From Philip Carl Salzman on the Middle East Strategy at Harvard blog

Uncle Sam Wants You
From Philip Carl Salzman

“He must be a spy,” said the visiting Baluch, bearded, turbaned, and baggy in long shirt and trousers. My fellow camp mates of the Dadolzai shrugged. They had accepted me and were past wondering exactly how I got there. “Sure,” I replied; “the government”—whether Iranian or American was left unspecified, “they are paying me big bucks to tell them how many rocks”—I point at rocks on the ground—”there are in Baluchistan. And they are very interested in how many of these”—goat turds—”there are in Baluchistan.” Camp mates shrug; visitor is now bored with the subject.

New locale: Rajasthan. The Brahman veterinarian from the Sheep and Wool Service who served as my guide, local expert, and traveling companion, assured me that everyone knew that so-called tourists who went to Jaisalmer, up near the Pakistan border, to ride the camel safaris in the sand dunes were really spies. “Why,” he said, “they went missing for days at a time, and we know what they are spying.” His trump argument: “No well-to-do, educated people would ever do anything so dumb as to want to ride camels in the desert, for fun.”

It is very common for anthropologists, and foreigners in general, to be regarded as spies, agents, dubious, and perhaps dangerous. So the oft-heard plea of researchers—”We can’t ever work for government or people will think all of us all the time are spies and agents”—seems at the very least naive, and, one cannot help thinking, disingenuous.

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