THE LATEST IN THE ZERO SERIES:
- 0.171: Anthropology and the Will to Meaning: Vassos Argyrou
- 0.178: The Social Production of Science and Anthropology as Knowledge for Domination
- 0.179: Imperialism, Americanization, and the Social Sciences
- 0.18: Anthropology and the Rise of the Social Sciences within the Structures of Knowledge – Immanuel Wallerstein
- 0.185: Terms of Incorporation, Concepts of Domination
- 0.189: Stanley Diamond & Claude Lévi-Strauss on the Nature and Future of Anthropology
- 0.19: Questions about Colonialism and Anthropology: Epistemology, Methodology, and Politics
- 0.20: “Potentially Dangerous Implications for the Practice of Anthropology Today”
- Welcome to ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY: The End of the Beginning of the End
THE LATEST ON HTS:
- New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case: John Stanton
- Iraqi Insurgents Capture Human Terrain System Member: John Stanton
- ACTION ALERT: Sign the Anthropologists’ Statement on the Human Terrain System
- John Stanton: The New Face of the Human Terrain System
- Where are the Pueblo Clowns?
- Human Terrain System Suffers Another Casualty
- Reality Check for the Human Terrain System: Marilyn Dudley-Flores Responds
- Anthropology on Stage, Human Terrain System on Screen
- News from the Military-Academic Complex: McFate’s PhD, HTS Contracts, Minerva Grants, Afghanistan
New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case: High Drama in HTS
by John Stanton
Monday, 08 February, 2010
Observers indicate that two individuals in HTS leadership positions on the ground in Iraq—Lieutenant Colonel Byrd (Program Management Office – FWD) and Michael Goains, GG-15 (Theater Coordination Element) had direct knowledge of Issa Salomi’s prior forays outside Camp Liberty/Victory Base Complex in Iraq unaccompanied by his teammates (team designation IZ-02,) or US military personnel. Salomi was apparently taken by an Iraqi insurgent group in January 2010 and a video of him recently appeared in global media outlets in February 2010.
Observers have also pointed out that Salomi is not, in fact, a contractor but is instead a temporary US Army Civilian employee. In 2009, HTS reverted to a government program and contractors were forced to choose between leaving or converting to US government civilian status.
“There is so much drama within the HTS program right now that it is unbelievable. Many, many people are being fired, rearranged and moved around due to management incompetence and personality problems,” said observers. “The amount of money being squandered is ridiculous.”
One team leader (HTAT-B) was fired because of allegations of sexual harassment (a problem apparently not confined to HTS operations in Iraq and Afghanistan). Some members of his team quit because of his behavior. Some believe that he “literally looked at pictures and selected his incoming team members based on physical attractiveness.”
Another HTS employee was apparently fired because she was caught breaking into a building on the Victory Base Complex in the middle of the night looking for something to eat.
One Big Incestuous, Corrupt Family
A senior NCO (although reportedly married) is allegedly having an affair with a Human Terrain Analyst in Baghdad, Iraq (mimicking senior management one presumes). Apparently they have become quite adept at influencing military leadership. “One of them routinely denigrates social scientists she works with, and claims her six years of military intelligence (interrogations) background makes her more qualified than those with a PhD.”
Goains’ wife is currently going through HTS training and will evidently be going to work with him in Baghdad as a Social Scientist for the TCE.
Goains evidently had the Knowledge Management Officer and IT Director in Iraq fired for unknown reasons. “There is now no IT/tech support for the people on the ground and this will most likely remain the case,” said sources. “This means that most of the reports that the teams are tasked with producing will never see the light of day outside Iraq. This is another monumental waste of taxpayer money.”
According to sources, the Knowledge Management (KM) Directorate is headed by Dan Wolfe, President/CEO of Universal Solutions, Inc (USAI) located in Virginia. The other contractor involved was Ascend Intelligence (recently purchased by General Dynamics C4 Systems (GDC4S). Bradley Green is the new Project Manager for GDC4S/HTS.
Observers allege that Wolfe redirects “a lot of program money to his own company.” For example, the SSRA work is contracted through him and then subcontracted to Glevum Associates, so Wolfe profits from that contract too. Wolfe apparently advises Steve Fondacaro (HTS program manager) on all the IT & KM related matters.
Two Optia/MaxVision computer servers ($20,000 each) that were sent out to the field in 2009 were never even used by the HTS/HTT’s. There is a rumor that Fondacaro’s brother is involved with/owns the company that provided the Optia/MaxVision servers.
That story remains rumor but, given the track record with HTS, virtually anything is possible.
Corrections: CornerStone ref. in last article was incorrect. Career Stone is the proper name.
John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security and political matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com.
Max Forte: As I asked here, this crisis raises numerous questions, and HTS has apparently gone AWOL and is answering none.
Like in previous crisis situations, except more so this time, the HTS website is completely useless (now reaching the extreme of being totally offline for more than several days): “Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)”
There are important questions here besides those raised in the media reports and by John Stanton. One concerns the ability of the resistance to pinpoint and target this individual, which raises the question: why? And of course: how? It suggests that the League of the Righteous are aware of what HTS is, and who its personnel are. Whatever they knew about HTS, one thing seems certain: now they will learn even more about it.
Another question is: does Salomi’s family receive compensation during the period of his captivity? Is Salomi paid danger pay and is paid while he is a hostage?
In addition: what are HTS, the Army, etc., doing to seek his release? Will they negotiate?
Do they train their personnel to deal with situations like this? How was Salomi able to leave the base without anyone knowing, especially in a situation where a Status for Forces Agreement stipulates that U.S. forces are to be confined to their bases, except in emergency cases or where Iraqi forces seek their backup? [Note: thanks to Darryl Li, this was not the case: Salomi was on an excused absence: http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=13291]
HTS’ silence is extreme this time, a rather irresponsible outfit that exposes its employees to great dangers. That’s also unethical of course. What is not so funny is that HTS senior representatives are otherwise all over the media like some attention-starved, has-been celebrity desperately trying to tout a come-back special. When trouble explodes, they rush for the nearest exit. So another question is: why does anyone sign up to join this crew?
Iraqi Insurgents Capture Human Terrain Team Member: Issa T. Salomi
by John Stanton
Sunday, 07 February 2010
Steve Fondacaro and Montgomery Carlough, senior program management of the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS), were warned as early as 2007 that Human Terrain Team members in Iraq and Afghanistan would become prey for insurgent groups. They were advised repeatedly that training must emphasize the dangerous environment HTS employees would be operating in. That training needed to focus on practices and procedures for handling life threatening situations to include kidnapping.
Issa Salomi, a 60 year old HTT member operating in a combat zone, was taken in January 2010 by an Iraqi insurgent group and a video of him was released on the Net in February 2010 by the same group. This tragic event drives home, once again, the core failings of the Human Terrain Team System: the inability to find qualified personnel, to train them properly and to, quite simply, take care of them. Some allege that many team leaders and HTS management itself have no clue where many of their teams are. “Some HTT members disappear for days and then return.”
“They will tell you they are addressing this in the curriculum redesign but it’s too little too late. The students currently in training are not been thoroughly briefed on the situation on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan . There does not appear to be any attempt to implement anything in training regarding kidnapping. This is criminally negligent,” said observers.
Observers also indicate that those in charge of revising the HTS curriculum and training new batches of HTS students are not qualified to do so as their expertise is in private sector organizational behavior. Some have had no military or field experience and, what’s more, hardly understand the US military culture they are embedded in. Yet they are offered contracts that extend, in some cases, close to one month at $1200 per day. Some allege that conflicts of interests abound within HTS with one of them centered around the outlay of $2 million to a group called Cornerstone.
How much more will it take until the word “accountability” becomes relevant to the US Army’s HTS program? Where are the IG’s or the US Congress? Secretary of Defense Robert Gates may have held accountable the program manager for the Joint Strike Fighter whom he recently fired but no one died in that program.
Who in HTS, and those that command above it, will be held to account for the deaths,trauma and lives ruined for a military/sociological experiment gone wrong? Those below, and their families, deserve much more than a mention on the HTS.mil website or in court/medical records for their efforts. [MF: Note that the website for HTS has been down for at least several days now.]
Michael Bhatia, Nicole Suveges, Paula Loyd, Don Ayala (and the Afghan National murdered), Wesley Cureton, Scott Wilson, Issa Solomi, and those unidentified US soldiers wounded in their company.
John Stanton is a Virginia Based writer specializing in national security and political matters. His recent book is General David Petraeus’ Favorite Mushroom: Inside the US Army HTS. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com
UPDATED — MORE NEWS:
- IRAQ MOQAWAMA WEBSITE
- Story/Video on Iraq Moqawama –> Translated into English
- “Missing US contractor Issa Salomi paraded by terrorist group,” Times Online, 08 February 2010
- “Shiite Militant Group Posts Video of Abducted American in Iraq,” FOX News, 06 February 2010
- “Video Of US Hostage Held In Iraq Released,” Sky News, 06 February 2010
- “Officials confirm kidnapping of U.S. contractor in Iraq,” Washington Post, 06 February 2010
From the NETWORK OF CONCERNED ANTHROPOLOGISTS, 27 January 2010:
Dear Fellow Anthropologists,
The US Congress is currently evaluating and considering the expansion of the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System (HTS) program, in which anthropologists have been recruited to assist with counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq [see here, here and here for more background]. Please join us in expressing our firm opposition to the program and any expansion by agreeing to add your signature to the attached “Anthropologists’ Statement on the Human Terrain System Program.” Modeled after a well-publicized 2008 statement written by economists to oppose the Bush administration’s first TARP program, this statement aims to clearly and concisely state the factual grounds for our opposition.
Unlike our previous year-long effort to compile signatures for the Network of Concerned Anthropologists’ “Pledge of Non-participation in Counterinsurgency,” we want to collect the signatures of as many professional anthropologists as soon as possible so that our voice can be heard in the debate about HTS.
To add your name to the statement [see the statement below], please EMAIL your NAME, TITLE, and AFFILIATION to NOHUMANTERRAIN@GMAIL.COM. Include the subject line “Anthropologists’ Statement.”
Please encourage other professional anthropologists to sign as well. Thank you very much for your support.
Sincerely,
The Network of Concerned Anthropologists Steering Committee
(Catherine Besteman, Andrew Bickford, Greg Feldman, Gustaaf Houtman, Roberto Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, Jean Jackson, Kanhong Lin, Catherine Lutz, David Price, David Vine)
January 26, 2010
ANTHROPOLOGISTS’ STATEMENT ON THE HUMAN TERRAIN SYSTEM PROGRAM
To the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the President pro tempore of the Senate, and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees:
We, the undersigned anthropologists, want to express to Congress our profound opposition to the Human Terrain System (HTS) program and its proposed expansion. We are heartened and encouraged by the Pentagon’s interest in expanding its cultural knowledge, and we believe that anthropologists have an important role to play in shaping military and foreign policy. However, we believe that the HTS program is an inappropriate and ineffective use of anthropological and other social science expertise for the following reasons:
1) There is no evidence that HTS is effective. There is no evidence, as some supporters have claimed, that the program saves lives. In fact, a special commission of the American Anthropological Association (AAA)—the largest professional anthropology society in the US—concluded in December 2009 that “there exist no publicly available independent evaluations of the effects of HTS’s activities, either positive or negative. Whether, or how, HTS might reduce conflict, in short, has yet to be evaluated.”
2) HTS is dangerous and reckless. To date, three embedded social scientists assigned to Human Terrain Teams have been killed in theaters of war. According to the journal Nature, “some scientists who have joined the program have complained about inadequate training,” while some military personnel reportedly complain that protecting Human Terrain Team members puts the lives of their soldiers at risk.
3) HTS wastes taxpayer money. In addition to its human costs, HTS has been costly. According to one report, approximately $250 million has been allocated to HTS since its creation in 2006.
4) HTS is unethical for anthropologists and other social scientists. In 2007, the Executive Board of the AAA determined HTS to be “an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise.” Last December, the AAA commission found that HTS “can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology” given the incompatibility of HTS with disciplinary ethics and practice. Like medical doctors, anthropologists are ethically bound to do no harm. Supporting counterinsurgency operations clearly violates this code. Moreover, the HTS program violates scientific and federal research standards mandating informed consent by research subjects.
For these reasons, we ask Congress to halt further appropriations to the HTS program, to cancel plans for expansion of the program, and to carefully consider alternative courses of action for securing peace in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond.
Signed,
………………………………………………
