Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[ganulv]

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. There are probably worse, sadly.

[120mm]

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]

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. 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?

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

[Beelzebubalicious]

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.