Anthropologists Still Banging on HTS

In a commentary column at C4ISR Journal, a pair of DoD-affiliated anthropologists are still hammering on HTS.

Sending social scientists to study local populations in the company of armed troops amid active hostilities will not produce scientifically reliable information. Just as important are the long-term consequences of this approach. Embedding anthropologists with combat brigades undermines their independence and duty not to harm populations — requirements that are the linchpins of anthropological ethics. Calling embedded anthropologists “social scientists” does not solve the problem.

We are also concerned about the military’s reported plans to make its HTS teams permanent, and to use them for so-called “phase zero” activities abroad after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Present concerns are based upon the issues identified in our 2009 report.

The association’s Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the U.S. Security and Intelligence Communities concluded unanimously that “when ethnographic investigation is determined by military missions, not subject to external review, where data collection occurs in the context of war, integrated into the goals of counterinsurgency, and in a potentially coercive environment — all characteristic factors of the HTS concept and its application — it can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology.”

It is important that readers of C4ISR Journal understand that this statement was written not by some hippie fringe of the profession but by a group that included anthropologists who work for the military in non-HTS capacities. For example, one was a staff archeologist for the Army, and another continues to provide cultural training for the Marine Corps.

By: Brant

Intel In Afghanistan Catching Up to Reality?

So the intel guys are now doing the job of the civil affairs guys?

Military intelligence officers were scrambling a year ago to collect and analyze the social, economic and tribal ins and outs of each valley and hamlet in Afghanistan.
This information wasn't the kind of secret or covert material many military intelligence specialists were used to. But it was seen as crucial to helping commanders tell the good guys from the bad, learn what Afghans really needed from their government and undermine the Taliban-led insurgency by winning hearts and minds.
Since last fall, top intelligence leaders in Afghanistan have shifted their energies back to targeting the enemy the more traditional way, by mapping their networks, and analyzing the behavior of what made the Taliban tick. It's not that they stopped collecting the other information, but the focus shifted to helping commanders on the ground learn what they needed to know to help them kill the enemy directly — and drive that enemy to the negotiating table.

And maybe we could've been paying attention to this for years...

Ironically, the change in Washington policy comes just as the top official in charge of military intelligence in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Steve Fogarty, shifted his focus back to how the U.S. gathers that social, economic and tribal data, and how to make sure the troops are getting access to it to help both understand local communities and foster local governance. He may now face a closing window of opportunity to beef up those programs, as his programs face the looming drawdown of manpower and resources ordered by an administration fed up with the war's $10 billion-a-month price tag.

Yay - let's cut the budget and starve our assets of the resources to do their jobs! Oh wait, even in the years of mass budgets, Map-HT was starved for money.

By: Brant

Culture as a Weapon System?

What is a weapon 'system'? Is 'culture' a 'weapon system' or is it just another tool we need to have in our toolbox? Not everything is a 'weapon system' is it?

At the fourth Culture Summit of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in April 2010, Maj. Gen. David Hogg, head of the Adviser Forces in Afghanistan, proposed that the US military think of “culture as a weapon system.” The military, Hogg asserted, needs to learn the culture of the lands where it is deployed and use that knowledge to fight its enemies along with more conventional armaments. This conceptual and perhaps literal “weaponization of culture” continues a trend that began with the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Endorsed at the highest level by Gen. David Petraeus, head of Central Command, the Pentagon unit in charge of the greater Middle East, the idea of culture as a weapon grows out of the “‘gentler’ approach” to America’s post-September 11 wars adopted after the departure of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This approach is best articulated in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, that Petraeus oversaw and that the Army released in December 2006.

In the Field Manual, this peculiarly military application of culture uses cultural anthropologists’ definitions of culture as the behaviors, beliefs, material goods and values of a group of people that are learned and shared. The weaponization of culture posits that culture can be a crucial element of military intelligence, used to influence others, to attack their weak spots and, more benignly, to understand the others the military is trying to help. While scholars and military analysts have shown how “culture” was enlisted to play a role in the Vietnam war, today’s wars are the first in which culture has been so clearly articulated. Maj. Gen. John Custer, commander of the Army’s Intelligence Center of Excellence, describes this shift as “a tectonic change in military operations.”

By: Brant

Wikileaks In The News and Blogs

Jules Crittenden is reporting that Wikileaks is at it again...

Wikileaks reportedly is preparing to release an Afghan ”massacre” vid that is more shocking than the Iraq gun camera footage they popped a couple of months ago. Now, does that mean it will be even more clueless, distorted and offensively biased than that one was?

Also, Cryptome has an insider look at Wikileaks, and it ain't flattering...

What most people don't realise is just how WIKILEAKS internal structure resembles an absolute dictatorship. Forget the invisible nine so called board members composed of technologists and media representatives, they do not exist, and they never have.

Forget about Daniel Schmitt, one of WIKILEAKS public faces, he is of absolutely no consequence and has no influence, editorial or otherwise within WIKILEAKS.

WIKILEAKS is, and always has been the brain child of Julian Assange, a convicted ex hacker, who's original concept was to attach a value to leaked information, and sell it to the highest bidder. From an initial base of approximately eight high value sponsors, and an Internet community ready to buy into Assange's snake oil of protecting the whistleblower by guaranteeing anonymity based upon technological means and legal support if the smelly stuff really hit the fan..!!

WIKILEAKS is essentially a one man band, with a core of unpaid volunteers, who provide all of the grunt work and server space for WIKILEAKS. There is no huge bill for server space. Assange fronts for an organisational infrastructure donated gratis by others. So you may justifiably ask just how much does it cost to run WIKILEAKS?

The basic expenses incurred by WIKILEAKS such as minor running expenses, paying for the server space that is not donated, and communications costs is approximately $55K per year. This figure excludes Assange's so called promotional expenses, which include international travel in business class, hotel accommodation, taxis, clothing, and personal expenses. For FY 2009 and YTD, these are estimated to be in excess of $225,000.

There are no internal accounts at WIKILEAKS accurately detailing expenditure of monies received from donors, and Assange has no visible income streams.

Now, we do need to caveat the Cryptome reference. They've been spectacularly wrong about plenty of things before, especially when talking about HTS and MapHT.


By: Brant

Shakeup in HTS Leadership

The Human Terrain System is undergoing a leadership shakeup.

The manager and co-founder of the U.S. Army’s controversial social-science program is no longer in charge.

Retired Colonel Steve Fondacaro — a charismatic, mercurial, mile-a-minute former Special Forces operator and East Harlem native – turned the Human Terrain System from an academic experiment into a military reality, embedding social scientists into combat units.

Then he waged an internal insurgency to expand the effort Army-wide, despite the service’s dedication at the time to a purely bombs-and-bullets approach to warfare. ”We’re like a germ in the body of [the Army],” Fondacaro once told me. “All of their systems are sending white blood cells to puke me up.”

But the Army changed its ways. And Fondacaro’s expansion effort was largely successful. At last count, there were 21 Human Terrain Teams operating in Iraq and six more in Afghanistan, offering advice to commanders on the local cultural landscape.

By: Brant

Cryptome on HTS: Ready! Fire! Aim!

John Stanton's Reports on the US Army Human Terrain System over at Cryptome appear to be hard-hitting inside-source style writing that have a single-minded mission: advocate for the shut down of HTS.

However, if you scratch the surface, you find quite a few problems.

In this article, which focuses on Dr McFate's illegitimate child, Stanton takes aim at a lot of issues within HTS.

The US Army HTS has been plagued with troubles that continue unabated. Allegations of sweet-heart deals with personnel at the US Naval Post Graduate School to develop MAP HT, shell companies created by those connected to Fondacaro/McFate to absorb HTS funds, questionable business intelligence practices between contractors seeking HTS work, and HTS personnel resignations ("in disgust and sexual harassment at HTS HQ Fort Leavenworth have resurfaced again as the calendar year 2009 comes to a close. US Army HTS has continued to lower its recruiting and training standards (allowing the near-elderly into combat zones) and it is reported that in the transition from civilian contractor-run to government-run some time ago, fully 71 percent of employees walked away from the program.

Now, I can tell you as someone who has worked on Map-HT for over a year now, NPS had nothing to do with it. There are a lot of people involved. CENTCOM is running operational management; the Army's CERDEC is running technical management. US Army Psyops and Civil Affairs, Maritime Civil Affairs (Navy), and yes, HTS all have a seat at the table representing the user community. MITRE is there to work the data models and DCGS compatibility. Overwatch built much of the software, and handles a lot of training, alongside SunTek. PFI is handling testing and integration, and Booz-Allen-Hamilton has the info assurance piece. The Army's ATEC is handling documentation, which is leading to the first draft of much of the doctrine involved. But NPS? Nowhere near the program. They just aren't. It's not just a lack of "sweetheart" deal. There's *no* deal. None. At all.

In another article, Stanton takes even narrower aim at Map-HT.

The nonfunctioning MAP HT remains controversial, according to sources, for a number of reasons. First, because there are plenty of robust US Army computing software/networks that perform the same or similar functions as MAP HT. Better still, these systems have already been bought and paid for. Second, US Army regulations, in many instances, also mandate that existing software/networks be utilized. For example, CENTCOM's secure Combined Information Data Network Exchange (CIDNE), plus already extant software/networks that the US Army has in place, was used by enterprising HTS personnel as a substitute for the nonperforming MAP HT.

And in the process, Stanton shows that he is remarkably ill-informed about the uses and purposes of the software. First, CIDNE is an intel system, and Map-HT is a civil affairs system, that happens to be in use with HTS. That's right, USACAPOC is driving that train, not HTS. HTS gets what USACAPOC decides to deliver to them. HTS has a voice in the room when discussing requirements, but HTS are not the development shop for Map-HT, CENTCOM/CERDEC/USACAPOC are.

Back to CIDNE... It's relevant that CIDNE is an intel system, and Map-HT is a civil affairs system. You see, CA personnel are not supposed to conduct intel activities. CA guys can't even 'collect' information. They have to 'assess' things. There are important legal distinctions that have a lot to do with host nation integration, NGO cooperation, etc. You can't just use CIDNE b/c then the intel and CA reporting chains are unified, and that's illegal. If Stanton actually knew about the subject, instead of cutting and pasting disgruntled emails from former HTS employees, he'd understand the difference.

Furthermore, if he were really the investigative journalist he likes to pretend he is, he'd look even deeper into CIDNE and why data is not shared out of CIDNE. It's not shared because CIDNE does not want to. CIDNE was told to open their databases to push info through the PASS to ABCS services; they didn't. CIDNE was told to open their databases to push info through the PASS to FusionNet; they didn't. CIDNE was told to open their databases for queries coming from Map-HT to check to see if persons were being tracked in the intel world so the CA guys could hand them off and get out of the 'intel business'; they didn't. Oh yeah, and back in 2007, CIDNE's software was randomly declassifying source files by sharing them through the CDX to CENTRIX even though they weren't authorized to be pushed through the CDX. CIDNE started as a HUMINT tracking system, morphed into an intel deconfliction system, then started trying to do battlefield events management, too. All the while keeping their arms tight around their data stores and not sharing them with anyone, despite multiple stars instructing them to.

Is Map-HT perfect? Hardly. And from the inside, I can tell you I have a pretty good handle on what a lot of the flaws are - and one of them is not the system, but the training in how to use it and the lackadaisical approach to training that HTS and USACAPOC both adopted early in the program. The training plan and the emphasis on it are both being addressed.
Map-HT is also only in Spiral 1 - the initial deployable capability. You have to get it into the field to see how it works before you can truly assess it. Spiral 2 is supposed to incorporate feedback from downrange into the system and get Map-HT closer to a fully developed and deployable system. But riddle me this, Stanton: If Map-HT is such crap, why are there 47 outstanding requests for CF-52s currently languishing for lack of budget with the Map-HT hierarchy? People are asking for it because they see value in it.

HTS has issues. No one is going to deny it. But if Stanton can't get basic, verifiable, and legal distinctions right - the stuff that you can either find publicly available, or should know and understand if you purport to be a journalist pontificating on the topic - then how are we supposed to believe the anonymously-sourced details, the seedy war stories, the innuendo and rumor, and the hearsay? If he can't get right the facts that the public can easily verify, why should I trust in him to accurately report the stuff I can't?

The short answer is that I can't trust him. He clearly has an axe to grind with HTS. There are far bigger budget sinkholes than HTS, and there are far bigger ethical issues in the government contracting world than HTS and Map-HT (go look into Alaskan 8A designations for an abuse of gov't contracting). I don't know why Stanton has it in for HTS, but it would be nice if he could get the facts straight before going on the warpath.


By: Brant

HTS Mission Shift?

Danger Room is reporting that HTS 'research' is showing that the Kandahar 'offensive' might not work.

That’s where HTS is supposed to come in. Originally, the program was focused on embedding social scientists and anthropologists within brigades. But as several people close to the program tell Danger Room, there is now an emphasis on larger-scale polls run by local contractors as a way to obtain a larger picture of the situation.

Both polling and embedding researchers have their risks, and their shortcomings: Two HTS social scientists have been killed in Afghanistan, but conducting surveys, even through local companies, can also be perilous. The survey draws on a total of 1,994 interviews covering nine of Kandahar Province’s 16 districts. But it leaves out seven crucial districts: As the survey’s authors note, there are “inherent dangers associated with conducting surveys in a conflict zone” like Kandahar Province, and interviewers stayed out of areas with active violence.

In other words, the survey leaves out the populations that most need to be understood, at least from the coalition’s perspective. Still, the results are telling. Interviewers queried residents of Kandahar on everything from quality of services like clean water, electricity to the availability of primary schooling for girls and boys and medical care. They also asked local residents about security government effectiveness.

The bigger deal? This shift away from qualitative research to quantitative research. You knew it was just a matter of time before the Army got back to what it does best - count things. They were never going to be comfortable with narrative reports, but survey results can be put onto PPT slides and that makes staff weenies happy. Sigh.

Download the report here (PDF)

By: Brant

Surge In Afghanistan? Send Them to Marja!

The impending NATO-led operation in Marja is likely to affect the local population is some drastic ways.

Nato aircraft dropped more leaflets over Marja at the weekend warning of the planned offensive.
Villagers said the leaflets gave the names of several alleged militant commanders and told fighters to leave the area or be killed, the Associated Press reports.
One resident, Gul Muhammed, told AFP news agency why he had left town.
"There are Taliban all over the place and foreign troops around Marja," he said. "So I was scared that we might get hurt."
Another man, Mohammad Hakim, was heading to Lashkar Gah with his wife, nine sons, four daughters and grandchildren.
"Everybody is worried that they'll get caught in the middle when this operation starts," he told the Associated Press.
"I can stay for one or two weeks," he said. "But if I have to leave my agriculture land for months and months, then how will I feed my family?"

It's also going to be very interesting to see how well the Afghan force perform in this operation.

The effectiveness of the alliance between the U.S. military and Afghanistan's security force rests on a particularly delicate question: Will sufficient numbers of Afghans put up a good fight against the Taliban -- starting very soon?

Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's strategy to reduce the U.S. role in Afghanistan includes increasing the training of the Afghan force, doubling its size and enhancing its capabilities. How realistic that strategy is remains to be seen, particularly in light of President Obama's preference that the United States begin withdrawing troops in mid-2011.

An offensive expected soon to seize the Taliban stronghold of Marja -- an insurgent haven and a hub of the narcotics trade in violent Helmand province -- would serve as a strong boost to Western efforts to create a robust national security force, if Afghan troops demonstrate competence and courage in the field.

But such a deliberate effort to showcase the Afghan force's role in a high-profile assault carries heavy risks as well. A lackluster showing in Marja by the Afghans would be a propaganda coup for the Taliban and a blow to hopes that a Western military drawdown can begin next year.

In July, when Marine battalions swooped into the Helmand River Valley, the Afghan contingent accompanying them was less than one-seventh the size of the U.S. deployment -- about 600 Afghan police and soldiers to about 4,500 Marines. Marine Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson complained publicly about the lopsided numbers, saying more Afghan soldiers were needed.

As the Marines seized a swath of the valley, tensions emerged with their Afghan allies. Some of the Afghans fought bravely, but others hung back, reluctant to move to the front lines. Once the Marines had established a foothold in a string of villages, field commanders were frustrated by their inability -- because so few Afghan counterparts were on hand -- to communicate with the villagers they were trying to win over.

This time around in Marja, commanders indicate, a greater proportion of the troops will be Afghan. The size of the American assault force has not been disclosed, but Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, told reporters that there would be more than 1,000 Afghan police officers and thousands of Afghan army soldiers.

And the Afghan forces will play a more important role in engaging Marja's overwhelmingly Pashtun population of about 85,000. Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan military, told reporters in Kabul, the capital, that a key role of the Afghan troops would be to help "separate the local people from the terrorists."

More than military pride is involved. One of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's many challenges is to convince the population that his government is strong enough to fight the Taliban. A show of force by Afghan soldiers also might persuade low-level Taliban fighters to quit the insurgency.

It's not just uniforms going in, either, as Human Terrain System analysts are moving closer to the front.

Decades ago development experts from Washington built the town of Marjah in southern Afghanistan in order to populate a desert they had helped irrigate with a network of U.S.-built canals.

Marjah has since become a breeding ground for both opium poppy cultivation and insurgents. Now U.S. civilians are back ahead of a major military offensive, planning to reverse the gains made by the Taliban, and win the hearts and minds of civilians.

NATO troops led by U.S. Marines are preparing to seize Marjah soon in one of the largest operations of the 8-year-old war, the first big display of force using some of the 30,000 extra troops pledged by U.S. President Barack Obama last December.

U.S. military officials say shooting their way to victory will not lead to peace in Afghanistan, and winning the cooperation of Afghan civilians is their most effective weapon.

Kristin Post, a social scientist working for a Department of Defense "Human Terrain Team", is about 12 km (8 miles) south of Marjah, and she is looking forward to going into the town, alongside a battalion of Marines, and talking to its residents.

View Larger Map

By: Brant

In-depth Look at HTS

The Weekly Standard has a nice overview of the training program of the Human Terrain System and some of the background that brought it about.

In those early days, the U.S. military in Afghanistan, for all its famous night-vision goggles, was blind to what has become known as the “human terrain”—the people it had come to liberate. No one has to explain to any soldier the tactical significance of a hill or a river or an airfield; whereas few soldiers on the Kandahar base had ever heard of Barakzais, much less the Popalzais and Alokozais and Ghiljais who had been left out in the cold. Their commanders similarly failed to recognize the mischief flowing every day from the fact that the interpreters on whom the Americans were wholly dependent—supplied by the governor’s helpful brother—were working for him.

Today efforts are being made to change that, as the military draws on a culture of “lessons learned”—the systematic practice of looking back at mistakes to see what can be done better. The generals in charge of the counterinsurgency strategy being implemented in Afghanistan are graduates of the hard school of Iraq, where the United States also paid the price of ignorance. Now, the generals—notably U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief David Petraeus and the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal—are working through multiple channels to build their forces’ ability to relate to the Afghan population.

By: Brant

BUB: The Army's Human Terrain System

The Army's Human Terrain System program is, officially,

a new proof-of-concept program, run by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), and serving the joint community. The near-term focus of the HTS program is to improve the military's ability to understand the highly complex local socio-cultural environment in the areas where they are deployed; however, in the long-term, HTS hopes to assist the US government in understanding foreign countries and regions prior to an engagement within that region.
- HTS was developed in response to identified gaps in commanders' and staffs' understanding of the local population and culture, and its impact on operational decisions; and poor transfer of specific socio-cultural knowledge to follow-on units.
- The HTS approach is to place the expertise and experience of social scientists and regional experts, coupled with reach-back, open-source research, directly in support of deployed units engaging in full-spectrum operations.
- HTS informs decision making at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.
- The HTS program is the first time that social science research and advising has been done systematically, on a large scale, and at the brigade level.

Human Terrain System at Wikipedia



Hasn't stopped all sorts of things from being written about it...

Comparisons to the movie "Avatar"

One review in Counterpunch that caught my eye was an analysis of the elements of real world counterinsurgency doctrine, in particular the Human Terrain System, a new element of military counterinsurgency strategy in which social scientists are deployed to study restive populations and formulate strategies for pacifying and controlling them.

Blackfive goes off on lack of support from academic anthropologists

Our privileged class of pampered elites safely ensconced in their ivory towers is whinging again about those who dare contribute to our common defense. In this case one group of these wankers objects to our use of anthropologists in the Human Terrain System, a project designed to help the military understand the local populations so we can better work with them.

Other academics consider that it the opposition might not just be "we don't like war, therefore..."

Alternatively, the report hints that the real problem is merely a poor choice of words. "We should consider the work of HTTs to be sharply different, in its goals, from conventional disciplinary ethnographic pursuits and not to be 'ethnography' in any credible sense." (54) If HTS were re-branded to avoid the terms "anthropology," "ethnography," and "social science," and instead present itself as a counterinsurgency program pure and simple, then--it seems--CEAUSSIC would not expect it to follow either the AAA ethics codes or the Common Rule. All of this points to the need for clear definitions when discussing ethical and legal obligations.

A long article looks at the implications of expanding HTS within the context of the contractual specifications set out by TRADOC.

TRADOC G-2, citing documentation, envisions long term system integrator services for the program will occur in multiple geographical locations around the globe. This will include in-theater locations in support of the US COCOMS. HTS will provide the critical human terrain or green layer in strategic and tactical defense plans, analysis of adversaries and potential threats and in the analysis of threats to ground, air, sea and space in support of information operations capabilities for STRATCOM and other major Commands. The contractor shall provide support to analyze concepts, architectures, plans, doctrines, and requirements studies. The contractor shall analyze missions and mission areas as they are promulgated and provide support to the drafting and review of requirements documents (e.g., Concepts of Operations (CONOPS), Mission Needs Statements (MNS), Operational Requirements Documents (ORDs), etc.). The contractor must consider intelligence threats and coordinate with integrated strategic and tactical defense plans, and other related studies, plans and programs. The contractor must consider all battlefield operating systems issues in coordination with integrated strategic and tactical defense plans as well as other related studies, plans and programs.

Further, data collection and dissemination of the HTS products is essential in building a Common Operating Picture for the warfighter. The HTS effort includes coordinating data collection efforts with Battle Command (BC) ; oversight of deployed team collection efforts to ensure a process is established to support staffing and implementation of future spirals and requirements; ensuring the HTS fills the Combatant Commanders requirements; development and implementation of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities (DOTMLPF) solutions; implementation of DOTMLPF to leverage the strengths of the capabilities while improving theater operations; capability development; and Force integration of a “System of Systems” which provides intelligence and information to small unit leaders to increase Force effectiveness and influence operations.

Even the far-left nutjobs get to weigh in.

Yes, it takes a village to win the war, but what about that troublesome "localized" Afghan culture, an attachment to place, religion, and family that is part and parcel of their stubborn refusal to embrace "modernity"? How will we navigate the shoals of such savagery? As part of this effort, we’re sending in nearly a thousand civilians, in part to carry out the political side of this war – a major aspect of the new counterinsurgency strategy in vogue at the Pentagon these days. Some of these civilians will be anthropologists – and, yes, you read that right.
Indeed, the anthropologists have already arrived – with at least three such specialists among the US casualties. To my knowledge, 36-year old Paula Loyd, anthropologist and US Army reservist, is the third social scientist to be killed in Afghanistan, where she was working with the so-called Human Terrain System (HTS), one of the US military’s more Orwellian project

And just when it couldn't get any weirder...
Pravda(?!) weighs in on a tabloid-news angle to the whole shebang.

Just when it seemed that the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS) could not provide any more drama/distractions, on October 20th, in the District of Columbia Superior Court, Mrs. Montgomery McFate (Plaintiff) filed for divorce from Mr. Sean McFate (Defendant). The case will be heard on January 14, 2010 at 8:30 AM according to a court spokesperson (case number 09DRB3126). Sources say this was precipitated, in part, because Ms. Montgomery McFate, Senior Social Scientist, is expecting a child out of wedlock. Sources are adamant that this is the case though, for obvious reasons, the results of any “medical test” to confirm those reports can’t be verified. Whether true or false, the impending divorce will provide yet another distraction for an already distracted US Army program.

That's a lot of press for a program that's about 550 people strong.

Also check out HarmonieWeb, the official public face of HTS for NGOs and others working with them.

By: Brant

Human Terrain System runs afoul of professional anthropologists

The professional association of anthropologists is not happy with the entire concept of anthropologists supporting warfighters in the field.

Anthropologists have traditionally had a pretty wonkish reputation, earnestly taking field notes while interviewing a tribal chief, or lecturing in some college classroom about the intricacies of indigenous clan-systems. If the Pentagon has its way, though, more anthropologists will exchange their tweed for military fatigues and leave the halls of academe for the frontlines. For the last two years, the U.S. military has embedded anthropologists and other social scientists with American troops in order to improve the army's cultural IQ. But last week, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) released a report coming out strongly against the program, saying that both in concept and application, it "can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology."
Since 2007, the Pentagon's Human Terrain System has been placing social scientists in every army combat brigade, regiment and Marine Corps regimental combat team. There are now more than 500 people employed by HTS, a number that is increasing rapidly. On the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, their job is to gather information and provide commanders with a greater understanding of the local population, reducing the need for lethal force by helping the army determine the needs of the community, according to Steve Fondacaro the project manager at HTS. Secretary of State Robert Gates has publicly praised the project, and one army colonel told Congress that one Human Terrain team reduced violent clashes encountered by his brigade in Afghanistan by 60-70%. As President Barack Obama revamps his Afghanistan strategy, getting ready to send 30,000 more soldiers, HTS is poised to become a major part of America's war, helping troops navigate in a foreign land. "We're pleased to find ourselves fully aligned with the goals [of the Obama administration]," says Fondacaro.

By: Brant