I would suggest whatever scenarios you work up that you have some of your soldiers play locals and some play US. The soldiers that are role playing locals will be briefed up on what the local attitudes are, recent events, and on the internal politics of the area. The soldiers, playing themselves will go in with much less information.
We found that the soldiers role playing local villagers learned an awful lot by watching how the soldiers interpreted, or misinterpreted what was going on and how they could make a good situation bad or vice versa.
Your interpreters should not be read into the scenarios any more than the person doing the negotiating or their security team. This will keep the entire event spontaneous and as life like as possible.
I would also suggest rolling these role playing events into a larger scenarios. Have your teams run other type of missions and have them begin the negotiations after they have been doing other “real” soldier work.
A few scenarios that have worked in the past train ups.
First Contact:
Your first time in the village that has had no permanent US/Coalition presence. You are moving in and you want to let him know what you will be using for escalation of force signals and negotiations curfew enforcement.
Feed Me:
You want your troops to start living off of the local economy. You will need to buy vegetables, bread, etc. How can you do this without causing food prices to go up so that locals have a hard time paying but still support the local economy and put a human face on your soldiers?
Pothole:
The roads that you use are in need of repair. Since your unit’s vehicles have caused a large part of the wear and tear (and all those potholes and chewed up asphalt make great places to hide IEDs) you convinced you CA guys to help spring for some of the cost.
Which roads will be fixed, when will they be fixed, who will fix them, and who gets the credit are all potential subjects open to negotiation?
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