Anthropology Goes to War

...McFate and Col...

...In the Christian Science Monitor piece, “Tracy” went further: “In most circumstances, I am ‘third’ gender,” says Tracy, who can give only her fi rst name...

...At a meeting I attended in July in Mehtar Lam, the capital of Laghman Province, between American offi cers, representatives from the State Department and USAID, and Laghman’s Provincial Development Council, none of the Americans was aware of a crucial dynamic...

...But these could and should be provided during the predeployment training the Army is paying for anyway...

...According to a Canadian survey conducted in late September in Afghanistan, 64 percent of respondents said “the foreigners have made a lot of progress or some progress in the fi ght against the Taliban...

...Is it true that the Dari speakers don’t speak Persian...

...There hasn’t been a suicide bombing since the spring...

...Is a lack of cultural awareness foiling our mission in Afghanistan...

...She says that she is not seen as either an Afghan woman or a Western one— because of her uniform...

...Thomas Johnson has produced a database, as noted above, which promises to be an excellent resource, though so far it lacks genealogies and kinship information on local leaders...

...I visited one of these district centers, Tani, where Major Kohn had built sturdy stone barracks for 60 American soldiers in two months for just $80,000...

...In Kandahar, stronghold of the Ghilzai Pashtuns who predominate in the Taliban leadership, 58 percent nevertheless say the foreigners are doing a good job battling the Taliban...

...And if the HTT needs interpreters, it’s hard to see how they are getting closer to the people or learning more than a smart American offi cer who’s done some homework...

...This made me want to ask some basic questions, which the Americans would certainly have asked had they known about the linguistic divide: How do the Dari and Pashto speakers in this province look at each other...

...In Iraq, the fi rst teams of Arabic language and culture experts have just been deployed...

...They tend to view them as Midwesterners circa 1930 might have regarded Englishmen: more sophisticated, yes, but also suspiciously smooth, possibly effeminate, likely laughing at them behind their backs...

...The data was not very accurate and it was broad, countrywide information,” Major Kohn told me...

...As the country’s biggest single ethnic group, comprising 40 percent of the population, Pashtuns feel linguistically sidelined by the dominance of Dari and don’t particularly enjoy speaking it...

...But the majority I saw—Afghans under 25 who had a local university degree, if that—had an inadequate command of English and lacked maturity, experience, and judgment...

...Well then maybe we can offer the education head help for the schools, with the express desire that he bring the police commander into the fold...

...Montgomery McFate was exceptionally bright and articulate, but with the nervous manner of someone trying to sell a lemon...

...Meanwhile, just as our methodical, unglamorous strategies are bearing fruit, our military seems to be buying into the “cultural knowledge” critique, and buying into a dubious version at that...

...Here is a representative quotation from the Times article (“Tracy” being the pseudonym of a member of the Human Terrain Team): In eastern Afghanistan, Tracy said wanted [sic] to reduce the use of heavy-handed military operations focused solely on killing insurgents, which she said alienated the population and created more insurgents...

...April 29, 2007) inadvertently suggests that she is equally sketchy on Arab culture...

...At the moment, then, the Human Terrain Team, at least in Afghanistan, looks like a solution without a problem...

...A dozen pages of Galula are worth more than anything written by anyone mentioned in this article...

...Johnson is an expert on the Pashtuns—the dominant tribe in southern Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan— with substantial time on the ground...

...In our July meeting, Col...

...It has enhanced any ability to talk to [Afghans...

...Khost Province, once a “red” area—army lingo for a hotbed of insurgency and violence—now has 9 of its 12 districts listed as “green,” or well controlled by Afghan forces...

...A bright, articulate, and imperturbable reservist, Kohn, 34, whose civilian job was head of Barclays Global Investors’ defi ned contribution sales and strategy in San Francisco, is very much New Army...

...The HTT had given Major Kohn a report on Khost Province and under the heading “economy,” the lead sentence stated that the Khost economy is dominated by poppy production...

...Language classes aren’t offered on either Mehtar Lam or Salerno bases, and though several offi cers I met were studying Pashto or Farsi, it’s the enlisted men who are regularly seeing ordinary Afghans...

...The two languages are written in the same alphabet and share some vocabulary, particularly the more abstract words of Arabic derivation, but they split apart more than 2,000 years ago and are grammatically distinct...

...One reason is probably that our troops are not yet living in district centers...

...In reality there is no opium grown in the province...

...The military is ready to beat up on itself, too, although if you scan military journals, it seems to have spent much of the last few years retooling to fi ght small rather than large wars, and to emphasize counterinsurgency and nationbuilding rather than mere kinetics (aka killing...

...troops should be living in two more green districts, Gurbuz and Mando Zayi, by November 30...

...I’m as neocon as they come, but Patai’s book is wrong in both details and thesis, and cannot be used “correctly...

...And so I requested that part of my embed be at FOB Salerno in Khost so that I could meet with some of the Human Terrain Team members and see them in action...

...And how well does the program as it now exists answer this need...

...They will also move into Sabari, a “red” district, at the same time...

...The program is called the Human Terrain System and is in its infancy...

...the governor spoke exclusively in Pashto, and almost all of the Afghans translated their own remarks into English rather than the other local language...

...After pointing out the broad ‘cut and paste’ nature of the report, I never received a correction or response...

...earlier in 2007, eight suicide bombers killed 32 Afghans...

...Fondacaro chainsmoked their way through our interview, they used the same strategy...

...I saw classic counterinsurgency doctrine working in Afghanistan during a two week embed in Khost and Laghman provinces this past July...

...It makes Soldiers and Marines targets and is ultimately more dangerous than moving on foot and remaining close to the populace...

...How do they compete for or share power...

...A U.S...

...Same culture, same religion—why is this...

...His 1963 Pacifi cation in Algeria, reissued by RAND last year, is a witty, snappy, pre-PC read...

...mainly when they do patrols, and then only as vague silhouettes through the bulletproof, sealed windows of up-armored Hummers...

...While he was understandably more focused on Iraq (and left for an extended mission there shortly after our meeting), his knowledge of the situation in Afghanistan seemed lacking in detail...

...Such at least is the position taken in the Army’s new Field Manual 3-24, the Galula-inspired, Petraeus-supervised bible on counterinsurgency, which has this to say on the subject in Appendix A: Raiding from remote, secure bases does not work...

...It’s hard to overemphasize how good an idea it is to have our troops living close to the people...

...But reading the glowing accounts in the Times (October 5) and Christian Science Monitor (September 7), including the information that an additional $40 million is being spent on the HTTs, now makes me wonder if good money will be thrown after bad...

...Until you have sat through a two- to four-hour village or district shura you do not know the meaning of tedium...

...That’s how things get done in Afghanistan, but if you don’t know the family relationships you can’t manipulate them...

...We have translators in Afghanistan, but they are of highly varying quality...

...The province, with a population of one million, has suffered 70 IED explosions in 2007, killing 34 Afghans but no coalition troops...

...I emerged from it with the distinct impression that I was seeing the emperor’s new clothes...

...Today, the website that provides “reachback” for the team, and is accessible to the general public, states correctly that Khost does not produce poppy (www.nps.edu/Programs/CCS...

...Staff Sergeant David Escobar, also of the Civil Affairs unit, added, “We had about one half-hour class about Afghanistan and a month of classes on Iraq...

...The more educated people will understand Farsi, or more accurately Dari, the Afghan dialect, the language of Afghanistan’s court, government, and universities, but it is not what they speak at home...

...Then there is the issue of sending female non-Pashto speakers to bond with male village elders...

...We are much further along with the strategy of pushing out into rural areas in Khost—a province that shares a 150-mile border with Pakistan’s most lawless areas—than in Laghman, and not surprisingly, the numbers are much better there...

...How is infl uence divided up in the province between them...

...In Afghanistan, the fi rst team of fi ve experts deployed to FOB Salerno, in Khost, in January 2007 for a six month tour...

...In Laghman and Khost I saw smart, highly motivated commanders and soldiers well versed in counterinsurgency theory, approaching their tasks with optimism and determination...

...As Dr...

...From a cultural perspective our predeployment training was a complete failure,” Kohn told me...

...My answer to the second question should be obvious by now...

...Afghanistan is the Super Bowl for Civil Affairs, there’s a ton we can do here, but at Ft...

...McFate, who received a Ph.D...

...A retired Australian army colonel, Kilcullen also holds a doctorate in anthropology...

...Well, a two-headed American would also attract the curiosity of Afghans, but that doesn’t mean they would be eager to welcome him into their community...

...He put me in touch with Fondacaro, a retired colonel with the 82nd Airborne Division, and we spoke on the phone in the winter and spring of 2007...

...They spoke as though they were among the Army of 1964, focused on body counts and kill ratios, rather than the Army of the Small Wars Journal, the new counterinsurgency fi eld manual, and the endless “lessons learned” briefi ngs...

...Afghanistan is one of the most strictly gender-segregated societies on earth, and while women can be of immense use in obtaining the confi dences of Afghan women—particularly senior women who hold the reins of power in the family and know all the gossip—they simply can’t be as effective in meeting with male elders in rural areas...

...The French took back territory from the rebels not because Galula convinced them that he understood their culture, but because he convinced them that their interests were better served by affi liation with France...

...This same sense of vague generalities followed me as I tracked down Steve Fondacaro, the head of the Human Terrain System program...

...she speaks of using Raphael Patai’s 1973 book The Arab Mind—a purported favorite of neocons—“correctly...

...Even in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, which are less friendly to Americans than the provinces I visited, the Afghan people are overwhelmingly appreciative of foreign troops and opposed to the Taliban...

...I was able to understand maybe 10 percent of the Pashto I heard in meetings and interviews, and could tell if people were discussing, say, security or weapons, but not what they were saying about them...

...I would have to fi nd another topic to cover...

...At Khost, the so-called cultural expert was an Iranian-born female offi cer whom I will call “Sharifa...

...To my dismay, the Army had double-booked my embed with the HTT...

...The core building block of the system will be a fi veperson Human Terrain Team (HTT) that will be embedded in each forward-deployed brigade or regimental staff...

...Sadly, from what I saw, the HTT isn’t ready to solve our troops’ language and cultural problems...

...Why does Laghman, a nonborder province, lead Afghanistan in IED attacks per capita...

...But as I saw in Khost, U.S...

...Movement on foot, sleeping in villages, and night patrolling all seem more dangerous than they are—and they are what ground forces are trained to do...

...Although unable to embed with the HTT, I was able to sit down with Fondacaro, HTT cofounder Montgomery McFate, a Ph.D...

...We are now stationing our troops in district centers—like American county seats—with just a couple of platoons living alongside and training Afghan National Army and National Police...

...Fondacaro seemed an amiable man, trying to serve his country and make an honorable postretirement living...

...That great lumbering beast, the American Army, may take a long time to change directions, but when it does, it moves swiftly, decisively, and with impressive competence...

...They see you as a soldier, not as a female,” “Sharifa” said to me...

...The last suicide bomber was just a few weeks ago—he took an Afghan police offi cer with him...

...from Yale, with a dissertation on British counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland, showed no familiarity with the work of Benedicte Grima and Charles Lindholm, anthropologists who have published widely on Pashtun culture...

...I can go back and enhance the military’s understanding,” she said, “so that we don’t make the same mistakes we did in Iraq...

...The Algerians pacifi ed thanks to Galula’s insights were French-speaking (some of the leaders of the FLN barely spoke Arabic...

...But none of the Army’s translators thought to tell their bosses that they were listening to two different languages or that the governor wouldn’t speak Dari...

...Driving around in an armored convoy actually degrades situational awareness...

...In Khost and Laghman Provinces, I saw that our soldiers do frequent patrols, mainly mounted in Humvees but also some dismounted, including trips nearly every night to spot suspicious activity (IED-planting...

...The one area where I thought our troops needed help was in language skills...

...About a third of the Afghans on the Council, an advisory body elected provincewide, were speaking Dari (the Afghan dialect of Persian) and the rest Pashto...

...We sometimes say they are not as intelligent as we are...

...On the admittedly slim evidence of my embed, I would say that it is not, but that more education and institutional memory would certainly help...

...The fi rst question is the more important one...

...There is a curiosity...

...One of the reasons he told me for stationing platoons in Khost province’s district centers is that they spend less time riding hither and yon in Humvees, and more interacting with Afghans...

...What’s going right in Khost doesn’t sound like what you read in the papers...

...Well, perhaps the most successful counterinsurgency operation ever mounted, David Galula’s in Algeria, doesn’t build the case for the overweening importance of cultural knowledge...

...Is the local education chief the brother-in-law of the uncooperative police commander in a troublesome district...

...Since the HTT program was in its infancy, and did not consume a significant amount of taxpayers’ money, I decided to hold fi re after my embed...

...This is what the very capable commanders I trailed in Laghman and Khost spend most of their time doing, and as a result they have largely succeeded in getting the local power structure on board in the eastern part of Afghanistan...

...Major Kohn says he was not aware of any database available for commanders...

...Give our maneuver commanders cultural and linguistic experts who can help them to fi gure out what is going on beneath the surface and infl uence local leaders...

...What is more troubling,” he emailed me later, “was that the report was issued without ever talking to a local maneuver commander, district Sub-Governor or Provincial offi cial...

...Often, they are quicker still to beat up on our military for supposedly ignoring this...

...In the words of a Military Review article (SeptemberOctober 2006) that described the Human Terrain System idea for a military audience: HTS will provide deployed brigade commanders and their staffs direct social-science support in the form of ethnographic and social research, cultural information research, and social data analysis that can be employed as part of the military decisionmaking process...

...A fulsome San Francisco Chronicle profi le (“Montgomery McFate’s Mission: Can one anthropologist possibly steer the course in Iraq...

...Bragg they trained us just to stay alive in a different theater...

...During my embed, Major Kohn explained how strategies pioneered by his commanding offi cer, Lieutenant Colonel Scotty Custer— especially stationing platoons in district centers—were part of the reason for Khost’s progress in 2007, and were being copied all over Afghanistan...

...And the complaints I did hear from Afghans there, in Nangarhar and in Laghman, weren’t about what the media would have you believe Afghans lament— alleged civilian casualties during coalition operations—but rather were about insuffi cient development aid or poorly executed USAID projects...

...The under-briefed Americans had assumed that all the locals were native Pashto speakers...

...I met one, an Afghan-American, who seemed able both to translate speakers’ words and to explain their context...

...In Khost, our soldiers were doing close to what Galula’s company did in 1956: moving off the big bases, into the countryside, and providing people there with an immediate promise of security and, for the fi rst time, a taste of the rewards of having a government...

...They are quite sure that if we just understood the Iraqis/Afghans/ Shiites/Sunnis better, we would have made fewer mistakes...

...Just a few weeks apart this fall, articles appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and New York Times about a new idea the U.S...

...or 8 P.M.—with 12 hours of maneuvers in between...

...We should learn the lessons of Vietnam and Algeria, we are earnestly told...

...There is one very primitive combat outpost in Najil, but troops are only there for two-week rotations because it offers tent accommodation without kitchens or plumbing...

...On July 28 at Salerno, I was told that the HTT is not producing a database because the units they worked with did not want one...

...Nevertheless, I emerged from a meeting with him in Washington unable to get a handle on exactly how he proposed to defeat the Afghan insurgency...

...It’s apt to be resented...

...They have great plans on the Internet,” he said...

...The only American who isn’t behind glass is the gunner in his intimidating perch...

...When our soldiers live on remote bases, they are visible to Afghans Ann Marlowe is the author, most recently, of The Book of Trouble: A Romance...

...Nationally, 89 percent of Afghans view the Taliban unfavorably and 93 percent doubt its ability to provide security...

...From what I saw in eastern Afghanistan, we are doing a pretty good job—and the security of these provinces is evidence...

...The HTT will provide the commander with experienced offi cers, NCOs, and civilian social scientists trained and skilled in cultural data research and analysis...

...Family is everything in Afghanistan, and Afghans often have a hundred fi rst cousins, who can be close allies or bitter enemies...

...Army procedures in Afghanistan are pretty close to best-practice counterinsurgency doctrine...

...What I heard from Civil Affairs cemented my impression...

...Four of the 9 green districts, Bak, Tani, Tere Zayi, and Shamai, now have U.S...

...And after investing maybe a thousand hours studying Farsi/Dari, I was gratifi ed to hear that the Army is coming around to seeing linguistic capabilities as a crucial part of counterinsurgency...

...Yet the Times has “Tracy” claiming the contrary...

...The Human Terrain Team program was touted in late 2006 in an adulatory New Yorker article by George Packer on the State Department’s chief counterinsurgency strategist, David Kilcullen...

...Just after meeting Kilcullen, I learned that a brilliant acquaintance, Afghanistan expert Thomas Johnson, who teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School’s program for culture and confl ict studies, was helping to develop a database for the Human Terrain Teams...

...There are dismounted patrols as well—but our troops probably spend more time in Humvees than they should...

...Most of all, our offi cers meet with Afghans, who love talking and love meetings...

...He’s an author of the Army’s new counterinsurgency fi eld manual, an excellent writer, and an extremely smart man...

...In Laghman, with 400,000 people, one province removed from the Pakistani border, there have been 67 IED attacks and two suicide bombings, killing nine Afghan civilians and 19 Afghan security personnel, and one American soldier...

...instead “they wanted an angel on their soldier...

...Before spending $40 million of taxpayers’ money on the Human Terrain Teams, there are two questions to ask: Does the concept of a Human Terrain Team answer a real need on the part of our commanders...

...Sending a non-Pashto-speaking Iranian to interview in a Pashtun village, then, is not just daft, like sending a nonEnglish speaking Spaniard to cozy up to an Iowa farmer...

...troops living in the district centers, and U.S...

...Army is trying out—attaching anthropologists and cultural experts to combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan...

...BY ANN MARLOWE At this point in the war on terror, even people who think David Galula is a trendy new chef are quick to point to the need for cultural understanding in successful counterinsurgency...

...And they are co-located with us at Salerno...

...This meeting, on July 28, was a huge disappointment...

...Nor do Afghans necessarily like Iranians...

...I was assigned instead to the Civil Affairs unit for the 2nd Battalion of the 321st Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division and spent fi ve days with them...

...When I asked one of the Afghans about this afterward, he said, “We Pashto speakers all understand Persian, but the Persian speakers do not understand Pashto...

...Army translator at the meeting in Mehtar Lam casually mentioned to me that his father was a provincial minister, which made me wonder about his biases, and about the kinship relations between the 30 or so Afghans in the meeting...

...With better predeployment training, and an institutional commitment to language learning, I have no doubt they—and the Afghan people—will bring security to Afghanistan...

...in anthropology, and an Iranian-born female Army offi cer who did not want her name used...

...Major Tim Kohn of the Civil Affairs unit for the 2nd Battalion of the 321st Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division had obviously mastered the lessons of FM 3-24...

...Along with offering advice to commanders, she said, the five-member team creates a database of local leaders and tribes, as well as social problems, economic issues and political disputes...

...But genealogical charts of provincial bigwigs are not available either at Mehtar Lam or in Major Kohn’s Maneuver Command...

...While self-criticism can be healthy, we shouldn’t lose sight of what actually works...

...Sharifa insisted, “There are a lot of Farsiwans [Farsi speakers] here in Khost,” but a bit of online research corroborated what locals told me: The province is 99.9 percent Pashto-speaking...

...This would include genealogies and family relationship information for as many provincial notables as possible...

...Sending an Iranian Farsi speaker to a Pashtun region of Afghanistan didn’t seem like a great idea to me...

...I found this hard to believe in a majority-Pashto area...

...They disparaged the Army’s approach in Afghanistan— where neither one of them has any meaningful experience —in order to market their program...

...I also found that the American team had no idea how the provincial notables were related...

...The Khost civil-military operations center is located in what was once a guesthouse belonging to Osama bin Laden, who spent time here in the ’90s...

...Something else our soldiers could use is an online database on the areas they are deploying to...

...While Dari and Pashto were offered on an elective basis to reservists training at Fort Bragg, soldiers said the classes were poorly taught and held at either 5 A.M...

...Again, I was unable to get a handle on exactly what the teams planned to do, but I thought it would all become clear once the program was operational...

...The concept is appealing: Make sure that the troops who are interacting with Afghans know how to work within the culture...