Blending into the mindset of the Human Terrain

[Coined]

Hi Marc,

Totally works for me! I'm looking at "battlespace" as a subset of the evolutionary term "workspace" anyway. For me, a "battlespace" is just a workspace that involves a "hot" competition in a workspace, and could be any "space" that is perceived / conceived by humans (or any other so-called sentient species... like my cat and his constant insurgent campaign for more cream in the morning!!!!).
Marc

With Why I mean; Why is that particular group of people important to make an assessment of? Why are they of importance to achieve "any" effect, and so on? After that the How and What may follow.

I think that the the future battlefield is about energy, water, an overcrowded earth and the food problems which will come along with that. The armies role will be more like "firemen". If you have a look at our beautiful world you will notice that about 75% of the population lives at about 25-30% of our Earth, roughly Asia, that part together with Africa can be our "challenging" environment, a 3BW environment.

Have a look at Afghanistan, the Taliban stand closely to the Wahabism, the most extreme explanation of the Quran, which is the state-religion of Saudi Arabia. This country together with other Gulf states supports the Taliban firmly. Also the drugs trade is huge. Many countries benefit from that. Electronics find their way from China to the Taliban, both China and Iran deliver weapons to parts of the Taliban and to the Hazara.

This can't be dealt with by a stove piped military approach. The military approach is just part of that. We have to train for such an approach, military training areas are too "narrow" for that.

For instance:

We know that (in this case) the Afghan population is illiterate (80%, and in Uruzgan 99%). The "mouth to mouth" news is THE news and the one who brings it is right. The mosque is one of the places where "the word" is spread; so send guys of the ANA to thos mosques in their uniform. Let them explain that "We are good muslims as you are and that is why we like to pray with you". They can build up rapport, so they can ask the population how they want to be helped, "We are Afghan as you are, we are here to build up our Afghanistan together". Of course there is more to it but that is too much for this mail. The outcome of this will be "more blending in" and if there is a disreputable or bad Imam preaching he will reconsider his anti-coaltion forces rethoric.

There are some Western armies, like the Canadian army, who have a military imam in their midst. An army captain. Imagine the mindset of the Afghans when they see him at TV or hear him at the radio having dicussions with Afghan mullah's. Imagine the reactions of the Ministry of Religious Affairs ........... Well, it happened and it worked, but due to the lack of policy on this it stopped when the captain ended his tour.

So, there is more ...... and we can train for that.