Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[Kivlonic]

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]

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 .

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]

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]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Ken White]

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.

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...

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

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]

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) - 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]

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]

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...

[Steve the Planner]

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]

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 . 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]

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]

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]

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...