"The London Conference on Libya" (29 March 2011) -- No Libyans invited

From UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s opening speech at the London Conference on Libya, 29 March 2011:

“Today is about a new beginning for Libya – a future in which the people of Libya can determine their own destiny, free from violence and oppression.

But the Libyan people cannot reach that future on their own.

….we must help the Libyan people plan for their future after the conflict is over…

…As one Misurata resident put it: “These strikes give us hope”.

Today we must be clear and unequivocal: we will not take that hope away.

It’s never too early to start planning co-ordinated action to support peace in Libya over the long term.

…we must help the people of Libya plan now for the political future they want to build…

A new beginning for Libya is within their grasp….

…and we will help them seize it.”

If David Cameron had been known for modeling his speeches on old Monty Python films, then he might be praised for his witty and clever genius in devising such a politically and morally fraudulent speech such as the one above. He opens with gushing sentiment about a “new beginning for Libya,” hailing freedom from violence even as his jets pound Libyan targets. As always before, the British love to set an example on how politics are to be done, and it was usually with a good whipping followed by tutorials on how to best mimic the master, with powdered wigs, robes, and a broken sense of self. The Libyan people cannot reach that future on their own–they are dependents and apprentices, they must be aided, gathered together, and schooled. Remember that this is a struggle cast as one between all of the Libyan people versus one man, Muammar Gaddafi, Cameron can thus seek refuge in a single token Libyan voice that praises the master for the air strikes–bombs give hope, and the master is generous: he will not take those bombs away. We–and the we here is us, not a Libyan collective “we”–must begin to start planning for what comes after for Libya, and we must do so in the absence of Libyans, not even our closest hangers-on, who were not invited to the conference (except for one defunct ambassador). We will seize that “new beginning” for Libya, and then, like the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdous Square, orchestrated by U.S. Marines, we will hand over the moment to the locals. Indeed, Dick Cheney must still be wondering if he had a prolonged wet dream in looking at the news footage of Libyan crowds in Benghazi cheering the start of the U.S.-led air war against Libya.

Like a 19th portrait of European Monarchs

“Ultimately, the solution must be a political one,” David Cameron opines with all of the sincerity of a choir boy, and to maintain an air of piety he reminds us, “it must be for the Libyan people themselves to determine their own destiny.” Well, apparently, it is not for them to decide. First of all, many of them have obviously decided to stand with the regime–they form an invisible species in the view from London. Also invisible are those Libyans that the Colonial Coalition will recognize, whose “Interim Transitional National Council” was not invited to participate at the conference. Cameron adds that this self-determined Libyan political solution, “requires bringing together the widest possible coalition of political leaders….including civil society, local leaders and most importantly the Interim Transitional National Council….so that the Libyan people can speak with one voice.” Who will bring them together? Some quickly fashioned TNC that cannot come up with even the basics of a political plan that remotely sound like they have been derived from Libyan realities? And who will bring them together, who are the planners? The actual participants in London’s imperial conference on Libya, besides multilateral institutions such as the UN, NATO and EU, were: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, and the U.S.A. While one can certainly appreciate the urgent and immediate need for Estonia to have a voice on the future of Libya, one has to wonder how anyone could miss the obvious Eurocentricity of the whole affair.

For his part, William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, was unable to come up with any two statements that did not contradict each other. Speaking after the conference, these are the kinds of proclamations Hague made: “We agreed that it is not for any of the participants here today to choose the government of Libya: only the Libyan people can do that”–and yet: “Participants agreed that Qadhafi and his regime have completely lost legitimacy and will be held accountable for their actions.” Participants agreed to that? And they speak with the voice of all Libyan people, in deciding who is legitimate? If the regime had in fact lost as much as is claimed, there would be no regime. “The Libyan people must be free to determine their own future,” then followed by, “Participants recognised the need for all Libyans…”–if it is all up to the Libyans, then there was no need for this “London Conference” of non-Libyans.

In a joint statement with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, before the conference, David Cameron only adds to this comedy: “A lasting solution can only be a political one that belongs to the Libyan people. That is why the political process that will begin tomorrow in London is so important. The London conference will bring the international community together,” so that “the people of Libya can choose their own future.”

A Libyan Plan, You Say

As for that Libyan blueprint for change, it does not sound like a document that was anything other than “cut and paste” from various international charters. In A Vision of a Democratic Libya the “Interim National Council” (other times referred to as the Transitional National Council, or TNC) elaborates, briefly, a blueprint for a Libya where rights are conceived entirely within the framework of a Western discourse of individual civil and political liberties, thus ignoring the social and economic rights that had been advanced and protected under the Gaddafi regime. The plan leaves a privileged space for the private sector, and the Council’s staffing with neoliberal economists is not merely incidental. The plan calls for forming political parties–because Libya has been free of that cancer–and then having parliamentary elections, as if this is what a democracy is about. Given a clean slate, they will slather it with corrupt and bankrupt Western ideas and institutions. The draft is thus a very valuable document, as a testament to the intellectual slavishness of these so-called “revolutionaries,” who can neither think for themselves nor, as is now blazingly evident in broad daylight, act for themselves. In their plan, the right to tweet now trumps the right to eat.

As far as the TNC is concerned, their plan was not so much “revolution” as resinsertion of Libya into a neoliberal global regime. The forces needed to achieve that are those of Western war corporatism and militarism: NATO, Special Forces, USAID, and now the CIA…with all of their wonderful human rights achievements in Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

What Libyan Action Looks Like

With each passing day since the passage of UN Security Resolution 1973 (UNSCR 1973), the force and direction of the “opposition” and “revolution” against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi becomes more clearly marked with the imprint of a U.S.-led NATO/UN initiative. It is not Gaddafi who is running out of options: he is in his country and has vowed not to leave. The mounting frustration over the obvious–and abundantly predicted–failures of the No-Fly Zone/air strikes is steadily leading to an escalation of foreign intervention, that desperately begs Gaddafi to leave, so that the “Coalition” does not have to take the obvious next steps: arming the insurgents (which would violate the very same UNSCR 1973 that the Coalition expects Gaddafi to respect), which might produce no significant results, or too little too late; or, invading and occupying. Whatever “popular uprising” against Gaddafi some insisted had happened, or would happen, has yet to materialize. The insurgents cannot advance beyond their limited areas of core support, and even there the air strikes cannot help them (witness the continued cases of violence within Benghazi itself, attributed to “sleeper cells” of the regime’s Revolutionary Committees).

Western media make it abundantly clear, often with supporting statements from the “rebels” themselves, about who is now the leading force in action against the government of Libya. Typically, for almost a week now, AP reports have begun (similar to articles on this site) with banner images of U.S., French, or British jets–this being one example:

Given this week’s retreat of the “rebels,” images like the one above would be followed lower down in an article with an image like this, also from AP’s reports:

Whose destiny is being authored here, and by whom? Coupled with the images of insurgents fleeing in a panic, statements such as the following are printed by the news media:

“Where is Sarkozy?” the rebels in Bin Jawwad, Libya, lamented on Tuesday when they did not get the air cover that they had come to expect and that had been ordered by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, President Obama and other Western leaders.

Or this:

“If they keep shelling like this, we’ll need airstrikes,” said Mohammed Bujildein, a 27-year-old rebel fighter.

And, as we are told by journalists that “the retreat Wednesday looked like a mad scramble: Pickup trucks, with mattresses and boxes tied on, driving east at 100 mph (160 kilometers per hour),” we are introduced to a “Col. Abdullah Hadi,” rebel in retreat:

“I ask NATO for just one aircraft to push them back. All we need is air cover and we could do this. They should be helping us,” Hadi said.

Robert Burns, the AP’s National Security writer, draws this conclusion: “Fresh battlefield setbacks by rebels seeking to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi are hardening a U.S. view that the poorly equipped opposition is probably incapable of prevailing without decisive Western intervention — either an all-out U.S.-led military assault on regime forces or a decision to arm the rebels.” They will likely decide to arm the rebels, as the last stop before an all out invasion–and with regime change will come nation-building, the establishment of an international protectorate, and those humanitarians who cannot afford to even look after their own kids just adopted themselves a new country.

More Foreign Intervention: From Start to Finish

Everyone who has been critical of intervention, from the earliest calls for even a limited no-fly zone, knew that the NFZ would simply be opening the door to ever increased foreign military intervention–because all such previous half-measures pursued to seek grand objectives had done so as well. Some critics were wrong on only one account: direct, covert intervention had already begun, before the NFZ was even tabled at the UN and passed on 17 March. From a Washington Post report of 10 March we learn that USAID teams had already been inserted in rebel-held territory. From 04 March in a report published by the Voice of America (VOA)–”Covert Action to Target Gadhafi?“–we find the earliest indications of what has now been confirmed as fact, that the CIA was undertaking covert action in Libya. By covert action, VOA reminds us of what that officially includes:

“Simply defined, covert action is any U.S. government effort to change the economic, military, or political situation overseas in a hidden way. Intelligence professionals consider it to be different than clandestine operations, which cover more traditional espionage and counterintelligence activities. Covert action can encompass many things, including propaganda, covert funding, electoral manipulation, arming and training insurgents, and even encouraging a coup.”

Even earlier, in a report from DEBKAfile from 25 February, we are told:

“Hundreds of US, British and French military advisers have arrived in Cyrenaica, Libya’s eastern breakaway province, debkafile’s military sources report exclusively. This is the first time America and Europe have intervened militarily in any of the popular upheavals rolling through the Middle East since Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution in early January. The advisers, including intelligence officers, were dropped from warships and missile boats at the coastal towns of Benghazi and Tobruk Thursday Feb. 24, for a threefold mission:

1. To help the revolutionary committees controlling eastern Libyan establish government frameworks for supplying two million inhabitants with basic services and commodities;

2. To organize them into paramilitary units, teach them how to use the weapons they captured from Libyan army facilities, help them restore law and order on the streets and train them to fight Muammar Qaddafi’s combat units coming to retake Cyrenaica.

3. To prepare infrastructure for the intake of additional foreign troops. Egyptian units are among those under consideration.

If correct, then that would mean that as little as a few days after the street protests had begun, a U.S. and European decision to directly intervene had already been taken. Now the New York Times reports that “Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the C.I.A. to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels, American officials said Wednesday” (see: ”C.I.A. Agents in Libya Aid Airstrikes and Meet Rebels” 30 March 2011). From “current and former British officials,” we learn that “dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations” (NYT). (See also: Reuters.)

This is not likely where matters will end. The U.S. commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, “left open the prospect of an international force entering Libyan territory,” when he testified before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. Asked about whether NATO could send ground troops into Libya, this was his response:

“I wouldn’t say NATO is considering it yet, but I think that when you look at the history of NATO, having gone through this, as many on this committee have, with Bosnia and Kosovo, it’s quite clear that the possibility of a stabilization regime exists. And so, I have not heard any discussion about it yet, but I think that history is in everybody’s mind as we look at the events in Libya.”

From 10 March, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, stated to U.S. senators: “This is kind of a stalemate back and forth, but I think over the longer term that the (Gadhafi) regime will prevail.” Given the unsatisfactory performance of the rebels, whom Clapper likened to a “pick up basketball team,” choices are limited. To the extent that the U.S. has resolved to remove Gaddafi, the likelihood of an all out invasion–not just the few boots on the ground that have already been in Libya for weeks–seems inevitable.

The U.S. is no longer hiding that it is its hand that is shaping action on the ground, and that the purposes go far beyond anything that could be construed as “humanitarian.”

Humanitarian?

Anything would be better than Gaddafi, say distant foreigners who have never been to Libya, know nothing about it, and were not even saying a word about Libya before 17 February. In response to criticisms of their mysteriously selective and apparently hypocritical humanitarian concerns, they now usually respond that just because “we” do not intervene everywhere, and “save lives” everywhere, does not mean that “we” should not do so in Libya. No, what it means is that you continue to refuse to provide a logical account for your choices. The reason for that is that the logic is not a humanitarian one, but a crudely ideological one that is fueled by media hype and the imperial preconditioning that came with decades of U.S. demonization of Gaddafi. Libyans don’t mean anything to them, they ultimately could not care less: what’s important is a collective “win,” for America to feel good about itself again–and never far from any of the American “humanitarian” justifications, one will usually find an admission that it feels good to see America acting as a force for good (“for a change,” some of them might add, to add that thin patina of intellectual distance, courageous writers and dynamic “thinkers” that they are). What is quite common, among the liberal imperialists, is this steadfast objection to any “boots on the ground.” Well, some boots are on the ground. How many did you need to be counted before you could be counted on to speak out, courageous humanitarian?

They achieved something at least–like concerns that U.S. military spending may not be sufficient in the U.S., nor in the U.K. where now, in the midst of severe austerity measures that target lower income groups, the complaint is that not enough is being spent on the RAF.

Humanitarian imperialism is part of a complex, that reduces to military humanism, heightened militarization of politics and public consciousness, increased support for war corporatism, and a skewed morality that works to produce an immediate economic blowback. What is most humanitarian, in fact, is what is of least concern to various Avaaz petitions and London conferences: diplomacy, cease fires, peace talks, and political solutions.

Whose Responsibility?

One would expect that the citizens of the nations that exported arms to those regimes that they now find offensive, need to take personal responsibility to make sure that their weapons manufacturers are blocked from ever again selling weaponry to states with a record of human rights violations–there is little point in first selling them the guns, and then balking when they are used. Otherwise, these revolutions do not belong to us–that “the best revolutions are completely organic,” is apparently a principle that even Obama voices (when not speaking of Afghanistan, of course). Readers should also read Patrick Buchanan’s article, “It’s Their War, Not Ours,” which makes many critically important points. I also agree with the Canadian Peace Alliance that any call for Western military intervention is “like asking the arsonists to put out their own fire.”

Why Does Libya Matter?

We should ask ourselves why it is that actions that have been taken against the Gaddafi regime were never even voiced as a possibility against the Mubarak regime in Egypt, with its own history of decades of torture, murder, imprisonment of dissidents, and the use of thugs and paramilitaries to injure and in numerous cases kill unarmed protesters. In Egypt’s case, there were no sanctions, no assets freeze, no arms embargo, and no call for the international criminal prosecution of the dictator and his henchmen. What kind of calculation is at work, where effectively one despot is treated as a “good dictator” and the other one as a “bad dictator”? What makes the difference? Is it the level and nature of the violence used against protesters? If so, and it is a matter of a body count, then what is the “magic number” of protesters killed that causes us to invoke the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine? (Just look at how people think of the violence as “genocide”–which by definition it is not–when speaking of Gaddafi’s violence.)

But apparently these questions glide past most of those citizens–not those in power–who make impassioned calls for urgent military action to “get Gaddafi out” and “stop the violence” (see the relevant section in our latest EER), including respected bodies such as Physicians for Human Rights and numerous other rights groups calling, ultimately, for military action should “peaceful” measures fail. Some go as far rehabilitating discredited tools in the imperial armoire, such as the no fly zone. And this has the urging of some Libyan rebels who ask for it. Yet, when it is pointed out that a no fly zone is actual military intervention, then the call is revised: yes, to the no fly zone, and air strikes (added recently), but no to foreign troops on the ground. Then they call on the UN to impose these, when the UN has no air force and no means of enforcement…so those in Libya calling for military intervention know very well that it will come from NATO. Neither no fly zones nor air strikes have ever removed a dictator or ended human rights violations–but they have always led to an escalation of atrocities and have vastly expanded the range of suffering. No matter: action now, any action, the no fly zone is suddenly validated. Also validated, NATO, as if it were some sort of global protector of revolutionaries. Gone from some minds are the lessons of Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The discussion is getting polarized in a bleak way, so that even some I might ordinarily support (Chavez, Ortega, Castro) seem intent on engaging in the most retrograde, embarrassing, self-destructive dichotomy politics: the enemy of my enemy is my friend (even if recently he was a greater friend to Tony Blair, western oil interests, neoliberalism, and privatization, more than a friend to any “revolutionary”); opposing NATO intervention must mean supporting Gaddafi; being a friend to the people of Libya does not extend beyond being a friend to Gaddafi. I do not understand why it is so difficult for some to both denounce the fascism of Gaddafi, his extravagant elitism, megalomania, and contempt for his own people, and denounce any NATO intervention at the same time. (As for a war to grab Libya’s oil, as Fidel argues…Libya was never denying the world market its oil, and there is no sign from the “revolutionary leaders” [with backgrounds in privatization, management, trade and investment] that they have any intention of keeping Libya’s oil within Libyan borders.)

Why is it that so many apparently feel that we must do something about supporting their revolution? This is the central question to this whole essay. What accounts for this desire to intervene? Is this a novel global phenomenon?

Revolutionary Resonance: “I may be in France, but my spirit is in Tahrir Square”

In a recent essay, “The Speed of Revolutionary Resonance,” by Gastón Cordillo, we begin to find some answers about this desire by non-Libyans to intervene in Libya. In that essay he speaks of “expansive empathy,” built on “instant systems of global communication” that “now shoot out powerful revolutionary resonances that travel at high speed toward anywhere on the planet.” Cordillo notes the ”unfathomable speed of this briefly disembodied resonance,” and that it involves “not bodies but affects decomposed in bits of information through networks of instant media communication that, on impacting TV and computer screens, affects other bodies and makes them resonate.” He builds his theory by speaking of the velocity and acceleration of current revolutions, “new revolutionary velocities,” “high-speed deterritorializing force,” and “fast-paced rhizomic synergy” aided by “instant forms of communication.” Cordillo provides us with an interesting quote to this effect from Nikolai Grozni:

“Ever since the uprising in Egypt began on Jan. 25, I have hardly moved an inch away from the TV screen. I may be in France, but my spirit is in Tahrir Square. I’m throwing stones. I’m breathing in tear gas. I’m lighting up Molotov cocktails. I’m dodging bullets. I’m fighting thick-headed policemen. I’m cursing every symbol of the regime until my voice cracks.”

As Cordillo explains,

“Grozni’s body (not just his spirit) was affectively and fully in sync with those bodies on Tahrir Square, to the point that the spatial distance between Egypt and France seemed to had dissolved. His body resonated, via his TV, together with those bodies on Tahrir Square. This instantaneous affectation amplified through global networks was the same that, a few days earlier, had inspired millions of Egyptian bodies following the news about the uprising in Tunisia to take to the streets to topple Mubarak.”

Cordillo also quotes Emily Bell who appeared on a panel organized by Al Jazeera and compared the speed of these revolutions, in language that will be useful later on: “We are now looking at a much more compressed time frame. Six weeks instead of six months.”

What makes me worry about the implications of a theory of resonance, is what it says about those who fail to resonate. I think here of Trinidad, now celebrating Carnival, whose mass media seem almost oblivious to what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa. We have heard humanitarian interventionists deride “isolationism” (as with Buchanan, above), but now “resonance” may unintentionally recreate the category of the “isolated,” reproducing a kind of Levi-Straussian, and Eurocentic binary between the “hot” (dynamic, modern) and “cold” (frozen in time) societies. Update: but given Cordillo’s response, my worries may be unwarranted. I hope so.

Globalization as Compression

Cordillo’s essay brings to mind a substantial body of writings on cultural globalization which, until recently, I had generally devalued for overstating the novelty of the past 40 years, taking instead a longer-term world-systemic perspective. (In fact, this was the subject of one of my earliest journal articles [more booklet] which was published when I was still a MA student: “Globalization and World-Systems Analysis: Toward New Paradigms of a Geo-Historical Social Anthropology (A Research Review),” Review 21(1) 1998, 29-99.) In these writings, as represented by Anthony Giddens, Roland Robertson, and Malcolm Waters, we find a stress on the following novelties of what they call globalization, as a post-1960s cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a single human community, indeed, a virtual community formed by instantaneous “real-time” interaction, leading to an “an emerging global culture of consciousness” and the emergence of “globality”–“the circumstance of extensive awareness of the world as a whole.” In this situation we find the growth of the systematic interrelationship of “all the individual social ties that are established on the planet” and even “the intensification of worldwide social relations” to the extent that we can speak of the formation of “genuinely world-wide ties.” Space has shrunk, we are told, and localizations of time have disappeared. Some anthropologists prefer to call this “distanciation,” which is quite misleading and often leads students astray: the more significant and useful concept is that of “compression,” of everything seeming to have come closer together. Where Cordillo speaks of movement, we might speak of “implosion.”

Continuing in this vein, Martin Albrow (see “Travelling Beyond Local Cultures,” in The Globalization Reader, 2nd. ed., edited by Frank J. Lechner and John Boli. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) describes globalism as “the values informing daily behaviour for many groups in contemporary society,” and how they “relate to real or imagined material states of the globe and its inhabitants” (p. 134). Globality consists of ”images, information and commodities from any part of the earth [that] may be available anywhere and anytime for ever-increasing numbers of people worldwide, while the consequences of worldwide forces and events impinge on local lives at any time” (p. 134). Time-space compression is the situation where “information and communication technology now make it possible to maintain social relationships on the basis of direct interaction over any distance across the globe [emphasis added]” (p. 134). Anthony Giddens defined globalization as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa [emphasis added]” (see The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 64). For Frederic Jameson the concept of globalization “reflects the sense of an immense enlargement of world communication [emphasis added]” (see his Preface in The Cultures of Globalization, edited by Frederic Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, Duke University Press, 1998, p. xi). Roland Robertson argues that globalization as a concept “refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole [emphases added]” (see “Globalization as a Problem,” in The Globalization Reader, 2nd. ed., edited by Frank J. Lechner and John Boli. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). Similarly, James Mittelman explains that “globalization compresses the time and space aspect of social relations [emphasis added]” (quoted in Manfred B. Stenger, Globalization: A Brief Insight, New York: Sterling, 2009). Finally, it was David Harvey who conceptualized globalization “principally as a manifestation of the changing experience of time and space. He captures this change in the notion of ‘time-space compression,’ which refers to the manner in which the speeding up of economic and social processes has experientially shrunk the globe, so that distance and time no longer appear to be major constraints on the organization of human activity [emphases added]” (Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo,  ”Tracking Global Flows,” in The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 2008, p. 8).

Having previously criticized these authors’ emphases on the novelty of globalization, I now have to issue a retraction. I think especially of past revolutions against dictatorial regimes, and how there was generally no popular outcry from citizens in other nations, nor special Security Council resolutions, nor even any effort to end support for the tyrannical regimes in question. Think of the 1949 Chinese revolution–in fact, I can think of the Canadian doctor, Norman Bethune, monumentalized as he is in Canada precisely because his involvement was such an exception (I belonged to Norman Bethune College at York University, and a statue of Norman Bethune greets me at the entrance to Concordia University). Think of the Cuban revolution in 1959–and again, an exceptional example of foreign involvement came in the body of Ernesto Ché Guevara, again a doctor, this time Argentinean. Think of the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979–U.S. involvement there consisted of Jimmy Carter ending aid to Somoza but also, through his ambassador (Lawrence Pezzullo), working quietly behind the scenes to unsuccessfully prevent the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) taking power after doing years of heavy lifting in toppling a brutal dictator backed by Washington. One of the few other acts of foreign intervention against that revolution came in an attempted secret shipment of weapons to the Somoza dictatorship, sent by Israel, which had previously armed Somoza’s troops with Uzis and Galil rifles. Think of the Grenadian revolution against the dictatorship of Eric Gairy, also in 1979, and also a domestic phenomenon that did not benefit from any significant international aid.

Something has definitely changed. Now, whenever a crisis erupts “we are all Americans” (9/11) or “we are all Palestinians,” (Gaza 2009) and recently “we are all Egyptians” and “we are all Libyans.” It seems like these days we are all busy being somebody else.

The Will to Intervene: “Are we there yet?”

Now, revolutions are to be measured in days, where two weeks of survival for the Gaddafi regime–after 42 years in power–is deemed “too long.” Revolutions must be instant, and we all get to have a say in what happens to make them succeed. Indigenous revolutions, painful, and enduring for years and even decades, are treated (if even acknowledged) as if they belonged to the Jurassic Park of political history. This attitude, and these expectations, of instant success, demanded by all of us, with the aid of our resources, is decidedly a novel phenomenon. We now speak of Facebook revolutions, and events in Libya may unfold in a way that we will speak of it as the “F-16 Revolution.”

While I am not one to sweep aside all proponents for intervention as “iPad imperialists” and narcissists (the will to intervene is about the need for me)–because I know of the many good intentions behind such desire to intervene, to stop violence and save lives–I am nonetheless troubled by this phenomenon, and not from a morally superior position as I was one of those calling for the ICC to initiate a trial against Gaddafi and his regime for crimes against humanity, and supported most of UN Resolution 1970 (except for its odd exclusion of mercenaries from any mention of possible prosecution, a deliberate exclusion designed to win Washington’s support–on the other hand, there may never have been any mercenaries, according to Human Rights Watch’s investigation).

The phenomenon is troubling, and not because of the vicarious, voyeuristic nature of the participant spectatorship. It is troubling because what do we really know about Libya? What do we know about the opposition forces? Unarmed protesters? Not any more. “Anyone’s better than Gaddafi”? Sober up. After days of contacting journalists and asking them to pursue this angle of inquiry vigorously–one freelancer and one Al Jazeera producer both acknowledged this remained a black hole in our knowledge of the actors on the ground…but they have done very little to remedy it–we still know little, and even fleeing migrant workers are treated as wallpaper for foreign reporters to talk about, but never talk to. I have never before witnessed a revolution where we knew so little about the revolutionaries. And what do we know about Gaddafi? While Fidel Castro lauds Gaddafi for vastly improving the lives of Libyans, CNN’s Anderson Cooper berates Libya’s educational system as “a joke,” when Libyans have the highest literacy rate in Africa (see UNDP, p. 171) and Libya is the only continental African nation to rank “high” in the UNDP’s Human Development Index. Does Anderson Cooper have better, secret statistics? It’s interesting because the BBC, if anything, affirms that Castro is correct:

“Women in Libya are free to work and to dress as they like, subject to family constraints. Life expectancy is in the seventies. And per capita income – while not as high as could be expected given Libya’s oil wealth and relatively small population of 6.5m – is estimated at $12,000 (£9,000), according to the World Bank. Illiteracy has been almost wiped out, as has homelessness – a chronic problem in the pre-Gaddafi era, where corrugated iron shacks dotted many urban centres around the country.”

Gaddafi appears deranged and nonsensical on television. So would many other politicians, speaking at rallies, in constitutional democracies, addressing supporters in their language, in a style they know and understand, with the flourishes that are customary in local politics. Observers scorn Saif Gaddafi and his wagging finger…but they have never seen a finger wagged at an audience until they have watched former Trinidadian Prime Minister Patrick Manning in action, who rambled from god, to fidelity, to jobs, sentences truncated, statements often contradicting each other, and the applause was wild. My simple point is that there is a lot we do not know, and do not understand, from the outside looking in, with little background.

Resonance may improve the agitation of bodies, but what does it do to educate minds?

NATO: Prosthetic Device for Revolutions?

Finally, what I am most concerned about is the possible prospect of would-be revolutionaries launching themselves into action, with little sense of cost and consequence, with little preparation to meet a military giant head on, as if approaching an injured and rabid tiger by waving a napkin at him. At one time revolutionaries used to brood and stew over questions such as “are the conditions ripe for revolution?” and “are the masses ready?” and so on. I am not saying this is absent from the minds of Libya’s revolutionaries–I know no such thing. What I worry about here are expectations. What would be a tragic downfall is for that admittedly excessive and vanguardist scientism to be replaced by a heady optimism that says, “Hey, but they did it over there, so let’s do it over here!” Revolutions are not raves, and more than just sensation.

More than that, one cannot go into a revolution thinking someone else, a superpower, will be there to back up the revolutionaries. One cannot screw on NATO as if it were a secret weapon needed to finish the job one started, and fears not being able to complete. Real revolutions are always violent; they are never clean and without bloodshed. In this vein, let me present (thanks to a friend’s recommendations) two especially vital videos of Malcolm X, demanding special attention to his message to revolutionaries:

In “The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of Race and Gender,” by Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins (reprinted in The Anthropology of Media: A Reader, 2002, pps. 92-116), we encounter this very illuminating passage dealing with the figure of the veiled, non-Western woman, photographed by National Geographic, placing the apparent obsession with the veiled woman in a broader historical and cultural context:

Fanon (1965: 39) pointed out in his analysis of French colonial attitudes and strategies concerning the veil in Algeria that the colonialists’ goal, here as elsewhere in the world, was “converting the woman, winning her over to foreign values, wrenching her free from her status” as a means of “shaking up the [native] man” and gaining control of him. With this and other motives, those outsiders who would “develop” the third world have often seen the advancement of non-Western women as the first goal to be achieved, with their men’s progress thought to follow rather than precede it. In the nineteenth century, evolutionary theory claimed that the move upward from savagery to barbarism to civilization was indexed by the treatment of women, in particular by their liberation “from the burdens of overwork, sexual abuse, and male violence” (Tiffany and Adams 1985: 8). It “saw women in non-Western societies as oppressed and servile creatures, beasts of burden, chattels who could be bought and sold, eventually to be liberated by ‘civilization’ or ‘progress,’ thus attaining the enviable position of women in Western society” (Etienne and Leacock 1980: 1), who were then expected to be happy with their place (pps. 109-110).

Lutz and Collins are right in that we can find evidence going far back in the literature of men writing about the abuse of women by their native male partners. In my own research on the historical narratives that invented the “extinction of the indigenous” in the Caribbean, I came across this passage from a volume published in 1858 with a lot of material about Trinidad’s aboriginal population (specifically: De Verteuil, L. A. A. 1858. Trinidad: Its Geography, Natural Resources, Administration, Present Condition, and Prospects. London: Ward & Lock, p. 172):

“At present there cannot be above 200 or 300 Indians in the colony, so that the aborigines may be said to be almost extinct….finally sunk under the ascendancy of a more intelligent race….but I also coincide in opinion with some judicious observers, who trace the approximate extinction of those tribes to the marked presence manifested by the Indian women towards the negroes and the whites, by whome they were kindly treated, whilst they were regarded by their husbands, of kindred race, more as slaves and beasts of burden, than as equals or companions. As a consequence of those connections, there exists at present, in the colony, a certain number of individuals of Indian descent, but of mixed blood.”

This narrative of the West bringing freedom to the women of the non-West is hardly absent today; if anything, it seems louder and even more hypocritical than ever before, especially when we learn that one of the agents of this liberation–the U.S. military–is a misogynist’s paradise. Presumably looking at the Arab revolution–but not really–media celebrities have cynically and opportunistically exploited the reported rape and assault on CBS journalist Lara Logan in Egypt as an excuse for a sweeping commentary on “Middle Eastern attitudes” and “Muslim men” and the need for a “sexual revolution,” with some like Bill Maher insisting, “We’re better….we’re better!” (this is how Maher, inevitably, always purchases a space of acceptance, radical on some fronts, but reassuringly jingoistic and blatanly ethnocentric on other fronts). In line with this discussion, I recommend the recent articles and reports below for a much deeper and more up to date reading.

Roger Ebert’s ‘sad focus,’ by South/South:

Extract: Here’s why Ebert’s statement was out and out harmful and hurtful: • It singles out ‘Middle East attitudes toward women’ at the exclusion of all other regions and all other people. • It promotes a generality about ’Middle East attitudes toward women’ that is unverifiable, but one that easily plays in to orientalist, bigoted and racist attitudes toward Middle Easterners, Arabs and Muslims. •  It makes the indignities that women suffer, from unsolicited groping to catcalls to group sexual assault into a cultural issue rather than a grave and global obstacle to gender harmony. • It wrongly limits the scope of sexist attitudes to the Middle East. This is ethnic exceptionalism. • In the face of all these generalizations it obscures rape culture: ‘Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to “cure” queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and “the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms.” • In the past decade of the Global War on Terror, brown bodies have been attacked on the basis of such justifications. If women in the Middle East are mistreated and subjected to derogatory attitudes and beliefs, then Western ‘civilized’ nations are justified to ‘liberate’ Middle Eastern women from their men.

Five inquiries on the worth of an Afghan woman, by South/South:

Extract: Is it worth remembering when Laura Bush visited Afghanistan in 2005 to put ‘a female-friendly face on an unpopular pro-corporate agenda‘?

In Tahrir Square and the Pentagon: Sexual assault exposed, by Suzanne Merkelson, Foreign Policy–a definite “must read”:

Extract: When one woman made a mistake at work, her boss called her a “stupid fucking female” and spit in her face. She was later stalked, sexually harassed, and raped. Another woman got drunk with her coworker, who was her superior, when he raped her. She spent the next two years forced to continue working with him; her work assignments were downgraded because she took medication to cope with the trauma of the ordeal. A third woman was sexually harassed by a supervisor and raped by a coworker. When she sought help from her workplace’s chaplain, she was told that “it must have been God’s will for her to be raped” and was recommended to attend church more often.

Where do these women work?: The U.S. military.

Military sexual abuse ‘staggering,’ Al Jazeera:

Extract: According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the rate of sexual assault on women in the military is twice that in the civilian population. A Government Accountability Office report concluded that most victims stay silent because of “the belief that nothing would be done; fear of ostracism, harassment, or ridicule and concern that peers would gossip.”

While a civilian rape victim is ensured confidential advice from his or her doctors, lawyers and advocates, the only access a military rape survivor has is to a chaplain.

Gates, Rumsfeld Sued Over U.S. Military’s Rape Epidemic, by Jesse Ellison, The Daily Beast:

Extract: A landmark lawsuit filed Tuesday against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, alleges that the military’s repeated failures to take action in rape cases created a culture where violence against women was tolerated, violating the plaintiffs’ Constitutional rights.

Copy of Class-Action Suit against Gates and Rumsfeld

Copy of 2009 Department of Defense Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military

…and some interesting statistics that show how much better “we” are:

• “According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006. That’s more than 600 women every day” (National Organization of Women)
• “1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime” (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network)
• “Rape and sexual assault comprise 2.1% of all workplace victimizations, accounting for an average of 36,500 incidents annually” (Houston Area Women’s Center: Sexual Assault in the Workplace)

A report by the Center for Naval Analyses, as mandated by Congress last year as a precondition for releasing further funds to the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System, declares that HTS is a success, and at worst, a victim of its success. The report is primarily focused on management structure (not managers), organization, recruiting, the “metrics” of success, and policy and regulatory issues (p. 1). It now seems more than likely that the report was a formality as part of a public, political window-dressing act where Congress ostensibly “responds” to criticisms and controversies surrounding HTS, but with every intention of continuing the program. Indeed, that is a fitting conclusion, considering that the report came on the eve of the announced resurgence and expansion of the program.

It’s a Success, and a Victim of its Success

While “success” is the overarching theme of the report, at no point do we find a CNA explanation of what it means by “success,” and indeed it remains the big mystery word of the entire report, even when the CNA investigators themselves note that HTS also lacks a formal understanding of success and how to gauge it. Here is the first declaration of success, appearing right up front in this report, which serves more as a justification for continuation of the program than an in-depth analysis of the many criticisms of the program:

“First, the HTS program has been, in many ways, a success. It is a unique and dynamic program, and its leadership and staff have been able to generate a new and innovative capability within a bureaucratic environment that is not always open to such initiatives. In our interactions with HTS personnel and staff, we consistently came across individuals who were deeply committed to the mission, which most likely has also contributed to its successes. The program also has support within the Army leadership. General David Petraeus, who recently became commander of International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, is a staunch supporter. There are some indications in the data we collected for this assessment that this capability fills a gap for the war-fighter and therefore has made an important contribution to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan” (p. 2)

The CNA does note that there have been criticisms of the program—largely muffled—but argues that they are rooted in “misunderstandings” and that they tend to focus on issues of decision-making and specific incidents (which, as critics of HTS, we know is an entirely deceitful characterization):

“the program remains the target of criticism. Part of this appears to stem from specific incidents and poor decisions that have occurred within the program, such as sending unqualified personnel into combat zones. Our analysis suggests that poor internal communications and the absence of an overall outreach or communications strategy may also be contributing to a misunderstanding of the program’s goals and operations. This may also account for some criticism” (p. 2).

Given the immense, and usually favourable, media coverage devoted to HTS and often stage-managed by HTS, one has to wonder how the CNA came to the conclusion that HTS lacked a communications strategy, or in which ways the program’s “goals and operations” were misunderstood. Since the very report itself was mandated at the culmination of a wide range of critical opposition, one would be justified in expecting some more detailed and careful treatment of these points. Instead, we have vague and obscure generalizations.

Some Anthropologists are Opposed to HTS

“For numerous reasons,” we are told, but without going into any detail, “some anthropologists are opposed to the program. To learn more about the nature of these concerns, we recommend the reader refer to the ‘AAA Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC) Final Report on The Army’s Human Terrain System Proof of Concept Program,’ Submitted to the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, October 14, 2009.” At no point in this report does the CNA simply lump a major theme under a single reference and tells the reader to go elsewhere—usually there is an attempt at a summary. “In addition,” they continue, “there is also an active blog community made up of a variety of outspoken individuals who oppose the program” (fn. 4, p. 2)—but no links, because the understanding is that Congress should not be made aware of any of our criticisms. Indeed, the CNA explicitly prefers to avoid them: “we do not directly wade into the broader debates surrounding the HTS program that are currently taking place on various websites and blogs” (p. 11). Somehow missing the lead role played by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists—which is never mentioned even once in the report by name—the CNA states: “A key stakeholder in this debate is the academic community, most prominently represented by the American Anthropological Association” (p. 12). We will return to what the CNA says about academics’ criticisms, and relationships with universities, further down.

The problems the CNA found/chose to examine were these:

1. Recruiting/hiring of unqualified team members
2. High rates of attrition among HTS team members
3. Contract ceiling being reached, halting HTS operations
4. Timecard problems
5. Frustration over permanent duty station assignment for Department of Army Civilians who rotate or transit through Fort Leavenworth
6. HTS program management (p. 8).

The Assessment

The CNA does acknowledge that there were limits to what it could assess and how:

“A significant portion of HTS activities and operations take place in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, given the 90 day time-frame we were allotted to conduct this assessment, the CNA assessment team was not able to travel to either theater to conduct our research. As a result, we relied mostly on information we could gather within the United States” (p. 10)

Relying on assessments from HTS’ own Program Development Team, the CNA reports that past PDT documents reveal “‘pockets’ of brigade commander feedback on the program—some positive and some negative” (p. 60), but also notes that there is a reason why there would be less negative feedback: “It was also voluntary for a unit to participate in the survey, thus units who were positive about their HTTs tended to participate, while those that had not had positive experiences with their HTTs were not” (p. 61). On a positive note, and unlike the mainstream media, Appendix B of the CNA report has detailed comments from brigade commanders who were critical of the HTTs assigned to them and did not find them useful.

Interestingly, while judging the program to be a success, the CNA devotes many pages to describing the partial, incomplete, halting, inconsistent, uneven, and often confused nature of internal HTS self-assessments. Our question should be: if HTS judges itself to be a “success” (and secures CNA’s agreement on this front) then what do they mean by success and how do they assess success? There is no clear and consistent answer. Indeed, even as the CNA explains at length that there were no consistent attempts to define or measure success, or that certain standard military assessment measures were never put in place, and that it is unclear who was the intended audience of the “mixed bag” of HTS assessments, and how the assessments resulted in decisions to change practices (if they did)—nonetheless, in spite of all of that, the CNA still begins its report with its primary conclusion: HTS is a success, and it’s the one basic, recurring term that it is consistently unable to define. Here are some examples of its findings:

“HTS has not relied heavily on metrics as part of past assessments procedures. Those that have been used have evolved over time, and have not been used consistently….In 2008, an effort was launched to develop a more formal assessment process similar to those in other military organizations. As part of that process, metrics have been developed, but apparently have not been employed….There has never been a permanent, fully-staffed component responsible for assessments within the HTS structure” (p. 69)

“It is unclear over time, what the exact purpose and goals of past assessments have been and who the intended audience is….Using the current approach it is difficult to do any trend analysis of the program because the tool used to assess the program’s performance and the final product has changed from year to year” (p. 70)

“There does not appear to be a formal process for implementing the suggestions/conclusions reached in the various” HTS internal assessments (p. 71)

“absence of clearly defined tasks and standards” (p. 71)

Even though they are unable to determine what success is, in the section following their detailed overview of the problems of HTS assessments, the CNA nonetheless continues with this line: “The HTS organization has been both blessed and cursed by its own success” (p. 73)

After charting poor recruitment, training and high attrition rates, the CNA still insists on concluding as follows:

“That HTS has succeeded at all (and it has had some notable successes [unspecified]) is a tribute to the hundreds of men and women who have dedicated themselves to making it happen. Many of the people we interviewed, including the most critical of HTS, indicated that HTS teams are performing a vital function. They contend that even if only a few of the teams are successful [meaning what?], the good work that the successful teams do is so important that it makes the whole enterprise worthwhile” (p. 109)

Stirring words.

Desperate and Unscrupulous Recruits, Optimism about Management

In the CNA investigators’ view, the most significant and persistent problem plaguing HTS has been recruiting (p. 3)—which is not to say that even with this limited scope they do not produce some interesting findings.

When speaking of recruitment and training, the CNA describes the work of the private defense contractor, BAE Systems, and its selection of candidates as ranging from “loose” in 2009 to “moderately selective in 2010—in the case of 2010, 60% of the total 1,342 applications received was rejected (p. 87). Interestingly, in speaking to a CNA interviewer, “BAE would not characterize recruiting as either good or bad but as ‘involved’” (p. 88). The CNA was not moved by this evasive non-explanation, and concludes:  “the quality of the personnel supplied under the BAE contract is substandard and is at the heart of most of the problems in the program….The government seems to have to take whatever BAE provides” (p. 106).

If this seems like it will take us on a journey through a maze of corrupt contractor practices and incompetent management, it would occasion disappointment, as the report spends more time outlining the unsuitable quality of recruits, and the bad economy that sends them to BAE Systems. As BAE itself told the CNA: “The weak economy had brought in some recruits….The weak economy has caused some of them to make the decision” (p. 89). The CNA says that the managers themselves found the recruits to be of poor quality: “Throughout HTS, managers comment on what they consider to be the poor quality of many of the recruits” (p. 90)—in some months, as many as 56% of trainees either resign and/or are dropped by the program. Again, the question persists: where in this do we see “success”?

What is an interesting revelation is that those in charge of recruiting and management suspected that many recruits are merely using HTS training for purposes other than serving HTS:

“Equally problematic is an apparently recent trend noticed by trainers of substantial numbers of recruits resigning at the very end of training—see for example the data of November 2009 and January 2010. The trainers tell us that many of these recruits seemed to have had no intention of actually deploying and were only there to collect pay for 4.5 months and get a security clearance….the substantial amount of pay collected during this interval may well be attractive,  particularly during this economic downturn. With the 4.5 months of training and a security clearance the recruit may also be able to get a lucrative long term job with another contractor” (p. 93)

As for the instructors, the CNA determines that 69% are from backgrounds that are “not relevant” to the stated requirements of the program (p. 96). As for the research managers, 76% are from educational backgrounds that are “not relevant” (p. 97) Of the deployed social scientists, 40% are from “not relevant” training backgrounds (p. 98) As for team leaders, 88% are from “not relevant” backgrounds: “On balance the team members’ academic specialties all too often lack real relevance to the behavioral and social science research backgrounds that the teams appear to need and is referenced in the position descriptions and the associated knowledge, skills, and abilities” (p. 100).

The CNA outlines what we already knew, that there has been a consistent lack of recruits with the necessary language skills, so much so that the requirement has been dropped (p. 101).

What is perhaps much more astounding, and never mentioned by the media, is the extremely high number of those being fired or resigning once they have already been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan: “we estimate that about 8 deployed team members are relieved from duty each year and about 80 team members resign while on deployment” (p. 102)—then, by its own reported numbers of persons deployed (157), that would mean about half of all deployed HTS team members either resign or are relieved of duty.

Even though the CNA did say that as many as 76% of all managers come from irrelevant backgrounds, the CNA is more positive in its commentary about managers. The CNA writes: “In general, there is reason for optimism about HTS internal management. The management structure has greatly improved in the last 12 months. Of note, there has been the addition of a Chief of Staff, several key replacements in directorates, and the organization is in the process of converting all remaining contractors that currently head directorates in government civilian status” (p. 5).

The CNA did assess the quality of the recruits. Did it do the same with respect to managers? No: “It is important that the reader understand that we were not asked to assess the quality of the managers, but only to comment on the adequacy of the structure” (p. 41). Even when it seems that the CNA might take a critical turn—“Given media reports (at least some of which we believe to be substantially correct) of inappropriate behavior on the part of some team members, it is reasonable to question whether the management is, in fact, adequate to the task” (p. 44)—the CNA pulls back: by inadequate management they mean management structure, and they proceed to recommend that there be more managers, following models that include those of management gurus like Peter Drucker. The problem with the managers is…there are not enough of them. As for management problems, the CNA concludes there is “reason for optimism” that all of the necessary changes to improve HTS management are well underway (p. 48).

Quite aside from the issues raised above, and included only because it supplements the photos provided by former HTS employee John Allison, what is interesting are the CNA’s notes about the HTS training facility:

“The physical plant for training at Fort Leavenworth can be described as Spartan. Until recently, training has been conducted in a group of trailers. The facility has been ‘upgraded’ and now occupies the basement of a small shopping center. The space consists of classrooms for students and cubicles for instructors. When we visited each of the classrooms was occupied with 15-25 students. Many of the classrooms are noisy due to the nature of the air conditioning system—making it very difficult to hear the instructor. During our visit, the instructors were experimenting with a headphone system to enable students to hear them over the air conditioning. This was the first day with the system and it was not working well” (p. 91).

Anthropology and Academic Outreach

First, it is important to note that, contrary to the ways HTS tried to distance itself from anthropology in the U.S. mainstream media when it could no longer counter overwhelming criticism and rejection, the CNA does note that anthropology is a cornerstone of HTS’ preferred identity: “HTS emphasizes the use of tools and approaches commonly associated with the academic disciplines of anthropology and sociology in its efforts to collect and analyze data about local populations” (p. 1).

To overcome criticisms, the CNA recommends more academic outreach, but notes “HTS also faces negative attitudes within some academic circles. For example, some universities have been reluctant to work with HTS” (p. 6). This is repeated on page 122:

“HTS also faces the challenge of negative attitudes within some academic circles towards the HTS program overall. In some of its outreach efforts, HTS has already faced an unwillingness on the part of some institutions or individuals (in particular some within the Anthropological community) to work together.”

Yet, as we know already, HTS has been successful in gaining the cooperation of at least four universities, as charted by the CNA:

How to get around the lack of subject matter experts and persons with relevant qualifications? The CNA notes that “in a resource-constrained environment, seeking opportunities to leverage the expertise, programs, and work of outside organizations is a worthwhile endeavor” (p. 121).

The CNA proposes a simple, awful solution—that all of us become silently enlisted into training HTS recruits:

“An alternative for the long term is for HTS to ‘grow its own.’ Promising young officers could be selected for training program in social science and sent to an appropriate university for advanced degrees….One downside to this approach is that the military officer trained as a social scientist might have more difficulty gaining the trust of the local population than a civilian social scientist” (p. 121).

They still want anthropologists and academics for their legitimacy and credibility in being able to penetrate local communities—assuming those communities have no access to these debates, and some do. There is no consideration of the likelihood that once the association with military training has permanently burnt the reputation of anthropologists, they will then get about the same welcome as the military gets.

An alternative that the CNA points to, and we shall have to look at whether this materializes in the future, is for HTS to work with any of “a number of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs),” or “other public research institutions such as the center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Brookings Institution,” which, “may also be appropriate partners for HTS” (p. 122).

It is peculiar that the CNA chose to blame the overwhelming criticism on HTS lacking a strategic communications plan for outreach to academic organizations, noting that HTS also lacks a directorate or individual within HTS who has the assigned responsibility for pursuing relationships and partnerships with academic organizations (p. 121)—yet we do know that Montgomery McFate attended anthropology conferences specifically with the aim of recruiting people, and that she featured herself in numerous articles about HTS.

More than One Human Terrain Program

With the assistance of an officer in U.S. military intelligence, we already posted some information on other human terrain capabilities in the U.S. military, as well as similar functions of SCRATs, and we identified multiple human terrain programs. The CNA charts some of these, but does not address the question of why HTS is therefore needed when its capabilities have been multiplied across several domains.

Also of Interest, Some Facts and Figures:

Number of Human Terrain Teams Deployed:

• Number of deployed Human Terrain Teams in Iraq is 10, or 92 personnel
• Number of deployed Human Terrain Teams in Afghanistan is 17, or 65 personnel
• Total persons deployed 157–for May 2010 (p. 19)

In addition, there are a further 7 Human Terrain Analysis Teams in Afghanistan, and 3 in Iraq (p. 21)

In Afghanistan, HTTs are deployed with the U.S. Army, Marines, NATO, Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, Task Force Phoenix, and “3 other unspecified units.”

Of 555 employees in total (as of 18 June 2010), 101 were military personnel, 206 were private contractors, and less than half (248) were civilians (p. 76).

Funding:

“HTS was not able to provide us with a detailed budget” (p. 43) – instead, all they have is a general funding plan. From that (p. 43) we learn of the funding provided to HTS in the following fiscal years:

• 2008–$144,000,000
• 2009–$92,541,000
• 2010–$159,729,000
• 2011–$154,822,000

TOTAL = $551,092,000

* the program began in 2006, and no figures are supplied for 2006 and 2007

From those amounts, the following was spent on deployed teams:

• 2008–$77,950,000
• 2009–$72,061,000
• 2010–$125,752,000
• 2011–$112,261,000

The CNA judges the level of funding to be inadequate (p. 43).

The BAE recruitment contract, renewed in September 2009, is $380 million, over five years (p. 86).

Anthropologists in the Military:

Some interesting data on the total number of all civilians with degrees in anthropology employed by the Pentagon, as of September 2009 (pps. 113-114):

• US ARMY: 285 (160 with a BA in anthropology, 95 with a MA, 30 with a PhD)
• US NAVY: 119 (68 with a BA in anthropology, 30 with a MA, and 21 with a PhD)
• US MARINE CORPS: 15 (8 with a BA in anthropology, 6 with a MA, 1 with a PhD)
• US AIR FORCE: 70 (47 with a BA in anthropology, 17 with a MA, and 6 with a PhD)
• OTHER DoD CIVILIANS: 43 (39 with a BA in anthropology, and 4 with a MA)

TOTAL = 532 (322 with a BA in anthropology, 152 with a MA, 58 with a PhD)

The CNAR report vindicates, again, the stories and observations of the nearly 100 sources from inside the HTS program that were responsible for the production of a staggering 50 articles written over a two year period. It is in large measure their stories that were responsible for the severe rework of the program. Sound minds in the US Congress and within the US Army/OSD—including the AR-15 investigator should receive some sort of commendation for their efforts.

Now HTS is evolving into a program-of-record and is unabashedly an intelligence support program as everyone knew it always was. HTS teams will be a mix of information gatherers from a variety of military, intelligence and social science disciplines mixed with US Army warfighters and combat hardened contractors.

In short, the HTTs will become multidimensional teams capable of deploying around the globe with the capability to use “civilian power” but go kinetic in the snap of a finger. The Sri Lankan soldier who once said, “I fear Human Terrain Teams more than the CIA” was quite prescient.

The HTS effort will continue during Operation New Dawn in Iraq and is ongoing in Afghanistan. According to US Army FY2012 budget documents, the HTS program will expand into other combatant commands like AFRICOM.

According to the CNAR, US Army TRADOC leadership was largely ambivalent to the HTS program even as General David Petraeus, USA—and ostensibly the CG of TRADOC–aggressively supported the effort as the premier solution to the failure of American political and military to prepare the human-cultural terrain for American soldiers.

On their watch soldier/civilian casualties (KIA, WIA), a manslaughter and hostage case, and sexual harassment cases took place within HTS. That TRADOC leadership in G2 and up the chain of command in TRADOC tolerated this state of affairs is common but utterly distasteful.

And people get promoted while people and programs crash and burn around them?

Some say that the next generation HTS is doomed because the reputation of HTS is so horrid that many in the field will try to avoid getting ensnared in the social science/intelligence combination product that HTS pushes. Within the US Army’s budget documents justifying HTS and other intelligence programs, there is a note that indicates the costs have increased because more contractors are being used to perform intelligence tasks of all types–just so.

At any rate, two excerpts from the CNAR are listed below.

“It appears that HTS’s most significant problems revolve around human resourcing and the level of support provided to HTS by TRADOC. We believe that solutions to these immediate issues exist. We emphasize, however that, these issues are not new. Problems in human resourcing and support have been evident in HTS for years—and little has been done to address them to date. As a result, we conclude that a more fundamental problem may exist: there may be a lack of TRADOC institutional commitment to making HTS a success. Hence, while further exploration would need to be conducted to determine this definitively, it is possible that the HTS mission would be better served if HTS were located elsewhere, but potential alternatives are beyond the scope of this assessment.”

“It, it is unclear what the exact purpose and goals of past assessments have been and who the intended audience is. It appears that the Project Management Office was the primary recipient of HTS products and that TRADOC G2 has not received or reviewed HTS assessment products. Second, the current approach has made it difficult to conduct any trend analysis of the program’s development. Finally, there is not a formal process for implementing the suggestions/conclusions reached in the various assessments within HTS. Any organizational change that has come about due to past assessments has been the result of an informal decision-making process.”

President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

“The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt. We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary and asked for to pursue a credible transition to a democracy.” –Barack Obama, speech on Friday, 11 February 2011, on the resignation of Hosni Mubarak

Finally, Mubarak is out. But the U.S. is still very much in, for now. Are we seeing, in Egypt, a novel American mode of intervention? Are we seeing evidence of what we might call the (Hillary) Clinton Doctrine? The U.S. government is certainly not speaking as if it has suffered a major loss. If anything, it sounds like it has plans for the future of the Egypt.

Numerous observers, even in the American mainstream media, have painted a picture of a “shifting,” ambiguous, ambivalent, often contradictory set of U.S. government narratives about the Egyptian revolution, since just days after the 25 January protests began. Their observations are not flawed. But one caution is very necessary: when we encounter people that we know are smart and astute, the best way to underestimate them and miscalculate their moves is to assume that they have become suddenly dumb when offering seemingly contradictory statements. The objective ought to be to search for the deeper logic that unifies seemingly opposed parts of the narrative into a working whole. In doing so, we will find what is evidence of what I think we can call the Clinton Doctrine, and evidence of its momentary success in Egypt.

It deserves to be called the Clinton Doctrine since U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been the author of several related foreign policy initiatives, which we can group under the banner of “21st Century Statecraft,” while Obama has really done nothing to be distinguished as a unique “foreign policy president.”

The (Hillary) Clinton Doctrine thus far does not exist officially, written up as a widely acknowledged policy. It should be, because as mentioned before it is a relatively novel approach, one that is much more insidious and yet appropriate to a weakened and recessionary empire. Simply put, the Clinton Doctrine involves hedging U.S. bets by keeping a foot in almost all camps, by maintaining contact with diverse sectors in a society critical to U.S. national security interests, emphasizing “stability” when regime survival seems possible, and then emphasizing “orderly transition” when change seems probable. It is a mixture of realism and opportunism and a desire to intervene without being seen to intervene, a low cost foreign policy that builds on established bases of military aid and support for civil society groups. By maintaining open and positive channels of communication (with Mubarak, the military, the April 6 Movement, El Baradei, and even the Muslim Brotherhood [long a working ally of the U.S.]) the U.S. made sure that no matter what resulted, it would remain in the picture as a continued player of importance. Viewed in this light, there is nothing contradictory about U.S. statements on Egypt.

“In these difficult times, I know that the Egyptian people will persevere, and they must know that they will continue to have a friend in the United States of America.” –Barack Obama, speech on Thursday, 10 February 2011

“I am telling tell you, in my capacity as am president of the republic, that I never find it embarrassing to listen and respond to my country’s youths, but it is shameful and I will never accept is to listen to foreign dictations , whatever their sources, pretexts or justifications were….I have never been subjected to foreign pressure or dictations“–Hosni Mubarak, speech to the nation, Thursday, 10 February 2011

If Mubarak made some nationalist sounds in his final days, against those who had provided tens of billions of dollars in support for his regime over the decades, it is because he observed the U.S. playing different camps, especially knowing for how many years the U.S. had maintained open channels to human rights activists in Egypt and had repeatedly complained to Mubarak about the excessive brutality of his security services and his far-too-tight control over the political process. For a recessionary empire, Mubarak’s regime was a high-cost alternative that increasingly made violent opposition less of an option and more of a certainty–and the U.S. cannot stand what one activist today proclaimed (with great hope) was an Egypt where “all horizons are open.” No, there has to be more predictability than that, where the U.S. is concerned. So the U.S. shifted its weight to its alternatives: pro-West human rights activists, and more powerful than Mubarak, the huge military infrastructure that the U.S. helped to build. Here is “orderly transition” with “friendship” to the Egyptian people.

That the U.S. has had positive contact with diverse camps is established in various sources. On the one hand, there is the work of the Alliance of Youth Movements, originating from the U.S. State Department and the work of Jared Cohen and aided by major Web firms such as Google, for whom Cohen now works while maintaining a leading position in AYM. This opened direct communication between one April 6 Movement activist and U.S. diplomats. Ahmed Salah, co-founder of the April 6 Movement is also a senior fellow at AYM, which maintains an active profile of engagement with Egypt. Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who was captured by state security and turned into a virtual hero by U.S. media as the founder of the Facebook page that allegedly led to the January 25 protests, openly corresponds with the State Deptartment’s Alec J. Ross, with his release getting special mention by State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, praised by Jared Cohen as the source to follow in Egyptian events. Before Mubarak had formally stepped down, Ghonim was posting in Twitter, repeatedly, “Mission Accomplished” and hailed the success of something he calls “Revolution 2.0.” Here Ghonim asks the protesters to now demobilize, as if the revolution was to stop merely at the removal of one man. Here he praises the army, clearly entrusting them to now take the lead. Ghonim instantly won the severe repudiation of those who have fought long and hard in Egypt for transformation.

Egyptian pro-democracy activists have certainly scored a major victory. Removal of Mubarak seemed almost impossible before, especially not by peaceful means. One fears that the revolution may now become fragmented, divided, manipulated, with the Ghonims touted by Washington as “heroes” and “moderates,” and others pressing for much needed greater changes likely to be set apart as “extremists.” For now, the Clinton Doctrine ensures that the U.S. is not yet down and out of Egypt.

“I recognize that this two year project, which overtly maps rural communities, trade connections and key local stakeholders with pastoralists around Hargesisa and Berbera, could be used as a resource for building Human Terrain Maps of this critical region of the Horn of Africa. We would be happy to do this in partnerships with [you]… As such there can be overt collection of Human Terrain data which opens the door to sensitively tailoring more in depth data collection. The project and Sazani Associates have a high level of buy in from the indigenous NGOs and will deliver tangible local benefits.”

“I have close personal ties to the security sector and I am aware of both the precarious nature of Somalia and the value of HTS for operationalising [a] military response. I am interested discussing the matter with an appropriate entity regarding the securing of resources for delivery of the project and would be grateful if you could forward this email on to someone within your company who may be interested. What we are look for is the funding to deliver the project and costs to support more in depth HT data collection and we are hoping that will be made easier when we finish registration as a IPVO early next month.” Sazani Associates

No wonder governments and indigenous populations around the globe are skeptical about the motives and practices of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) operating in their countries.

Take, for example, Sazani Associates, an NGO based in the United Kingdom. A representative named Mark Proctor from Sazani is looking to expand into the national security arena via the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS). They seek funding to MAP the HT in East Africa/Somalia.

Who knows how many other NGO’s have jumped on the cultural-human terrain mapping effort being funded out of OSD/TRADOC, AFRICOM or any of the other U.S. Combatant Commands. Or, perhaps, they are turning their data over, at a price, to elements the US national security apparatus to include academia.

“We are a UK based NGO who have offices in Tanzania and Belize and the majority of our work is around sustainable livelihood development and various forms of education. One of our areas of expertise is Zanzibar–our associates have a long history there, one being a fluent Kiswahili speaker. Islamic east Africa is therefore a place we are very comfortable to operate in. Having spent a little bit of time in northwest Somalia I was pleased to find the largest concentration of the Diaspora community in Europe in Cardiff, our local city (and capitol of Wales-semi autonomous region of UK). Over the years we have worked closely with this community and made the links to ensure a project could actually deliver in northwest Somalia.

This project was designed with three partners, the Universities of Somaliland (GOLLIS), Somali Progressive Society (UK) and Consortium of Somaliland Non Governmental Organizations (CONSOGO)(Somalia) all of which will be involved in delivering. The main contact for the UK Somali entity is an honorable man who is the president of the Somaliland Chamber of trade in UK, so he has access at the governmental level in Somaliland, which has proven helpful. As I said we have worked with him for a number of years. The project [called YES] is an enterprise-training and civil society engagement project developed with Somali partners by Sazani Associates. Sazani designed a $1.2M aid project with local NGO partners in Somaliland. Working with local Universities and a large Somaliland Government registered umbrella NGO, the project is aimed at supporting rural people to develop sustainable businesses, critical awareness of media and linking that to an export hub.”

The sales pitch goes on to say that the program is focused on “young people in their rural communities (pastoralists surrounding two main towns), developing businesses and creating a network of producers and an export centre. Mapping community interests, trade connections, key stakeholders and establishing relationships with them are central to the project delivery.”

Shadow Anthropology: And the Oscar Goes To…

The Human Terrain System was the subject of a play recently performed in California. “…an outstanding ensemble,” said LA Weekly.

The play is titled SHADOW ANTHROPOLOGY: A Post-9/11 Comedy. It was written and directed by Dr. Rick Mitchell of California State University, with music by Max Kinberg. There is even a song available from the show with lyrics by the playwright, music by Max Kinberg, and vocals by David Lee Garver.

Here is the story line:  As a poor Afghan family struggles to hold onto its farm in spite of a drought, a warlord offers possible solutions, including a more profitable crop, as well as an odd marriage proposal for the farmer’s young daughter. Soon thereafter, an idealistic anthropologist from Puerto Rico teams up with an opium-loving American mercenary as part of a U.S. Army Human Terrain Team. While the visitors attempt to create a more “culturally sensitive” military occupation of Afghanistan, various characters and bawdy shadow puppets battle it out for who controls not only the story, but also the land. A satirical examination of the U.S. military’s “new” post-9/11 strategy to win Afghan hearts and minds, this dark comedy features original songs, Turkish-style shadow puppetry, and Spam.

And the Oscar(s) for best ensemble performance in a drama goes to….General Martin Dempsey (USA) the new US Army Chief of Staff and his chain-of-command whilst at TRADOC. Their character acting as “leaders” was stunningly convincing even as the initial HTS program suffered casualties, mismanagement and burned to the ground on their watch.

By JOHN ALLISON

The attack on Guernica by Nazi Condor Legion fighters and bombers in full coordination with and bombing instructions from Spain’s Nationalist dictator, Generalissimo Franco, was carried out on April 26, 1937, 36 hours after my birth on the west coast of North America. This was the first major experiment in modern industrial weapons and methods of control of small dissident populations – “insurgents”; in this case the indigenous Basque people in their spiritual and cultural capital, Guernica. Pablo Picasso made his allegorical protest of this and tribute to the people who died there in his famous painting of that title. Picasso never allowed Guernica to be shown in Spain until after Franco was removed from power 12 years after Picasso’s death; then it was shown in the Prado; now it is housed in Guernica. The Basques say, “Guernica” Guernikara, “Guernica” for Guernica.

….I was the first correspondent to reach Guernica, and was immediately pressed into service by some Basque soldiers collecting charred bodies that the flames had passed over. Some of the soldiers were sobbing like children. There were flames and-smoke and grit, and the smell of burning human flesh was nauseating. Houses were collapsing into the inferno.

In the Plaza, surrounded almost by a wall of fire, were about a hundred refugees. They were wailing and weeping and rocking to and fro. One middle-aged man spoke English. He told me: ‘At four, before the-market closed, many aeroplanes came. They dropped bombs. Some came low and shot bullets into the streets. Father Aroriategui was wonderful. He prayed with the people in the Plaza while the bombs fell.’

…The only things left standing were a church, a sacred Tree, symbol of the Basque people, and, just outside the town, a small munitions factory. There hadn’t been a single anti-aircraft gun in the town. It had been mainly a fire raid.

[http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/guernica.htm accessed February 2, 2011]

Nationalists denied Nazi involvement and claimed that Guernica had been deliberately burned and dynamited by fleeing Republican forces, which had been using the city to store ammunition and explosives; it was also claimed that reports of the extent of the bombing had been exaggerated and were atrocity propaganda. (Sound familiar?)

At that time, Amelia Earhart was preparing for her second and final attempt to fly across the Atlantic. USan’s attention was focused by the media on this spectacle and on the recovery from the Great Depression that had been moved by President Roosevelt’s socialist-like policies. In the background, the global powers were ratcheting up their military machines, and the various rhetorics were pointing to a different road than the Public Works projects as a way to raise the people’s standard of living and education. Behind the scenes, among the moguls of industry – IBM, RAND Corporation, and others – and the military leaders, a competition was already underway for global domination by one or the other as the final solution to the social and economic problems, not of the people, but of the industrial elite, connecting the framework for the global Military Industrial Complex, about which US President Eisenhower later – too late – warned the sleeping US population, which was too busy watching Ozzie and Harriet to care.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Guernica was in Vietnam, where the indigenous people had revolted against the colonial rule of the West, first against the French, and, after defeating them, against the USA (with 200 years of experience in militarized conquest – knowledge passed down by the Roman Empire – and domination of indigenous peoples of North America) whom the Vietnamese people also defeated, but at great cost in lives and in environmental damage that will continue to affect its people’s health for a long, long time.

During the war on Vietnam the U.S. dropped the equivalent of 450 Hiroshima bombs that killed many hundreds of thousands, and left behind more than 500.000 tons of unexploded ordnance killing an additional 100.000 to 200.000 people. Yet worse was to come. Operation Ranch delivered a poisonous cocktail to Vietnam including cyanide to destroy rice fields and an estimated 49.3 million liters of Agent Orange sprayed into the forests, fields, and streams of South Vietnam. Close to 5 million people were present directly in the areas sprayed, and millions more were effected through contaminated food sources and environment. Agent Orange is the strongest poison known to man, and at least three generations of Vietnamese have suffered damages to physical health and psychological well-being. Acknowledging reluctantly that Agent Orange was responsible, the U.S. Veterans Administration has now placed 14 diseases on the presumptive list as caused by the poison. Yet despite promises made, the victims of the war in Vietnam are still ignored 40 years later. Can Western Europe be a guiding conscience to the U.S. and respond to this unprecedented crisis?…

During the war the US Airforce dropped from two to three times the amount of ordnance dropped during the entire World War 2, but on a much smaller area. It is difficult to imagine the amount of destruction and stress caused by this military strategy of annihilation. The older generation of Vietnamese had already been exposed to decades of war with the French in order to liberate the country from colonialism. That war fresh in memories and with many victims added on to the stress caused by the US during the War on Vietnam. The ordinance dropped produced 20 million large craters, and was the equivalent of 450 Hiroshima bombs. After exiting Vietnam the U.S. left behind 500.000 tons of unexploded ordinance that subsequently killed between 100.000 to 200.000 people (Bouncy, 2006).

Nixon promised billions of dollars for remediation and rehabilitation of land and people after ending the war on Vietnam. None of these promises were kept. The Globe and The Mail (2008) reported that according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.2 million Vietnamese (2010) were exposed directly to Agent Orange, resulting in 400.000 deaths and disabilities. Furthermore 500.000 children have since been born with birth defects. The poisoning effects from Agent Orange persist today since it became part of the food chain resulting in the birth of children with multiple problems (BBC NEWS: HEALTH (2010). So while 4.8 million were present during the spraying, many more were exposed through the contaminated environment and food (Schecter, 2002; Stellman, 2003).

[Agent Orange and war related stress: Physical and psychological disorders. DR. KNUD S. LARSEN, (Professor emeritus, Department of Psychology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA) and DR. HAO VAN LE (Head of Department of Cultural Psychology, National Institute of Psychology, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi, Vietnam) in ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR Sozialmanagement (Journal of Social Management), 2010 Vol. 8 | Number 2 | 2nd semester 2010]

Today is February 3^rd, 2011, the day that three Israeli planes landed in Cairo, bringing crowd control weapons for the dictator Mubarak, their consort. Today’s Guernica is Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, La Côte d’Ivoire…,while Tunisians and Egyptians are attempting to stand up to The Beast, and the insurgency seems to be spreading. However, the Zeitgeist that animated the Nazi’s and the Spanish Nationalists at Guernica and the US in Vietnam has since spread to all the  European nations and to their approved rulers of the former colonies, with its head, teeth and portavoz vested in the USA, Nuova Roma.

How did the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave fall to such depths, and what is the hope for changing course to return Power to the People from those who have usurped it and continue to solidify their gains?

One can trace the conversion of Barack Obama to the military spirit of Mars that animates this collective Beast. After my refresher course on military culture during Human Terrain System training, I recognized it in the changes in Obama’s rhetoric. Their signature phrases – like “the way forward” – began to creep into his speeches; if you know MilSpeak you will recognize it. He was coolly recasting himself as an emissary of The Mission. His Cabinet appointments demonstrated his intent, not to serve as the absolute upright, manifesting the values and goals which had seduced the US citizenry to choose him as The Way Out of this vice, this vise.

Instead of “change you can believe in”, Obama has gotten in line and traded Commander in Chief for the position of Chief Public Information Officer for the Department of Defense and the global industrial elite of the Empire.

Who knows, maybe Hosni Mubarak held some of the same ideals Obama mouthed, in the beginning, before he bargained away the rights of the Egyptian people for his own aggrandizement; or, maybe both Mubarak and Obama were always on track for their personal careers.

In Nuristan of the Hindu Kush, some of the houses in the isolated high valleys have carved into the oak planks flanking the doors, the zig-zag path of a lightning bolt. I was told that this was the house of an Aula Mətz, a Big Man or Great Man, who was or is a leader, comparable to the Latin American strongman or “caudillo”.

This lightning bolt, I was told, represents his skill at sensing the desires of The People and, in the formal, alpha dialect of the Kalasha, to state for them what they themselves could not state so skillfully; so seductively

The people turned to the Aula Mətz in time of struggle or of crisis to show them the Way Out of their situation. Once he had gained that trust, he could lead them into an entirely different path, and the people would follow his zig-zag course away from the original direction. Of course, in their world, if he fucked with them, they simply killed him and turned to another to lead them.

I was seduced by Obama. I campaigned for him. I voted for him. I had faith in him; there is no other word; maybe because he is mulatto; maybe because he was a community organizer among the down-trodden. I felt his authenticity; I thought that I did.

I’d still like to hope that he has something up his sleeve, and will turn the tables soon; but my hope is evaporating as I disregard his words and look at his actions.. Now, Barack Obama has made clear that his Way Forward is not our way; the way of The People. Rather, he is headed down a path blazed by Generals McChrystal and Petraeus (betray us) under command of the Captains of Industry. And I ain’t goin’ his way.

The Islamic world is laughing and crying over the West’s “freedom and democracy” mantra. They see how skillfully the USans are kept from seeing the truth of their leadership which has recently passed a bill making the elections of their “representatives” available to those who can buy them; the delusion that they are self-determining, represented by leaders who will take them where they want to go; will make their nation walk its talk. But, instead of fulfilling the hope of the downtrodden, they continue to look to “the news” on FOX to learn what to think about the despots.

And now, in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Jordan, Yemen, Algeria … The People are uprising – “insurging” – against the zig-zag leaders that the West has bribed the elite of their own societies to install, who will follow the path of the USans Caudillos, their Aula Mətz. They have suffered the truth of Western “democracy”.

This whole movement returns the clock to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire into separate nations by the Western colonial powers and the preparation by the British of the State of Palestine to be usurped by Zionist invaders who now rule the colony of Israel – where I spent an entire year with six months’ indoctrination on Kibbutz Dafna, one of the earliest forts established in Palestine by the Zionists, which is what TE Lawrence said – I think it was in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom – will NOT stand, cannot stand; a European colony in the heart of Arabia. That is at the core of this revolutionary struggle – the Arabs own indigenous version of Freedom and Democracy!

These people are indigenous to their lands, regardless of Israeli “scholars’” revisions of history, contradicted by many Jewish, non-Zionist scholars, who get hell for it, denied tenure and such. The Arabic and related Muslim peoples still operate as a society behind the scenes that are depicted on their media that weaves a zig-zag Western Capitalist path. They hear that if they change things to fit their own values and goals, they will “destabilize” their “region”.

The same lies have been overcome now in most of Latin America; first in Cuba, then Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile still sputtering on and off, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador …, and according to Hillary Clinton, this “destabilizes” that region.

What the USans need right now is a leader like José Martí; one who has the charisma such as Obama’s, but also the ethics, the knowledge of the ruling elite, the vision of a future to awaken the USans from their stupor, their torpor, their dreaming, and to inspire the USans with the courage to confront what they then will understand as Evil as the Nazi leaders who ordered the devastation of the small town of Guernica the day after my birth.

Of course, given the state of the US population that is so folded into the perspective of the media that is an organ of the Military Industrial Complex, that prescribes their dreams, that leads them down that Zig-Zag Path, it is The Awakening that will be difficult, since we are not an indigenous people, but people stripped of culture and re-dressed in an economic, legal, and political framework that they learn in public schools, churches, the media, who no longer share an oral history, a People’s History of the USA that allows them to independently assess and organize a response to despotism from the grass-roots level. All they have is the “news” and reports of the State of the Union by the Caudillo.

We still sometimes use “pre-literate” to describe peoples who have not been folded in to this dream. As though they will inevitably evolve to a higher state of “culture”, as the USans have. However, some of the technology that might ensnare us also has served those “preliterate” peoples to connect person-to-person, group-to-group, and the result has been shown impressively in the wars of liberation in Tunisia and Egypt. There, in those exploited populations, people had both understanding and courage and they had connections between themselves that enabled their revolutions.

A Nation of Sheep

I am just wondering, how does a herd of fat sheep, each one living in his/her private residence, protected by alarms to the security company,  comfortable, too well-fed, distracted and diverted with media and many toys, people who don’t say “hello” but divert their eyes in discomfort, maybe in fear, when you pass them on the sidewalk,  … how can they get awakened, get knowledge of a reality beyond their leaders’ isolating media, and get connected directly with one another in discussions that will lead toward a dignified and morally strong society whose government is not so much a world leader and competitor as a cooperator and compañero with good will towards all peoples?

It seems that such websites as this one are the only path open. How do we move beyond preaching to the choir, to the Awakening?

Maybe a Guernica Day Rally in place of Earth Day, and more “fun”?

But, even such websites as this might no longer be available to connect the US citizens to those of like mind in the US and globally. See http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/

If we keep criticizing, Clinton-Obama-Bush might do what Mubarak did to the internet in Egypt’s Crisis. National Security, you know? We might need a Guernica in San Francisco! to protect Freedom and Democracy.

I was getting really upset that every time I went on a show, all you would see is “Crisis in Cairo,” “Unrest in Egypt.” And they were totally missing the historical significance of what was happening. My country, you know, my people, these incredibly courageous people in Egypt, were standing up to a tyrant of 30 years, and all they wanted to focus on was this looting, that was clear at the time and now has been proven to be linked to the Mubarak regime. And all they wanted to ask was, “Are American citizens safe? And how are the artifacts in Egypt?” And I said, “Look, everybody is safe. We all care about the artifacts, but can we please talk about Egyptians and what a historic moment this is?” –Mona El-Tahawy, Egyptian journalist

In a first-rate public exercise of missing the point, the American Anthropological Association released a statement on 02 February, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, misleadingly titled “Statement of Support for Egypt.” After getting past the brief formality of noting that Egyptian lives and rights are being trampled upon, the statement goes on to focus on the fate of the artifacts housed at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities–visited by countless tourists, and a specialized class of tourists known as archaeologists. Self-interest, anyone? Indeed, the statement is 190 words, of which at most 31 are devoted to Egyptian lives and rights, and 150 are devoted to the blessed artifacts.

One has to hope that few Egyptians will read the statement, or give it much thought, or it could fuel a rage that is exclusively reserved for the artifacts. One should recall how in March of 2001, the Taleban then ruling Afghanistan decided to destroy the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan, that in turn inflamed public opinion abroad. What sparked the decision was the fact that UNESCO and European delegations had offered to spend money restoring the statues, at a time when international economic sanctions were hurting Afghanistan, and when other UN officials were simultaneously warning of the worsening of famine in the country. The Taleban had been requesting international aid to help a million Afghans confront starvation–but instead only an art restoration project was offered, for the statues. Is it a wonder then that in a fit of indignation and rage the Taleban vented their fury on precisely the sole objects that occupied Western concerns? Which is the greater of the outrages?

Nor did the AAA statement mention the Egyptian authorities’ practice of denying entry to the museum by locals dressed in galabiyas–Nora Shalaby (photo), an Egyptian archaeologist at the Cairo Museum, reports that there were a number of times “whereby Egyptians who are not considered ‘civilized’ enough are denied entry into the museum so as not to tarnish Egypt’s image in front of foreigners! At the same time tourists are allowed to roam freely in the museum with bare chests, and wearing bikni tops and hot pants in complete disregard to the country’s culture.” So, as 3arabawy put it sarcastically, “those dirty, uncivilized Egyptians” were blocked access, but not of course foreigners, some of whom then publish statements like we read above, where the Egyptians are themselves worth little more than a passing mention, restored to their place as wallpaper for an American spectacle.

Sometimes, misplaced concerns and misdirected sentiments can provoke the exact opposite of what is sought. What is of far greater concern is not the relics of a remote past, but whether Egyptians will be allowed to build a better future, free of the weight of intervention by the government that the American anthropologists’ statement failed to condemn: their very own.

“With notebooks and pens we will end suicide bombings and gore. Sensitivity to backward culture will help us to control the horror. They’ll learn love for American freedom through stories they’ll come to adore.”

“Anthropology will help to explain the people we wish to contain. We’ll win hearts and minds behind enemy lines by mapping the human terrain.”

“We’ll identify those we can trust to embrace the occupation. We’ll remove all the others….”

“With social science to lead us, through dark Afghanistan, we’ll blaze a path toward victory, and eventually into Iran!”–words from the song, Shadow Anthropology, see below.

Dr. Rick Mitchell, is a professor and creative writing advisor in the Department of English at California State University, Northridge who, with the support of his university’s Faculty Research Fellows Program and the Puffin Foundation, has created and launched a play that is getting a number of positive reviews: Shadow Anthropology–A Post 9/11 Comedy. This has been mentioned in previous articles that we have published, as an upcoming production. One review from Eye Spy LA tells us that “Mitchell weaves a complex story about U.S. colonization into an enjoyable, comedic romp,” one that uses “almost every form of dramatic spectacle with Turkish shadow puppets, catchy musical numbers and light Brechian flourishes.” In this play, the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System, and the work of militarized anthropology are targets of criticism. We are told that “the play is critical of U.S. occupation strategies that are intended to reduce conflict, but only fuel it through ignorance.” As for HTS another review tells us that it is, “touted as a way to win hearts and minds…a devious attempt to root out insurgents through entrapment.” HTS is also referred to in one of the reviews as, “an underhanded American ploy to colonize and ferret out insurgents.”

To clarify the aims of Rick Mitchell’s project I asked him to what extent HTS was intended as a focal element, if it was. He explained that “HTS is certainly a big element, but the play also focuses on broader areas, i.e., the (ugly) US occupation of Afghanistan (and, to a lesser degree, of Puerto Rico [the anthropologist is from Vieques]), the stereotyping (and necessity) of ’enemies,’ the drug-war connection in US warfare (and espionage), the ‘occupation’ of women exacerbated by Sharia Law, etc.” The main point is that, in Mitchell’s words, ”the piece is adamantly against occupation of any kind.”

One of the HTS characters, on a Human Terrain Team, is a former Marine, Evan–described by one review as a “trigger-happy coked out junkie;” in another review in LA Weekly as “a well-paid defense operative…an unprincipled superpatriot whose sprawling ego is pumped up by his coke-and-heroin habit and his steady intake of Viagra. A practiced slimeball;” and, in a review by the Levantine Cultural Center as someone who, “shadows the Afghan population to gain insight, while remaining in relative darkness.” The other team member, Fe, is supposedly a left-leaning Puerto Rican anthropologist, “with sincere intentions for the use of anthropology,” described in another review as “unwitting.”

I asked Rick Mitchell what his main sources of information/inspiration were in creating the HTS characters, Fe the anthropologist and Evan the soldier of fortune:

I did a ton of research, not only about the HTS, but also about Islam, Afghanistan’s history, the US military, BlackWater, mercenaries, extremisms (of the Islamic, X-tian, and Free Market variety [Tariq Ali's The Clash of Fundamentalisms was useful here] etc., etc. Of course, a couple of early, major leaders (of the HTS and a private mercenary co.) were on my mind when I began writing. But that changed a lot as the play developed and the characters began going in different directions.

Evan works for a firm that in the play is called SwampWater, and while not modeled on any one person, nor a composite of specific persons in existence, his creation by Mitchell was influenced by some of the books he has read “about the kind of guys who were working as private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan (and by the Fundamentalist right-wing in the US).”

Rick Mitchell’s next stop is at the South Asia Center at University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, to present a reading of the play on Feb. 18 at the following conference: Popular Culture and Alternate Histories: Voices from Beyond the Security State in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

With parody videos, critical books, online critiques, and this play, one is forced to reject one of the central premises in the sales pitch delivered by the Human Terrain System early on: that it would help to make anthropology useful and relevant, and presumably, respected.

I am currently reading through the 130+ pages of the play and a follow-up article may come in the future. In the meantime, below is the song of the play, with lyrics by Rick Mitchell, music by Max Kinberg, and vocals by David Lee Garver:

[Photos by the Son of Semele Theater]

On 20 January 2009, this is what an instrument of American pacification stated on his entry into office:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

But who clenched that fist? Which American defense contractors helped to build the fist, with what amount of U.S. military aid, and with how much Israeli armour plating? Against whom was that fist clenched? Let’s be really clear about what is happening in Tunisia, Egypt, perhaps soon Israel/Palestine (see The Palestine Papers), and now Lebanon and Yemen: a wall of U.S. supported dictatorships and clients is collapsing and the U.S. is on the wrong side of a history it can no longer write with any credibility or legitimacy. Right now, in the streets of Cairo and numerous other cities in a blacked-out Egypt, a nation reduced to serving as Israel’s ham fisted border guard, is revolting. More will follow, and we can say that with absolute certainty.

When it was already too late to salvage its allied regime in Tunisia, Hillary Clinton made the usual reformist sounds, but still with an emphasis on order and, of course, reform (the staunch stance of the counter-revolutionary, at least since America’s days as the director of the Alliance for Progress). Juan Cole has argued convincingly that American foreign policy, largely on auto-pilot in late second-term Bush mode, has been willing to sacrifice everything and everyone in the name of counterterrorism and national security. Not everyone is willing to continue being sacrificed, and not for the pursuit of American interests over, above, and against their personal freedoms and feeding their families. What Cole most likely would not intend to suggest is that the U.S.’ special relationship with Tunisia emerged only with Bush. Instead, that particular relationship extends back almost as far as the founding of the U.S. More recent, under the 31-year rule of dictator Habib Borguiba (predecessor of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali), his regime received circa $750 million annually, and then advanced military support as well. Between 1987 and 2009, under Ben Ali, the U.S. signed $349 million in sales of military hardware to Tunisia. After 2009, with Obama in office, Tunisia was to be sold military helicopters in a $282 million sale. The Pentagon announced: “This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that has been and continues to be an important force for economic and military progress in North Africa.” Ben Ali’s Tunisia, as one article put it, was a “model U.S. client.”

With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement about its Egyptian partner–”our assessment is that the Egyptian Government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people“–the U.S. has clearly taken the wrong side, and it’s something that it will likely pay for. Except that it has been paying, lots, for a long time: “The US has provided Egypt with $1.3 billion a year in military aid since 1979, and an average of $815 million a year in economic assistance. All told, Egypt has received over $50 billion in US largesse since 1975.” This report from the Congressional Research Service, put the economic assistance figure at over $2 billion annually, a sure sign to Mubarak that he could put off any “reform” indefinitely as long as Washington bankrolled his power. The U.S. has also invested a large amount of advanced weaponry into Egypt’s so-called “defense.” Numerous reports, including observations by senior opposition leaders in Egypt, point to the spontaneous, self-organizing, youth-driven protests in Egypt, emerging from a gigantic part of the population that has borne the brunt of extreme levels of unemployment, miserably low wages, and harsh state control over their daily lives with nearly 30 years of “emergency” rule in force. They know all about the clenched fist, and who paid for it.

The notion that American leaders, fully aware of the depth of corruption and brutality among its allies, could think that U.S. interests would be safely pursued by exacting a punishing tribute from Tunisians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians, and so on, is utterly astonishing. It shows how decrepit and blind U.S. foreign policy has become, a hegemon well into decline, plunging into the deepest depths of senility.

*****

On a personal note, I am very grateful for the continuous correspondence over these past two years from a group of very friendly Egyptian comrades–students, professors, journalists, trade union activists–who have helped me to learn a great deal about daily life under America’s ally, Mubarak. What is happening now, has always been on their minds, they never tired of fighting back, and I wish them every success. If there is any justice in this world, Mubarak should be made to face it, as should his patrons in Washington.

The world as "downrange" for Gabrielle Giffords

There is Representative Gabrielle Giffords, in photos on this page, enjoying the fruit of shock and awe, definitely a representative. Of what? That’s one question. What are not the questions worth any/further debate are whether or not Sarah Palin may have inspired or encouraged the shooting in Tucson on 08 January–the answer, plainly, is no–or whether the “tone” of political discourse somehow foments or fosters such violence–and again the answer is decidedly no.

What is more intriguing is that members of a society such as the U.S. would even turn to such questions. Why would one expect that a society which meets the world through force, direct and indirect, threatened and implied, in order to achieve its political aims would somehow be immune to the forces which it nurtures and in which citizens are schooled daily? When the U.S. projects violence “abroad” (in the world in which it is immersed), where does that violence come from to begin with? If Americans did not believe that the best way to get things done was by opening fire, would they elect and abide by governments breaking all historical records for military spending when the U.S. no longer has a superpower rival? Its actions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere are not simply external, abroad, and away, as if one could so neatly remove them from the social system that created the conditions for political violence. Sarah Palin cannot be blamed: she is neither a system nor a culture, and let’s not even indulge those childish notions that suggest pictures of crosshairs on a map somehow directed someone to shoot. The “tone” cannot be blamed: some very polite people do awful things, and Americans ought to know this given that they have one such person in power. Changing the “tone” of debate is worthless while drone strikes are continually ordered by the White House.

The persistent problem here is misrecognition of the fact that empire and violence are fundamental organizing principles of this globally elongated entity known as the United States. “Changing the tone of debate in Washington” is a narrow, insular, nationalistic framing of how reality is perceived and processed. It is a line of argument favoured by those who implicitly know that they have an empire to preserve, and pretend that what we do “over there” is somehow disconnected from and unrelated to what we are right here. The insincerity of the statement is astounding, coming as it does after months of virulent death threats against Julian Assange and Wikileaks, printed and transmitted by the mainstream media themselves, without caution, restraint, or apology. Nor have officials in power done or said anything to tone down the voices of the gathering lynch mob, clearly basking as they are in the warm glow of the hatred they encouraged by careless accusations against an organization that has harmed no one and broken no laws. It’s not just that no separation between domestic discourse and international imperialism is impossible when it comes to setting a “tone,” it’s that one cannot have one tone for one matter and a radically different tone for another, coming out of the same mouth. Nor can one just repair tone while continuing to commit heinous acts of violence, and even celebrating them as “service.”

It is therefore no accident that Michelle Obama should issue a statement, presumably of consolation, that states: “We can also teach our children about the tremendous sacrifices made by the men and women who serve our country and by their families.” Always the resort back to the military, and the reduction of “service” to a career in violence to achieve political objectives. Force back your tears, we have a world to conquer and tame. We get to pick and choose our violence; we have the right to bring death, but we shouldn’t have to suffer it ourselves; we can live by the sword, but it is inconceivable that we should die by the sword. The state orchestrates violence on a massive scale, the media sanctify it, and citizens are trained to accept it as the norm. Who knows what finally motivated this one shooter to finally act, when others just imagine themselves acting. Perhaps it was basic American “common sense” telling him that to get things done, you need a gun. Perhaps it was his rebellion against a system where elections are made to matter so much because they are a substitute for democracy, where casting a ballot is submitting your signed resignation from the decision-making process–from this moment onward, someone else will make my decisions for me, they can do with me what they please. But then it should have been a massive throng of shooters who showed up on that day, so another key question is not just why this happens in the U.S., but why it does not happen more often.

There really is nothing new here. The U.S. has had political murders before, and will have them in the foreseeable future. Nor are the ideas expressed here novel, certainly not when I rely on awfully worn statements such as “living by the sword, and dying by the sword.” This reminds me of another familiar saying, uttered below by one man commenting on political violence, who suffered political violence, America’s finest ever public speaker and political intellect, so much so that calling him “American” seems to do him another injustice.

[scroll to 00:40]

1. A regime that produces a death list of citizens abroad to be executed by its secret intelligence service, without arrest, without trial by a jury.
2. A regime that conducts surveillance at home and then uses that information to have an allied state abroad, one that flouts human rights, and tortures one of its citizens.
3. A regime that continues to operate secret detention centres where inmates are routinely denied the most basic rights to challenge the reasons why they have been imprisoned, without charge, and without representation.
4. A regime that is bent on maintaining war against other nations, including against peoples who never attacked it, thereby representing an obstacle to world peace.
5. A regime that routinely denies the legitimate claims and demands of its population, in order to favour a small cabal of elite bankers and industrialists, and thus also a regime that effectively renders elections little more than an expensive shadow play owned and operated by the billionaires who can engineer a win for their candidates.
6. A regime that persecutes those who believe that it is wrong to conceal the human rights abuses of their regime, that believe the world needs to know how that regime uses its troops to slaughter innocent civilians abroad, with neither reason nor remorse.
7. A regime that exercises pressure to round up the private details of Internet users, if they in any way conspired to reveal these facts.
8. A regime that harasses its citizens at airports, seizing their personal property, extracting information about a person’s activities and associations, and then targeting the person’s friends and colleagues, on the suspicion that the person may have peacefully opposed the state’s public lies.

(Answers: 1 – source, source, source; 2 – source, source, source, another example; 3 – source, source; 4 – example; 5 – example; 6 – example, example; 7 – source, source, source, source; 8 – example, example, example.)

Some might reply, “China,” except that points 1 and 4, at the very least, do not seem to readily apply. One might then have said, “Iran,” but only insofar as torture and net surveillance are concerned. In fact the list, as incomplete as it is, only describes the United States, and yesterday the U.S. government decided that the best way to respond to its overexposure by Wikileaks was to demonstrate and confirm that one’s lowest opinions of the regime, that the betrayal of democracy, the failure of liberalism, and the totalitarian bent of the state were all in fact correct. Consider what follows from such a realization, and ask if “working within the system” and “politics as usual” will suffice any more as anything other than naive desperation and self-deception. If such a list might have described to some a China or an Iran, then imagine what it says about the citizen that abides by it, knowing what we know, seeing what is put on display.

For those who have not yet had a chance to catch up with the news, yesterday Iceland Member of Parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir revealed via Twitter that the U.S. Department of Justice had gone to Twitter with a sealed order (hence, not to be communicated to the targets of their “criminal investigation”) demanding “all mailing addresses and billing information known for the user, all connection records and session times, all IP addresses used to access Twitter, all known email accounts, as well as the “means and source of payment,” including banking records and credit cards. It seeks all of that information for the period beginning November 1, 2009, through the present.” It was not just Jónsdóttir who was targeted, but also Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp, and Julian Assange, with the same information sought for Bradley Manning and for WikiLeaks’ Twitter account (neither Manning nor Assange have their own individual Twitter accounts). You can read the order itself here. Had Twitter not pushed back, and got the subpoena unsealed (read the order to unseal), thus permitting the targets to appeal the order, the information would have been quietly and secretly passed on to the U.S. Government, like perhaps other online media services have done already.

Those who have initially been targeted by this action–which seems to be part of an effort for the U.S. Government to actually do what every reasonable person advises it not to do, which is to pursue a case to criminalize the publishing of leaks (one example)–have offered a number of reasons of why they think this is happening. Jónsdóttir said “I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone.” She confirmed, “I have nothing to hide and have done nothing wrong,” but not for that reason would she just “hand my information over willingly to DoJ.” Appelbaum asked: “I wonder if the subpoena is merely a front to legally introduce evidence captured by the confirmed NSA wiretaps two blocks from Twitter HQ?” Gonggrijp noted, “I would have guessed that the US government has more discreet and effective ways of getting my IP-number and credit card details, which is essentially all this would get them.” He added: “Heaven knows how many places have received similar subpoenas and just quietly submitted all they had on me.” Wikileaks itself, via its Twitter account, had this to say: “Note that we can assume Google & Facebook also have secret US government subpeonas. They make no comment. Did they fold?”

Wikileaks rightly points out:

“If the Iranian govt asked for DMs of Iranian activists, State Dept would be all over this violation of ‘Internet freedom’.”

At what point does one stop making excuses for the system? At what point do analyses begin to reflect that liberalism is dead (it was a short-term experiment in hegemony), that the war is intended to be permanent, that speech has been distorted or prostituted by the state, that the project of economic development and modernization has failed the majority of humanity, everywhere, utterly? And if you don’t want to talk about these things, what are you talking about?

[In connection with this article, please see the associated file uploads: COMISAF ppt or COMISAF pdf; FET pptx or FET pdf; ISAF Engagement with Females PDF; and the previous post: "Recommended ISAF Guidance for Female Engagement Teams"]

“In the time of Xerxes, it is documented that the King took advice from his Queen which significantly impacted a political issue and prevented mass genocide. We are still in Persia. Conversations still go on between men and women behind closed doors. To understand those conversations and more importantly how we may be able to influence them we must be able to access the females. Female Engagement Teams [FET] is a proven concept…The Marines do this well…To garner the full benefit of FET throughout the country, comprehensive ISAF guidance needs to be issued for Female Engagement Teams.” Combined Joint Intelligence Operations Center—Afghanistan—Strategic Intelligence Update, 23 February 2010. Briefing titled Recommended ISAF Guidance for Female Engagement Teams. Quote from slide number 13, notes.

It is not every day that a U.S. commanding general like Stanley McChrystal (USA, Ret.) signs a directive  (dated 31 May 2010, Engagement With Afghan Females Directive) that is based in some measure on the story of Persian King Xerxes and Queen Esther. Who knew that the story would be used to support FET’s, another 21^st Century U.S. Army COIN initiative to extract information from the population in Afghanistan? FET’s target is the 50 percent of the Afghan population that is female.

And who knew that “We are still in Persia?” Perhaps the metaphor should be this: The USA is becoming like the Persian Empire and is destined for an ending that befalls all empires.

The Book of Esther tells a wonderful yet completely fictitious story of Xerxes’ Jewish Queen Esther who ultimately saved the Persian Empire’s Jewish community from extermination/genocide. In the fable, King Xerxes wife even managed to convince him to allow the Jewish community within the Persian Empire a two day window in which to take revenge against its enemies in any manner it sought fit. The story as “a historical record must be definitely rejected” according to the Jewish Encyclopedia.

So let’s cut the FET’s authors/briefers some slack and look to Xerxes’ “real” Queen Amastris. Would she have been the type of person who “behind closed doors” could convince King Xerxes to spare a hounded segment of his empire? Herodotus—not exactly objective in these matters– claimed that “Amastris was cruel and vindictive. On one occasion she sacrificed fourteen youths of the noblest Persian families to the god said to dwell beneath the earth. The tale of her horrible mutilation of the wife of Masistes [cut her breasts off among other body parts] gives us a lively picture of the intrigues and cruelties of a Persian harem.”

Hey! This is the USA! We destroy history by night and recreate it by day.

Triangulation Nation: Teenage Engagement Teams Next?

According to the authors of the briefing, men, women and children are part of the triangle of knowledge that must be targeted for information collection. “In Afghanistan, we observe rather consistent themes: Men interpret information and tell you what they think you want to hear. Women see and hear what goes on behind the walls. Children run free in the community—they see, watch and are involved in nearly every activity in the community.”

The briefing’s authors note that children are to be targeted but with care. That high care quotient is rather odd given that Afghan children/teenagers have to navigate cluster munitions, land mines, ordnance from air and land, and hostile occupants and locals. FET’s (and PRT’s, HTT’s, HET’s) would seem to be the least of their problems.

“Children are a delicate engagement endeavor as we do not want to put them at risk. However, approximately 45 percent of the population is under age 16, impressionable and vulnerable and a prime target for enemy force recruitment. The future of Afghanistan rests with children. If we don’t engage then the enemy will so they will need to be considered in our human terrain targeting construct.”

FET’s proponents even support using Afghan adolescent male’s attempts to impress/court females as a tool to extract information. In short, any and every activity is in-bounds for information exploitation.

FET’s Sponsored by the Human Terrain System

Just like the ISAF Guidance presentation referenced above, a similar briefing from HTS describing/selling FET’s was prepared by Dr. LisaRe Brooks and is dated 28 October 2010. Dr. Brooks is an HTS member located at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. She offers the rationale—minus Queen Esther’s support—for the FET’s effort.

“Female engagements are an integral component of COIN by embracing  and understanding the missing 50% of the population; building relationships with the Afghan women to earn their trust, give women confidence in GIRoA (Afghan government] and divide them from those that violate their constitutional rights; and empower them to have a voice and ownership in solutions for problems in their families, villages, country. The desired end states are these: women influence families/ communities not to support the Taliban; women influence others (women) to demand basic services from the local government (with coalition force support); women influence family and community members to support GIRoA; and women do not support/ enable the insurgency.”

Females need to be involved in global COIN, in Afghanistan, in Iraq (The Lioness Program for example) and anywhere else males are a few cans shy of a six pack when it comes to treating females and minorities like equivalent human beings. In fact, women or anyone else qualified for tooth or tail US government operations—military, intelligence, stability, diplomatic—should be in decision making or frontline positions. If the premise is “All of Government, All of Society” in the ongoing American War Effort against terror, drugs and crime—and protection of the US Homeland– then every American is needed in the cause (including 16 year olds).

Further, females are essential to the success of any COIN/collective intelligence gathering operation as is suggested by some commentary/observations in the two FET’s briefings mentioned in this article. Social sensitivity is a big part of the reason. In October 2010, “A  new study co-authored by Carnegie Mellon University, MIT and Union College researchers documented the existence of collective intelligence among groups of people who cooperate well, showing that such intelligence extends beyond the cognitive abilities of the groups’ individual members, and that the tendency to cooperate effectively is linked to the number of women in a group.”  It makes perfect sense.

What makes no sense, however, is the US Army’s rush to field an inconsistently trained FET’s capability. Given its deadly experience with its own Human Terrain System–in which recruiting, training and management crippled the initial concept—it seems ludicrous to put FET’s on the fast track.

Indeed, in a 7 December 2010 teleconference interview with Colonel Chadwick Clark of the COIN Training Center in Afghanistan and Colonel Sheila Scanlon, Advisor to the Afghanistan Minister of the Interior had some choice responses for their questioners. They took pains to stress that FET’s was all volunteer and that other countries operate FET’s in Afghanistan. Training was a focus area of the interview:

“Well, right now, there is no standardized training for the FETS. The FETs receive training based on how they’re going to be employed. The Marine Female Engagement Teams that are being employed in Helmand in Regional Command Southwest go through four months of training prior to their employment. The Female Engagement Teams that are being employed in other places go through training that’s commensurate with how they’re going to be employed. I know that’s not a good answer, but really the training varies from anywhere from four months to a week’s worth of training.

We’re taking a look at is standardizing some of the training for all the Female Engagement Teams that are going to be employed in here. So probably sometime around the end of January [2011] we’ll have a program of instruction put together for all the Female Engagement Teams that are going to be employed, and it’s going to be focused more on understanding the operational environment and understanding their role in a Female Engagement Team.”

Currently, according to statements in the December 2010 interview, there are a total of 40 female engagement teams in Afghanistan with a minimum of two females per team. “So there are at least 80 trained females in the country right now, but 40 teams employed in each one of the regional commands. There are 17 in Regional Command Southwest, 5 in the South, 11 in the East, 6 in the North and 1 in the West.” A map of the FET’s locations is contained in Dr. Brooks briefing referenced above.