I am impressed with the brilliance behind the Human Terrain System (HST) in understanding that.

Michael Udris
Co-Director

The people are prone to exploitation by smugglers, criminals, militias and of course the US who hire them. Anthropologists ideally accurately document their social structure, beliefs, value systems etc and if hired by the military also their financial, insurgent connections, motivations etc. It is not the goal of the US military to simply watch and do nothing but rather destroy those financial links, ideological influences and push them towards our sphere of influence. But offering road construction, terp or labor jobs without the ideological status or purpose does not fully satisfy the structure of the community and conflict results. So the anthro are dispatched again to understand the problems that create the conflict and another solution is applied, and so on and so on until we are studying the broken shards of a glass and wonder why it won’t hold the water we keep pouring in.

In other words anthropology would correctly point out the broken social structures that need to be repaired BEFORE we apply pressure. There are very smart people in Afghanistan (I work with them) who correctly surmise where, to whom, when and what remedies, pressure, change or influence can be applied without creating more conflict. The U.S. military is not one of our customers because they choose to use a group of beltway pundits who frame the problem in distinctly US/Pak/Iran, Islam/Judeo Christian or Pashtun/Coldwar terms that are not sensible solution oriented frameworks. They are a prisoner of how they have framed the problem. For example a recent KLE initiative was created to figure off who they should pay off to create ‘awakening’ groups, not to reconstruct the correct tribal checks and balances before vesting weapons. Why? because the Obama administration has set an 18month window for results. Additionally we seek “moderate” pashtun leaders on our payroll instead of cultivating non denominational firebrands who will ignite passion amongst fellow afghans. Go figure. There are examples of future leaders who capture the spirit of Afghans. None of them do well at the official polls or in the eyes of the State Dept…because they are populists, free thinkers and don’t fit the “mold” created by America for a leader.

So my point is that if you hired the world’s best anthro with language, culture, history and wisdom he would be viewed as the enemy because he would respect the Afghans vision of their future not America’s future for Afghanistan.

And we know America’s history with installing leaders of “Free and democratic” countries :))

“For example in Nuristan or Zabul people are well disposed to sharia, tribal customs and the expulsion of foreigners who are not invited.”

Can you explain your second paragraph further? Are you saying that if HTS actually worked properly, the occupying military might sympathize with the above and leave? But since it doesn’t work properly….. a documentary that says things about HTS without being opinionated …. doesn’t attract much interest or attention…. and so doesn’t give them much more opportunity to subvert the local norm in support of their mission? … But in that case, wouldn’t a film which uses what you consider the “proper human terrain/anthro” approach be twice as valuable?

Removing legitimacy of a mission is one thing, but am I not mistaken that even when things like wide public support are removed…. it still for some reason drags on… and on… and on….

I am told that in order to win awards and influence people you must incite, not recite.

Link? The biggest danger of a proper human terrain/anthro approach is that the occupying military might actully understand and sympathize with the opinions, viewpoint and plight of the locals. For example in Nuristan or Zabul people are well disposed to sharia, tribal customs and the expulsion of foreigners who are not invited. So clearly use of metric level social knowledge is only relevant if you seek to manipulate, change or subvert the local norm. Accordingly a documentary that does not seek to modify an opinion about the HTS program is simply informative, not transformative.

Thereby removing the legitimacy and need of their mission.

HTS members and the military are representing “America,” of which I’m a part, and being funded by MY tax dollars to carry out work that I fundamentally disagree with. At that, they’re getting rich doing it. Where I live, even $90,000 is a salary to dream for. If academics are so eager to do this work in Afghanistan, why don’t they stop doing it on my money and stop carrying around an American flag, as if they represent all of us? That’s not what MY little corner of America is about, and that means that anyone carrying out this project on behalf of “America” is acting on a lie because they don’t really represent all Americans. Let them make their OWN military with their OWN funds called “Liberators of Afghanistan” and see how far they get with THAT.

Not that anyone cares, but if they want my support for this project, they should be required to make a convincing argument why WE so desperately NEED to be in Afghanistan in the first place, and for what reasons, which, from my perspective, would need to start with including Afghan perspectives.

So, for that, I don’t have any interest in Bhatia, or in whether or not the project was well or poorly executed, or even, as RYP put it, in “experienced anthros with regional experience and language skills providing insight to local military commanders to maximize their effect over a wide spectrum of operations.”

As far as whether or not a film should be explicitly critical, I think that even explicitly critical films can leave the audience to come to their own conclusions, as long as they’re not based on lies and skewed facts and do include key perspectives. I would be just as open to seeing a film that is explicitly FOR intervention in Afghanistan. After all, we do have the ability to think for ourselves, I hope, no matter what Michael Moore says.

Karzai is working all ends against the middle. He knows we are leaving and his family has consolidated its position as the “go to” people if you need to get anything done in the south.

We corrupted Karzai when we pretended he was a warlord sent to save his people from the taliban in Tarin Kot. He survived a direct hit from our own misguided JDAM so everything after that was just gravy. :))

He plays the game well. Even down to knowing when to cold shoulder Holbrooke, the military and other folks and then magically warming up when we need him to say something on TV in english.

You will notice that the USG burned Wali Karzai (again. Last time the story was drugs) using the pliable, well timed. journos at the NYTimes. The information that he and his brother Wali are CIA assets was apparantly only news to the NYTimes I guess…and surprisingly they only discovered that a week before the election. The dossier has been around for years and the govt always gave the Karzai’s top cover because they thought they were more important inside rather than outside the tent. Now we have an Afghan government that actually did become inclusive but we dumped them on their butt because Karzai went against us and picked the leaders of the main ethnic parties We call them warlords but they are as legitimate as Karzai is. The dirty secret is that Abdullah was pushing for the return of Rabbani a hard core droning islamic fundamentalist even though State wanted Karzai to pick Abdullah instead of Fahim as his running mate.

The Karzai’s have mastered that afghan game of being important to all sides and trusted by none.

And that is a key point: it is just nonsense to say that there are U.S. efforts on the one hand, and Karzai’s corruption on the other. The CIA has paid his allegedly corrupt brother, well aware of the corruption and drug dealing. Whitewashing the U.S. role in, first, installing Karzai, and, second, continuing to enable and oversee the corruption is a story that the Western media apparently is incapable or unwilling to either explore or even conceptualize. It’s a system of domination…there are no autonomous “parts” to it.

For his part, Karzai shows some genius of the colonized middle man. He is able to use the system to the benefit of himself and his allies. Some may joke that he is the “mayor of Kabul,” but I would be willing to bet that would sit just fine with Karzai: he has effectively positioned himself as Afghanistan’s newest warlord. Knowing full well that the U.S. will have to withdraw, he has planned effectively for the future.

In response to our accusations and condemnations that the elections were fraudulent and corrupt, I suspect Karzai would have an answer to that too, if speaking candidly. The whole electoral process was corrupt, anyone could have bribed ballot counters, anyone could have bought thousands of fake voter ID cards, anyone could have washed off the “indelible” ink and re-voted — in other words, anyone could have played the game of fraud, the opposition included. Indeed, there was some evidence that supporters of his rivals did in fact engage in some fraud themselves. So Karzai might say: may the election go to the person who has the best networks, the widest array of well positioned supporters, who can carry out fraud successfully.

After all, if you can’t even steal an election properly, why the hell should you get to be President?

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All I am saying is that there is a lot of ambiguity about Karzai, and a lot of naivete and shallow moral purity among Western commentators when it comes to Karzai, not to mention plain hypocrisy and ass-covering.

Bhatia was well respected and provided a lot of benefit to the military in the specific area he worked (Khost/Gardez area, if I remember correctly) but that was a function of Bhatia’s personal skills and energy not the efficacy of the military HTS program. Bhatia died because he switched vehicles and was blown up by an IED. So clearly cultural survival was not taught by the military. His local afghan friends I met were appalled that he chose to/had to adopt the look, dress and movements of the military in the region. That flaw alone destroys any cultural bridge a bright mind tries to build. Like having a uniformed smiling cop in your house asking about smoking dope or how many guns you have.

As I mention in my article the goodwill Michael created went with him. The time is long past for learning or analysis of Afghan opinions and intentions. This winter begins the iron fist part of “clear” but we don’t have enough troops to “hold” and Karzai appointees will decide where we will “build” so we shall see where the HTS anthro stuff fits in.

The miltary is knocking the fuzziness out of of “human terrain” and focusing on harder applications (as a normal person would assume) There are going to be something like 260 (the number changes) “social scientists” kicking around Iraq and Afghanistan but the truth is with a few KLE’s, cups of tea and the rapidly ramping up intel flow, most miltary officers can figure out pretty quickly who is who and what is what without Berkely-babble answers confusing their pointed questions.

The concept of the HTS program makes perfect sense. Experienced anthros with regional experience and language skills providing insight to local military commanders to maximize their effect over a wide spectrum of operations. In my brief exposure and discussion with commanders, it is the execution where the program is deeply flawed. So with the new crunch time approach the focus has changed.

The cultural dissonance between the anthros and military appeared to be much greater than between the afghans and the military. The support for this program comes from the new academic “full spectrum” concept of warfare that the Ranger/PhDs and beltway futurists have spawned. A smart military commander wants smart advice but the legitimacy of the application is undermined by the terribly simplistic military mandate in Afghanistan. The essential role is to defeat terrorism, support the government of Afghanistan and create a local security force. You don’t need a PhD to figure out that the afghan people are tired of broken promises, corruption and being swapped and traded by various power brokers more often than a teenager with too many old baseball cards.

The taliban are imperfect as well but they are gaining ground mostly because of the corruption and ineptitude of the Afghan govt. not due to the failure of the U.S. efforts in country. Also the dual or multiple allegiances being formed are putting more afghans in the “bad guy” vs “good guy” category. Even though they can be one and the same.

Human Terrain was a noble idea when Afghan’s were curious about us, and us about them…but it’s time has past. The current focus is on creating a small arrmy of cleared (TS/SCI) ASOT trained special operations types who provide a far harsher product than reports on wedding cultures or linguistic linkages. The money has shifted from touchy feely to “reach out and touch” type of amateur anthropology (fight the network thinking here) The commanders now get what they really wanted milspeak spooks who are pushing and pulling hard details into the military system. A cynic would have surmised that I the anthros were hired to train the military how to be “anthro 101s” and then dumped when their pay was cut from $300K to around $90K as govt employees. That’ll teach them.:))

Yes the military is interesting in academics shaping counter insurgency benefits but counterterrorism is where the real money is. And counterterrorism is where people get killed using the same information provided from a far less idealistic source.

I had a very different reaction to Bhatia’s role in the film. Though I think the way the film is structured (with a second-half shift into his life) leaves the viewer a bit confused about how to take it, I preferred the ambiguity of the film. In the post-screening discussion the audience was split over whether it should have been more explicitly critical, but as someone who hates Michael Moore films, I prefer films that leave me to come to my own conclusions.

But I think Bhatia’s role in the film isn’t just death-as-selling-point or pin-the-heartache-on-the-westerner. Bhatia was a way for them to explore the individual’s struggle over Human Terrain. In particular, I would disagree with the idea that the film shouldn’t have had a western protagonist. The film was for western audiences about western notions of warfare, and specifically about the academic’s role. In this sense, focusing on Bhatia was a way to involve the film’s academic viewers more personally, going through the process of what it meant for him to participate and the kinds of problems he sought to explore before participating. This isn’t just a hook, but an exploration of the key moments of decision for the key target audience of the film.

I suspect the film was changed somewhat since I saw it, but the version I saw definitely lapsed into memorial at the very end, which I thought was out of step with the rest of the film. But I don’t think Bhatia was just a catch or a western face to involve the viewer. He represented and explored the key question of the film – which was not is HT good or bad, but whether I should be involved or not.

Again, the film may have been changed since I saw it, but I was surprised you thought that the critical voices were drowned out by the pro-HT voices. I think this is probably something that depends a lot on the lens you bring to the film, but I thought most of the pro-HT voices were not as eloquent or articulate in putting their point across and the critical voices carried a lot more weight in the film. This is probably because many of the critical voices were closely involved in the film anyway, and so could make more strategic interventions.