U.S. Soldiers Get Tips From Anthropologists Program Aims to Reduce Need for Combat

Oct 05, 12:59 PM

Current Headlines: By David Rohde

In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a demure civilian anthropologist named Tracy. Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first-ever Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they act as cultural advisers and suggest ways to win local support without using military force.

Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with anthropologists here, said the unit's combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the anthropologists arrived this spring. He said the focus had shifted from combat to improving security, health care and education for the population.

"We're looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist's perspective," he said. "We're not focused on the enemy. We're focused on bringing governance down to the people."

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates authorized a $40 million expansion of the program, which will assign teams of anthropologists and social scientists to each of the 26 American combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, military officials are scrambling to find more scholars willing to deploy to the front lines to interpret tribal structures and explain cultural differences.

Yet criticism is emerging in academia. Citing the past misuse of social sciences in counterinsurgency campaigns, some denounce the program as "mercenary anthropology" that exploits social science for political gain. Opponents fear that, whatever their intention, the scholars who work with the military could inadvertently cause all anthropologists to be viewed as intelligence gatherers for the U.S. military.

Hugh Gusterson, an anthropology professor at George Mason University in Virginia, and 10 other anthropologists are circulating an online pledge calling for anthropologists to boycott the teams, particularly in Iraq.

"While often presented by its proponents as work that builds a more secure world," the petition says, "at base, it contributes instead to a brutal war of occupation which has entailed massive casualties."

In Afghanistan, the anthropologists arrived along with 6,000 troops, which doubled the U.S. military's strength in the area it patrols, the country's east.

A smaller version of the Bush administration's troop increase in Iraq, the buildup in Afghanistan has allowed U.S. units to carry out the counterinsurgency strategy here, where American forces generally face less resistance and are better able to take risks.

Since General David Petraeus, now the overall American commander in Iraq, oversaw the drafting of the army's new counterinsurgency manual last year, the strategy has become the new mantra of the military. A recent U.S. military operation here offered a window into how attempts to apply the new approach are playing out on the ground in counterintuitive ways.

In interviews, American officers lavishly praised the anthropology program, saying that the scientists' advice had proved to be "brilliant," helped them see the situation from an Afghan perspective and cut down on combat operations. The eventual aim, they say, is to improve the performance of local government officials, persuade local tribesman to join the police, ease poverty and protect villagers from the Taliban and criminals.

Afghans and Western civilian officials, too, praised the anthropologists and the new American military approach but were cautious about predicting long-term success. Many of the economic and political problems fueling instability can be solved only by large numbers of Afghan and American civilian experts.

"My feeling is that the military are going through an enormous change right now where they recognize they won't succeed militarily," said Tom Gregg, the chief United Nations official in southeastern Afghanistan. "But they don't yet have the skill sets to implement" a coherent nonmilitary strategy.

Deploying small groups of American soldiers into remote areas, Schweitzer's paratroopers organized jirgas, or local councils, to resolve tribal disputes that have simmered for decades.

Officers shrugged off questions about whether the military was comfortable with what David Kilcullen, an Australian anthropologist and an architect of the new strategy, calls "armed social work."

"Who else is going to do it?" asked Lieutenant Colonel David Woods, commander of the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry. "You have to evolve. Otherwise, you're useless."

The arrival of the anthropologists in this Taliban stronghold was part of what the military called Operation Khyber. It was a 15-day drive in which 500 Afghan and 500 American soldiers tried to clear an estimated 200 to 250 Taliban insurgents out of much of Paktia Province, secure southeastern Afghanistan's most important road and halt a string of suicide attacks on American troops and local governors.

The process that led to the creation of the teams began in late 2003, when American officers in Iraq complained that they had little to no information about the local population. Pentagon officials contacted Montgomery McFate, a Yale-educated cultural anthropologist working for the navy who advocated using social science to improve military operations and strategy.

McFate helped developed a computer database in 2005 that provided commanders with detailed data on the local population.

The following year, Steve Fondacaro, a retired Special Operations colonel, joined the program and advocated embedding social scientists with American combat units.

McFate, the program's senior social science adviser and an author of the military's new counterinsurgency manual, dismissed criticism of scholars working with the military. "I'm frequently accused of militarizing anthropology," she said. "But we're really anthropologizing the military."

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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