Max Forte's List: Militarized Academia, Imperial Anthropology

• In Khost Province, a controversial group called the Human Terrain Team, or HTT, provides the Indiana soldiers with on-the-ground information. Comprised of social scientists embedded with the military, HTTs have been operating in Afghanistan since February 2007. Late that year, the American Anthropological Society issued a memorandum, criticizing the military’s use of the academic discipline. But one of the anthropologists, Alec Metz, argues the HTT mission is vital to the war effort.
• “The HTT mission is to provide the brigade with the socioeconomic and cultural understanding of the people,” Metz said.  “The idea being in a counterinsurgency environment, the center of gravity is not any particular bit of terrain, but the actual people in the area in which it operates. It’s imperative that this brigade understands the people in its AO (Area of Operation). They’re trying to influence them, to win them over. And it’s not an easy fight either. And it’s not anything they can fight with any of the traditional ways they’ve been trained. It’s not kinetic.”
• So as the U.S.-led forces battle both a popular insurgency and an indecisive Afghan populace, cultural familiarity and time are in the Taliban’s favor.
• “This is the huge advantage of the insurgents. They don’t have to win any battles, all they have to do is outlast us. Outlast the United States,” Sinno said.  “The Taliban know that. They’re smart enough to know. You may have heard, the most famous saying of the Taliban leaders, ‘The Americans have the watches, but we have the time.’”

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• From January to July, Holbert, a former social studies teacher at Lincoln High School, was one of five U.S. Army officers assigned to serve on a special liaison team in Afghanistan.

     

  He was a member of the Army’s first Cultural Operations Research-Human Terrain System team, stationed with the 82nd Airborne Regiment in eastern Afghanistan
• Holbert spoke at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Friday evening about the Army’s efforts to exercise respect for, and develop an understanding of, the complex relations among religion, tribal culture and politics in a lecture sponsored by UNL’s Department of Classics and Religious Studies.
• “Bottom line: we’re trying to teach soldiers about the culture they’re operating in so they have a better understanding and appreciation of Afghans and their culture,” Holbert said.

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• I am a cultural anthropologist (or social anthropologist if you wish) with a long-term research commitment to countries in conflict in West Africa – Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular. Last year I was approached by the Swedish National Defence College. They wanted me to head their Africa programme. It was a part-time commitment and the attractive part of it was that I would be in control of funds where I myself could pretty much decide the focus of research as long as it was related to conflict on the African continent. Sweden is, still today, more or less neutral and has kept a low profile in the war on terror (or the terror on terror), and Swedish military interest in Africa is by and large peacekeeping missions.

• Moral panic has entered US social anthropology
   

   

  and the American Anthropological Association in particular
• This kind of non-commitment charter is, I would argue, just a way of putting ones head in the sand and risks ending up as an act of ignorance only
• US anthropologists somehow need to come to terms with the fact that they live in a militarised country and that they must in one way or another engage with this in order to act for change (i.e. demilitarise the country) – something that is central not just for them but for people all over the world
• It is important to remember that all relationships with the military do not imply the same type of structural involvement, just as doing work with the military means different things depending on which country one works in (it is obvious that engaging with the armed forces in Sweden or Switzerland is not the same as in US or North Korea)
• There are, however, certain kinds of tasks that we should not get involved with and that is for instance direct military intelligence. Where research material can not be published for military reasons we should certainly stay out: We must keep working with open sources. Similarly we should not be involved in intelligence work where individuals are pointed out (unless this information is already available in other open sources)
• There is nothing wrong in teaching militaries how to understand some of the social complexity that exists in social life instead of letting them base their actions on social stereotypes
• Many anthropologists have been approached by military intelligence staff during conferences and lectures and others can account for how militaries use material they have already published. This is inevitable (unless we stop publishing) – and most probably not a bad thing as long as it is structure and not individual – it is social science and not intelligence gathering.
• My argument is simply that anthropological research cannot be efficient if the researcher is brought in alongside the heavy guns of imperial machinery. An anthropologist in military fatigues cannot conduct high quality fieldwork – results become seriously flawed. In this situation what the mercenary anthropologist can give to the military power is impotent research findings; in consequence not very much to fear
• If not anthropologists – then others can do the same job, but maybe (but certainly not certainly) with less commitment to the local community
• Social anthropology is still rife with colonial guilt and although we should be embarrassed and keep remembering what some of our scholarly fathers and mothers did it should not push anthropology into being a counter-state science
• by engaging with state functions we may work for change

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• This is something I've thought about a lot, especially since agreeing to take over as the director of the Middle East Studies program at the Elliott School of International Affairs
• I expect that over the next decade, this will turn into a flood as smart, young veterans look to put their experiences into a broader perspective and to apply their hard-won granular knowledge to broader academic and policy problems.
• And not only military veterans -- there are plenty of civilians, contractors, and NGO workers who have worked in Iraq as well.
• I wonder if people have given serious thought to how it might change the field of Middle East studies
• A remarkable number of my students at Williams College (and later from George Washington) chose to serve in the military after graduation in the post-9/11 period (and some, like the much-missed Nate Krissoff, didn't make it back)
• When they enter academic programs, these veterans will (and already do) bring a great deal of on-the-ground experience to the classroom and to their research
• Their point of reference will be (and is) Iraq and the Gulf, not Israeli-Palestinian affairs, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, or other areas where a great number of current faculty began their encounters with the region
• they will have much greater familiarity and comfort with military and security issues than do many currently in the field
• I doubt that the main effect will be to push the field to the "right", as I've heard suggested
• Indeed, I'd guess that the bias would be towards pragmatism and empiricism, and against any kind of ideological doctrines

  • Except that "pragmatism and empiricism" are favourite tools of ideological doctrines of Western-conceived "progress," civilization, and contain Eurocentric bases that impede any kind of critical examination of their own culture.
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• How the critics of the "Human Terrain Program" over in Anthropology might react, I admit I don't know...
• I've had a few soldiers interested in pursuing degrees ask me nervously whether they would be shunned by academics.  I would be shocked if any experienced prejudice or bias because of their war service -- certainly not at a place like GWU -- and would be appalled if they did. I certainly hope that such concerns wouldn't stop them from applying
• I'm excited by the possibilities --- and hope that the academic disciplines, university departments, and professional associations are ready to encourage and to nurture their ambitions

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• Some skeptics view the trend as likely to raise concerns -- most prevalent in anthropology -- about whether scholars with military ties can be true to their disciplinary obligations, especially as they relate to research subjects. One commenter on the article writes: “It depends on whether those scholars are prostituting themselves to the Pentagon. There are going to be quite a few 'anthropologists' (quotes intentional) who are about to find themselves unemployable over the next few years due the ease with which they spread (their wallets) wide open for a John named 'The Pentagon''s funding.”

• The AAA’s Ad Hoc Commission on Anthropology’s Engagement with the Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC)
• Laurie W. Rush, U.S. Army Archaeologist, Fort Drum, NY, member CEAUSSIC
• an opportunity to learn more about the extent, scope, and variety of engagement that US anthropologists currently have with the military, as well as the wider security sector, and with particular attention to ethical forms of engagement
• When literature began to appear in anthropological publications that challenged the ethics of those of us who work for the military, I was struck by the tone of the discussions

  • As if matters of "tone" are what matter most when describing the enlistment of anthropologists in projects of colonial subjugation. Anyone making noises about "tone" is usually someone unprepared to deal with real dissent -- they may have heard about dissent happening somewhere else, or may have read about it, but they never had to confront it themselves, and never have they been directly targeted by the dissenters. The liberal screams in fright that she might be the target. How could they attack me so, I, who am so reasonable and tolerant?
    
    Confronted with dissent, they found the dissent ugly. The only option they could then think of was how to stymy and stifle the dissent, by resorting to rhetorical pacification. Faced with insurrection, the domestic, liberal, academic counterinsurgent turns to matters of tone and style.
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• It was as if the authors were unaware that there were already several hundred archaeologists already employed in archaeological survey, inventory, and evaluation of archaeological sites that are located on the millions of acres of land belonging to US Department of Defense (DoD) Installations
• many of us work on a daily basis as advocates for Native Americans who share our goal of stewardship for the Native American ancestral places that we help to manage
• Anthropologists currently work as cultural resource managers and/or installation archaeologists at all of the large acre military bases for all branches of the services, located in all regions of the United States including Alaska and Hawaii
• I am the Cultural Resources Manager and Army Archaeologist at Fort Drum, New York
• I am responsible for all of the archaeological sites and historic properties that could be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places that may occur within our 107,000 acres
• I have colleagues and counterparts that work for all of the other large acre Army Bases like Fort Carson, Colorado and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for Air Force Bases like Hill and Nellis in Utah and Nevada, and Navy Installations like China Lake, California
• The Department of Defense (DoD) archaeology program has been generously funded as part of the DoD Environmental Program going back to the mid 1980s
• As part of the DoD Environmental Program, military archaeologists have surveyed hundreds of thousands of acres, have discovered tens of thousands of archaeological sites and in some cases have provided enough new information to rewrite the prehistory of entire regions.  Many military archaeologists have worked in close collaboration with academic archaeologists for years, offering field school opportunities, lectures, and field trips, as well as teaching courses and participating in professional societies.  We also have counterparts in the militaries of other nations that do very similar jobs.
• the social sciences in general over the past few decades have shied away from directly studying conflict, warfare, and warriors especially in western settings
• few interlocutors who can translate between military and academic social science cultures
• Is there an ethical distinction to be made between archaeologists who went to work for the military prior to or after the US invasion of Iraq?
• What do archaeologists bring to the table in support of the military?
• What does engagement with the military offer to archaeology as a profession and to archaeologists as professionals?
• advantages of working for the Department of Defense as archaeologists include
• Steady and predictable employment with reasonable salaries and benefits
• Funding for fieldwork
• use of state of the art research tools including GIS, aerial imagery, satellite photography, lidar (light detection and ranging, a remote sensing system used to collect topographic data), laser scanning, remote sensing, and archaeometrics
• opportunity to consult in good faith with Native Americans who have ancestral ties to military lands
• Funding for travel
• Access to acreage that is only available to individuals working on behalf of or for DoD
• The global press has covered many stories of damage and destruction to cultural property related to the current conflicts from the Bamiyan Buddhas to damage at Babylon.  Military archaeologists have now been offered opportunities to work on this issue
• Donny George, the exiled Director of the Iraq National Museum, described the most recent AIA/DoD partnership workshop as a “dream come true.”

  • She conveniently ignores and silences the fact that the US military itself did the damage which the military archaeologists are supposedly "working on"; it also supervised the looting of Iraq's National Museum; and the US military stole millions of Iraqi documents and removed them to the US. She won't confront the damage caused by her paymasters.
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• The contributions to the profession then include
• Tremendous amounts of new knowledge
• Development of powerful predictive models that can be used by academic colleagues
• Demonstration of the importance of working with Native Americans as partners
• Viability as a profession outside of the academy
• There is no question that participation in making land available for military training is part of a process that helps prepare men and women to go to war.
• Clearly, military installation priorities have unfortunately shifted since that time, and all of the military archaeologists are that much more immediately affected by the true nature of military training and uses of military training lands.
• the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property during Times of Armed Conflict was ratified by the US Senate in September of 2008
• A sampling of criticisms leveled at archaeologists who are working on cultural property protection during conflict issues include:
• • Engagement with the military in any way is unethical – period.
   
  • Heritage training programs are nothing more than an attempt at improving public relations for the US military.
   
  • Showing respect for cultural property during armed conflict would legitimize military action.
   
  • Engaging with the military in any way could lead to further engagement that could be unethical.
• As a civilian who works for the military, I personally appreciate well thought out discussions about the ethics of working with the military.
• thoughtful debate on the issue is critical for me
• However, the only way for that form of interaction to be productive is if those thoughts are knowledgeable and are offered in a collegial manner. 
• set the tone for positive informed conversation with room for productive discussion and collegial disagreement
• These issues are far too important to settle for anything less

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• "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." Dwight David Eisenhower, "Military-Industrial Complex Speech," 1961
• The Myth of the Grand Chessboard: Geopolitics and Imperial Folie de Grandeur
• dominance creates megalomanic illusions of insuperable control
• this illusion in turn is crystallized into a prevailing ideology of dominance
• these ideologies are delusional, indeed perhaps insane
• what looks demented from a public viewpoint makes sense from the narrower perspective of those profiting from the provision of private entrepreneurial violence and intelligence
• The ideology of dominance was expressed for British rulers by Sir Halford Mackinder in 1919: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."[5] This sentence, though expressed after the power of Britain had already begun to decline, accurately articulated the anxieties of imperial planners who saw themselves playing "the Great Game," and who thus in 1809 sacrificed an entire British army of twelve thousand men in the wilderness of Afghanistan.
• Expanded by Karl Haushofer and other Germans into the alleged "science" of geopolitics, this doctrine helped to inspire Hitler’s disastrous Drang nach Osten, which in short order terminated the millenary hopes of the Nazi Third Reich. One might have thought that by now the lessons of Napoleon and Hitler would have subdued all illusions that any single power could command the "World Island," let alone the world.
• the global dominance mindset, as expressed by thinkers like Zbigniew Brzezinski
• his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard

• For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power." (p. xiii)

   

  "For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained." (p.30)

   

  "To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)[9]
• This kind of brash talk is not unique to Brzezinski. Its call for unilateral dominance echoed the 1992 draft DPG (Defense Planning Guidance) prepared for Defense Secretary Cheney by neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby: "We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."
• and the Bush-Cheney National Security Strategy of September 2002 (NSS 2002).
• It is echoed both in the 2000 PNAC Study, "Rebuilding America’s Defenses,"
• it is epitomized by the megalomanic JCS strategic document Joint Vision 2020, "Full-spectrum dominance means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations."
• The Real Grand Chessboard: Those Profiting from Enduring Violence
• In March 2001 the biggest oil majors (Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco, and Shell) had their opportunity to design the incoming administration’s energy strategies, including Middle East policy, by participating secretly in Vice-President Cheney's Energy Task Force.[17] The Task Force, we learned later, developed a map of Iraq’s oil fields, with the southwest divided into nine "Exploration Blocks." One month earlier a Bush National Security Council document had noted that Cheney’s Task force would consider "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."[18] Earlier the oil companies had participated in a non-governmental task force calling for "an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments."
• After 9/11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith established the Pentagon’s neocon Office of Special Plans (OSP), which soon "rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda."
• Many journalists were eager to promote the OSP doctrines. Judith Miller of the New York Times wrote a series of articles on Saddam’s WMD, relying, like OSP itself, on the propaganda of Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi.[21] Miller’s book collaborator Laurie Mylroie went even further, arguing that "Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself."[22] Many of these advocates, notably Feith, Libby, and Mylroie, had links to Israel, which as much as any oil company had reasons to wish for U.S. armies to become established militarily in Central Asia.
• Private Military Contractors (PMCs), Whose Business is Violence for Profit

• The inappropriateness of a military response to the threat of terrorism has been noted by a number of counterterrorism experts, such as retired U.S. Army colonel Andrew Bacevich:

   

   

  the concept of global war as the response to violent Islamic radicalism is flawed. We ought not be in the business of invading and occupying other countries. That's not going to address the threat. It is, on the other hand, going to bankrupt the country and break the military
• America has resorted to uncontrollable subordinates to represent its public power in these remote places. I shall focus chiefly in this essay on one group of these, the so-called Private Military Contractors (PMCs) who are authorized to commit violence in the name of their employers
• reminiscent of the marauding condottieri or private mercenary armies contracted for by the wealthy city states of Renaissance Italy
• as many as 100,000 personnel were employed by PMCs in the US Iraq occupation
• Whereas the stated goal of Rumsfeld and the armed forces in Iraq was to end violence there, the PMCs clearly had a financial stake in its continuation. Hence it is no surprise that some of the largest PMCs were also political supporters for pursuing the ill-conceived "War on Terror."
• Blackwater was the most notorious example; Erik Prince, its founder and sole owner, is part of a family that figures among the major contributors to the Republican Party and other right-wing causes, such as the Council for National Policy. His sister once told the press that "my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party."
• Private Intelligence Companies and the Provision of Violence
• Diligence LLC
• Two of its founding directors (Lanny Griffiths and Ed Rogers) were also founders of the influential Republican lobbying team Barbour Griffiths and Rogers (later renamed BGR). Haley Barbour, the senior founder of BGR, also served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997
• Diligence was founded by William Webster, the only man to head both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mike Baker, its chief executive officer, spent 14 years at the CIA as a covert field operations officer specializing in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations. Whitley Bruner, its chief operating officer in Baghdad, was once the CIA station chief in Iraq.
• Its partner in Diligence Middle East (DME) is New Bridge Strategies
• New Bridge was established in May [2003] and came to public attention because of the Republican heavyweights on its board – most linked to one or other Bush administration [officials] or to the family itself. Those include Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush’s presidential campaign manager, and Ed Rogers and Lanny Griffith, former George H.W. Bush aides.
• The firm of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers was the initial funder of Diligence, which shares an office floor with BGR and New Bridge in a building four blocks from the White House
• Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), an $8 billion corporation involved in defense, intelligence community, and homeland security contracting
• Before becoming Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates was a member of SAIC's board of directors. SAIC personnel have also been recruited from CIA, NSA, and DARPA
• SAIC helped supply the faulty intelligence about Saddam’s WMD that then generated ample contracts for SAIC in Iraq
• In October of 2006 the company told would-be investors flatly that the war on terror would continue to be a lucrative growth industry
• I certainly do not wish to suggest that SAIC single-handedly created the will to fight in Iraq. The combined efforts of defense contractors, oil companies, PMCs and PICs created a mindset in which all those eager for power were caught up, including, I have to say, career-minded academics.
• In Iraq as in Afghanistan and Vietnam a generation earlier, a sure ticket to consultations in Washington was support for interventions that ordinary people could see would be disastrous.
• The yea-saying of academics has approved even the privatization of intelligence which we have just been describing.
• What we have been talking about until now is advocacy disguised as expertise.

• The passage of the Patriot Act generated a new realm of profit for SAIC contractors -- domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens – as well as new intelligence fusion centers to carry this out.  

   

  “As part of the Pentagon’s domestic security mission, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created the Counterintelligence Field Activity office in 2002 and filled its staff with contractors from Booz Allen, BAE systems, SAIC, and other suppliers of cleared personnel. CIFA, as we’ve seen, was used against people suspected of harboring ill will against the Bush administration and its policies….At present, there are forty-three current and planned fusion centers in the United States where data from intelligence agencies, the FBI, local police, private sector databases, and anonymous tipsters are combined and analyzed by counterterrorism analysts.... According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the project “inculcates the project “inculcates DHS with enormous domestic surveillance powers.”

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• Anyway, she lists a bunch of stuff that happens, then, “A brave researcher, Paula Loyd, was doused in cooking oil and set on fire when she ventured out of her compound last year.” Look, we don’t have to belabor the point: Paula was the social scientist on a Human Terrain Team, she was a former Army Civil Affairs Officer and USAID and UNAMA employee with years of experience in southern Afghanistan. She was on a first-name basis with the governor of Zabul, for crying out loud! Plus, she was embedded with an Army battalion. She didn’t “venture out of her compound,” she was out doing research, fully aware of the danger. Do not make her weak when she was nothing of the sort.

• The contributions to biosecurity that I outline above do not fit neatly with the terms of anthropology’s present ethical debates, driven largely in relation to Department of Defense developments such as the Human Terrain System, the Minerva Initiative, and a new counter-insurgency doctrine mindful of local culture (as Rob has discussed). Nor does my work, I believe, easily align with the boundaries to current controversy within public health about the militarizing effects of a counter-bioterrorist agenda and a preparedness mindset. I hope that colleagues in both public health and anthropology come to see security not simply as a homogenous, static sector with “obvious” ethical pitfalls, but more as something in the making, worth wresting the meaning and means of.

• Under an experimental program in Afghanistan, teams of anthropologists and social scientists are working alongside soldiers to help win the war by winning over the Afghan people.
• It may seem like a brilliant idea. But in this battle, nothing is as it seems.
• extra clips of ammunition strapped to his chest
• another who wore wire-rimmed glasses with his Army-issue camouflage
• They were civilians, members of an experimental Army project called the Human Terrain System that embeds anthropologists and other social scientists with front-line units to advise soldiers about local culture
• The soldiers would create a secure perimeter as they walked, Dunn told them. Any villager who wanted to pass the patrol would have to enter the perimeter and be frisked for weapons.
• "We're going to make sure that people who are in our perimeter stay in our perimeter, and people who are outside stay outside."
• Karl Slaikeu had asked for this assignment. A 64-year-old psychologist and conflict-resolution specialist from Texas, Karl had been nursing an idea that he thought could change the course of the war. He was looking for a village that, with concerted attention, could be turned into a model of development and security. Pir Zadeh, where the patrol was bound, was a place where locals had formed a neighborhood watch and where the village elder seemed to like Americans.
• The bearded Human Terrain team member, who went by the nickname Banger, asked what to do if the patrol came under attack.
• Banger was a former Marine whose background had prepared him for missions such as this, but Karl had arrived in Afghanistan only a month earlier and had never before been to a war zone. Like the other social scientists on the Human Terrain teams, he had been offered the option of carrying a weapon and had been issued an M-16, though he acknowledged he wasn't fully prepared to use it.
• Known to his teammates as Doc, Karl had attended seminary as a young man and considered becoming a minister like his father. Instead, he got a PhD in psychology, taught at the University of South Carolina and started a conflict-resolution business for corporate and private clients in Austin.
• The first Human Terrain team deployed in 2007, and today there are roughly 20 teams in Iraq. In January, U.S. Central Command asked the project to more than double the number of teams it deploys to Afghanistan, from six to 13.
• "You can't establish a democracy, build a school, build a banking system unless you know something about the society that you're working in," said Montgomery McFate, the anthropologist who helped create the Human Terrain System with retired Special Operations Col. Steve Fondacaro.
• Military commanders and the project's architects say that it helps make soldiers more knowledgeable, thus minimizing casualties and civilian deaths. But the number of highly trained social scientists with extensive knowledge about Afghanistan and Iraq is extremely limited, and most of them don't want anything to do with the military.
• In 2007, the American Anthropological Association came out against the project on the grounds that anthropologists working alongside soldiers would become indistinguishable from the military, making it harder for the scientists' subjects to freely consent to be interviewed. The association also noted that the information gathered by the Human Terrain teams could be used to target opponents in combat, violating ethics rules that require subjects not be harmed in the course of research.
• watching for anything that might jeopardize ethical standards by endangering local people
• "It just hasn't come," he said, "and I've been looking for it."
• Most days, Karl worked with Banger. His real name was Stephen James Lang
• Banger had grown up on a farm near Sioux City, Iowa, and served in the Marines for 11 years before injuries ultimately forced him out. He moved home to Arizona and took courses in political science and Islam, earning a bachelor's degree. He had served in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War and later in Saudi Arabia, but like Karl, he had never been to Afghanistan.
• What if soldiers provided real, dependable security to even one Afghan village? If the village were actually safe, development and jobs could follow.
• In counterinsurgency circles, this is called the "oil spot" strategy. The term was coined by the French soldier and administrator Louis Hubert Lyautey, who was sent to colonial Morocco and Indochina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Hanoi, he watched as soldiers set up a network of military posts to protect villagers and keep out insurgents, and armed locals to defend themselves. With "pacification a great band of civilization advances like a spot of oil," Lyautey wrote.
• a tradeoff in which villagers would help international forces secure the area in return for services like water, electricity, health care and education
• With his background in conflict resolution, Karl saw the relationship between Afghans and international forces as akin to a troubled marriage, in which each side's entrenched views had to be revised if they were to get along amicably. But the reality was infinitely messier. There was no baseline trust between Afghans and coalition forces on which to build the deals he hoped for. And even if soldiers did strike a deal with local stakeholders, that didn't mean the Afghans would be powerful enough to enforce it, or that they wouldn't strike a contradictory deal with the insurgents.
• "The day of throwing money at the problem by digging a well, building a school or opening a clinic -- without first establishing a secure perimeter in cooperation with villagers -- should end," he wrote in a paper published this spring in Small Wars Journal, an online magazine focused on counterinsurgency. "The old model is too risky, since an IED [improvised explosive device] or other attack can turn the effort into naught in an instant."
• In the selected oil spot villages, he suggested buying and burning the current poppy harvest, subsidizing the transition to a different crop, and targeting drug lords, labs and traffickers. He also wanted to start a paid informant program to create income for villagers who might otherwise work with the Taliban. One spring day, Banger went to Kandahar to meet with a Canadian officer. He called Karl with exciting news: The Canadians were already working on a similar initiative. They wanted to know more about Karl's oil spot approach.
• the Canadians unveiled their own "model village" project
• "Because it's such a threat to the insurgency, it makes it a likely target," Canadian Maj. Mario Couture told the Canadian Press news agency. "Is this a surprise? No. Are they going to try again? Most likely. But the place is well-defended."

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• The Human Terrain System, the Army’s social-science program, has seen pay cuts, tragedy — and an exodus of talent. But plans are still in the works to boost the number of anthropologists and social scientists the Army has deployed overseas.
• “The number of highly trained social scientists with extensive knowledge about Afghanistan and Iraq is extremely limited, and most of them don’t want anything to do with the military,”
• Neither Sleiku nor Lang have any prior Afghanistan experience
• his efforts to win friends in Afghan villages don’t seem to guarantee success. Despite their experiment in the district of Maywand, violence there continues to rise
• the Afghanistan “experts” know nothing about Afghanistan and have never been there before. How could they be deployed as Afghanistan advisors without ever having set foot in the country before?

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