Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[marct]

Hi Wilf,

To kick or not kick is not really the problem. That comes down to good behaviour, and common sense.

Both of which are rare and, also, culturally defined .

... but HTTs are working for the military. That means that have to have some military utility. They must be useful. The military has a defined mission and that is what the HTTs have to support. The military is not there to enable the HTTs to gather information of Ethnographic interest.
Surely their job is to furnish information in support of the mission? Isn't that an S2 function?

Is it a civil affairs function?

I think you, and a lot of people, are caught up in a terminology (and perception) problem here. The first part deals with the concept of "mission". First off, all missions are nested under and, in theory, subservient to a policy "mission". What may be the most immediately effective way to achieve a specific mission may actually lead to an increased likeliness of a higher order mission failing. This seems to be the niche in which the HTS was originally conceived of to fill - figuring out when the "normal" actions on a mission would increase the likelihood of failure for a higher order mission. That isn't really either an S2 or CA function.

Second, the "military utility" of an HTT is, in theory, both preventative as well as supportive in nature. Again, in theory, it should cover the spectrum from really low level missions (e.g. door kicking) to the highest order they can influence (e.g. which local power structures to work with). This just doesn't fit in nicely with the standard definitions of who does what, when and how, and it has certainly led to confusion about the role of the HTTs and the HTS.