuff set forth in administrative decrees and reflected in the census detail sets. (A lot of folks have seen the summary tables, but not the detailed reports---or the DG field notes). Really good work.

They also break the Ethnic and Religious data down accordingly to blocks.

In Baghdad, I spent a lot of time with the folks who managed the pre-2003 administrative/intel maps. They really had a phenomenal amount of information on property ownerships, uses, infrastructure systems, cattle breeding stations, agricultural rail sidings, graves (by ethnicity)---you name it. The operating manual for pre-war Iraq. Another very good operational information resource. (And they have english symbology, since they were started by the Brits in the 50s).

Nothing about Iraq should have been a mystery to anyone---it was all there all the time -other than the mass graves and, of course, the WMD.

Steve

Steve the Planner

01-12-2010, 08:03 PM

Attached (hopefully) is an pdf of the CoSIT spreadsheet showing the approved admin structure c. 2003 (immediately pre-invasion).

slapout9

01-12-2010, 11:28 PM

Steve the Planner

01-13-2010, 12:08 AM

But what I kept finding is that knowledge is a cascading function.

The more you learn, the more you can figure out more pieces you don't know, and then fill in those blanks.

(So much of these places rely on oral traditions).

The more you already know, the more locals feel like you actually care, and aren't stupid. Oftentimes, that can lead to even more info dumps, and more stories told.

One pre-2003 map showed a huge and complete cattle operation at and above Balad (cattle breeding centers, slaughterhouses, everything), so we found some old sources about the huge operation which was nowhere evident.

Provincial folks told us about it to, but only vaguely knew the details or location (they were off by plus or minus 5 miles).

Then we all figured it out and found it using new and old mapping and site visits. The operation had been suspended after the war. The owner fled against threats. The facilities were stripped or dismantled.

Now, we knew where the veteranarian, bredding centers, coops and grain systems needed to focus.

Bottom line. An old map I found later (1886, as I recall) identified Balad by its historical name Istabalat (Cattle station/stables), where all the caravans would stop on the Silk Road to switch horses/camels, etc...

The owner was the same rich family that owned Al Warka Bank and Balad Canning Factory. These were all part and parcel of government cattle,poultry, etc... systems that were sold off after the Baaths realized that privatization had certain virtues over collectivization (plus they needed cash).

The folks who worked the spread all lived locally and took the cattle home (why you see so many cattle in and around Balad).

Balad means "town," like Balad Ruz, Town of Wheat. But Balad, the town, is actually a contraction from Istabalat, a place name/functional description that dates to the way old days. So the local pronunciation "belet" is no fluke.

Who knew?

Oh, is this stuff the intelligence somebody was looking for?

slapout9

01-13-2010, 12:57 AM

Who knew?

Oh, is this stuff the intelligence somebody was looking for?

Don't know if anybody was looking for it, but that is all critical ASCOPE information IMO. Back in my day I used a ZIP code based system to find criminals or contacts that could kead me to them.:wry:

Does A'stan have anything similar?

Steve the Planner

01-13-2010, 02:43 AM

Trouble with Afghanistan, as I understand it, is that there are a lot of different Afghanistans, so what might exist in one place might not in other.

Still, if you understand basic geography and human settlement/economic patterns, a lot gets explained.

For some reason, I used to read all those stupid field reports, and talk to folks who worked that area. I know that kind of stuff is usually just dumped as paperweights somewhere, but sometimes having actual reports from folks who have been there is sometimes useful.

In Iraq, I found the two best background resources for spot problems to be: (1) SF/MITT folks and (2) Iraqi contractors/translators/local nationals.

One guy was a contractor, always in and out of the finance office at Spiecher for one project or another that he was getting paid for. I always waylaid him for lunch and smoke to talk about what businesses used to exist where. He struck me as the kind of guy that had cased a lot of places and always had his eyes open. I did get a lot of good clues from him for what I was looking for---before he got carted away for bid fraud (oh, well).

In Baghdad though, I could always find Kurds who, like my contractor friend, had been around a lot of the North for one reason or another. Like MG Flynn's new strategy, its just about digging in every nook and cranny for what you are looking for. Somebody has been there before.

I had a friend who, as Sheriff, tried following all the known bad families, since that was where all the crime came from. Apparently, though, that wasn't PC. Something about profiling??!!

Steve

slapout9

01-13-2010, 03:49 AM

I had a friend who, as Sheriff, tried following all the known bad families, since that was where all the crime came from. Apparently, though, that wasn't PC. Something about profiling??!!

Steve

Profiling........sounds like the Sheriff was doing good Police Work.

Steve the Planner

01-13-2010, 03:51 AM

Right. That was the problem:

"Slow down, kid. You'll make the rest of us look bad!"

Steve the Planner

01-13-2010, 04:07 AM

marct:

State-of-the-art crisis mapping is/should not be static.

UN's refugee records are a great way to follow some of the motion. Refugee records and various registrations (schools, food registrations, NGO (Mercy Corps, etc...) are great ways to track the dynamics, but nobody on the Mil intel side, to my knowledge understands civilian registrations, data systems and tracking.

Same, too, with political/adminstrative maps. Westerners have little conception as to how dynamic and substantive they are as proof and symptoms of discontent/conflict. I started out as a tank commander on the "Internal" German Border---during the prior periods, the political boundaries changed as routinely as in Iraq; in fact, you can't track the data across spatial geography unless you know where was where, when.

Who reports to who, where, why, when? How did those change over time, and why?

On the UN Disputed Boundaries Team, we got a chuckle out of the first seating of the Iraqi Kirkuk Boundary Committee. Their first question (logically) was: Which Kirkuk are we studying? (Gareth Stansfield from our team published a lot of the Kirkuk issues in Summer 2009).

Problem, too, comes when (as the AAA raised), when the opponent press starts blurring lines between reconstruction, PRTs and Drones/Death Squads.

Getting good civilian information requires either personal contacts or organizational trust. Very important.

Steve

PS- I have most of the tribal, religious, ethnic data back to the 1930's on a hard drive collecting dust in my office. Nobody in Iraq had any use for it.

slapout9

01-13-2010, 02:17 PM

Right. That was the problem:

"Slow down, kid. You'll make the rest of us look bad!"

Yep! I am familiar with concept;)

Outlaw 7

01-13-2010, 04:24 PM

It should be noted that the concept of HTTs was pitched to the JIEDDO Task Force rep in Bagdah in 2006, but it was pitched along the lines of the SF Area Studies for ODA teams that would be deploying into a specific country.

BUT it was pitched with the concept of tying it into the MI flow on info collection to be used to verify information being collected on the interrogation side as there was in 2005/2006 no effective way of verifying information provided by detainees.

The presentation was forwarded to the JIEDDO Task Force and the Lincoln Group rep Andrea Jackson. What occurred out of that presentation was not what was presented which I initially think was the tie of the Lincoln Group to academia.

Who became the future Program Director--it was in fact the very same JIEDDO officer that the presentation was made to and the Lincoln Group eventually pulled out or was forced out and the program became an academic program with a total wall between them and MI as they refused to be tasked initially nor did they want to be tasked by MI via RFIs. There was a true need to tie them to the interrogation process in order to confirm or deny statements being made by detainees as it was virtually impossible in the 2005/2006 period to check anything in the way of tribal or community issues unless a specific HCT was sent out to specifically check something which naturally never happened.

The presentation made intially to JIEDDO was in fact along the lines of the old SF area studies program and when one see's today how HT is handled in assessments and IRs there is little to no difference to the former FAO area studies---so it begs the question why can not the FAOs that use to this work step up and tie into the troops on the ground thus eliminating the need for an extremley costly program that is in fact faltering and which has not become a Program of Record.

Steve the Planner

01-13-2010, 05:09 PM

Outlaw:

You really packed a mouthful in.

What was intended versus what was created.

Mission creep.

Transition from challenged project to formal program status.

Bottom line for me is that if this COIN stuff has legs in these ill-defined wars with no military solution, it needs to know more, and be more engaged on more levels than some other solution for some other problem.

I have no idea what military intelligence should or should not do as a program, but I have apretty good idea of what it needs to do (and not do) in major aspects of this application.

I first heard about HT in the context of geography---doing background people, place, thing studies to make up the recent knowledge deficit in those areas.

Then, in application, it seems to have morphed into anthropology, and field based tribal studies in support of local targeting and tactics. So everybody is doing tribal and religious mapping and papers, but nobody is assembling the background stuff that I thought was the basis for the knowledge gap.

So, I don't know how it became what it became. I do know, as MG Flynn indicates, that it has not filled the gaps adequately, and, collaterally (since US civilians were relying on the military for their work) left the whole effort unsupported in so many ways.

I'm still of the dumb-ass opinion that if the focus is on creating programs and fusion cells, it misses the point. There needs tyo be an analytical core or information resource available to set a Common Operating Picture (on a continuous learning basis), provides actionable guidance in response to challenges faced, and collects, synthesizes and uses the knowledge flow coming and going between commanders and the field.

The wiki definition of social sciences is:

"anthropology, archaeology, communication studies, cultural studies, demography, economics, history, human geography, international development, international relations, linguistics, media studies, music therapy, philology, political science and social psychology."

The fact that anthropology is the first alphabetically does not suggest to me that it is of great moment. Most of what is needed, it seems to me, can be divided into two categories:

1. Observable/Measurable Social Sciences: Geography (including basic infrastructure, systems, markets etc..), Demographics (people, counts, types (ethnicity/religion/tribe), etc..., Development & Economics, History, and Politics (political/admin systems, processes and players, really); and,

2. Interpretative Social Sciences: Anthropology, cultural studies, psychology.

Not having enough of one or the other can pose serious problems, but US terrain/imagery, while impressive and technically capable, does not encompass an end state solution for many of the important applications.Making leaps from religious or tribal data to basic economic and geographic issues is not always reasonable or productive.

As an old tank commander, I just wanted a map with terrain features. As a civilian-mil implementer, it is better for a local to draw a napkin sketch of the governance or economic system which I can later reconcile geo-spatially, and consolidate with the other napkins to, maybe, bring insight to other alternatives.

Something about intelligence theory is basic. The more you know and learn, the more you can know and apply.

Professionally, I would rather use data (scrounged and verified by any sources) to cross-check against field verification and systemic consistency (smell test)) in sets, and update those sets with field changes on as real-time a basis as possible. Then, use that knowledge base to fill in gaps for people while they fill mine. If it isn't engaged and actionable, its just another contract..

Question is: What is needed?

01-13-2010, 06:53 PM

Something about intelligence theory is basic. The more you know and learn, the more you can know and apply.

Professionally, I would rather use data (scrounged and verified by any sources) to cross-check against field verification and systemic consistency (smell test)) in sets, and update those sets with field changes on as real-time a basis as possible. Then, use that knowledge base to fill in gaps for people while they fill mine. If it isn't engaged and actionable, its just another contract..

Question is: What is needed?

You are correct with the last question--what is needed. We answer that question by knowing what the mission is IMHO and that brings us around to the discussion of the MG Flynn CNAS report (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=9412&highlight=Flynn).

The breakdown occurs in my opinion when one moves from position "the more one knows, the more one can know" (which is fine) to the position "the more one can know, the more one must know."

I'm not at all convinced that simply because we can know, for example, that the soil 10 feet below the surface at UTM grid LC 1234554321 consists of a specific form of clay that we usually need to know that. If I am planning to build another Burj Kahlifa I might need that knowledge, but I doubt it is important if I'm trying to decide where to erect my TACSAT antenna.

Steve the Planner

01-13-2010, 07:18 PM

No doubt that, on application, overkill obscures, like notifying someone that a Nigerian with a bomb is coming, but burying it in a big info dump.

A map, or any geo-spatial product should be composed for the user's purpose--not too much or too little. But the other layers still have meaning and purpose---just not to you then.

If somebody back home has a reasonably good hydro-geology assessment for well-drilling purposes that shows where and how much volume is appropriate in a certain aquifer, or soil types are a relevant condition for building or planting, it is the first level.

If I was on a military patrol, I might only be interested in the immediate situational items, but you might want more if it is for civ/mil.

On a patrol basis, it might also be nice to know for the first two or three rounds, where the routes are between market locations, which may also be used for poppies. And which is a public school versus a madrassa. Later, you might not want that on your map, but it still might be relevant (example: when are the routes used, by whom? Where do they connect to? Is the route abandoned, intermittent, only used at night?)

How is that kind of information compiled, made available, fed? Is there broader meaning in the aggregate of a lot of little pieces sometimes?

Steve

davidbfpo

02-07-2010, 11:50 AM

Unable to clarify if the Reachback Center's unclassified product 'My Cousins Enemy is My Friend A Study of Pashtun Tribes' is known here, but hat tip to Patrick Porter's blog: http://offshorebalancer.wordpress.com for drawing attention to it (Pub. Sept '09): http://www.scribd.com/doc/19595786/My-Cousins-Enemy-is-My-Friend-A-Study-of-Pashtun-Tribes-

Military officers and policymakers, in their search for solutions to problems in Afghanistan, have considered empowering “the tribes” as one possible way to reduce rates of violence. In this report, the HTS Afghanistan RRC warns that the desire for “tribal engagement” in Afghanistan, executed along the lines of the recent “Surge” strategy in Iraq, is based on an erroneous understanding of the human terrain. In fact, the way people in rural Afghanistan organize themselves is so different from rural Iraqi culture that calling them both “tribes” is deceptive. “Tribes” in Afghanistan do not act as unified groups, as they have recently in Iraq. For the most part they are not hierarchical, meaning there is no “chief” with whom to negotiate (and from whom to expect results). They are notorious for changing the form of their social organization when they are pressured by internal dissension or external forces. Whereas in some other countries tribes are structured like trees, “tribes” in Afghanistan are like jellyfish.1

Instead of “tribal engagement” in Afghanistan, the HTS Afghanistan RRC advocates for “local knowledge, cultural understanding, and local contacts,” in the words of David Kilcullen.2 There are no shortcuts. What this means in practical terms is a need to focus on ground truth, looking at local groups and their conflicts, rather than arriving with preconceived notions of how people should or might, given the proper incentives, organize themselves tribally. Most of Afghanistan has not been “tribal” in the last few centuries, and the areas that might have been (majority-Pashtun areas that make up parts of Regional Commands South and East) have changed drastically over the past 30 years.

Pashtuns may choose to organize themselves along many different forms of identity, and may be conscious of belonging to more than one form of community simultaneously. Pashtuns’ motivations for choosing how to identify and organize politically— including whether or not to support the Afghan government or the insurgency—are flexible and pragmatic. “Tribe” is only one potential choice of identity among many, and not necessarily the one that guides people’s decision-making.

I am sure it is of relevance.

Rex Brynen

07-08-2010, 12:56 PM

“Culture as a Weapon System” (http://www.merip.org/mer/mer255/davis.html)

Rochelle Davis

Middle East Report 255, Summer 2010

At the fourth Culture Summit of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in April 2010, Maj. Gen. David Hogg, head of the Adviser Forces in Afghanistan, proposed that the US military think of “culture as a weapon system.”[1] The military, Hogg asserted, needs to learn the culture of the lands where it is deployed and use that knowledge to fight its enemies along with more conventional armaments. This conceptual and perhaps literal “weaponization of culture” continues a trend that began with the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.[2] Endorsed at the highest level by Gen. David Petraeus, head of Central Command, the Pentagon unit in charge of the greater Middle East, the idea of culture as a weapon grows out of the “‘gentler’ approach” to America’s post-September 11 wars adopted after the departure of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.[3] This approach is best articulated in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, that Petraeus oversaw and that the Army released in December 2006.

In the Field Manual, this peculiarly military application of culture uses cultural anthropologists’ definitions of culture as the behaviors, beliefs, material goods and values of a group of people that are learned and shared.[4] The weaponization of culture posits that culture can be a crucial element of military intelligence, used to influence others, to attack their weak spots and, more benignly, to understand the others the military is trying to help. While scholars and military analysts have shown how “culture” was enlisted to play a role in the Vietnam war,[5] today’s wars are the first in which culture has been so clearly articulated. Maj. Gen. John Custer, commander of the Army’s Intelligence Center of Excellence, describes this shift as “a tectonic change in military operations.”[6]

...

marct

07-08-2010, 03:00 PM

Thanks for posting the link, Rex. It does nicely encapsulate some of the problem areas I've been working with :wry:.

Rex Brynen

07-16-2010, 07:51 PM

Culture as a Tool of War: US Military Approaches to Occupation in Iraq (http://www.mei.edu/Events/Calendar/tabid/504/vw/3/ItemID/275/d/20100727/Default.aspx)

featuring:

Rochelle Davis
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
Georgetown University

Tuesday, July 27, 2010
12pm-1pm
Middle East Institute
1761 N St. NW
Washington DC 20036

The Middle East Institute is proud to host Rochelle Davis, professor of Anthropology at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, to discuss US military conceptions of culture and the war in Iraq.

Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the proposal of a new counterinsurgency doctrine in late 2006, culture has been named as a key to the success and failure of US military operations. Nevertheless, cultural training material has provided erroneous information about Iraq and Iraqis and has fundamentally shaped US troops' attitudes about Iraqis. More recently, all four branches of the US Military have established new culture-centered institutions which are producing significantly different material, suggesting a fundamental shift in their approach to cultural training.

Davis' research, based on analysis of cultural training material and interviews with US troops and Iraqi civilians, suggests that military decision makers, current policy makers, and troops on the ground face fundamental challenges when approaching the role of culture as it relates to tactics of war.

M.L.

10-08-2010, 02:47 AM

an·thro·pol·o·gy (ăn’thrə-pŏl’ə-jē) n.

The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.
[Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/anthropology]

I’ll confess: This is a rant. I hate the term “Human Terrain.” If you are unfamiliar with this term, it refers to a U.S. Army program which uses social science and social scientists to help commanders understand the social dynamics of local populations. This kind of understanding is particularly valuable when conducting counterinsurgency operations because winning the support of the local population is the most important objective. This is in contrast to more conventional warfare in which seizing (actual) terrain is the more important objective.

I can only assume the Army uses this phrase to help the cognitively challenged segments of the officer corps who might look at you with a blank stare if you used the word Anthropology, or the words Social Science, or similar phrases. “You see, CPT Schmedlab, we used to seize key terrain, but now the people are the terrain, get it?”

My problem with this term is twofold. First, it assumes the majority of officers are absolute idiots who can’t understand a concept unless one can relate it to something familiar in existing military jargon. If this is the case, the Army needs to reassess the quality of the officers it is recruiting. Second, the term itself is misleading. Humans are not terrain. They are not even like terrain.

Terrain is static. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t have families or choices or feelings or culture. Humans, on the other hand, have all these things and more. Human socio-cultural systems are incredibly complex, which is why we need to increase our institutional knowledge of social sciences. Comparing social systems to dirt and rocks, to use some jargon, “ain’t gettin’ it.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time the Army has done this. I remember “Non-Lethal Fires.” WHAT?! The only way fires can be non-lethal is if you miss your target. Of course, this was intended to convey information operations intended to influence certain actors within the populace. Actually, the term is still floating around. I guess we can now fire some non-lethal fires into some human terrain. Or, we could just say “influence the local populace.”

In short, humans are not rocks. But whoever came up with the term “Human Terrain” most certainly is.

I will now step off my soapbox.

Brett Patron

10-08-2010, 03:10 AM

Folks spend more time complaining about terms for new, hairy, or hard to define terms, and spend less time actually defining things.

Human Terrain is adequate. What the concept lacks is advocacy and folks actually finding a way to best integrate it into operations.

THAT is what Human Terrain (or whatever the uncomfortable would prefer to call it) really needs.

BJP

120mm

10-08-2010, 03:21 AM

The phrase "Human Terrain" was actually a working title, and the folks at FMSO who came up with it attempted to rename it using weather terms, but by that time, the now discredited used car salesman Steve Fondacaro and Mitzie McFate had already codified it.

And you're wrong. It's not "Anthropology". In fact, the Anthropology field has been trying to simultaneously "own" the Human Terrain program, while demonifying it.

It's not really about Anthro, or Social Science. It's about filling in the blanks that the Intel community has discarded in their "taxonomizing" and "Taylorizing" of Intel by applying scientific/academic rigor to qualitative data versus quantitative data. Don't feel bad, though, HTS itself has no clue as to what it's supposed to be doing, so you are not alone.

In fact, precious few Anthro types are involved in HTS and of those, precious fewer are worth a crap. Those with the most useful skill set in HTS are the Political Scientists, Economists and Historians.

I am no lover of buzz words or acronym-mania, but prior to ranting, it might help to know something about the subject . HTS is not about Anthropology; Anthropologists just seem to think everything is about them.

M.L.

10-08-2010, 11:07 AM

...my basic argument is not that Human Terrain is anthropology. In my opening paragraph I describe HT as "...a U.S. Army program which uses social science and social scientists to help commanders understand the social dynamics of local populations."

I didn't say HT was anthropology. My post is about what HT is NOT rather than was HT is.

Obviously, there are more social sciences involved than just anthropology. however, I use the big scary word anthropology to illustrate the larger point that there are words (some scary, some hairy) which describe what human terrain people are doing. We should use those words. Why? Because human terrain is misleading. Humans are not anything like terrain, with the possible exception that they both exist here on planet earth. You can't gain an understanding of the local populace the same way you would gain an understanding of terrain.

Perhaps my problem is that I didn't propose an alternative name. So, here you are:

Name: Human Sociocultural Systems Teams.
Purpose: To assist Army commanders by gaining knowledge about local populations which includes values, beliefs, normative behaviors, practices, and interactions that shape the choices and behavior of people within the area of operations.

120mm

10-09-2010, 02:05 AM

The reason why Anthropology is such a "big scary word" is that Anthropology and Anthropologists have by and large allowed their field of study to be co-opted by nut-cases and megalomaniacs who have subsequently made Anthropology fundamentally worthless for all but the most arcane navel-peerers.

I cannot think of a worse field of study to draw candidates for socio-cultural anything from.

BTW, if you think the Human Terrain people are doing "Anthropology" or anything like it, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. It's a concept, frankly, that briefed well, but has not panned out. There are damned few halfway decent products out there by HTS, and both volume and quality of products are disappointing, to say the least.

Human Atmospherics is another name of a competitive/complementary program that does similar work downrange that is somewhat better named, yet is both more descriptive, as well as having a basis in historical military cultural information gathering. DIA's Stability Operations Information Centers do similar work as well.

William F. Owen

10-11-2010, 01:51 PM

It's not really about Anthro, or Social Science. It's about filling in the blanks that the Intel community has discarded in their "taxonomizing" and "Taylorizing" of Intel by applying scientific/academic rigor to qualitative data versus quantitative data.
Concur. Intelligence work done well does not need "Human Terrain" or Anthropologists. Some thing done badly needs to be done well, not done a different way.

Steve the Planner

10-11-2010, 02:43 PM

Your use of the term "taylorizing" is particularly significant.

In grad school (many moons ago), I was addressing the weaknesses of "Industrial Policy" delusions while routinely taking the Amtrack through the wasteland of Taylor's early 20th C. industrial paradigm, south of Philadelphia.

My sad impression of HT comes from 2001 when it appeared that they were, as you said, trying to reconstruct complex "systems dynamics" causal loop diagrams into "on/off" switches to drive the public/civilian side of the equation, with predictable failed results.

Ultimately, it comes down to relevant intelligence---useful wisdom and understanding---played out on a reiterative basis on a dynamic and interactive field.

The social, physical and cultural sciences play a role---a role.

What always impressed me in Gertrude Bell's original source works was her acute eye and understanding of political, administrative, geographic, economic, physical and force details (within the limits of the knowable to a Brit trekster at that time), and had little to do with anthropology. She was a cunning Intel operative.

Steve

Jedburgh

10-11-2010, 02:46 PM

Purpose: To assist Army commanders by gaining knowledge about local populations which includes values, beliefs, normative behaviors, practices, and interactions that shape the choices and behavior of people within the area of operations.
That's an intel function. Unfortunately, MI appears to be progressing more and more towards competence on the use of systems instead of the development of substantive knowledge and critical thinking which is essential to analysis. Add in the low ratio of language training for intel professionals (and continuing waivers for MOSs that used to require languages), and we have a quality problem that is rooted in training, not personnel. So, instead of fixing the problem at the root - by revising and improving the training of intelligence analysts and HUMINT personnel, we have HTS.

I concur with 120mm that HTS products are generally low quality (especially the RRC products) partly because of the aversion of HTS with being associated with intelligence. They certainly could do with a decent class on report writing. And lately, HTS has become more closely associated with Civil Affairs - but I don't see that improving their product in any substantive way.

Global Scout

10-11-2010, 11:36 PM

Jedburgh, that's a polite way of saying the system is broke. I love my analysts, but the bottom line is they can't tell me what I need to know. I get better intell from the operators, intell analysts narrow their view to classified traffic, and disregard everything else. I think you're right, it is a training problem, but also a cultural problem, because the mold has been set and it will be hard to change.

Ethereal

10-14-2010, 04:44 AM

Heard much about 'em, but have not seen much of substance from them in multiple tours to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Seems like a money pit to me.

E

Tom OC

10-16-2010, 12:31 PM

I come from the field of criminology via anthropology, and as primarily an academic, I can safely say there are lots of stupid things that the social sciences do which make it hard to "translate" into actionable or practical application. One is the tendency to typologize or come up with names for things. This is usually either an exercise in semantics or some kind of ego trip in which the academic hopes the name will catch on and they will be forever cited in the literature because, after all, most literature reviews go like this: "Jones et al. remark that there are three types... whereas Smith holds the following four types exist...." Two is the deliberate fascination with theory building, an exercise devoted mainly to the development of "puzzles" for other academics to work on; i.e., providing the "stuff" or starting points for theses and dissertations. Most of this theory-testing only produces R-squares of .20 or .30 at best, which means a large percentage of known factors remain unknown. That's what makes social science a soft science, I suppose. We aren't dealing with close tolerances or things with 999.99% certainty like chemistry. Yet, there are some good practical applications derived from the occasional theoretical insight. Most of these are obtained by luck or serendipity rather than by design. Some are substantive, and the better ones involve being a polymath rather than toiling in the theory-practice divide.

marct

10-16-2010, 08:54 PM

Hi Tom,

Long time, no chat ;)!

I come from the field of criminology via anthropology, and as primarily an academic, I can safely say there are lots of stupid things that the social sciences do which make it hard to "translate" into actionable or practical application.

Too frakin' true! Not the least of which, IMKO, is the artificial, status-driven distintcions between "applied" and "Theoretical" (the capitalization shows which one is usually considered more important :wry:).

One is the tendency to typologize or come up with names for things. This is usually either an exercise in semantics or some kind of ego trip in which the academic hopes the name will catch on and they will be forever cited in the literature because, after all, most literature reviews go like this: "Jones et al. remark that there are three types... whereas Smith holds the following four types exist...."

Again, spot on, although I will quibble with you on the semantics issue. I think most academics don't take semantics seriously except as a game, which is something I deplore.

Two is the deliberate fascination with theory building, an exercise devoted mainly to the development of "puzzles" for other academics to work on; i.e., providing the "stuff" or starting points for theses and dissertations. Most of this theory-testing only produces R-squares of .20 or .30 at best, which means a large percentage of known factors remain unknown. That's what makes social science a soft science, I suppose. We aren't dealing with close tolerances or things with 999.99% certainty like chemistry.

Yup. There's also so much energy put into turf wars that even if you could get an R-square of, say, 50-60% in an area, you will get hammered if you cross disciplines to do it: THAT's applied work :eek:!

Yet, there are some good practical applications derived from the occasional theoretical insight. Most of these are obtained by luck or serendipity rather than by design. Some are substantive, and the better ones involve being a polymath rather than toiling in the theory-practice divide.

Personally, I've often found that the best insights come when you do some insanely radical discipline crossing as well. For example, my choir is now prepping Schutz's musicalishe exequiens (1637), and some of the structures really only "make sense", in the sense of evoking a particular emotion via words and music, if you know something about the battlefield weaponry and tactics and the historical situation of the prince whose funeral it was written for.

Cheers,

Marc

M.L.

10-16-2010, 10:36 PM

Most of this theory-testing only produces R-squares of .20 or .30 at best, which means a large percentage of known factors remain unknown. That's what makes social science a soft science, I suppose. We aren't dealing with close tolerances or things with 999.99% certainty like chemistry.

Tom,

If memory serves, R-square values are a numeric expression of the probability that a given model will predict future behavior. Perhaps the problem is social scientists are trying to predict behavior. This seems somewhat difficult to accomplish in a social system where the agents have a choice, emotions, subjective rationalities, cultural forces, etc...

By way of contrast, in the "hard" sciences atoms (above the quantum level), molecules, etc... obey predictable laws. Thus, it would seem models which predict the behavior of agents (that themselves must follow predictable laws) would result in very high R-square values.

I don't mean to assert that there isn't a significant amount of stupidity in the social sciences (there is in every discipline). Rather, I would suggest less that reliable predictive models in social systems says more about the system in question and the approach to understanding it than it does about the scientists.

Often, the answer you get depends on the question you ask. Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions? I would argue the failings in social science are related to our attempt to study it as if it were a hard science; that is to say reductionist, analytical, linear thinking.

For example, if you are doing any type of research you must state your independent and dependent variables. However, social systems are not composed of independent and dependent variables, and applying such a construct is doomed to fail. The construct asks the wrong question, i.e. "What are the cause and effect relationships?" There are few cause and effect relationships in social systems because people have choices.

Social systems are composed of interdependent variables. Therefore, we cannot study one or two in isolation, but we must study the system as a whole to understand the interdependency of the variables and the emergent properties of the system.

Additionally, classical sciences attempts to remove context from the equation in order to isolate the cause and effect relationships between variables. However, context is everything in a social system. To study a social system without context is to invite failure. Results of context-free experimentation will not be useful in the "real world" because context exerts a heavy influence on behavior.

In short, social systems can't be studied like physical or chemical systems, yet this is what we are doing. As long as we continue to do so, we are unlikely to have much success.

marct

10-16-2010, 11:17 PM

Hi M.L.,

Well, I'll let Tom handle the "hard" (hah! Stats is hard?!?!) side but, from what I remember, R-squared is a CYA fudge factor applied to an apparent (presumed?) [pseudo-]causal relationship. You know the type "X causes Y with .27% rsq validity; of course, Y causes X with .23% rsq validity" :wry:.

If memory serves, R-square values are a numeric expression of the probability that a given model will predict future behavior. Perhaps the problem is social scientists are trying to predict behavior. This seems somewhat difficult to accomplish in a social system where the agents have a choice, emotions, subjective rationalities, cultural forces, etc...

It this belief that in order to be a "science" something must be quantified using the simplest form of mathematics (statistics). Sure, we're trying to predict behaviour, but the people who rely on simplistic models a la Quettelet are committing an ID10T error: Markov chains, probability "sprays", Chaos and Catastrophe theory are better languages for some of what we study for exactly the reasons you list. Then again, most of us got into the social sciences to escape from math.... :cool:

By way of contrast, in the "hard" sciences atoms (above the quantum level), molecules, etc... obey predictable laws. Thus, it would seem models which predict the behavior of agents (that themselves must follow predictable laws) would result in very high R-square values.

Well, yeah. Then again, almost everyone seems to forget that "prediction" is based on probability, and it can't account for a "new" event (Taleb's Black Swans). I've always suspected that this is one of the reasons why people who get heavily involved in the philosophy of science and, especially, cosmology get heavily into some very "odd" head spaces that are right outside of the common understanding of causation.

I don't mean to assert that there isn't a significant amount of stupidity in the social sciences (there is in every discipline). Rather, I would suggest less that reliable predictive models in social systems says more about the system in question and the approach to understanding it than it does about the scientists.

Often, the answer you get depends on the question you ask. Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions? I would argue the failings in social science are related to our attempt to study it as if it were a hard science; that is to say reductionist, analytical, linear thinking.

Totally agree with that :D! It's one of the reasons I use both music and dance to try to grok what I study. That, BTW, is one of the lesser advertised / discussed components of Anthropology ("groking" I mean). There's little written about it, barring a chapter by Rhoda Metreaux from the '50's, and we only seem to talk about it after the third drink.

So, what happens if you don't "ask questions" but, rather, set your mind in "neutral" and just "perceive"? That's what a good fieldworker does (or should do) when confronted with something which they have no good predictive model for. When I was doing my grad work, we used to have a joke (well several...) about the differences between Anthropologists and Sociologist:

An Anthropologist and a Sociologist walk into a bar and see a good looking women at the bar. The Sociologist walks up to the bar next to one of the women, orders a beer and, looking out the side of his eye, carefully slides a paper in front of the woman which reads "Would you like to XXXX? Yes ___ No ___"; gets slapped and slinks off to watch the game on TV. The Anthropologist shakes his head, goes over to the other side of the woman, orders a Scotch and mumbles "Men!". Five minutes later, he and the woman leave the bar.

For example, if you are doing any type of research you must state your independent and dependent variables. However, social systems are not composed of independent and dependent variables, and applying such a construct is doomed to fail. The construct asks the wrong question, i.e. "What are the cause and effect relationships?" There are few cause and effect relationships in social systems because people have choices.

Social systems are composed of interdependent variables. Therefore, we cannot study one or two in isolation, but we must study the system as a whole to understand the interdependency of the variables and the emergent properties of the system.

Well, now here's an interesting question: why do you assume variables exist :D? I would argue that patterns and forms exist in people's minds and exert a sense of "rightness" on individuals, but "variables"? That, I suspect, is highly debatable. Now, I could stop playing silly semantics, but I think that this is, really, an important semantic distinction. All too often, "variables" are proxy variables - my favorite one has always been church attendance as a proxy for religious belief: it fails, in Canada at least, because church attendance or, rather, the spike in the late 1980's - early '90's, was related to a general pattern expectation that it was good / safe for the children. It also fails in a whole slew of other areas as well....

So, I've always held that what we should be looking at is a) a pattern of behaviour and b) the "explanation" or "meaning structure" ascribed to that behaviour by those who perform it is a much better, and more useful, unit of analysis and theory construction.

In short, social systems can't be studied like physical or chemical systems, yet this is what we are doing. As long as we continue to do so, we are unlikely to have much success.

Totally agree.

Cheers,

Marc

M.L.

10-17-2010, 04:28 AM

Well, now here's an interesting question: why do you assume variables exist :D? I would argue that patterns and forms exist in people's minds and exert a sense of "rightness" on individuals, but "variables"? That, I suspect, is highly debatable. Now, I could stop playing silly semantics, but I think that this is, really, an important semantic distinction. All too often, "variables" are proxy variables - my favorite one has always been church attendance as a proxy for religious belief: it fails, in Canada at least, because church attendance or, rather, the spike in the late 1980's - early '90's, was related to a general pattern expectation that it was good / safe for the children. It also fails in a whole slew of other areas as well....

You make a great point. This goes back to asking the right questions, the relationship of context to behavior, and the complex mental models inside thinking, feeling humans within a socioculutral system.

I'm reminded of the "Pepsi Challenge" in which (in classical scientific reductionist analytical style) subjects were given a blind taste test of Coke and Pepsi. The majority of subjects preferred the taste of Pepsi.

Of course, Coke continued to dominate the market. Execs at Pepsi puzzled over how they could be losing market share if their product tasted better. The answer, of course, is that in real life people don't drink soda without labels; in real life people drink from a bottle with Coke or Pepsi displayed prominently.

Subsequent studies discovered that when the subjects were given taste tests with product labels, i.e. they knew whether they were drinking Coke or Pepsi, they preferred Coke, not Pepsi. Furthermore (and this is the really fun part), researchers monitored the brain activity of these tests, and found that Coke actually produced increased activity in the pleasure centers of the brain when subjects could see the label, whereas Pepsi produced more when the labels were concealed.

People didn't just irrationally believe Coke tasted better. Seeing the label actually changed the activity level of the brain. To them, Coke really did taste better.

This has got to be incredibly frustrating to a scientist. However, if you accept that context, emotion, and subjective perceptions are all part of the sociocultural fabric, it may not allow you to predict behavior, but it will at least lead you to accept that there are vast unknowns out there, and that any attempt to understand or influence a sociocultural system should proceed from that basic premise.

120mm

10-17-2010, 06:11 AM

People didn't just irrationally believe Coke tasted better. Seeing the label actually changed the activity level of the brain. To them, Coke really did taste better.

This has got to be incredibly frustrating to a scientist. However, if you accept that context, emotion, and subjective perceptions are all part of the sociocultural fabric, it may not allow you to predict behavior, but it will at least lead you to accept that there are vast unknowns out there, and that any attempt to understand or influence a sociocultural system should proceed from that basic premise.

This is brilliant, btw. However, I do not agree that these are "unknowns" or at least that they are "unknowable".

They are probably unknowable from a purely rational scientific POV, but they are certainly knowable or at least recognizable on a viscerally conscious level. The problem with traditional "science" is that it limits the range of intelligence one can apply to a problem.

Liking something better because you can see the label certainly makes sense on a gut level. Just like hamburgers taste better when eaten right side up. (at least to me...)

M.L.

10-20-2010, 11:49 AM

This is brilliant, btw. However, I do not agree that these are "unknowns" or at least that they are "unknowable".

They are probably unknowable from a purely rational scientific POV, but they are certainly knowable or at least recognizable on a viscerally conscious level. The problem with traditional "science" is that it limits the range of intelligence one can apply to a problem.

Liking something better because you can see the label certainly makes sense on a gut level. Just like hamburgers taste better when eaten right side up. (at least to me...)

I agree, however, gut instincts seems to be a world apart from scientific method. Perhaps social science requires a melding of the two; a place for exploring what makes sense intuitively.

Perhaps "unknowns" is a poor choice of wording. "Complex variables" might be better; complex in that the value of the variable can change with changing contexts. In other words, the value of "most preferred soda" is not an absolute value, but changes as context changes.

marct

10-20-2010, 01:22 PM

Hi ML.

BTW, I agree with 120mm - really nice example :).

I agree, however, gut instincts seems to be a world apart from scientific method. Perhaps social science requires a melding of the two; a place for exploring what makes sense intuitively.

Umm, yeah, we used to call that pace "Anthropology" :cool:. Unfortunately, the discipline got hijacked in the 1980's, and the flip side of using intuition as a tool of scientific enquiry - "Know thyself" - got dumped from most curricula and the more important informal training.

Perhaps "unknowns" is a poor choice of wording. "Complex variables" might be better; complex in that the value of the variable can change with changing contexts. In other words, the value of "most preferred soda" is not an absolute value, but changes as context changes.

Well, names do have power (Coke? Pepsi?), and the art to naming something is to try and capture a perceived essence and have it associated with the name. "Complex variables" is better than "unknowns" in some ways, but it still implies some form of absolute value from the implication of causality and, as you noted, context changes "absolutes", which means that a) they aren't absolutes and b) the implied causal model is operating at the wrong level (i.e. it's trash at prediction).

I've been spending a fair bit of time over the past 15-20 years looking at how thinking in terms of patterns, rather than causal lines or networks, may prove to be a more fruitful approach: "life as improvisational jazz" rather than "the Billiard Ball universe" as it were. That doesn't mean that there aren't grammars or deep structures operating with a bounding effect on social action, it just means that linear logic can only be applied to a limited part of social action.

Cheers,

Marc

Steve the Planner

10-21-2010, 02:19 AM

ML:

I'm somewhat confused about this hypothetical discussion on "soft sciences."

As an undergrad geographer/econ, I built urban parking rate studies as a proxy for demand variables, then spent time with CSX on route mapping, rights of way and box car movements.

In grad school (planning and policy), I was tracking coal supply/demand factors for budget/policy implications to major project investments, and identifying regional economic patterns and drivers.

So what was my career path? Running a parking management company through grad school. Afterwards, running a large business park development/construction company.

The majority of my fellow "soft" scientists followed the same path---site location, resource planning/analysis, transportation/shipping, weather forecasting, GIS, intel, consulting...

As a senior civilian adviser in Iraq, I worked on the same stuff I work on in civilian world, but more oriented to rebuilding the systems. We were in the field every other day---driving from Tikrit to Baghdad, or up to Bayji to inspect projects, looking at oil/fuel movements. After six months, I probably traveled to more different places across Iraq (civilian and military) than any military folks for the simple reason that their uniforms kept them out of many places/activities/conferences where a green suit was inappropriate.

I spent the next six months as an expert assigned from DoS to the UN, looking at all the disputed boundaries and working closely with the international expert teams, and a large network of civ/mil contacts, on borders, populations, trade patterns, pipelines, etc...

Personally, I believe the DoS PRT effort was really poorly structured and managed, but, within it, and especially through the EPRTs (linked to Battalions), there were some really bright, capable, committed and daily engaged civilians who carved out deep knowledge and contacts with locals---based on efforts to actually do things with them (drainage canals, seed, businesses, cultural programs).

There was never a time that I could learn anything useful about any civilian matter in any part of Iraq where a DoS EPRT person (or military assignees), did not know evereything relevant about it, including the challenges and pitfalls. Whether DoS or DoD these folks were experienced civilians (even if in a green suit for that tour) on the ground helping other experienced civilians in real life conditions.

What useful information could I have gained from an HTS academic passing through? Fact is, in 14 months, I never ran into one or heard of one contributing anything useful.

120 talks about tasting the burgers. There are so many folks like him who have actually tasted all these burgers with every kind of condiment applied, that it makes no sense to go looking for a theoretical analysis of the shape of the burger, the symbology of the burger, or the societal linkages of the burger. If I have a question about the burger, it can only be answered by a person with daily experience with burgers: How do I get one? What does it costs? How do I get more? Is the meat rancid?

I think there is a big tendency in this discussion toward a typology of social sciences that inaccurately implies that social science folks are all academic theoreticians. I suspect that most people with economics degrees are, in fact, gainfully employed in very practical day to day real life things that could never be defined as "soft."

The implementation failure for HTS, in my opinion, was to become lost in academia and "soft" theoretical analysis. They would have been better of at the HR/Recruiting stage to avoid academia completely and go after "hard" social scientists with deep reasoning skills in real world applications.

Re: Jed's comments. The answers can't be found by playing with the system. They are a combination of recruitment, deployment, and interaction with the real world and the real problems being faced.

Dayuhan

10-21-2010, 03:27 AM

120mm

10-21-2010, 06:00 AM

The idea that the tools of social science in general and anthropology specifically can provide military commanders with valuable insights on the "human terrain" is not unreasonable in itself. What I suspect is often overlooked is the reality that good field work takes a great deal of time. Even a very good anthropologist cannot walk into a new community, open some sort of intellectual spigot, and produce a stream of valuable insights. A good anthropologist wouldn't even try. Sending social scientists who have not specialized in an area into the field for a few weeks or months and expecting useful information to emerge is generally going to be futile, especially in a security environment that requires the people doing the study to have military escorts, restricts their time and movement, and makes the community slow to trust and reluctant to provide accurate information.

Actually, a fairly talented person with even a modicum of information can increase a commander's knowledge incredibly even in a short period of time.

The security environment you describe is largely a myth; someone with just a little bit of fieldcraft can navigate most of Afghanistan quite easily with very minimal security.

The ethnographic interview is a very flawed technique; people lie and they most often lie to themselves. Observation ethnography and looking at societal outputs actually make rapid ethnographic surveys very do-able and are usually more accurate, to boot.

The problem is, most Anthropologists are wonks, who work slowly, pedantically and often come from white-bread America with no experience in anything but academia.

Someone with a broad background, especially with one in agriculture, mechanics, history and linguistics and who is sensitive to nuance and has good perception can make rapid assessments and be correct.

I once sat on a hill in Helmand for four hours, and was joined by a US DoS guy who engaged me in conversation. I proceeded to tell him things he'd never heard before about "his" district that he'd never imagined before, based solely on that morning's observations of things like architecture and planting patterns. That guy had been there five years.

I just returned from a district that was reputed to have "no industry" by so-called "experts" who'd been there since 2002. I spent less than one day in the district and was able to identify a thriving brick-making industry, a combine factory and a large and apparently expanding machining business along the route we took through the district.

-G-

10-21-2010, 12:03 PM

Originally Posted by Steve the Planner
Personally, I believe the DoS PRT effort was really poorly structured and managed, but, within it, and especially through the EPRTs (linked to Battalions), there were some really bright, capable, committed and daily engaged civilians who carved out deep knowledge and contacts with locals---based on efforts to actually do things with them (drainage canals, seed, businesses, cultural programs).

If you insert HTS (for Dos PRT) and HTT (for EPRT), is the statement not accurate as well?

Originally Posted by Steve the Planner
There was never a time that I could learn anything useful about any civilian matter in any part of Iraq where a DoS EPRT person (or military assignees), did not know evereything relevant about it, including the challenges and pitfalls. Whether DoS or DoD these folks were experienced civilians (even if in a green suit for that tour) on the ground helping other experienced civilians in real life conditions.

That’s a mighty bold statement. :eek:

Originally Posted by Steve the Planner
What useful information could I have gained from an HTS academic passing through? Fact is, in 14 months, I never ran into one or heard of one contributing anything useful.

Well, with all due respect, maybe some perspective on how much you actually didn't know about every possible civilian matter in Iraq. From my experience this was highly useful. YMMV

Originally Posted by Steve the Planner
If I have a question about the burger, it can only be answered by a person with daily experience with burgers: How do I get one? What does it costs? How do I get more? Is the meat rancid?

You don’t need a “hard” social scientist to answer these questions though. Any semi, non-retarded kid that’s old enough to count will do. In addition, “Soft” social scientists have been known to go out and eat a burger from time to time.

It's useful to know the "why" behind things like this. On which norms are you basing the rancidity of the meat, yours or theirs? Is it supposed to taste like this? Why would they eat meat that tastes like this? Is this a reflection of poor refrigeration, slow transport, sickly livestock, etc? Or do they actually prefer it this way? Why would they serve me a rancid burger? Are they just messing with me, or are they deliberately trying to make me sick (to make a point)? Which point? Which is the “wink” and which is the “blink”. How does this help achieve cultural intimacy? Those are obviously simplistic questions, but the more you know what something means, and how it works, the greater your ability to interpret/manipulate a person/situation towards a desired outcome. However, sometimes the meat just stinks.

Originally Posted by Steve the Planner
The implementation failure for HTS, in my opinion, was to become lost in academia and "soft" theoretical analysis. They would have been better of at the HR/Recruiting stage to avoid academia completely and go after "hard" social scientists with deep reasoning skills in real world applications.

Just because the anthropological community threw the largest (and loudest) hissy fit, doesn’t mean they were the only social scientists HTS recruited. Should HTS have avoided academia altogether? I certainly don’t think so. To imply that an anthropologist lacks “deep reasoning skills in real world applications” is absurd. I really think you may have the wrong idea about what anthropology is, and what a good anthropologist can do.

Are there a bunch of useless twerps in the field? Absolutely. But don’t mistake the current majority membership of the field for its capacity to contribute or its lack of relevance. History has proven otherwise. A good anthropologist has the potential to make great impact and/or wreak great havoc (IRB committee and AAA aside). Or they can analyze the heck out of a perfectly rancid burger. :wry:

G

Tom Odom

10-21-2010, 12:19 PM

As a former FAO I am a believer in cultural intelligence and as an anthro minor, history major, I would have to class myself with the social science crowd.

I was and still am a believer in the concept of a dedicated human terrain capability. But I will say after a year as the POLAD in MND-B, the human terrain capablity never was applied in anything near to what it advertised.

There were bright, even brilliant spots on the human terrain teams. Some were antthropologists, most were not. What was lacking was a system to direct and capture relevant information based on the CCIR, not on a whimsy of a social scientist who felt that the Iraqis were not really happy having us there. Gee, who knew? The same fellow wanted to take the summer off because Baghdad was hot.

There were too many like him and not enough of the brilliant ones. None of them really got the concept of telling the commander what he needed to know versus telling him what they found to be "interesting" on any given day.

I again say that the concept is sound but its fielding was done so haphazardly that it left commanders and staffs puzzled on how to best integrate these teams. When those in the system don't have a system to begin with, integrating that system into military planning is systemically doomed to failure.

Best
Tom

slapout9

10-21-2010, 01:18 PM

When those in the system don't have a system to begin with, integrating that system into military planning is systemically doomed to failure.

Best
Tom

That is Quote of the week stuff!

Sparapet

10-21-2010, 04:05 PM

First off let me say this is a great little debate. I have interacted with HTTs in Iraq quite a bit and instead of pursuing my love of Anthropology and Political Science into grad school chose to pursue my love of the M1A2 after college. My experience with HTTs and other non-targeting intel gathering is that the whole concept of "understanding" my environment is somewhat foreign to the officer corps.
120mm points out his experience in OEF with assessing the environment but I would hazard a guess that he is a rare, rare exception. In general, Tom's opinion of piss-poor implementation of non-targeting intel is spot on. I have observed time and again Bn and Bgde commanders absolutely clueless about what the HTTs do, while the HTTs are confused about what they are supposed to do and get creative or settle into an atmospherics routine.
Whatever our ideological leanings, occupations require local understanding. The more distant the cultures of occupiers from occupied the more the learning curve and the greater the distrust (WWII is a prime example).
As a maneuver leader I spent several months putting together a coherent tribal/leadership picture in my sector because the units before me never got past the key leaders whom they could pay to get things done. My anthro/poli sci background helped me ask the right question and notice the right patterns. By the end, the sector made sense. A year or two of an HTTs effort in a 7 yr occupation would have cut that learning curve and allowed me to implement effective IO in early/mid tour instead of at the end.

At the end the bigger point is the one that started this thread. The anti-intellectualism, especially against the social sciences, in the officer corps is borderline criminal. Considering we are often the de facto governors from Company and up for months and years at a time the fact that we rarely value anything that is education while thinking that training is all you need (current article series on Design is a perfect example) is one of our biggest handicaps and I am convinced it has cost lives, many of them.

Pete

10-21-2010, 04:55 PM

When I did Army medical supply work in Bahrain years ago some military people thought I was out touristing around if I wasn't in the warehouse kicking boxes. I needed to know the area of operations, such as where I could rent forklifts and trucks, where the good hardware stores are, and which compressed gas companies could test our medical oxygen cylinders. It also helps to know your way around town so you don't have to take the same routes every day, as well as which neighborhoods are Sunni, which are Shia, and areas to avoid during periods of ethnic tension.

M.L.

10-21-2010, 10:28 PM

I think there is a big tendency in this discussion toward a typology of social sciences that inaccurately implies that social science folks are all academic theoreticians. I suspect that most people with economics degrees are, in fact, gainfully employed in very practical day to day real life things that could never be defined as "soft."

The implementation failure for HTS, in my opinion, was to become lost in academia and "soft" theoretical analysis. They would have been better of at the HR/Recruiting stage to avoid academia completely and go after "hard" social scientists with deep reasoning skills in real world applications.

Steve:

To be honest, I could care less what someone does for a living, academic or otherwise. The bottom line is that we need people who can think - whether we find them in academia or "real world" occupations is irrelevant.

I did my first graduate thesis on the relationship of experience to job performance. I found (stunningly), that cognitive ability, rather than experience, is the single best predictor of future performance. In simplistic terms - smart people are better at almost everything.

I understand where you are coming from, but the choice between academics and "real world" social scientists is a false dichotomy.

Pete

10-21-2010, 10:44 PM

It's everyones' responsibility to learn about the Area of Operations where they are -- it's not just an intel function, or something that somene else should inform you about via distribution. First off, scout the lay of the land in the area, so if you have to conduct infantry operations you'll have a feel for the area. With more recon and scouting around you'll learn a bit about the demographics, ethnic and sectarian things, road networks, so forth. Learning how to say and understand things in the local language helps too.

The main impression of the U.S. Army intelligence community I've gotten is that they mainly like to fiddle around with organizational charts about how info is processed. They also like their secret handshakes and Walther PPKs, it makes them feel important. Years ago I went to OCS with the guy who now commands Fort Hootchie-Coochie, but as they say, "Three tears in a bucket ... "

Right before I got the old heave-ho out of the Army a former Special Forces guy begged me to join SF, he said I was the sort of guy they needed. I was amazed, I could barely pass the PT test.

M.L.

10-21-2010, 10:47 PM

"Complex variables" is better than "unknowns" in some ways, but it still implies some form of absolute value from the implication of causality and, as you noted, context changes "absolutes", which means that a) they aren't absolutes and b) the implied causal model is operating at the wrong level (i.e. it's trash at prediction).

Marc,

I'd be the last person to claim that either absolute values or causal relationships exist in great abundance in social systems. Both are extremely rare, yet our craving for deterministic models (the perfect billiard table) leads us to imagine absolutes and causal relationships where none exist.

(Perhaps it is instructive to remember that Newtonian physics do not describe the universe as it really is, but we stick with Sir Isaac because: 1. He was pretty close. 2. Quantum Theory and Relativity Theory are too "spooky" for everyday life. Do we prefer comfortable lies to uncomfortable truths?)

My use of the term "complex" implies a variable which is dynamic, interactive, and is inextricably linked to its environment, as in a complex system.

Given such a system (and all social systems can be described as complex), the best thing we can shoot for is continuous iterative approximations of the system structure, function, process, and emergent properties.

Fuchs

10-21-2010, 10:53 PM

I did my first graduate thesis on the relationship of experience to job performance. I found (stunningly), that cognitive ability, rather than experience, is the single best predictor of future performance. In simplistic terms - smart people are better at almost everything.

This fits to my experiences as and with consultant(s).

We usually got tasks which we never had done before and proceeded to embarrass very experienced employees who had been in and failed on their job for years. They had failed to do what we succeeded to do in a matter of weeks.

Most of them were rather simple minds who weren't able to think unconventionally, creatively or even to raise their own level of expectation high enough to recognize obvious problems. Some recited what they were told, completely devoid of own thinking. Some were even too dumb to grasp what they were told.
Others were very experienced at one or two tasks - and failed every time when the application of their very narrow experience mislead them.

Once I even got into trouble because I wasn't able to hold back my astonishment when I was asked in response to an extremely stupid question. All I had done wrong was to ask why they hadn't thought about this consequence before their action (they had violated a rule and expected me to help them cover up their mess).

I'll never forget how I once solved a mystery for a corporation's medium-level management with a half-time effort over only three weeks. They had been clueless for years (they fell prey to several conflicting lies and half-truths). All I had to do was to use my university education, google, the phone, an intern, pen & paper and the brain.

jmm99

10-21-2010, 11:56 PM

That SF guy (probably a laid back type himself):

from Pete
Right before I got the old heave-ho out of the Army a former Special Forces guy begged me to join SF, he said I was the sort of guy they needed. I was amazed, I could barely pass the PT test.

simply recognized your natural talent to sit atop a mountain trading Bravo Sierra with the indigenous types in their own lingo. :D

Which ain't a bad talent for any interviewer and/or intel type.

Regards

Mike

Pete

10-22-2010, 12:31 AM

But I wasn't bucking for Special Forces, I thought that learning all you could about the AO was what military professionals did as a matter of course. Patrolling, recon, "Pick Up Your Weapon and Follow Me."

Steve the Planner

10-22-2010, 04:33 AM

120's comment about DoS: Obviously, not every DoS PRT was worth the effort to ship them in in the first place--especially in Afghanistan. My buds there tell me they are basically just in lock-down, so it doesn't surprise me that the main batch there are just the types collecting pay.

Even within DoS, the in-fighting was merciless, and very few groups were tapped into what was going on, versus what they were doing as a bureaucratic mission. Just goes to show---if you put enough bureaucracy on the ground anywhere, it will do what it does best---spin around itself.

We had our own list of contacts---everybody crossed the Palace---but, like in the civilian world, most of the best information sharing occurred at the pool or the Off-Site. The good stuff seldom found its way into the internal reports.

I do have to disagree with Spar, though.

I went as part of the batch of senior civs in late 2007. All of us responded ASAP to a call by Amb. Crocker to come and help. It was a very different recruiting pool for a very unique call for our expertises applicable to Iraq matters. Most of the actual experts went back home to do what we do.

I joined up with a new MND-N staff that damned sure had their heads screwed on. Between us, the Iraqis, and them, there was a constant and effective effort to drill for change---get us out of the way and let them find the route. Granted, we were running against a very embedded pattern to the contrary.

Hate to ruin the myth created by years of very poor history, but the military I was working with was exceptional.

Even with that, our MND-N counterparts understood that there were parts the civs were more appropriate for, and parts that they were more appropriate for. LTG Hertling had it down with helicopter diplomacy (bringing ministers to sites in the North) and regional conferences, and that gave us access to the ministers, senior staffs and contacts. And we had cover and contacts from the Green Zone to Al Faw.

When you put Iraqi technical managers together with US ones, the expertises, problems and solutions are all common, and they really graved what we could make available to them (especially through DivEng, mobility, etc...). That created an entirely different value to the relationships and information flows than if you just send a bunch of folks to bother them.

Like 120 in Afghanistan, I never felt any constraints about movement or access to anything I wanted to see or anybody I needed to meet with, and we always found enough venues and side-contacts to get the full story. I had my full body armor stowed at Speicher for trips in the North, and lightweight DoS vests to go under suits when we undercovered through Baghdad in the old beat-up Buicks.

Only time we ever had movement trouble was in September 2008. A minister called and said he was surprised that he had managed to get several key ministers together to meet next week (scheduling was always a bear). So we jumped at the chance.

On the morning of, we got alarming calls that security had descended on the ministry and wanted to do the full dogs and shake-downs of everybody.

Then, when we went out the door at the Palace, instead of our usual low-key convoy, there was a driveway full of big stuff. We forgot that it was 9/11, so the ministers were available because nobody else had scheduled, but the security on our side was too much to allow the meeting with us. So, instead, they all got together, which was, as we found out later, a very productive session (without us). I count that as a win.

G: The folks I travelled with were mostly Syrians, Iraqi-Americans, Iraqis, and UN's international experts, etc... and very good at interpreting what was going on. They wrote the books that the academics were reading.

Not everybody in Iraq was blind, deaf and dumb all the time.

Last week, Foreign Policy had an article bemoaning the fact that the census was cancelled (again). Anybody who actually understands Iraq's Ottoman bureaucratic past, and its actual census system and capabilities would know that they have always known exactly how many Iraqis are where. Just because they don't say, doesn't mean they don't know. (Hint: Food rations are as accurate as any census would every be.)

But I can assure you that HTS didn't have a clue. Populations, settlement patterns, tribal. ethnic, religious. Wasn't that a key factor?

Steve the Planner

10-22-2010, 04:47 AM

PS- Team Ninewa Article provides a good overview of what things had to become. Iraq focused. Smaller, sustainable projects. Better integration from Nahias, Qaddas to Governate to Baghdad. Expanding scope and participation beyond "the regular suspects."

Rocket science is not a precondition.

Interesting, but one of the biggest execution stumbling blocks in the North was a US guy they just arrested in PA--graft, corruption, kick-back allegations. Go figure?

sgmgrumpy

10-22-2010, 07:05 PM

All good points. As 120 has experienced the processes of the program, and some of the crazy stuff you cannot make up as an example of below article on the latest with one of these so called "smart people", the never ending saga of the misfits continue.

Apparently, the young woman likes to wear the monkey outside the wire because she thinks it reduces the hostility of the locals by presenting a soft friendly fuzzy American face, offsetting the threat implicit in the weapon she wears on her hip.

http://www.seven-shots.com/spanking-the-monkey-ht-team-and-cultural-sensitivity/

M.L.

10-22-2010, 07:58 PM

All good points. As 120 has experienced the processes of the program, and some of the crazy stuff you cannot make up as an example of below article on the latest with one of these so called "smart people", the never ending saga of the misfits continue.

Who, exactly, accused a woman with a sock monkey of being smart? Is is because she was educated? Cognitive ability and education are most certainly not the same.

Pete

10-22-2010, 10:06 PM

That SF guy (probably a laid back type himself):
simply recognized your natural talent to sit atop a mountain trading Bravo Sierra with the indigenous types in their own lingo. :D

Which ain't a bad talent for any interviewer and/or intel type.
Bravo Sierrra? Wait a minute, I'm not sure that's a compliment. I've had some serious posts on this forum:

Ridgeway Caps
known-distance marksmanship training
loop and hasty slings
Blanton's Bourbon
five-paragraph field orders
how to shine M1943 buckle-top boots
M1 thumb
"Ain't no use in lookin' down"
"Ain't no discharge on the ground"
Article 15s
raccoons on my deck eating the cat's food
Field Artillery gunnery
fixing flat tires for female Ordnance officers who are maintenance experts
John S. Mosby confounding the U.S. Army

... and that's just to name a few. So there, take that.

Ethereal

10-23-2010, 07:27 AM

Actually, a fairly talented person with even a modicum of information can increase a commander's knowledge incredibly even in a short period of time.

The security environment you describe is largely a myth; someone with just a little bit of fieldcraft can navigate most of Afghanistan quite easily with very minimal security.

The ethnographic interview is a very flawed technique; people lie and they most often lie to themselves. Observation ethnography and looking at societal outputs actually make rapid ethnographic surveys very do-able and are usually more accurate, to boot.

The problem is, most Anthropologists are wonks, who work slowly, pedantically and often come from white-bread America with no experience in anything but academia.

Someone with a broad background, especially with one in agriculture, mechanics, history and linguistics and who is sensitive to nuance and has good perception can make rapid assessments and be correct.

I once sat on a hill in Helmand for four hours, and was joined by a US DoS guy who engaged me in conversation. I proceeded to tell him things he'd never heard before about "his" district that he'd never imagined before, based solely on that morning's observations of things like architecture and planting patterns. That guy had been there five years.

I just returned from a district that was reputed to have "no industry" by so-called "experts" who'd been there since 2002. I spent less than one day in the district and was able to identify a thriving brick-making industry, a combine factory and a large and apparently expanding machining business along the route we took through the district.

Based on your experience, or based on fact? Do you really believe that you "engaged" a DoS guy in a conversation he's never had? Seriously?

E.

120mm

10-23-2010, 11:08 AM

Based on your experience, or based on fact? Do you really believe that you "engaged" a DoS guy in a conversation he's never had? Seriously?

E.

Yes. I am not some kind of wunderkind. What I do is actually go out into the district, armed with a bit of of research, and look at the countryside with a critical eye.

The problem is as I state it. The kind of person who gets assigned to the field often does not have a discriminating eye, or they lack relevant real world experience. Frankly, if I were in charge of picking folks to send downrange, I'd look very hard at guys and gals with agricultural experience, and experience with the mechanical arts.

What I don't mention is what a rich resource the ADTs and USDA representatives have turned out to be. I cannot praise highly enough the insight these guys have pretty uniformly had.

The problem you run into, of course, is finding the right mix of ag/mechanical experience and a basically curious outlook on the world and knowledge of history/culture.

jmm99

10-23-2010, 06:37 PM

to say nothing of possums. :)

Yup, actually a compliment - metaphor would be talking with Montagnard (http://www.cal.org/co/montagnards/vpeop.html) types - making like a practical, field anthropologist (vs the office bound type), sitting on the edge of the village until accepted and then eventually getting to participate some in the local activities. Something like Dayuhan has done.

As I said, BSing with the indigenous folks "ain't a bad talent for any interviewer and/or intel type."

Now, if you've been reduced to BSing with possums, that's where I draw the line. :D

Regards

Mike

Pete

10-23-2010, 07:03 PM

Thanks for the compliment. :o My main downfall as an officer, besides a fondness for beer, was in the area of leadership -- I was never entirely comfortable or confident in leadership positions. My college degree fast-tracked me into OCS after I enlisted. Had I spent more time enlisted I would have either developed my leadership skills through experience and attendance at junior NCO schools, or barring that I would never have been considered for commissioning in the first place. Nobody ever doubted that I was intelligent or a nice guy.

Shek

10-24-2010, 12:53 AM

Tom,

If memory serves, R-square values are a numeric expression of the probability that a given model will predict future behavior. Perhaps the problem is social scientists are trying to predict behavior. This seems somewhat difficult to accomplish in a social system where the agents have a choice, emotions, subjective rationalities, cultural forces, etc...

M.L.

R^2 measures the amount of variance in the observational data described by the model. Thus, it describes a correlative relationship in past data.

If your model captures a causal relationship, then your R^2 will give you a sense of how well you might predict future outcomes. However, many folks commit statistical malpractice because they 1) don't understand what makes a model a good model and 2) confuse correlation with causation, and so they only interpret the model through the R^2.

As you talk to, in the end, human behavior is subject irrationality and involves a complex interdependence, and so R^2 values tend to be low in the social sciences (this may not be problematic for your model depending on what you are trying to do, but that's a tangent not needed for the thread).

M.L.

10-25-2010, 02:57 AM

Shek

10-25-2010, 02:52 PM

Thanks. Been a while since I did any research that required me to work with R-sqd.

One small thing - the term "irrationality" is something of a pet peeve of mine. It implies an objective viewpoint of "what is good for me." However, people act according to a subjective perception of rationality. Emotion and culture also influence decision making.

When other people act differently than we think they should, we (Americans and American military types especially) tend to dismiss the behavior as irrationality, or worse, stupidity.

The truth is that everyone has good reasons for acting the way they do according to their individual perceptions. Its our job to figure out why they do what they do.

M.L.,

I was not referring to an ethnocentric view of rationalism, but instead was talking to how we use heuristics that are fraught with systemic biases that result in irrational choices (e.g., framing choices as lives saved vs. deaths will usually result in different choices that are mathematically (objectively) inconsistent).

You point about ethnocentric viewpoints is on the mark, and I love the example of the Iraqi Perspectives Project (http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2006/ipp.pdf) to point out that Saddam, who was seemingly irrational, was actually acting in a highly rational manner.

Sparapet

10-25-2010, 02:58 PM

A lot of this discussion seems to boil down to education and intelligence of the officer corps and our OGA brethren. What I find odd in the whole discussion is the same thing that grates in the whole COIN discussion; we seem to believe that we are the first human power and generation to attempt occupation and reorganization of political systems, thus we are discovering something new and amazing. The initiative in Ninewa with TF Spartan.....something to be admired in 2010? Why not in 2003? Did we discover something new about how human populations and governance work?
I think the core issue here is education of the intelligent. In this lecture from the early 1930's on education in America ( http://mises.org/daily/2765 ) the lecturer explores the question of education vs training in a way that is awfully modern and hits on the difference.
Considering our culture's technologist bent and admiration of the mechanically efficient we have created procurement and preparation system for our (especially junior) officers that meets some basic technical knowledge requirements. Beyond that no knowledge and skills are encouraged, demanded, or reinforced through pre-commissioning and through careers until mid-field grade schooling. We don't have an educational standard of any sort. So those of us who are successful, who can in fact asses accurately and think critically, become a matter of chance. IMHO there is nothing to admire here. The HTTs are not a "weapon system that fits the target" but instead a plug to fix a deficit of intellectual capital within the corps. Same with PRTs and other do-dads. Think of occupation for what it is: governance. In governance you have to govern, which means bringing with you the leadership that has some working knowledge of what it takes to govern. They don't need to be agricultural experts but they need the education and intelligence to recognize when they need those experts and how to use them. Since we (military officers) are always the first, longest tenured, most empowered presidents/governors/mayors in an occupation we need to be the educated class within the government that values big words and difficult ideas. SFC Hooah will always be the expert door-breaker and food distributor. CPT Schmedlab needs to know when/why to break the door or set up a distribution point.

Steve the Planner

10-26-2010, 01:39 AM

ML:

Herbert Simon: Bounded rationality---limited by what we know, what we can understand, etc...

I think it gets overly complicated, though, when we start mixing concepts of human settlements and governance--two different things.

Folks have been voting with their feet since the dawn of time, or scrambling to survive. That, and causations, are the basic drivers for population re-settlement. If everything was grand, we would all just procreate to scarcity.

But conflict zones are, by definition, never grand places to be, highly unstable, and treacherous to safe and prosperous existence..

I share the same insight from Iraq that dozens of soldiers noted before me---people are just trying to get by, and the challenges, to an extent, are complicated by US, and whatever "inspiration" was passing for wisdom inside the Beltway at a given time.

The difference between 120 and myself is that, hopefully, by being outside the command structure, you can influence it by, first, seeing things outside the internal lense, and, second, bringing forward the properly framed questions to drive more productive alternatives.

It never ceased to amaze me that, by catching up to folks ate ends of tours, they had folders of good ideas they would have liked to have implemented, but that weren't in their lanes.

Like any big bureaucracy, the challenge is to move the bureaucracy whether from above, below or within. It just ain't easy---don;t care whether it is Ford Motor Company or the Pentagon. Scale, organization, staffing, logistics create and define much of what will happen based on decisions made six or nine months in advance.

Not really a problem of sending folks out into the field to better their fishing if the bait and tackle are wrong, or there are no fish in the assigned river.

Umar Al-Mokhtār

10-26-2010, 11:34 PM

Sociocultural Human Intelligence Teams.

They could work with the French military's Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre and Commandos de Recherche et d'Action en Profondeur. :D

M.L.

10-27-2010, 01:21 AM

Sociocultural Human Intelligence Teams.

They could work with the French military's Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre and Commandos de Recherche et d'Action en Profondeur. :D

Creative with the acronyms. You'd be a great addition to the Pentagon...

M.L.

11-08-2010, 04:32 AM

There is an article in the November-December 2010 edition of Military Review entitled Controlling the Human High Ground: Identifying Cultural Opportunities for Insurgency (http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20101231_art006.pdf). Needless to say, I’m disappointed we continue to dwell on this idea of “Human Terrain.” As I said when I started this thread, humans are not terrain. Humans aren’t even like terrain. Why we use the metaphor of “terrain” to describe human beings is beyond me.

Some might wonder why I am so intent to writing about this subject. How we model things is important. Here is an excerpt from a paper entitled On the Mismatch Between Systems and Their Models (http://www.acasa.upenn.edu/System_MismatchesA.pdf)by Russell L. Ackoff and Jamshid Gharajedaghi:

There is a very serious mismatch between most social systems and the models of them that are in use. Barry M. Richmond, creator of the Systems Dynamics model and I-think language makes it clear that systems and the models of them in use are not the same. According to him “the way we think
is outdated.” He goes on to define thinking as:

consisting of two activities: constructing mental models, and then simulating them in order to draw conclusions and make decisions. The mental model is a “selective abstraction” of reality that we create and carry around in our head. As big as some of our heads get, we still can’t fit reality in there. Therefore all mental model are simplifications. They necessarily omit many aspects of the realities they represent.

To think about anything requires an image or a concept of it, a model. To think about something as complex as a social system we use models of similar, simpler, and/or more familiar systems. Unfortunately, as social systems become increasingly more complex, simpler mental models of them do not reflect their emerging properties.

In short, this is what is happening with human terrain. We are using a simple model (terrain) to imagine or conceptualize a much more complex system (human social/cultural groups). As a result, we draw bad conclusions about the nature of the system. This new article from Military Review is a perfect example. The model of “terrain” has erroneously led the author to believe that humans, like terrain, can be “controlled.” Humans are independent beings capable of making choices. While humans can certainly be influenced, they can never be controlled.

Steve the Planner

11-08-2010, 12:42 PM

ML:

From inception, and throughout, the mistake that identifying human dynamic factors was the same as discovering On/Off switches and control dials was to dismiss foreign and enemy publics as something less complex and dynamic than our own electorate.

There is a very big conceptual gap between Big Government/Nations actors/organizations and those of Little Government/Local Governance that seems insurmountable under present structures.

Folks who live far away from a local consequence are more likely to support something with significant local impacts. The perceived impacts, at the local level, are area and impact-specific.

Terrain is the ground on which events occur. Terrain can shape and influence events, but only the actors and drive the events.

The silly notion that we are trying to "shape" terrain/events fails to appreciate the exigencies/realities of CT/COIN in a conflict/post-conflict environment.

In a conflict/post-conflict environment, a deployed and engaged military is not and "influencer" or shaper, except at the risk of falling to its own propaganda.

Occupy, dominate, control as long as is needed. Then build relationships, transitions.

Get over the notion that "wars" and "enemies" can be influenced, shaped, or PR-ed out of existence. Or that we can transition before we occuy, domonate, control.

Not doing so is as dangerous to mission, and soldiers as it is to the subject population.

davidbfpo

02-06-2012, 10:56 AM

Moderator at Work

Prompted by the most recent post I have merged eight threads on the subject of Human Terrain, Human Terrain teams (HTS) and Anthropology into one. Most threads were in the Social Science forum and a few outside, including one in Job Seekers. I have left two threads on Iraq & HTS. (Ends)

Curious that the linked topics have fallen out active posts.

davidbfpo

02-06-2012, 10:59 AM

A short e-article by SWC Member Marc Tyrell appeared in my in tray today and maybe of interest to SWC.

He ends with:
Do the military need and will they continue to use socio-cultural knowledge in order to complete their missions? Yes. Is this only provided by the HTS? No. It is more than time for us to stop flogging a dead rhetorical horse and start looking at the reality of the various and multiple engagements between the military and socio-cultural knowledge.

Link:http://www.e-ir.info/2012/02/05/the-human-terrain-system-clashing-moralities-or-rhetorical-dead-horses/

ganulv

02-07-2012, 02:41 AM

The two methods, broadly speaking, of social and cultural anthropology are ethnography (field work of the sort done by Malinowski) and ethnology (cross-cultural comparison using textual and non-textual artifacts of various kinds). The former is not the exclusive domain of anthropologists, though I think it fair to say they were central in its legitimization amongst scientists social and otherwise. The latter isn’t, either, but doing it well presumes some background that would be difficult to acquire outside of anthropology and a handful of genetically related disciplines (folklore and [human & historical] geography, for example).
Good ethnography is difficult in the most stable social contexts. Presume an ethnographic encounter between a visitor with no particular self-interest beyond intellectual curiosity and a local with absolute willingness to reveal the warts and all of his or her knowledge. Even if the visitor is a top notch student and the local a top notch teacher 1:1 transmission of knowledge is impeded by cultural differences and the reliability of data and inferences built on them is always somewhat in doubt. Now imagine the same ethnographic encounter when the visitor shows up backed by a group of rough men in full kit and the local has to answer to his or her shadow governor after they have departed. The reliability of data gathered under these circumstances and inferences built on them are in serious doubt.
I do not on principle object to the use being made of tools associated with anthropology by any parties to a conflict. I may find their aims distasteful but the fact is that anthropology made its IPO long ago. I absolutely believe that the agent handler, ODA team member, or FSO with some formal training in anthropology will benefit from it in the field. That is not to say, however, that I believe that good anthropological field work is likely during wartime (see #2 above).
The entire HTS project strikes me as an effort to use ethnography to make an unfeasible strategy somehow serviceable. A better applied use of anthropological tools for OEF–like undertakings would be, IMHO, to run the strategy by a group of ethnologists and ask the seemingly simple question, “Do you judge this to be feasible in the first place?”

This is just my 5¢ as someone who knows a lot more about anthropology than do most military professionals (and who fully acknowledges that military professionals tend to know no less about anthropology than do most other non-anthropologists) and more about the military than do most anthropologists (which is not to be understood as a claim that I have a vast or even good knowledge of the military). Some of it may be restatement of previous posts in this thread but I haven’t read many of them since joining this forum less than a year ago. It’s a topic that in my experience involves a lot of misinformation, posturing, and talking past one another so I tend to give it a wide berth for better or worse.

marct

02-07-2012, 03:55 AM

Hi Ganuly,

The two methods, broadly speaking, of social and cultural anthropology are ethnography (field work of the sort done by Malinowski) and ethnology (cross-cultural comparison using textual and non-textual artifacts of various kinds). The former is not the exclusive domain of anthropologists, though I think it fair to say they were central in its legitimization amongst scientists social and otherwise. The latter isn’t, either, but doing it well presumes some background that would be difficult to acquire outside of anthropology and a handful of genetically related disciplines (folklore and [human & historical] geography, for example).

We could go back and forth on this since a lot of it is national school dependent but, sure, let's work with these as the two base methods for gathering and comparing data. That said, we do know a fari bit after 150 years or so about kinship systems, economic systems, etc. that, IMHO, does have some direct relevance.

[LIST=2] Good ethnography is difficult in the most stable social contexts. Presume an ethnographic encounter between a visitor with no particular self-interest beyond intellectual curiosity and a local with absolute willingness to reveal the warts and all of his or her knowledge. Even if the visitor is a top notch student and the local a top notch teacher 1:1 transmission of knowledge is impeded by cultural differences and the reliability of data and inferences built on them is always somewhat in doubt. Now imagine the same ethnographic encounter when the visitor shows up backed by a group of rough men in full kit and the local has to answer to his or her shadow governor after they have departed. The reliability of data gathered under these circumstances and inferences built on them are in serious doubt.
I do not on principle object to the use being made of tools associated with anthropology by any parties to a conflict. I may find their aims distasteful but the fact is that anthropology made its IPO long ago. I absolutely believe that the agent handler, ODA team member, or FSO with some formal training in anthropology will benefit from it in the field. That is not to say, however, that I believe that good anthropological field work is likely during wartime (see #2 above).

Absolutely agree! This means that whoever is doing "fieldwork" under such a condition must be top notch in their ability to perceive patterns and anomalies. Basically, it means that we have to throw out your point 1, except as background reference, and concentrate instead on observation skills.

[LIST=4] The entire HTS project strikes me as an effort to use ethnography to make an unfeasible strategy somehow serviceable. A better applied use of anthropological tools for OEF–like undertakings would be, IMHO, to run the strategy by a group of ethnologists and ask the seemingly simple question, “Do you judge this to be feasible in the first place?”

LOLOL - yup, which is why I am increasingly coming to the opinion that "senor social scientists" should be lodged in Red teaming cells vs. something like the HTS. Of course, that's another article ;).

This is just my 5¢ as someone who knows a lot more about anthropology than do most military professionals (and who fully acknowledges that military professionals tend to know no less about anthropology than do most other non-anthropologists) and more about the military than do most anthropologists (which is not to be understood as a claim that I have a vast or even good knowledge of the military). Some of it may be restatement of previous posts in this thread but I haven’t read many of them since joining this forum less than a year ago. It’s a topic that in my experience involves a lot of misinformation, posturing, and talking past one another so I tend to give it a wide berth for better or worse.

I would certainly agree that the "debate" is often a case of people talking past each other. Honestly, it's been kind of frustrating for me since all of the sides seem to have decided to ignore what actually happens :wry:. I think that's why I stuck the "rhetorical dead horses" in the title of my piece: I was honestly tired or hearing the "same old, same old" again, with little movement happening.

Cheers,

Marc

jmm99

02-07-2012, 06:52 AM

Really Good to see your avatar back on the screen. Not to get between two anthropologists for too long, but ...

Vive le Moulin a Vent et Vive le Canada ! :) You know the rest of our drill.

BTW: I'm no longer a lawyer, but a "Retired Gentleman" (to steal a Victor McLaughlin line as Quincannon (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041866/quotes)). I can reliably inform you that the "proper uniform" of a "retired gentleman" is sweats :D:):D

Regards

Mike

marct

02-07-2012, 01:29 PM

Hi Jmm,

Good to be back :D. I thought that sweats were the uniform for teleworkers :eek:!

Cheers,

Marc

Stan

02-07-2012, 01:41 PM

Hello Marc,
Glad to see you about - you old pirate :D

David and I had just Skyped each other (that almost sounds like something the USG will ban soon with hints of data bits having sex :eek:) wondering about your whereabouts and I honestly thought you were on the dark continent with M-A traipsing around in the jungle.

Regards, Stan

marct

02-07-2012, 02:16 PM

Hey Stan,

Good to hear from you, too :D.

Nah, haven't been doing that much travelling, just dealing with life and a LOT of singing (we had our Carnegie Hall debut last summer, to rave reviews :cool:).

On the research / thinking front, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how the CF can / should integrate their socio-cultural knowledge gathering and analysis, especially given our withdrawal from a combat role in Afghanistan. It's taken a while, but the picture is slowly coming together.

Cheers,

Marc

ganulv

02-07-2012, 03:11 PM

LOLOL - yup, which is why I am increasingly coming to the opinion that "senor social scientists" should be lodged in Red teaming cells vs. something like the HTS.
HRAF is online now (http://www.yale.edu/hraf/collections.htm) so there really is no excuse not to do some Phase 1 reading. Not that there was before.

On the research / thinking front, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how the CF can / should integrate their socio-cultural knowledge gathering and analysis, especially given our withdrawal from a combat role in Afghanistan. It's taken a while, but the picture is slowly coming together.
If you happen to be walking along the roadside when a pair of the CF’s new model snowshoes (http://flic.kr/p/7B4rFR) fall off a truck I might know a potential buyer for them in western Massachusetts. :D Not that there has been much need for them down this way this winter… :(

Stan

02-07-2012, 03:29 PM

On the research / thinking front, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how the CF can / should integrate their socio-cultural knowledge gathering and analysis, especially given our withdrawal from a combat role in Afghanistan. It's taken a while, but the picture is slowly coming together.

Cheers,

Marc

Marc, One would think that almost anyone with background from their military experiences would be a great source of knowledge, but it seems to me that sociocultural analyses continues to take a back seat (as far back as post-1991). We can't even remotely figure out what the Chinese and Russians are doing, yet alone a far more complex subject like Afghanistan.

I'm certainly not going to argue with Malinowski, but I've known people that devoted their lifetime to going local, but yet, had no idea what they were talking about.

One of the things I immediately recognized was the pathetic use of interpreters. Locals like their own spin on things and that never translated into something our Embassy folks could comprehend. It's no wonder we're in the mess we're in :D

marct

02-07-2012, 03:41 PM

HRAF is online now (http://www.yale.edu/hraf/collections.htm) so there really is no excuse not to do some Phase 1 reading. Not that there was before.

True.... then again, I know a lot of people who just don't have the mindset for using the HRAF files ;). Anyway, it looks like the HTS is into a market expansion phase not only trying to sell the system to other countries but, also, getting into the phase 0 action (http://www.idga.org/command-and-control/videos/idga-s-special-operations-summit-2011-col-sharon-h/&mac=IDGA_SMO_12_CA_LI) :wry:.

If you happen to be walking along the roadside when a pair of the CF’s new model snowshoes (http://flic.kr/p/7B4rFR) fall off a truck I might know a potential buyer for them in western Massachusetts. :D Not that there has been much need for them down this way this winter… :(

LOL - they are nice, aren't they! I'd probably keep them for myself given how much snow we have been getting up here. Not as much as some years, but a few heavy days.

Cheers,

Marc

jmm99

02-07-2012, 03:41 PM

are the wave of the present and future - the ultimate general purpose uniform even for those doing ethnography and ethnology.

That field work involving socio-cultural knowledge gathering, esp. where a common language is lacking and commmunication can be effected only by acting out the physical practices of the culture, sounds like it could get pretty sweaty - maybe no clothes is the best norm there.

All in all, cross-cultural comparison using textual and non-textual artifacts of various kinds sounds like a less stressful pursuit for aged gummers.

Regards

Mike

Stan

02-07-2012, 05:08 PM

... where a common language is lacking and communication can be effected only by acting out the physical practices of the culture, sounds like it could get pretty sweaty - maybe no clothes is the best norm there.

Regards

Mike

Hey Mike,
Most of the FAOs I worked with had far less language capabilities but yet their knowledge of the local culture and interaction in fact spoke tons. I would think having language abilities is paramount (or certainly makes things easier), but its only a slight part of the equation that some individuals simply don't possess.

Remind me to tell you the story about a CAR lieutenant who took nearly all his clothes off for a hair cut in South Carolina after being on base for 20 hours. His barber... was none other than the Provost Marshall's 18 year old daughter :eek:

Ken White

02-07-2012, 05:10 PM

It's taken a while, but the picture is slowly coming togetherGood to see you here again -- and I sure hope you'll share that as it comes together...

Sing well. ;)

Ken

ganulv

02-07-2012, 05:30 PM

I'm certainly not going to argue with Malinowski, but I've known people that devoted their lifetime to going local, but yet, had no idea what they were talking about.

One of the things I immediately recognized was the pathetic use of interpreters. Locals like their own spin on things and that never translated into something our Embassy folks could comprehend.
You know, Malinowski had the Slavic soul so he was working at an advantage. It’s true, though, just being there doesn’t mean you get it. And every field linguist I’ve known has a clue about local life in the places they have worked even if they hadn’t had the bit of formal training in socio-cultural theory per se. (On a tangent, I took a couple of courses from a linguist who is a Kinyarwanda speaker (https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3414). He seems to think I’m pretty much a moron, not without reason. :p)

[Sweats] are the wave of the present and future - the ultimate general purpose uniform even for those doing ethnography and ethnology.
Personally, I think Supplex (http://www.shopfest.com/runners_sportswear/supplex_facts.htm) is gold for the hot and muggy stuff. But I won’t argue with my elders. :)

All in all, cross-cultural comparison using textual and non-textual artifacts of various kinds sounds like a less stressful pursuit for aged gummers.Ça dépend. I’d take a day in Bali over a day with a crusty old archivist 99 times out of a 100. And that’s being generous! :p

True.... then again, I know a lot of people who just don't have the mindset for using the HRAF files.
It’s true, I sometimes forget that I’m a gentleman of the old school.

Anyway, it looks like the HTS is into a market expansion phase not only trying to sell the system to other countries but, also, getting into the phase 0 action (http://www.idga.org/command-and-control/videos/idga-s-special-operations-summit-2011-col-sharon-h/&mac=IDGA_SMO_12_CA_LI) :wry:.That’s… surprising. My admittedly limited understanding of HTS is that it hasn’t borne much fruit. Or maybe it’s not surprising given the tendency of bureaucracy to spawn zombie programs (braindead but relentlessly expanding and hard to put in the ground).

LOL - they are nice, aren't they! I'd probably keep them for myself given how much snow we have been getting up here. Not as much as some years, but a few heavy days.It’s a neat idea to use metal to construct a more traditional frame form and to use lacing rather than Hypalon for the flotation. But that’s a separate paper, as you put it earlier.

It’s so brown and bland down this way it might as well be the Midwest. I had to make a day trip all the way to central Vermont last weekend to get into any of the white stuff. I did get to pass some of the time by listening to the Canadiens/Caps game in the vernacular, at least!

marct

02-07-2012, 05:40 PM

That’s… surprising. My admittedly limited understanding of HTS is that it hasn’t borne much fruit. Or maybe it’s not surprising given the tendency of bureaucracy to spawn zombie programs (braindead but relentlessly expanding and hard to put in the ground).

What's really frustrating for me is that we really just don't have much decent, publicly available data on it :mad:. Anecdotal evidence abounds and, from some of the stuff I've seen, the quality and usability range is huge. My suspicion, though, is that the "export version" is being pushed as a way to generate legitimacy (and revenue). The phase 0 move is probably to try and avoid coming cuts since I suspect that a lot of what they will be doing is already done. Guess we'll just have to see....

It’s so brown and bland down this way it might as well be the Midwest. I had to make a day trip all the way to central Vermont last weekend to get into any of the white stuff. I did get to pass some of the time by listening to the Canadiens/Caps game in the vernacular, at least!

We've been having rain for the past couple of days. After all, "Waterlude" (real name Winterlude) is a tradition up here. Looks like we'll get snow again on Friday, though.

Cheers,

Marc

Stan

02-07-2012, 05:50 PM

Hey Matt,

You know, Malinowski had the Slavic soul so he was working at an advantage. It’s true, though, just being there doesn’t mean you get it. And every field linguist I’ve known has a clue about local life in the places they have worked even if they hadn’t had the bit of formal training in socio-cultural theory per se. (On a tangent, I took a couple of courses from a linguist who is a Kinyarwanda speaker (https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3414). He seems to think I’m pretty much a moron, not without reason. :p)

I guess my original point would be that we can't just take an ordinary soldier and hope to have an anthropologist. As bleak as some conclude the HTS program is, there are just as many of us that fully applaud their contributions. That "edge" may in fact work out to saving lives on both sides of the fence.

As far as your DIE verbs go, ask that Kinyarwanda speaker to battle with Lingala with but 800 words and phrases. Tons of vocabulary doesn't always translate into difficult :D

As an aside, I'm glad you finally met Marc. We have battled with wit and brawn with no equal. It's now on you :cool:

jmm99

02-07-2012, 07:11 PM

ethnography (interviewing people, establishing rapport, communicating "stuff") - in my (former) world, that may or may not have involved shaping (manipulation) of the "stuff" to meet the requirements of my client's end goals determined by the client's policy. "What is Truth ?" asked Pilate - and received no answer. Shaping (manipulation) may be used to support good, indifferent or bad policies. Anthropology also may be used to support good, indifferent or bad policies.

ethnology (cross-cultural comparison using textual and non-textual artifacts of various kinds) - been there, done that and do it here; and admit to the shaping (manipulation) of the resultant product. Again, the issue becomes whether the methodology is used in support of good, indifferent or bad policies. That opens up a new endeavor - as to which, one might pursue further adventures in ethnography and ethnology, or engage in adventures in babysitting.

Stan: The interpreter thing is interesting - and sometimes one gains a personal insight. Flashback: I'm with a gal and her parents (the dad having been a partisan in the Winter War after the Russians burnt the family farm; and then a regular in the Continuation War) to talk about legal options. The gal (very well educated) offered to translate - which was wise, considering my lack of any fluency in the spoken language (esp. real Finnish). I was surprised on how often "mutta" (but) occured - translating something like: on one hand ..., but on the other hand ... (yksilla kadella ..., mutta toisaalta ...). I sounded like some legal academic. :o

ganulv: While Supplex rings my bell as a chemist (and I've a little Dupont stock), I buy my wardrobe at the Family Dollar Store - no fancy Yuppie stuff. Besides, the only hot and muggy places up here are saunas - no clothes worn there. :D

I'd never argue anthropology with Marc; he's the one who keeps bringing up things like Hittite Law (as to which, he clearly needs guidance ;)). No point in fighting - our ancestors did enough of that in 1755-1760 (Lake George and the Plains of Abraham, wins for Marc's; Fort William Henry and Le Moulin a Vent, wins for mine). They then went on to join in building a nation, Canada - although admittedly, a few others did help in that process. :)

Regards

Mike

Stan

02-07-2012, 07:39 PM

Hei Mikka !

Stan: The interpreter thing is interesting - and sometimes one gains a personal insight. Flashback: I'm with a gal and her parents (the dad having been a partisan in the Winter War after the Russians burnt the family farm; and then a regular in the Continuation War) to talk about legal options. The gal (very well educated) offered to translate - which was wise, considering my lack of any fluency in the spoken language (esp. real Finnish). I was surprised on how often "mutta" (but) occured - translating something like: on one hand ..., but on the other hand ... (yksilla kadella ..., mutta toisaalta ...). I sounded like some legal academic. :o
Regards

Mike

Interpreters are locals and they are prone to what all locals say and do. Who wants to look like a prime idiot in front of a bunch of Yankees :D
But, if you want to ever walk away with even a clue as to what was discussed and the context of the conversation - you better up your game.

My first real Finnish sauna was with a great bunch of Finnish bikers. Being beaten with soaking birch branches is definitely an acquired taste thing. I got more out of that 2-hour session than I would have in 10 years talking to Finns. My Finnish, BTW, sucks :o

I just completed interviews with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) to see if we had some candidates for tours in Africa with the UN. Out of 77 candidates, I came up with 6 I felt met the grade. During the interviews two of them decided to use the "N" word to describe Africans. Having just been read the riot act (death by powerpoint) on conduct inside the MSB. What the HR folks from Sweden didn't know, was that the N word is merely part of the Estonian language and means very little - certainly not racist. What the Estonians didn't know was that their tiny country and secret language was taken completely out of context.

While I was able to defuse the situation I made it a point to slam home the often conceived version of a simple mistake with languages and cultures.

I could have done nearly anything at the Finn's house and sauna and little would have happened. Finns are a tolerant and friendly bunch. I doubt that such acts and slights in the Sub-Sahara would be so easily forgotten.

Regards, Stan

jmm99

02-07-2012, 09:17 PM

from Stan
Finns are a tolerant and friendly bunch

but not always accurate.

I could point you to commentary by an African-American who lives in Helsinki - racial slurs of him vary (use and non-use thereof) from person to person.

On the other hand, Finns are used to their Black or Dark Finns (my mother was one - she'd tan very dark even in what summer we have - despite the blue eyes), which is said to be because of the 25-30% "Eastern" genetic component that runs in most Finns.

Then, there is the Swedish-speaking Finn vs Finnish-speaking Finn thing, which goes beyond all reason. It supposedly is gone - along with other 19th and early 20th century things. But, it is far from gone if enough beer goes down the throat of a still dyed in the wool "Fennoman" - attestation by fairly recent personal experience.

Now, is the Stan-JMM conversation ethnography or ethnology (JMM being something of an artifact) ? :)

Regards

Mike

ganulv

02-07-2012, 11:22 PM

Hey Matt,

I guess my original point would be that we can't just take an ordinary soldier and hope to have an anthropologist. As bleak as some conclude the HTS program is, there are just as many of us that fully applaud their contributions. That "edge" may in fact work out to saving lives on both sides of the fence.
I guess my reservation is that some seem to conceive of socio–cultural knowledge as a panacea. If the expectations are reasonable I could see how having an anthropologist around on the ground could help in this way: anthropologists are aware that there is always more than one way to do things as well as of the fact that variation in social life isn’t infinite. An anthropologist could conceivably 1) help steer troops on the ground away from understanding the locals’ motivations too much from their own (the troops’) point of view as well as 2) help save some time making assessments of communities because they can immediately eliminate a lot of options that someone cutting things from whole cloth might consider in their initial assessments.

I remain skeptical that anthropologists working with troops in an area where there’s an insurgency underway can elicit consistently reliable opinions and detailed pieces of information from the locals. One of the things an ethnographer usually needs to get at those is trust, and that takes time even when everyone isn’t paranoid (and with good reason!) about everyone else’s real intentions. I hope no one is under the impression that ethnographers can get what an interrogator can in those contexts, just without the consequences of running interrogations.

I’m beyond skeptical about efforts at directed culture change. I’m not saying it can’t be done successfully. I’m not convinced anyone knows how to do it predictably, though. And I just don’t believe the U.S. is ever going to see a long term culture change project through to the end, and that’s a recipe for things ending up more chaotic than before when the project is left off. Reconstruction is—or at least should be, IMHO—the type specimen for such as that.

As far as your DIE verbs go, ask that Kinyarwanda speaker to battle with Lingala with but 800 words and phrases. Tons of vocabulary doesn't always translate into difficult :DNoun classes, always a party… :wry: With some vowel harmony and a little tonal morphophonology as party favors! :D

Stan

02-08-2012, 09:40 AM

Now, is the Stan-JMM conversation ethnography or ethnology (JMM being something of an artifact) ? :)

Regards

Mike

Hey Mike,
Without a doubt ethnography :D

Stan

02-08-2012, 02:04 PM

Hey Matt,

I guess my reservation is that some seem to conceive of socio–cultural knowledge as a panacea. If the expectations are reasonable I could see how having an anthropologist around on the ground could help in this way: anthropologists are aware that there is always more than one way to do things as well as of the fact that variation in social life isn’t infinite. An anthropologist could conceivably 1) help steer troops on the ground away from understanding the locals’ motivations too much from their own (the troops’) point of view as well as 2) help save some time making assessments of communities because they can immediately eliminate a lot of options that someone cutting things from whole cloth might consider in their initial assessments.

A good point and something the Army often does to their FAO and SF with extremely high (unobtainable) expectations. I saw the use of HTS as a one-person team working towards the same goals, but not hanging out with a bunch of armed men. In the end the anthropologist is yet another tool in the kit bag and not construed as the answer to everything culturally-related. The anthropologist is also a great mentor and instructor. Where better to learn and practice than in the country in question.

I remain skeptical that anthropologists working with troops in an area where there’s an insurgency underway can elicit consistently reliable opinions and detailed pieces of information from the locals. One of the things an ethnographer usually needs to get at those is trust, and that takes time even when everyone isn’t paranoid (and with good reason!) about everyone else’s real intentions. I hope no one is under the impression that ethnographers can get what an interrogator can in those contexts, just without the consequences of running interrogations.

That I think is the problem with our command (upper echelon) - when and how to employ your best assets should be left to the folks on the ground, and even then only with adequate training. For example: We have explosive detection dogs, but they are not the cure-all and certainly will not respond passively during a fire fight or under duress.

I’m beyond skeptical about efforts at directed culture change. I’m not saying it can’t be done successfully. I’m not convinced anyone knows how to do it predictably, though. And I just don’t believe the U.S. is ever going to see a long term culture change project through to the end, and that’s a recipe for things ending up more chaotic than before when the project is left off. Reconstruction is—or at least should be, IMHO—the type specimen for such as that.

Both Marc and I were subjected to a virtual cultural training video (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=7970) years ago. While we both had some serious reservations and both concluded it was not ready for prime time, it is out there and ... Well, dunno :wry:
Any skepticism about the HTS would soon seem mediocre once you took the cultural challenge :D

davidbfpo

03-28-2012, 03:14 PM

Hat tip to Circling the Lion's Den for this item:
The US Army's Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin for Oct-Dec 2011 is a special issue devoted to the subject. Some of the articles relate to Iraq, but several are devoted to the HTS in Afghanistan, including case studies of Rural Human Terrain in Kandahar, engaging local religious leaders in the Central Helmand River Valley and articles on bilingual data collection and HTS support to Information Operations.

Link to the Bulletin's issue:http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/mipb/2011_04.pdf

...one of the papers notes: "Difficulties integrating HTS teams into Army units arise because the HTS program brings together two professions (social science and military studies) that tend to operate within different problem-solving paradigms, speak different languages, consist of different personalities, and have misconceptions one about the other. Academia is stereotyped as theoretical, long winded, and perhaps of no practical use at the moment. Military studies are stereotyped as too practical, laconic, and operating under the slogan that a 70 percent solution is good enough right now in the battle space."

Link to Circling:http://circlingthelionsden.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/analyzing-us-army-human-terrain-teams.html

ganulv

03-29-2012, 06:10 AM

Hat tip to Circling the Lion's Den for this item:

Link to the Bulletin's issue:http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/mipb/2011_04.pdf

Link to Circling:http://circlingthelionsden.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/analyzing-us-army-human-terrain-teams.html
Many thanks for these links. I scanned the bulletin just now and will aim to read a couple of the articles tomorrow.

What I have seen of the bulletin so far reinforces my impression that the U.S. military and civilian contingents in Afghanistan seem to be fairly ignorant as to the basics of agriculture. (That's not a criticism. In my experience few Americans know much about where the food they eat comes from.) Am I way off base here?

marct

03-30-2012, 10:20 AM

What I have seen of the bulletin so far reinforces my impression that the U.S. military and civilian contingents in Afghanistan seem to be fairly ignorant as to the basics of agriculture. (That's not a criticism. In my experience few Americans know much about where the food they eat comes from.) Am I way off base here?

That matches my impression, and in more areas than just agriculture. Still working through the articles, though....

Cheers,

Marc

ganulv

03-30-2012, 11:54 PM

120mm

03-31-2012, 02:02 PM

but I still find the case study of the village of fig farmers in Kandahar where no one knew rotted manure is fertilizer to be absolutely bizarre. I have to wonder what you would find if you were able to scratch beneath the surface of that one.

You'd find out HTS members are drooling idiots. But that's ok; they fit in with the rest of the US contingent, there.

ganulv

03-31-2012, 04:24 PM

You'd find out HTS members are drooling idiots. But that's ok; they fit in with the rest of the US contingent, there.
:(

In all seriousness, that they happened upon a settlement full of people who farm for a living where no one knows how to manure their fields and didn't go beyond teaching them about organic fertilizer speaks volumes to me. In that kind of situation I would think that either a) they haven't been farming for a living for long and start trying to figure out if there is a recent history of population movement and/or a "development" project or b) the folks in that settlement were actually doing something else for a living. Pursuing those possibilities might really reveal a lot (whether or not ISAF and GIRoA would like the things revealed is another question).

It all could just be a problem with the text. Who knows what got edited out? And I'm not pretending I know the constraints involved with the case. But still, the article leaves me scratching my head.

JMA

03-31-2012, 04:33 PM

Ken White

03-31-2012, 05:56 PM

Why would the 'US military contingent' need to understand the basics of agriculture?I've been wondering the same thing while following this thread...

Bob's World

03-31-2012, 06:51 PM

I've often been curious about the fixation on Afghan agriculture as well, in regards to how improving it might somehow be a cure for insurgency.

I'm no expert on the topic, but I did grow up in rural Oregon and my undergrad was in forestry so I have some appreciation about those who live close to the land and what works and what doesn't work. I also spent a bit of time flying over Helmand, Oruzgan, Kandahar and Zabul provinces; and being fascinated with the grandeur of the place, and also very interested in the study of terrain as it shapes the fight, and the study of how man works to squeeze a living out of a harsh environment; I spent much of that time staring down at the ground and thinking in those terms.

From this I earned a tremendous respect for the Taliban fighter and his ability to defy our tremendous technology through his equally tremendous hardiness, dedication and ability to become one with his surroundings. Also for the Afghan farmers, who seemed to squeeze every drop of life out of the soil and water available with their efforts.

I also spent a couple hours standing on the roof of the Arghandab District center looking out over the Arghandab valley in conversation with a USDA SME discussing his work, his observations, recommendations, etc. So, no expert, but I have some experience on this topic.

I too don't get it.

People tell me how the Afghans don't know how to maximize the agricultural potential of their land. Bull####. With the tools and resources available to them they maximize it very well. Sure, if they had massive tractors, irrigation, computers, etc they could do ma ore to be like Americans farm in Kansas, but hey, Afghanistan isn't Kansas. Who is going to sustain and maintain those capabilities? To provide such a capacity would be as silly as building a massive Western-style Army that they cannot afford to sustain and that is inappropriate to the security concerns of the region...

Second, where in the history of conflict between those who are governed, and those who govern them (insurgency), has it been a function of said populace not knowing how to farm their land?? Not owning the land they farm? Definitely. That is a classic grievance for insurgency, one that Mao leveraged very well. Land ownership is one of the largest problems in Afghanistan today as well, but for very different reasons. In this "winner take all" patronage society, where fortunes have swung 180 degrees so often over the past 40 years there is truly no way to sort out the mess of who has best title to any of the very valuable plots of arable or city land.

But is there a role for military personnel in this? No, not really.

ganulv

03-31-2012, 10:49 PM

Why would the 'US military contingent' need to understand the basics of agriculture?
If the strategists have decided upon undertaking a population-centric counterinsurgency (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/population-centric-coin-in-afghanistan) and 80% of the population is engaged in agriculture, how could these same strategists even pretend to formulate strategy if they know nothing about agriculture?

But is the implicit question whether or not I think military professionals need to know something about agriculture? I don't see how it would help the young man scanning the Fulda horizon with his field glasses c. 1985; I don't see how it would not help the military governor of an agriculturally rich state then, now, or ever.

And my semi-informed opinion is that with COIN 2.0 the United States Military asks far too much of itself.

Ken White

04-01-2012, 01:50 AM

JMA

04-04-2012, 11:48 AM

If the strategists have decided upon undertaking a population-centric counterinsurgency (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/population-centric-coin-in-afghanistan) and 80% of the population is engaged in agriculture, how could these same strategists even pretend to formulate strategy if they know nothing about agriculture?

But is the implicit question whether or not I think military professionals need to know something about agriculture? I don't see how it would help the young man scanning the Fulda horizon with his field glasses c. 1985; I don't see how it would not help the military governor of an agriculturally rich state then, now, or ever.

And my semi-informed opinion is that with COIN 2.0 the United States Military asks far too much of itself.

May I offer another perspective on all this.

The assumption that COIN has to be either enemy- or population- centric is an error IMHO.

An analysis of each specific insurgency should lead to a unique course of action being adopted as COIN policy.

Not every grievance cited as contributing to the insurgency can be addressed. If for example the true motivation behind the insurgency is more ideological than economic, more religious than the pursuit of human freedoms or more ethnic than a demand for democracy then a 'political settlement' will be unlikely.

Certainly the current US approach to COIN being what can be called 'cheque-book COIN' where money is thrown around to buy off the opposition and buy support from those caught in the middle is quite ridiculous and destined to fail.

Ken's (good) point about the use of foreign troops to support the 'state' is valid. And of course the US know that the longer the troops stay in the country the more the locals see them as occupiers and want them to go (this also happened to the Cubans in Angola).

It is well worth having another look at Wilf's paper 'Killing your way to Control' (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/BAR%20151%20Killing%20your%20way%20to%20control%28 2%29.pdf)

If we accept that at the highest level 80% of the COIN policy is political the 20% comprising the military action will often prove to be critical in determining the outcome of the insurgency.

It should be obvious that the armed 'wing' of the insurgency must be confronted with armed force. The armed insurrection must be suppressed or at least contained to to allow the political process to run its course. If the armed insurrection is not suppressed then it is not possible to negotiate from a position of strength (as is the case in Afghanistan).

Wilf writes:

The population will obey whoever exercises the power of law over them. Power creates support.

IMHO I would use the word 'submission' rather than support.

The people need to submit to the rule of law. The people need to submit to peaceful negotiations (whether a minority gets what it wants or not). etc etc

Those who resort to violence must be met with kind.

...So I would not spend a cent on agriculture in Afghanistan... in fact the next trick should be to destroy their irrigation system if they use continue to use them to cultivate poppies. Just give them the Gypsy's warning on that... and if they don't listen... then let the Engineers have a little fun with demolitions.

Dayuhan

04-04-2012, 12:28 PM

An analysis of each specific insurgency should lead to a unique course of action being adopted as COIN policy.

Agree completely with that, but I'd hope that analysis would be conducted not only to determine what course of action is needed, but also to determine whether any action is called for at all. One of the problems with all our talk of COIN is the visceral assumption that insurgency by definition is something that needs to be countered, even if the specific insurgency in question is really not something we need to be concerned with.

The people need to submit to the rule of law. The people need to submit to peaceful negotiations (whether a minority gets what it wants or not). etc etc

Those who resort to violence must be met with kind.

What if it's the government that ignores the rule of law, refuses to negotiate, and resorts to violence? It happens, and it's a good reason to be very careful about choosing what governments we want to support and deciding what insurgents need to be countered.

ganulv

04-04-2012, 04:13 PM

Wilf writes:

The population will obey whoever exercises the power of law over them. Power creates support.IMHO I would use the word 'submission' rather than support. IMHO the use of force can almost always ensure compliance but it may or may not ensure cooperation. In a scenario in which you possess unlimited recourse to violence and they do not you can bludgeon them into compliance before they are entirely exterminated. (Probably (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada).) You might even mistake that compliance for cooperation. But should your recourse to violence decrease and theirs increase they might give you a nasty lesson in the difference between the two (http://youtu.be/wWIbCtz_Xwk).

JMA

04-04-2012, 04:50 PM

IMHO the use of force can almost always ensure compliance but it may or may not ensure cooperation. In a scenario in which you possess unlimited recourse to violence and they do not you can bludgeon them into compliance before they are entirely exterminated. (Probably (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada).) You might even mistake that compliance for cooperation. But should your recourse to violence decrease and theirs increase they might give you a nasty lesson in the difference between the two (http://youtu.be/wWIbCtz_Xwk).

This is exactly why I said 'submission' and not 'support'.

This is also why I stated (elsewhere) that the US needed to make greater use of proxies to fight these wars because - like in Rodesia but not in Zimbabwe - the US is not willing to indulge in the brutality required to defeat the insurgents and match their methods which force the population into the submissive compliance required.

ganulv

04-04-2012, 05:19 PM

This is exactly why I said 'submission' and not 'support'.

This is also why I stated (elsewhere) that the US needed to make greater use of proxies to fight these wars because - like in Rodesia but not in Zimbabwe - the US is not willing to indulge in the brutality required to defeat the insurgents and match their methods which force the population into the submissive compliance required.
Yeah, to me the most problematic statement in Owen’s article is that "[t]he population should not be asked to pick sides" on p. 37. No, they shouldn't be, but they will, and not nicely. The worst case I can think of is being stuck between the Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian security forces (http://icarusfilms.com/new2009/luca.html). There are probably worse, sadly.

120mm

04-05-2012, 02:20 AM

Back to the agriculture issue:

1. Those anthropologists/social scientists who do not understand agriculture tend to be idiots who are not worth their weight as landfill. By "tend", I mean "they are, without a doubt". Ivory tower idiots with multiple degrees and no useful experience.

2. In some localities, there is zero knowledge of farming, because entire generations have been wiped out, and the locals are returnees with no ag experience or interlopers with no ag experience. It is not uncommon to see these guys make really bad ag decisions, like dumping a bag of seed on the ground in a pile in their field, or spraying melons for worms after they are infected. And then selling them in the market. These "farmers" then starve and can be picked up by the insurgents fairly easy as recruits to make ends meet.

3. The presence of someone with practical ag experience plus a bit of anthropological education might keep the US from doing stupid #### like the Helmand/Argandab Valley Authority project like we did in the 1950s and 1960s, which is precisely what others in this thread warns about. In other words, local ag standards, executed correctly, are often superior to 'Murrican methods.

Finally, on the subject of HTS personnel. In short, they suck. They suck because they tend to be morons and idiots. Most are catastrophically unqualified and the few that are "qualified" are unsuited for this sort of work. I know one actual social scientist who is currently deployed who really knows how to do this sort of work. I had the honor of working with him the last year and a half.

On a related topic, this HTSer, myself and an Afghan-American in another program outproduced the entire $227 million HTS program last year, in quantity of reports alone. Now, if you consider "quality" of reports, we outdistanced that $227 million program a hundred fold. Their reports tend to be recycled data and "I like poop. Do you like poop?" kind of quality, whereas ours was real data, collected, analyzed and given to grateful ISAF/DoS personnel. Or quashed by the chain of command as being just a little bit too much of an uncomfortable truth.

The problem with inserting Anthropologists/Social Science types into this situation is that the skillset and mindset are so shockingly rare that it isn't worth the pain. There are maybe a couple of people that could really do the job and would want to do the job.

JMA

04-06-2012, 05:28 AM

Yeah, to me the most problematic statement in Owen’s article is that "[t]he population should not be asked to pick sides" on p. 37. No, they shouldn't be, but they will, and not nicely. The worst case I can think of is being stuck between the Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian security forces (http://icarusfilms.com/new2009/luca.html). There are probably worse, sadly.

Lets look at his whole paragraph shall we:

The population should not be asked to pick sides. They should merely be informed that the Army will win, and that should be demonstrated to them, as forcefully and unequivocally as possible. No one should be confused that if you fight the Army/Security Forces, you will die or be captured. Evidence should be literally laid before them. There should be no more complicated message than that.

The idea here is good but easier said than done.

Clearly this has not worked in Afghanistan despite the Taliban taking significant casualties. There seems to be a never ending supply of those ready to take the money the Taliban offer (much from poppy derivative proceeds) and take up arms.

So the message has not got through to the population that death or capture will be the end result of joining the Taliban.

So is Wilf's model achievable?

My position is that it is not with the restrictions placed on the US and Brit armies in Afghanistan. Rules of engagement and (horrifyingly) increasingly attitudes of officers (some displayed around here) which are more suited to work with the Peacecorps than with an army at war.

Then inexplicably the US have appeared to forgotten the simple lesson they learned in Vietnam - where a segment of their Viet Cong enemy were 'farmers by day, soldiers by night'. (If they have not forgotten then they have no #*!# idea how to deal with that)

This comes back to the need - IMHO - to use proxies who can fight by the same lack of rules as the Taliban. Use of such tactics or methods would not be possible for use by US or Brit forces. (Nor would - most likely - the US Congress allow such proxies to kill in the name of the US)

Edward Lattwak is always a good read to counter the namby-pamby stuff that the new breed of COIN experts churn out.

I suggest you start here: What would Byzantium do? (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/01/what-would-byzantium-do/)

The prognosis is not good for successful US/Brit military interventions in the future.

Beelzebubalicious

04-06-2012, 05:42 AM

If I may take this conversation down a couple of notches (to my intellectual level) and back a page, I have always been curious to know whether idiots by default drool, or if a "drooling idiot" is another degree of idiot (in a spectrum of smarter and dumber idiots) or if a drooling idiot is an idiot with some sort of neurological problem or chronic infection. Also, is the ivory tower idiot a smarter idiot or does the adjective, "ivory tower" automatically, in this context, mean a dumber kind of idiot?

By the way, I am a PhD student in Anthropology doing my dissertation on "the idiot as a metaphor for the anthropologist in the human terrain system".

Thank you for your insight. please respond to me in simple language, free of jargon and if at all possible, expletives.

davidbfpo

04-06-2012, 07:01 PM

A large number of the recent posts concern the Afghan drug problem (cultivation) not HTT and after a review have been moved to the existing thread on those issues:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=1234

SWJ Blog

06-14-2012, 09:50 AM

An Enhanced Plan For Regionally Aligning Brigades Using Human Terrain Systems (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/an-enhanced-plan-for-regionally-aligning-brigades-using-human-terrain-systems)

Entry Excerpt:

--------
Read the full post (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/an-enhanced-plan-for-regionally-aligning-brigades-using-human-terrain-systems) and make any comments at the SWJ Blog (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog).
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

davidbfpo

08-12-2013, 11:14 AM

After what I see as a lull Human Terrain System HTS is back on the agenda. There is today SWJ Blog 'System Failure: Anthropologists on the Battlefield', which links to a very poor USA Today piece:http://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2013/08/11/human-terrain-system-afghanistan-war-anthropologists/2640297/

There is a far better link to a NYT column 'How to Read Afghanistan':http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/opinion/sunday/how-to-read-afghanistan.html?pagewanted=2&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all

Bearing in mind another thread on lessons learnt this phrase is so simple:
GOOD intelligence requires good reading; you can’t have one without the other.

The article concludes:
What happened to Paula Loyd reminds us that understanding what motivates our enemies and the people we’re fighting among is a long and painful undertaking. But turning away from this effort, as many in the military did in the wake of Vietnam, ensures only that more Americans will die in other wars, in other far-flung corners of the world.

Finally, with hat tip to the UK-based blog on Afghanistan, Circling the Lion's Den:
US security writer John Stanton has written many articles over the last few years on the US Army's Human Terrain System, some of which have been referenced by this blog. Now 115 of his pieces have been published as a collection. The US Army Terrain System 2008-2013: The Program from Hell costs just $6.66 (ooh er!!), but is worth every penny.

Link:http://circlingthelionsden.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/john-stantons-writings-on-human-terrain.html