[R-G] Counterinsurgency, Anthropology and Disciplinary Complicity

[Anthony Fenton]

February 3, 2009
Roberto González on Human Terrain Systems
Counterinsurgency, Anthropology and Disciplinary Complicity
http://www.counterpunch.org/price02032009.html
By DAVID PRICE

During the spring and summer of 2007 word began circulating of a new  
military program designed to draw upon anthropological theory, field  
methods and personnel in theatres of military battles and occupation.  
As anthropologists' concerns over the program grew, mainstream media  
outlets availed themselves for a cascade of fawning uncritical  
personality profiles and news pieces selling the American public on  
the idea that more culturally nuanced forms of military occupation  
would lead to victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. While different  
branches of the military have a number of anthropologically informed  
programs, the Human Terrain System (HTS) has become the most visibly  
controversial program because of the ethical and political problems it  
creates (and ignores) by embedding social scientists with battlefield  
troops. Since it was conceived in 2006, the Pentagon has allocated  
nearly $200 million for HTS.

When the details of the HTS first became publicly known, Roberto  
González, associate professor of anthropology at San Jose State  
University, wrote a series of articles appearing the Royal  
Anthropological Institute's journal Anthropology Today, CounterPunch,  
and Z Magazine critically analyzing the political, ethical, and  
military problems with Human Terrain. González is a founding member of  
the Network of Concerned Anthropologists and has been at the forefront  
of debates on Human Terrain within the American Anthropological  
Association (AAA). He has also introduced AAA resolutions denouncing  
the Iraq War and the use of anthropological knowledge for coercive  
interrogations and torture.

González's book, American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the  
Human Terrain, has just been published in Marshall Sahlins's  
University of Chicago Press Prickly Paradigm Press series; it is a  
timely hard hitting critique of Human Terrain Systems and the dangers  
of social science subservient to counterinsurgency. This past week  
Professor González gave CounterPunch an exclusive interview.

David Price: How did you come to write American Counterinsurgency:  
Human Science and the Human Terrain?

Roberto González: I decided to write "American Counterinsurgency"  
because I was concerned about growing connections between the military  
and the social sciences, and how these connections might threaten the  
lives of Iraqis, Afghans, and others. For more than two years, a group  
of military planners has been involved in a scheme to whitewash  
counterinsurgency-to clean up the image of anti-revolutionary warfare,  
which is always a dirty business. Even though the US military has more  
than a century of experience in counterinsurgency warfare (going back  
to the "Indian Wars" of the 1800s and the cruel campaign against  
Filipino revolutionaries in the early 1900s), General David Petraeus  
and other battlefield technicians have portrayed the method as a  
"gentler" means of fighting, while recruiting political scientists,  
anthropologists, and other social scientists to create the tools to do  
this. The Human Terrain System, which embeds social scientists in  
combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, is among the most visible new  
counterinsurgency programs, and this became the focus of my work.

Price: Where did the idea of human terrain come from?

González: The idea of human terrain-euphemistically defined as the  
local population in a theater of war--is not a new concept. Although  
one could go back centuries to find similar metaphors, its  
contemporary roots stretch back to 1968, when it appeared in a report  
by the infamous US House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC.  
(HUAC was responsible for witch hunts of suspected communists during  
the 1950s.) The report was about the perceived threat of the Black  
Panther Party and similar groups within the US, and it warned that  
such militants "possess the ability to seize and retain the initiative  
through a superior control of the human terrain." From the beginning,  
discussions of human terrain were linked to social control in the  
context of domestic counterinsurgency. Keep in mind that all of this  
was happening as the FBI's nefarious Counterintelligence Program  
(COINTELPRO)--which brutally repressed political dissent within the  
US--was in full gear.

The human terrain concept resurfaced decades later, in 2000, when  
retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters--a hard-boiled  
neoconservative pundit who advocates using American armed forces for a  
"cultural assault" upon non-Western societies--published an  
influential article that was circulated widely. In the article, Peters  
argued that in urban combat operations, "human terrain. . .the people,  
armed and dangerous. . .will determine the success or failure of the  
intervention." Over the next several years, Peters' ideas spread  
quickly and eventually entered the military's lexicon. The Human  
Terrain System cleverly incorporated the term, perhaps in order to  
capitalize on the buzzword's popularity within military circles.

Price: This history linking notions of human terrain with social  
control and suppression of domestic political movements strikes me as  
being very different from normal anthropological research undertakings  
designed to understand rather than control or subvert other cultures.  
How does this past history of human terrain as tool to suppress  
domestic political movements align with Human Terrain Systems today  
and with normal anthropological research or practice standards?

González: Today's HTS program is aligned with past incarnations of  
human terrain in at least two ways. First of all, it is clear from  
early descriptions of HTS (published mostly in military journals) that  
its architects envisioned it as an intelligence-gathering program  
along the lines of Vietnam War-era efforts such as the US Army's CORDS  
(short for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support). An  
essential part of CORDS was the collection of ethnographic data on  
Vietnamese civilians, which was then passed on to paramilitaries  
working for Operation Phoenix, a secret branch of CORDS. As a result,  
the paramilitaries eventually assassinated more than 26,000 Vietnamese  
with alleged ties to the Viet Cong. If we take descriptions of HTS  
seriously, then political suppression of Iraqis and Afghans appears as  
a very real possibility.

Another similarity between HTS and the 1960s human terrain concept has  
to do with its uses as a tool for suppressing domestic dissent. HTS  
supporters from John McCain and Robert Gates on down have used it as a  
way demonstrating to Americans that we're involved in a culturally  
sensitive occupation. It offers us the illusion that we're fighting a  
kinder, gentler war, a war that we can feel good about supporting. I  
think it's revealing that HTS-though still an experimental program-has  
employed a well-connected, full-time public relations specialist to  
help groom this public image. Dozens of puff pieces have appeared in  
the corporate media, which has had the effect of winning over liberals  
who might otherwise be opposed to the occupations of Iraq and  
Afghanistan.

Using anthropologists for these kinds of objectives-for political  
suppression and propaganda purposes-runs completely against normal  
anthropological research practices. For many years, American  
anthropology has typically been used as a means of understanding other  
societies, not as a way of controlling them more efficiently. It's  
useful to think of anthropology as a field that is similar in many  
ways to the fields of medicine or psychology. The knowledge in each of  
these fields can be used responsibly, in ways that improve the human  
condition, human health, human self-awareness. But the same knowledge  
can be used to harm people, to make their lives more miserable rather  
than better.

Price: In reading public statements and published articles from Human  
Terrain personnel and leaked documents like the recently surfaced  
Human Terrain Manual I'm struck by the crude efforts to harness  
specific forms of anthropological theory for the program. It seems  
that the program only wants to use certain types of anthropological  
theories and methods; what do you see as the key elements of Human  
Terrain System's efforts to apply anthropological theory?

González: HTS personnel tend to use outdated anthropological concepts,  
theories, and methods, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. For example,  
Montgomery McFate (the Pentagon's senior social science advisor for  
HTS) has recently published articles and given presentations in which  
she relies heavily upon the concept of "tribalism," functionalist  
theory, and data collection methods developed for the Human Relations  
Area Files. Others have sought to incorporate social network analysis  
as a research method. Each of these elements was either created or  
elaborated at a time when many anthropologists were employed by  
colonial governments to more effectively control indigenous  
populations. It's no accident that these are precisely the tools  
advocated by HTS's architects.

In the past, when military planners and colonial administrators sought  
the counsel of anthropologists, they looked for a social science  
stripped of ambiguity, meaning, and context. They wanted simple  
analytical tools that might help them accomplish short-term  
objectives: to put down an uprising, to manufacture propaganda, to  
conduct psychological warfare, to divide one ethnic group or religious  
sect against another. Today, anthropologists commissioned by the  
Pentagon as counterinsurgency consultants use the same tools as  
instruments for manipulation and social control-not as a means of  
humanizing other people. Some of this work is published in army  
journals with titles like, "The Military Utility of Understanding  
Adversary Culture" and "Operational Culture for the Warfighter." These  
kinds of articles tell us a great deal about a principal aim of  
militarized social science: transforming culture into a weapon.

Price: There are indications that AFRICOM is interested in using Human  
Terrain, or Human Terrain-type programs. What is your read on how the  
Obama Administration will approach Human Terrain Systems or other  
efforts to adopt cultural forms of "soft power" to control and occupy  
other cultures?

González: Recently, a military contract firm called Archimedes Global  
posted a recruitment ad for "socio-cultural cell" members within the  
newly-established AFRICOM (US African Command). The ad calls for  
specialists with "human terrain" expertise, among others. It's a clear  
example of how human terrain has become a much broader phenomenon, now  
embraced by the military, industries, and research universities.  
Beyond the army's HTS program, human terrain has become a growth  
industry.

After Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary,  
there was a boom in funding for projects focused on human terrain  
research and "culture-centric" warfare, and this attracted dozens of  
companies from the military-industrial complex-BAE Systems, Aptima  
Corporation, MITRE, the RAND Corporation, Wexford Group, MTC  
Technologies, NEK Advanced Securities Group, and Alpha Ten to name a  
few. Unfortunately, President Obama has asked Gates-a staunch  
supporter of HTS-to continue serving as Defense Secretary, while  
simultaneously calling for an escalation of the Afghanistan war. I  
think that HTS and similar programs are likely to flourish as long as  
the US military continues to occupy other countries.

Price: The journalist John Stanton has written a detailed series of  
investigative reports indicating widespread financial mismanagement,  
lack of accountability and programmatic conditions indicative of a  
military-contract-without-accountability gone wild. Last month, the  
British journal Nature reversed its earlier support for Human Terrain  
Systems and called for an end of the Human Terrain program. While most  
anthropologists and even members of the intelligence community have  
come to recognize Human Terrain as a rouge program, do you foresee  
either the ethical, political or financial problems bringing any sort  
of investigation to Human Terrain Systems?

González: A great deal of evidence points to extreme waste and fraud  
in the Human Terrain System-something that is typical of many other  
Pentagon programs farmed out to military contractors. Former HTS  
employees told me that millions of dollars were routinely wasted on  
ineffective and inadequate training exercises, useless software  
programs, and incompetent staff members. They reported that an  
expensive "Reachback Research Center" located at Fort Leavenworth,  
Kansas was rarely used for research, but instead functioned as a  
warehouse for employees who weren't "deployable assets." Zenia Helbig,  
a former employee of the program, has stated that "the program is  
desperate to hire anyone or anything that remotely falls into the  
category or 'academic'." To make matters worse, HTS has not had any  
independent reviews or assessments. In fact, the only assessments that  
have been conducted were carried out by evaluation teams consisting of  
people with a vested interest in the program's continuation.

Despite this overwhelming evidence pointing to a program run amok, the  
US Congress has not shown much interest in investigating HTS. In fact,  
when a joint session of the House Armed Services and Science  
Committees held hearings in April 2008 to discuss the Human Terrain  
System and other social science programs, House representatives did  
not ask Steve Fondacaro (director of HTS) any tough questions. Since  
that time, three HTS social scientists-Michael Bhatia, Nicole Suveges,  
and Paula Loyd-have been killed in action, an HTS employee has been  
charged with murder for a revenge killing in Afghanistan, and yet  
another has been charged with espionage. These scandals, along with  
persistent pressure from academic groups, may yet lead to HTS's  
demise. But remember that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been a  
staunch supporter of HTS and counterinsurgency warfare, and he will  
continue his term as a member of the Obama administration. We can't  
rely on the new administration to bring an end to these programs. It  
will be left to citizens of conscience to demand the abolition of  
human terrain teams-and the imperial wars that employ them.

David Price is a member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologist.   
He is the author of Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and  
Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War, just  
published by Duke University Press. He can be reached at dprice at stmartin.edu

Roberto J. González is author of American Counterinsurgency: Human  
Science and the Human Terrain (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2008) and  
Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca  
(University of Texas Press, 2001). He can be reached at roberto_gonzalez at netzero.net