The real “problem” of the conflict involving Wikileaks is the problem posed by active, independent citizens standing up to the national security state, and winning. For all of the complaints, insults, and angry assertions issued from various branches of the U.S. government, stop and take note: the U.S. has yet to issue any kind of arrest warrant for Julian Assange or anyone else involved with Wikileaks. The U.S. government literally does not have a case, because it does not even have a law for prosecuting Wikileaks. That is how stymied that state finds itself. Needless to say, those who want Wikileaks to be stopped, have to stoop to much lower depths, using smears, personal insults, name calling, mad accusations, rumour, gossip, etc. The bizarre and highly questionable allegations of rape and sexual coercion play right into their hands. That is not the crux of the conflict involving Wikileaks: the crux remains that a national security state engaged in war cannot control what we know and what we think.

A secondary, though not unimportant problem, is how activists organize to confront that state, and its supportive media. Matching centralized power with centralized activism has always been a recipe for disaster, unless state power is in serious decline, suffers from a lack of legitimacy, loyalty and resources, and is up against rare figures like Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Ché” Guevara. Personalizing what ought to be a wide, diffuse, and anonymous network helps to activate the possibility of decapitation. While centralization and personalization are important enough problems, failing to heed critical advice is another. This is what Julian Assange told Al Jazeera, as reported by AFP:

Australian intelligence services had warned WikiLeaks of “dirty tricks” before Swedish authorities issued a short-lived arrest warrant for founder Julian Assange over a rape claim, he says.

“We were warned on the 11th (of August) by Australian intelligence that we should expect this sort of thing,” Assange said on Monday in a telephone interview with broadcaster Al-Jazeera from a secret location in Sweden.

“We were warned about dirty tricks and specifically that they would be of a type like this,” the 39-year-old Australian said.

Right, so you were warned of this on the 11th, and three days later you admit to getting into bed with someone you hardly knew, and then three days after that you did it again, with someone you knew even less and who clearly was eager to insinuate herself into your inner circle at any cost. So if you had this warning, why did you ignore it? Is one allowed to ask these questions without being accused of being a part of a smear campaign?

The point is not to get personal, but to take away some important lessons from this. Diffuse, decentralize, depersonalize. Be suspicious of “new friends.” When the world’s biggest military superpower, and a sinister organization like the CIA is likely on your tail, don’t put yourself in compromising situations. Honey traps? Fine. Suck on sour.

Likewise, if Wikileaks desperately needed a contact point for the media, all sorts of alternatives are available that do not risk this kind of damnable distraction, and this juvenile game of perverse smear and exhausting counter-smear, that we have engaged in for the last few weeks. Hire a public relations firm. Hire struggling actors, using false names, who can improvise. Have more than one representative speak. Having just one speaking can make that one look big (or vainglorious as some attackers assert), but it can also make an organization look smaller and weaker as a result. Supporters can become tarnished too, as I have been, labeled a member of the “cult” surrounding Assange. The key point is that you are not the state, so don’t mirror it: don’t be too bureaucratic, too devoted to leadership, too fixated on the media.

Why is this even being discussed here? Yesterday an article was published by The Daily Beast, that has really rattled Wikileaks supporters, or some of them anyway. The article by Philip Shenon, no mere hack, “Civil War at Wikileaks,” brings internal dissent out into public view. The person in focus here is Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of parliament in Iceland, and reportedly one of the people who assisted in editing the Collateral Murder video. Some have chosen to dismiss this outright, as a fabrication, an interview that never happened. She is being asked by other Wikileaks supporters  if it is a valid and accurate reflection of her views. I think the article makes some good points, and some really dreadful, stupid points.

I agree with Jónsdóttir if she indeed said: “These personal matters should have nothing to do with WikiLeaks. I have strongly urged him to focus on the legalities that he’s dealing with and let some other people carry the torch.” I also agree with the anonymous Wikileaks organizer quoted in the article, about the problems of centralized control, which he/she says resulted in internal upheaval and the site being shutdown as a way to send a message to Assange.

But clearly Jónsdóttir made an idiotic, totally reprehensible remark when she said (if she said) about Julian Assange: “And he’s a classic Aussie in the sense that he’s a bit of a male chauvinist.” It is an ignorant, stereotypical statement that maligns all Australian males, and she uses it to indict Assange as if the rape charges were beyond question. As a classic male Aussie, he must be a rapist. If anyone had countered with: “Scandinavian women are a bit sluttish” or “Swedish women are uptight, neurotic, manic depressives,” one can imagine the shrill responses. Misandry is a poor defense against misogyny.

For that alone Jónsdóttir should retract her awful remarks and issue an immediate apology. They further confuse the issues, and further help to advance the smears. We have seen this before on The Daily Beast, as when they published this petty piece of ad hominem hyperbole by one Tunku Varadarajan–of the Hoover Institution, no surprise, and document thieves in their own right–who in the most bigoted and stereotyping fashion wrote of Assange’s “languorous, very un-Australian limbs.” Jónsdóttir’s remarks place her in those ranks, they reinforce the very problem she claimed to be complaining about, and they further distract from what is at hand: how best to openly confront the national security state, and keep on winning. I don’t have all the answers, but I know what some of the wrong ones are.

Sources report that Senior Social Scientist Montgomery McFate resigned her post with the US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) within the last ten days. Observers say the “category of resignation is similar to that of former HTS program manager Steve Fondacaro in that all assume it was a ‘forced revision’  or ‘let go’ as is common within the HTS program when an employee is released.

McFate’s position is now advertised as vacant said sources.

Observers express concern that some individuals who were appointed/hired by Fondacaro and McFate at Oyster Point, Virginia–to act on their behalf in the Social Science Directorate—will not function in the best interests of the program.

Meanwhile, others report that in the HTS training class known as “Research Methods” some instructors have told students that it is acceptable “to distribute blank journals to Afghan villagers and to have them  note their impressions of what is going on in their country.” The problem is, according to sources, that the journal instructions are in English and, of course, most Afghans do not speak English and are often illiterate even in their own language.

Observers say Social Scientists are in such short supply in HTS, that they are being jumped ahead of their designated training classes and are being deployed early minus proper training to survive in a war zone. Uniformed military personnel who have “done the time” in country express bewilderment at command decisions that lead to “field training” conducted by inexperienced National Guardsmen such as the Texas Army National Guard.

Some in the “Guard” have done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and have the credentials for training. But some have just arrived in-country and are not qualified for the effort

Sources say, “active duty personnel find  HTS is useless, and only serves to extend the line to the DFAC (Dining Hall).”

For as much serendipity as conventional, on the ground, ethnography is known to entail, the “approach” discussed here is barely an approach at all: it was unprovoked, unplanned, without coordination, being neither methodical nor systematic.  It became a collaboration, out of mutual interest, from distinct and separate positions, but there was no agreement about the direction it would take. And, it was public from start to finish, hence the claim to “open source.”

Ignoring Johannes Fabian’s argument for ethnography as commentary, and fixing attention on the lack of systematization, some will want to argue that there is nothing “ethnographic” about this, and I am even prepared to concede the point because it costs me so little. The real story here is not about ethnography, which is simply a vehicle, but rather the intended destination: understanding neocolonialism today. Had the intended destination been an ethnographic approach to understanding ethnography, rather circular, the likely motivation would have been yet another defensive validation of “the anthropological contribution,” something that interests me almost not at all, given its paralysis-inducing, conservative introversion.

This Moment Was Brought to You by Twitter

Let me add a few more notes about Twitter (to the dread of former students who went through my “Twitter course”). The primary venue for this encounter was Twitter. These days I am probably more active on the Twitter parallel to this site, writing more and more regularly than on this site (our other parallel sites, on MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, are considerably less noisy, for now). The commentary and exchange of views and information is also much more intense and regular in Twitter than we find here. In addition, the wide ring of interlocutors is a different one, corresponding mostly with journalists (independent or professional), activists, and others, primarily in the Middle East, India, Africa, and Latin America, many of whom have provided materials and other assistance to ZA. It’s a place where I can freely switch to writing in Italian, or Spanish, and continue dialogue (or shouting matches) with others. My video remixes continue even there, pulling as needed short video segments to illustrate different points in a debate. So in the debate about the rape allegations against Julian Assange of Wikileaks, I would insert a humorous clip to make a critical point about the Swedish police, which appears to be led by Frank Drebin of Police Squad (video clip), or in the personal smears against Assange and excessive deference to his accusers, I was reminded of this scene from A Passage to India (video clip). Had I wanted, I could have waited several weeks to mount another satirical video collage to present on this site, more complete, less spontaneous, and the original motivations and context obscured.

The message here is a simple one: you can do some things with Twitter that you cannot do with ordinary blogging, not to the same effect, with the same audiences and partners, and not in the same context of spontaneous collaboration. Twitter, like blogging, is not something that I recommend to all anthropologists–not at all. You have to know what you are doing with these tools, and why you want to use them.

Happy Independence Day?

The “story” begins like this. On the blog of a friend and past collaborator with ZA, Guanaguanare: The Laughing Gull, Guanaguanare posted this cutting music video by Fela Kuti, “Colo-Mentality,” as a tribute to Trinidad & Tobago’s Independence Day (celebrated 31 August)–along with the transcript of the words which you can view there, for a post appropriately titled, “Independence?…Whatever“, and I recommend listening to this song:

I related the disenchanted, been-around-twice attitude to recent events in Trinidad, since the new regime of Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar came into office in late May of this year. Among her first acts? Importing two Canadians, under very dubious circumstances, to lead the Police Force with highly inflated salaries, and even more inflated promises that these two foreigners would, by some magic of their northern superiority, put an end to a crime wave that Trinidadians themselves have never defeated. For those following the story, the racism and self-deprecation embedded in the story is astounding, and yet normal. It is a classic piece in a tale of neocolonialism, of self-rule self-defeated by those who serve their selves to alien others.

Also, I related this to other videos and transcriptions posted by Guanaguanare in recent months, of direct relevance (full transcriptions available there), each of these posted to Twitter by me. The first two are by a rare phenomenon, a Trinidadian punk band I have had the pleasure of corresponding with on YouTube and Twitter, Anti-Everything, breaking the extant colonial laws with their repeated use of the word “fuck,” a word banned in Trinidad. The third is by Trinidad’s leading living legend of social and political commentary in calypso:

THE OPPOSITION
The opposition says, “Vote for change.”
But we know better, because they’re just the fucking same
They have no new ideas, all the policies will remain
Words are only rhetoric, they’re spoken all in vain
And this is [they are] doomed to fail. [Repeat]

I can sound just like you, if I really wanted to
It’s really quite simple, if you follow this principle
Take a few key words strung together in a speech
Which you then preach like you care – education, heath care
Take a long……dramatic pause.
And vaguely criticize the laws
That you say will be rejected, if you get elected
Never mention strategy to move forward from here…continued

TRINIDAD SUCKS
1,2, …forged from the love of
liberty. In the fires of gas and oil.

There’s been no real democracy since colonial history,
When the campaign platform is a fete.
So salute to the illusion that we’re free
Vote for the motion because…

The government is corrupt
And the opposition just a bunch of crooks
And in case you did not realize
…our whole country is fucked

So make this your new anthem, and burn your national flag.

You take a few racist pigs and you put them in a race,
While the cost of living rises everyday.
They couldn’t balance a budget on their heads,
All the citizens of the country suffer when…continued

THE MADMAN’S RANT
Vote for we and we will set you free!
Anywhere you turn somebody chanting to we
Somebody promising jobs for all
Some renting gun to make other people bawl
But somebody promising more police car
Somebody going to take de country far
Somebody putting all de bandits away
We say, “If dey do the crime, dey going to damn well pay!”
But somebody promising human rights
While somebody threatening to put out yuh lights
The mortuary full with little Trinidad boys
A bullet start to whine and put an end to their joy
Now dey lying tall fuh dey Mama to mourn
Dey Nike gone, dey gold teeth gone
You see dey, dey want dey pocket full with blue, blue silk
Dey want dey statue drinking full cream milk
The little red silk is not dey true friend
De blue one had two extra nought on de end
So ah tag on dey toe is now dey ticket to hell
But look where we reach, well, well, well, well, well, well.

Ah hear a madman bawl as he spread out on a wall
He say, “Dis is it, dis is it, dis is it, I’ve been hit!
No time to give up brother, no time to quit!”…continued

The disillusionment with the imported, transplanted, imposed, ossified Westminster system, where elections…like in most liberal democracies, have become a game with outcomes favouring the elites and continuing the same system of oppression. That feeling, that analysis, is out there. I didn’t invent it…that’s one point about this open source ethnography.

Neocolonialism: The Twitter Exchange

The story began in Trinidad, now we see how it continued into Twitter, and then involved two more Caribbean speakers–another Trinidadian (TriniWarao) and a former boxer in Curaçao (SablikaTriumph)–an Afghan living in Australia (Hameed), and two more Canadians (Wayne Borean and “Not Prime Minister Harper”). In the list below, I am “1D4TW” (One Day for the Watchman–from a Trinidadian proverb).

1D4TW: “Fela Kuti – Colo-Mentality” (linking to Guanaguanare) ( http://bit.ly/bAvYRS ) 9:07 PM Sep 1st

1D4TW: Neo-colonialism: where governance becomes a mere mechanism for adjusting one’s nation to foreign demands #Independence 9:08 PM Sep 1st

1D4TW: Neo-colonialism: where elections are about selecting the next local manager to answer to foreign trends and impositions. #Independence 9:09 PM Sep 1st [auto retweeted by _the_mad_hatter] [auto retweeted by pmoharper]

1D4TW: Neo-colonialism: who wants “food sovereignty”? What matters is prices, not local production. Eating shit now. #Independence 9:09 PM Sep 1st

•••••••

manual retweet by sablikatriumph: “@1D4TW: Neo-colonialism: who wants “food sovereignty”? What matters is prices, not local production. Eating shit now. #Independence” #cur10 about 22 hours ago

•••••••

1D4TW: Neo-colonialism: when we get to be in charge of law and order, and beating up little black boys is now our charge. #Independence 9:10 PM Sep 1st

1D4TW: Neo-colonialism: the colonizer withdrew because he was fully confident that we could now continue colonizing ourselves. #Independence 9:11 PM Sep 1st [auto retweeted by hameed_a]

1D4TW: …and yet some academics cling to this fad label “post-colonialism” while taking possession of anti-colonial writers, like Fanon, etc. 9:13 PM Sep 1st

1D4TW: When you go back to calling it what it is, neo-colonialism, imperialism, and post-independence, give me a call… 9:13 PM Sep 1st

•••••••

TriniWarao: @1D4TW If “little black boys” includes disadvantaged “easy targets” of all ethnic backgrounds, I agree. http://tinyurl.com/28yf5ym 11:00 PM Sep 1st

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Couldn’t have said it better. http://tinyurl.com/26bzhww 11:04 PM Sep 1st

TriniWarao: @1D4TW It’s downright depressing but neo-colonialism leaves us believing that imitation flatters the mimic. http://tinyurl.com/27m33po 11:11 PM Sep 1st [auto retweeted by 1D4TW]

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Yes, neo-colonialism is when someone else’s destiny is your master. http://tinyurl.com/2d558g5 11:17 PM Sep 1st [auto retweeted by 1D4TW]

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Neo-colonialism is being condemned to repeat kindergarten ad infinitum…and liking it. 11:18 PM Sep 1st [auto retweeted by 1D4TW]

•••••••

manual retweet by sablikatriumph: “@TriniWarao: @1D4TW Neo-colonialism is being condemned to repeat kindergarten ad infinitum…and liking it.” #Curacao #cur10 about 22 hours ago

•••••••

TriniWarao: @1D4TW X agric chemicals, X mega-farms. Go 4 increase in ecologically sustainable, diversified, smaller holdings. http://tinyurl.com/2cgl9m4 about 24 hours ago

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Neo-colonialism is never having to say you’re sorry. Without real ownership there is no responsibility. about 23 hours ago [retweeted by 1D4TW]

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Neo-colonialism? CCJ [meant 2 replace London-based Privy Council as region's final court] is under threat. http://tinyurl.com/27d5nfl about 23 hours ago [auto retweeted by 1D4TW]

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Neo-colonialism: Conclusive diagnosis can be made post mortem. Autopsy reveals skull contents of 2 popsicle sticks & a rubber band. about 23 hours ago [auto retweeted by 1D4TW]

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Neo-colonialism = linguistic insecurity. Example: Insert ‘h’ where none exists. IndHependence?? THechnically, yes. THruthfully? NO. about 23 hours ago [auto retweeted by 1D4TW]

•••••••

1D4TW: @TriniWarao Great tweets, we should have started #neocolonialism about 24 hours ago

•••••••

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Thanks. See the results also in myself obviously and thankfully cannot pretend to be completely blind to it. #neocolonialism about 22 hours ago

TriniWarao: @1D4TW Kwame Nkrumah: The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state. #neocolonialism about 22 hours ago [auto retweeted by 1D4TW]

•••••••

1D4TW: @TriniWarao Thanks, that last one was great. #necolonialism about 23 hours ago

•••••••

sablikatriumph: @1D4TW Big UP slaying #neocolonialism all day everyday about 15 hours ago

It’s About Neocolonialism

We all struggle with these overlapping, mutually complementing cognate terms that refer to mutually reinforcing processes, terms such as imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. We’ve been through this already, in the first part of the Zero Series (to be continued, I promise). The sense one gets of neocolonialism from all of the above, scattered across blogs, YouTube, and Twitter, and spread among commentators and repeaters from Canada, Trinidad,  Curaçao, Afghanistan, and Australia–is that neocolonialism is internalized and localized, a variant and complement of global imperialism. It’s what makes imperialism work, at the local level, a way of articulating two distinct arenas and fields of interest. The prime actors in the neocolonial setting are not necessarily foreign (though they can be, in the case of imported experts, visiting IMF delegations, and over-sized foreign embassies), nor are the nation-states in question any longer formal political colonies (in terms of tissue thin charters and conventions). They are now post-independent, in more ways than one. The critique of neocolonialism is about a vision of self-rule that is more like management of locals on behalf of foreign interests, with some locals of course benefiting immensely from such arrangements. Ultimately it is about the continuation of colonialism by other means, a force felt, observed, and spoken about worldwide.

Image via Wikipedia

Imperial Brains Blown Out

When you’re wounded an’ left on Afghanistan’s plains
An’ the women come out to cut up your remains
Jus’ roll to your rifle an’ blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.–Rudyard Kipling

Last night Senator John McCain tweeted, “I believe the President’s artificial date for withdrawal from Afghanistan will doom us to failure–our withdrawal must be conditions based only.” We can be certain that withdrawal will indeed be “conditions based,” and one of the conditions will be the defeat and humiliation of another demented superpower in decline, whose hands have long been bloodied in Afghanistan. What McCain doesn’t need to add is that he is quite content with the pace of current American and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is averaging about three troops per day, exiting in caskets. Troops walking out of Afghanistan alive? Now that is what McCain objects to.

Yet, General Petraeus, in his recent propaganda campaign, went out on a very thin limb and claimed that the U.S./NATO was making “slow progress” in Afghanistan. What he does not add is that the Taleban are making very fast progress, having more money, more weapons, more fighters, and killing more Western troops than ever before…and this during the U.S. “surge.”

In honour of contemporary neo-Soviet political dinosaurs such as Senator McCain, and his fellow oligarchs in the military, we present three full length movies below about the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan from 27 December 1979 to 15 February 1989. These are the three most prominent, and we have the benefit of watching the complete movies (if you have not seen them already). For some original Soviet documents on the Afghan war, see the National Security Archive’s “The Soviet Experience in Afghanistan.” For a detailed media time line tracking U.S. covert involvement in Afghanistan, starting years before the arrival of Soviet troops, click here, and you will see details on CIA support for leaders whose names are those currently associated with the “Taleban insurgency.”

The Beast (1988, USA)

Directed by Kevin Reynolds, and written by William Mastrosimone, The Beast is in English and Pashto, and tells the story of Soviet failure through the experience of a tank crew in Afghanistan, that loses itself, and is hunted by mujahidin. The tank commander, Daskal, is brilliantly played by George Dzundza, a despotic commander who fought as a child in the battle of Stalingrad (nicknamed “tank boy”). We witness various Soviet atrocities, and follow two different sets of protagonists: the Russians in their tank, and the band of mujahidin, who are shown in a sympathetic light and whose thirst for justice we are made to share.

The full series of segments that make up the film should advance automatically. Should the movie stop at the end of the first segment, you can watch the complete playlist here.

Afghan Breakdown/Afganskiy Izlom (1990, Italy, Russia)

This version of the film is in Italian and subtitled in Japanese. Of the three films, this is my favourite. The movie was directed by Vladimir Bortko, and written by Leonid Bogachuk, Aleksandr Chervinsky, Mikhail Leshchinsky, and Ada Petrova. Michele Placido, an Italian television star, played the main protagonist, Major Bandura, a commander of a unit of Soviet paratroopers. The movie was based on research done in Kabul and Kandahar in 1988, by the movie director. The movie is set in the very late part of the Soviet occupation, and ends with withdrawal by air. Bandura and his fellow Soviets enjoy, as they describe, a lifestyle of comfort, privilege and luxury that they could never dream of back home. Indeed, as they begin to pack up, several of the key characters grow increasingly melancholic, dreading the return to their tiny apartments in Moscow. They make use of local markets in Afghanistan to buy various Western consumer items. The film ends with Bandura’s unit attacking a village, and being exterminated in return. You can read the complete story, and still possibly be able to follow the film even if you know neither Italian nor Japanese.

The full series of segments that make up the film should advance automatically. Should the movie stop at the end of the first segment, you can watch the complete playlist here.

The 9th Company/9 Рота (2005, Russia, Finland, Ukraine)

A 2005 Russian box office hit, this movie is in Russian and subtitled in English. The movie is based on the history of the actual 9th Company, and we follow recruits from Russia to a training camp in Uzbekistan, to Bagram air base and then onto Khost where they are required to defend a mountain (Hill 3234) overlooking supply routes (sound familiar?). The movie was directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk and written by Yuriy Korotkov. This movie is also set in 1988. Different reviews tell us that Soviet war veterans found several inaccuracies in this film, and tended to prefer Afghan Breakdown above.

The full series of segments that make up the film should advance automatically. Should the movie stop at the end of the first segment, you can watch the complete playlist here.

If you see, or have seen, all three films, please let us know what you thought and which of the three you liked most.

Recent Related Articles:

• Nation: How the Soviet Army Crushed Afghanistan (time.com)
• Barack Obama is facing the “Gorbachev dilemma” (rt.com)
• NATO chief hopes for Nov Afghanistan handover deal: report (reuters.com)
• With U.S. Approval, Moscow Heads Back to Afghanistan (time.com)
• NATO says Poland must finish job in Afghanistan (reuters.com)
• 6 reviews of The Beast (rateitall.com)

A modest degree of competence in the ethnology of Afghanistan leads to the conclusion that the “tribe” (recall the advisory “It’s the tribes stupid!”, The Atlantic, November 2007), the chief target of HTS and its imperial umbrella will never die. Everything the American savage killing machine encounters in Afghanistan is going to be loaded with a bomb—from the goat in the local market to cherry pie to Amy’s “provocative top” to the Kuchi camel to the turban and beard of the village leader to the Zadran boy who is cracking pine nuts. No matter how many and what kind of Callahans the HTS parades in Afghanistan and no matter what promises HTS makes and who it bribes, resistance to the contaminating presence of the freaked out American war machine will be lurking in every corner of inhabited Afghanistan.

Edward “Ted” Callahan is the newest American “authority” on Afghanistan. He claims a colorful background for himself. He must be an expert multi-tasker. Ted is or is imagined by the GIs in Afghanistan to be a spy, a detective, a member of the Special Forces, a CIA agent, a journalist, mountaineer, mountain and river guide. All or some of these he might be. He also claims to have conducted “research” and climbed mountains in northern Afghanistan. He has worked for Greg Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute, the organization bent on radicalizing women’s culture in Afghanistan. Mortenson, author of the Three Cups of Tea, also engaged in mountaineering in South Asia to prior embarking on his culture cleansing project in Afghanistan.

Ted Callahan is quite clear about his politics. He says “I consider this war to be justified.” But he is dead wrong in hallucinating: “my earlier field research of 18 months taught me that the majority (of) Afghans feels (sic) the same”. Ted Callahan, where and when did you do “field research” in Afghanistan? What and where is/are the ethnographic, social and cultural unit(s) of analysis(es) on which you base this conclusion? You claim to have visited northern Afghanistan. Take us to the specific location(s) where you conducted “field research.” Please document for us the specific dates of your ethnographic researches in these locations. You seem to have learned all the popular tricks used by many Euro-American ethnographers of Afghanistan for constructing academic, professional, and political capitals out of the concoctive mysteries of “Being There” doing research among the Afghan Others.  The only people who justify the American “war” are the rank and file members of the Northern Alliance who pimped and scouted for the occupation of Afghanistan. Were Callahan’s mountain climbing trips to northern Afghanistan hosted by the Northern Alliance? The overwhelming majority of the people of Afghanistan, the region, the Muslim World, the people of the United States and the global system believe that this war is an unjustified enterprise against preindustrial Muslim Afghanistan initiated and maintained by fascist Zionists and the weapon making industries of the United States and Israel.

Callahan, is a “pride and joy” graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at Boston University. The department houses the government funded American Institute of Afghanistan Studies. Ted Callahan imagines himself as an “amateur” “ethnographer” doing “ethnography” while speaking to the ethical standards of institutional anthropology. But his competence in anthropology and ethnography is doubtful. Claiming the ability to speak Chinese and having graduate anthropology courses at Boston University on his transcript do not produce these qualifications. His claim about “research” among the Kirghiz pastoralists and other ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan lacks cultural, temporal, and spatial specificity. Let us have a close look at selected features of his ethnographic tour in eastern Afghanistan.

Dari is the lingua franca of Afghanistan. It is the language of state bureaucracy and the market. Every ethnic group in Afghanistan (including Zadran and Kuchi Paxtuns) except the Farsiwan (Ethnic Dari speakers) speak two languages—their native/mother language and Dari. Thus, a person with competence in speaking Dari will be able to engage Paxtuns everywhere in Dari. Ted Callahan claims to speak Dari. Yet he is accompanied by an interpreter named “Rex”. We are not told about the cultural background of Rex. Nor do we know the linguistic mediums used in Callahan’s interactions with the Zadrans and Kuchis.

With his Dari competence Callahan could have interacted without an interpreter with the local Zadran and Kuchi population. Why then the presence of Rex, the interpreter? Here is a stark collision between Callahan’s claimed linguistic competence and local cultural and linguistic reality. Callahan writes: “As soon as they (the Kochis) noticed that I understand, they’ll lift their hands and say: ‘Azeemat’, Well done”. But, the morpheme ‘azeemat (in Dari and Paxtu [from the Arabic root ‘azm, firm resolution, determination]) means departure, leaving, starting to leave. The accompanying body language (lifted hands) underscores this equivalent of “goodbye.” The Kuchis say goodbye, Callahan thinks he has done well! In the absence of adequate local cultural competence, especially linguistic competence, how can an ethnographer, especially an anthropological ethnographer, meaningfully and properly process the surrounding social and cultural multilayered complexity?

The pastoral nomads of Afghanistan produce sheep and goats. There are no cattle breeding pastoral nomads in Afghanistan or South Asia. Cattle is produced by sedentary agriculturalists in this region. That the Kuchis in eastern Afghanistan “move from pasture to pasture with their cattle” is a groundless ethnographic assertion.

In the early 1970s a major development project was undertaken in Paktia province (the location of Callahan’s detective work) with the help of the West German government. German social scientists connected with this project have written extensively about social and cultural conditions in the Khost area. It appears that Callahan is unaware of these writings.  The anthropologist Alef-Shah Zadran (PhD, Anthropology, SUNY-Buffalo, 1977, currently with Kabul University) wrote his doctoral thesis about  Almara, a Paxtun village, fifteen miles east of Khost. Zadran spent twelve continuous months during 1975-1976 in Almara.

Ted Callahan’s “business plan” for the marketing of Zadran Jalghoza (pine nuts) in “New York specialty shops” is somewhat lagging behind the fast moving dynamics of regional and global markets. Starting in early 1990s, Zadrani Jalghoza (and other Afghan dried fruits) have been imported to the United States. Jalghoza is packaged and marketed in Afghan and South Asian food stores in the United States from coast to coast. The importer and packager is “AHU BARAH” (telephone no. 516-396-0710). Needless to say, shelled pine nuts are a standard item is Middle Eastern and South Asian cuisine.

If Forward Operating Base Salerno near Khost includes “Amy” with “tight jeans and provocative top” who “in one and a half years…has absorbed an encyclopedic knowledge about this area which comes flowing out of her mouth,” why inconvenience a raw youth like Ted Callahan in such dangerous detective work? Why not have one of those Afghan interpreters (“terps”) get the answers for the commanding officers and/or Amy from the Zadran or Kuchi subjects. Perhaps Afghans terps are not trustworthy. Even then, why is the presence of someone with Ted Callahan’s qualifications necessary in HTS operations in Paktia?

The people of Afghanistan have not and do not “despise” the Hazaras. Yes, they are a numerical minority in the country and have been on the receiving end of individual discrimination, not necessarily institutional discrimination. However, over the last thirty years this numerical minority has become politically quite powerful at the center and in their highland periphery. Currently the Hazaras are envied in Afghanistan for their ethnic and political solidarity and outspoken presence in the Kabul government.

To close, let us ask: what is anthropological about Ted Callahan’s thinking and writing? Nothing. What is the ethnographic authority of his detective work in Paktia, Afghanistan? None. No anthropologist worth her/his salt and no properly educated and experienced student of Culture would want to be associated with the HTS, with minds like Montgomery McFate, David Petraeus, Michael Howard, and the encyclopedic woman with the provocative top even if one was utterly desperate for company.

Selected Sources:

Ted Callahan wins American Institute of Afghanistan Studies first AIAS Student Paper Prize:

http://www.caorc.org/highlights/aias/aias-2005-10-06.htm

Ted Callahan bio on Altitude Junkies:

http://www.altitudejunkies.com/tedcallahan.html

Boston University Anthropology profile of Edward (“Ted”) Callahan Jr:

http://www.bu.edu/anthrop/graduate/students/e-callahan/

Ted Callahan bio on Mountain Madness (scroll down):

http://www.mountainmadness.com/about/guides.cfm

Ted Callahan’s letter to the New York Times:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901E5D81531F936A35751C1A96F9C8B63

Congressional Research Service: “Afghanistan: U.S. Foreign Assistance” (citing Callahan on page 5):

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/139236.pdf

Of Related Interest (recommended):

Three Cups of Tea for Imperialism! Greg Mortenson’s Participatory Militarism
http://www.counterpunch.org/barker08102010.html

Internal documents from an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, finding that millions of dollars from Israel were used to plant stories in the U.S. media, especially The Atlantic Magazine. These documents were released to the national archive and provided by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. The main body at the focus of the documents is the American Zionist Council, parent of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Many thanks to Jamil Hanifi for recommending this video.

Over this past weekend, the Swedish Prosecutor’s Office issued an arrest warrant for Julian Assange, on the grounds of rape and molestation, and then in a matter of mere hours withdrew the warrant for rape–he had been arrested in absentia in fact, so that announcing he was wanted, publicly, is at best bizarre.

Since then, the two women behind the allegations have become the focus of some of the heated discussion, with the identity of at least one of them now known (she too is in Twitter), and the deliberately distracting “big debate” has degenerated into one of whether the women are being “smeared,” or really are tools of the CIA, or whether Wikileaks supporters are “cultish.” None of this ought to matter either–it is entirely irrelevant. Understanding what Assange means by “dirty tricks” does not require that we lambast the women making the accusations.

This is what I think the discussion ought to be about. My premise is that, yes, the U.S. government will attempt anything to silence, marginalize, or put a stop to Wikileaks, and has said so. Secondly, whether directly or indirectly, the U.S. has applied pressure to the Swedish government, or whether the Swedish government pressured itself to please an ally, is almost unquestionably the case. Having stated the premise, let’s replay the key, known facts, and see what they add up to. All of the sources for these items have been compiled, with annotations, here, and some below.

In summary, this is the argument that I thinks makes best use of the available facts:

1. The U.S. government was glad to discover that Wikileaks was, at first, not protected by Swedish law, and not registered for constitutional protection.
2. But then Wikileaks obtained such protection, with Assange hired as a columnist, and the site to be hosted by the Pirate Party, an official political party with representation in the Swedish parliament.
   
3. The U.S. was “motivating” at least some allies to take measures against Wikileaks, with Australia known to have taken action, and promising more. The news spreads for governments as it does for the rest of us.
   
4. The Swedish Prosecutor’s Office is the legal arm of the Swedish state, a contact point with the U.S. Whether or not the Swedish government, whose territory was playing host to Julian Assange and Wikileaks, was directly contacted, we do not know, and it may not matter. In any event, justice systems correspond and converse with each other on an international level, on a regular basis, on any of a number of concerns ranging from copyright laws, trade regulations, criminal prosecutions, treaties and conventions, diplomatic affairs, etc. To assume that there was no possibility of discussion of the Wikileaks matter between the justice systems of the U.S. and Sweden would be truly remarkable. That there was some conversation between the two is in fact an assumption, but by no means an outlandish or unreasonable one.
   
5. Had Julian Assange been arrested, it’s possible that the US could have asked Sweden to extradite him.
   
6. That Prosecutor’s office failed to act in a credible and appropriate manner, thus raising everyone’s suspicion, including that of a former Chief Prosecutor who has called for an investigation. Something in this case is not right…and it happens to be “not right” in a very high profile case, which makes the moves even more questionable. The prosecutor who issued the warrant, and spoke to the press, certainly knew who Julian Assange is, and what was at stake with his arrest.
   
7. The real story is what happened in the Prosecutor’s Office…the women who voiced their accusations are almost entirely irrelevant here. Both they and/or Assange are likely to have unwittingly created an opportunity that others could then exploit.
   
8. The Prosecutor’s spokeswoman tells Al Jazeera that she has “no idea” if a set up was involved.

Watch this incredible interview on Al Jazeera:

Evidence of U.S. intent against Wikileaks:

On 19 August 2010, John Pilger reported the following:

In Washington, I interviewed a senior official in the defence department and asked: “Can you give a guarantee that the editors of WikiLeaks and the editor-in-chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?” He replied: “It’s not my position to give guarantees on anything.” He referred me to the “ongoing criminal investigation” of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to “fatally marginalise” WikiLeaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.

Previously, when asked if the Pentagon had any authority to act if WikiLeaks ignored its demands, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell responded: “We will cross the next bridge when we come to it. … If doing the right thing isn’t good enough for them, we will figure out what alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing.”

We know that the FBI is already involved in investigating Wikileaks and its supporters who facilitated any of the leaks of which Pvt. Bradley Manning is accused. Also, “the Pentagon announced it had launched a criminal investigation into the leak.” The Pentagon asserted that it believed the second tranche of documents to be released could potentially be “more explosive” and damaging to U.S. interests. Tracking down and detaining members of the Wikileaks crew is a priority–we see this from 31 July 2010: “Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Army then told him [Jacob Appelbaum] he was not under arrest but was being detained, the sources said. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is…”

We also know that the U.S. urged allies to crack down on WikiLeaks (10 August 2010), and as we read this news, so does the Swedish government, assuming that it was not directly contacted:

There seemed to be some relief for the U.S. in the news that the WikiLeaks website might not be protected by Swedish Law (06 August 2010): “Rules on source protection are written into the Swedish constitution and effectively block individuals and government agencies from attempting to uncover journalists’ sources. Revealing the identity if sources who wish to remain anonymous is a punishable offence….But the law only applies to websites or publications that possess a special publishing license granting them constitutional protection, and WikiLeaks has not acquired the requisite paperwork.”

While we are also told that, “Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Anders Jorle said the government had not been contacted by the United States about the WikiLeaks servers and had no plans to get involved in the matter,” the same spokesman then added, “Any decision to intervene would have to be taken by Sweden’s justice system.”

The Problem of Sweden as a Safe Haven:

But then what happened? Any legal avenue, through the above entry points, now suddenly seemed to be closed off. First, Julian Assange was hired as a columnist: ” ‘It’s no coincidence that I’m going to be writing for a Swedish paper. The Swedish publicist culture and Swedish law have supported us from the beginning’.” Assange also declared that “WikiLeaks will be applying for a Swedish certificate of publication (‘utgivningsbevis’) next week to guarantee that the organisation will be protected by Swedish constitutional law, even though they’ve already been offered such protection from two Swedish publications. This Swedish constitutional protection increases support for WikiLeaks, says Assange.” Another report also suggested that with Assange hired as a columnist, this would facilitate Wikileaks getting a license for full journalistic protections. To make matters even better for Wikileaks, the Swedish Pirate Party agreed to host WikiLeaks servers:

“The Pirate Party, by hosting WikiLeaks, hopes to provide it a safe haven much as it’s done for The Pirate Bay. ‘We hope that the new Parliament will give serious consideration to further strengthening Sweden’s press protection legislation,’ says Assange. ‘Western democracies are not always as free as one might think, and freedom of the press needs constant vigilance. In particular, we would welcome Sweden copying Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative, something that the Pirate Party also desires.’ The Pirate Party, for its part, knows that by hosting WikiLeaks servers the threshold for the confiscation is much, much higher. ‘If the servers are placed at an ordinary web hotel the threshold is of course already high when it comes to making a raid and removing them,’ says Anna Troberg (PP), deputy leader of the Pirate Party. ‘But the political price for touching the servers of a political party is even higher. So we can offer them some added protection, of which they are in great need.’ Some have also argued that WikiLeaks lacks the publishing certificate needed for full press freedom protection in Sweden. Now that The Pirate Party is hosting WikiLeaks the matter is no longer of concern.”

Ending the Safe Haven:

The Swedish Prosecutors’ Office arrested Julian Assange in absentia, and then gave this information to the press, a tabloid to be specific, Expressen (see here). Yet, a few hours later, the Prosecutor’s office reversed itself: “On Saturday afternoon chief prosecutor Eva Finné came to the decision that Julian Assange could no longer be suspected of rape. Considering that, Assange is no longer arrested in his absence.” Why? “When Ms Finné became in charge of the matter on Saturday, she had more information than the first prosecutor had on Friday night.” They do not indicate what that “information” was, and we must be clear, no official complaint was ever filed by those accusing Assange. The Police and the Prosecutor’s office took it upon themselves to take action, without being asked to do so. Why did they release Assange’s name? “Normally, the Swedish Prosecution Authority do not publish the names of persons suspected of crime. The authority did not in this case initiate publication. Late on Friday night, a Swedish newspaper got hold of information concerning Mr Assange’s arrest. When interviewed, the duty prosecutor confirmed the facts presented.”

In spite of the reversal, oddly the Prosecutor’s office claims that “absolutely nothing” suggests errors had been made, by either prosecutor (the one who issued the warrant, and the one who withdrew it).

When Karin Rosander was asked if it might have been a setup she said, “I have no idea.”

Given the obvious irregularities here, which the Prosecutor’s spokespersons can themselves barely veil, “A small Swedish justice watchdog group, RO, said it filed a complaint Sunday against the on-call prosecutor to the Ombudsmen of Justice, an office that investigates wrongdoing by public authorities. The complaint accused her of issuing the arrest warrant ‘without having enough information to make such a decision,’ said Johann Binninge, the group’s chairman and founder.” Even a former Swedish Chief Prosecutor is demanding an explanation for the arrest order:

“The former Swedish chief prosecutor, Sven-Erik Alhem, demands an explanation from the prosecutors that filed the arrest order for Assange and later withdraw the order. Alhem tells the Swedish newpaper Dagens Nyheter that he finds the actions of the prosecutors bizarre and confusing.  Alhem points out several actions to DN that he finds questionable; the arrest order was based on the assumption probable cause, the strongest grade of suspicion of crime that is required for an arrest order, and later this probable cause suspicions is withdrawn without the appearence of any new information in the case. This is very confusing. An order for an arrest in absentia is not normally made official as this will give the suspect a chance to escape. This was not the case here it was announce to the world and no one could avoid the media storm that followed these news. In this case when the arrest order was issued for a well known person, extra caution would have been taken by the prosecutor’s office to make sure an experienced and well educated spokesperson could have explained to the public and media the reasons for each step in the investigation.”

The same Swedish group named above, that monitors government actions, also called for an investigation of the original prosecutor, identified on Twitter as Maria Haljebo Jkellstrand: “We can see that, time after time, prosecutors don’t follow the Swedish objectivity laws,” Johann Binninge, founder of Organization for Safe Legal Proceedings, told CNN.”

This is not an ordinary screw up, and this is not a screw up involving an ordinary person.

The Distraction and the Tricks of Debate:

There should be no doubt whatsoever now about at least two key facts:

1. Julian Assange is the victim of a wrongful rape allegation, so he is the one who has been smeared.
2. That this article, like so much other discussion in the news, and about the news, is a distraction from the real work of Wikileaks and the war in Afghanistan.

Some, however, are determined to cling to the allegations as if for dear life. One example is an apparently well known lawyer in the UK, David Allen Green, whom I have been “debating” in Twitter (that’s if his multiple responses consisting of “ha ha ha” can be considered debate), who goes by the name Jack of Kent in Twitter (in the last hour or so he has moved to close his tweets from public viewing), has a blog by that name, and a Facebook page, and has written: “Is there a WikiLeaks Cult?” –short answer: yes– and “Rape Allegations and Due Process.” He appears to be gallantly defending the honour of these two mystery damsels in distress. His chief concern: that they suffer no smears (even though they seem to have made some of their own, and those led to an arrest warrant, something they did not suffer). One of the persons’ identities is unknown, but in the meantime “Julian Assange, rapist” occupied thousands of screaming headlines.

The other trick, after reducing this to a story about the honour of unfairly tarnished female “complainants” (who never filed any official complaint…and for some reason, Green, as a lawyer even, refuses to grasp that fact), is to make Wikileaks the recipient of charges and attacks against Assange. Thus most of Green’s tweets specified “Wikileaks” when he is actually speaking about Assange. Distraction accomplished, and it is deliberate, and a smear too, especially when those who protest such moves are immediately called “cultists.”

The third trick is to thus malign any suggestion of U.S. interest and involvement as “conspiracy theory” and to naively demand “evidence” (as if the CIA freely furnished documentation about its current and intended actions…which, keep in mind, have been as far fetched as exploding cigars for Castro, among other attempts, let alone unseating various elected governments). That others have recalled how anti-war critic and former weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, went up for sex charges that were then dropped, and that the same “fate” befell anti-war celebrity Robert del Naja, in a pattern that almost perfectly mirrors that of Assange, should at least cause a reasonable person to ask questions. The only conspiracy, then, would be the conspiracy to refuse to ask questions and maintain silence.

There is, even now, considerable circumstantial evidence that incriminates both the U.S. and Swedish governments in the hounding of Julian Assange. There is no definite, decisive, and fully documented proof–and there won’t be, without another leak–that this event and its handling was orchestrated by the CIA. But the best one can do is to construct an argument that makes use of the available facts, and to remember: in the real world, all we need is for three of five fingers to be pointing in the same direction. The U.S. went to war in Afghanistan on far less than that. I do not recall the widespread outrage in the West against Bush and others spouting an “Osama Bin Laden conspiracy theory” even when that is all it was, and no evidence of any kind had been furnished prior to the war, and no attempt was made to provide evidence until years later.

First, and in case you missed them, a series of YouTube videos produced by the U.S. military about the Human Terrain System:

The U.S. Army’s “light touch with heavy impact…a non-lethal force multiplier” — “a Human Terrain Team working with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is comprised of military and civilian analysts who specialize in capturing the mood of a local people:

“Knowledge is power in Afghanistan” — bridging the gap between the local population and occupation forces:

The Human Terrain Team — “prime cuts” of the above, longer, no narration:

[Please note, in light of the Pentagon's accusations against Wikileaks, that the U.S. military and NATO forces, which produce the photographs and videos like you see above, never blur the images of the Afghan civilians who are clearly providing them with information (an act that one would think is sufficient to provoke at least some questioning by the Taleban, if not something more punitive and drastic). No names are given, but in a country where many individuals go only by one name, or a name shared by many, photographic/video evidence is a much more reliable means for the Taleban to track down collaborators. However, feel free to continue ignoring this point--I raised it with a former HTS employee, who denied the practice of informants being photographed by the military even occurred.]

Second, some recent articles on the Human Terrain System:

• The Diary of Ted the Tongue: Pinecone Anthropologist (GEO magazine, via translation for Zero Anthropology)

It annoyed me that the critics of “mercenary ethnography” took cover in principled arguments. I wanted to form my own opinion about the HTS. I have to admit, I also wanted to experience firsthand one of the major events of this century. When I climbed out of the cargo space of an airplane, full of ammunition, onto the crushed rock track of the military base, Salerno, I was unsuspecting of the dangers that were ahead of me; I had no idea how I would investigate the lives of the Afghans in the middle of this war.

• Which is the bigger local threat: Islam, or anti-Islamic paranoia? Four Middle Tennesseans who’ve represented American values abroad share their thoughts: The Enemy is Us (Nashville Scene, 19 August 2010)

…and Katherine Carroll, a Vanderbilt assistant professor of political science, who spent a year in Iraq as a part of the military’s Human Terrain System’s team, dodging IEDs and suicide bombers.

These individuals — who put American values into practice throughout the world — say they’re aghast fellow Tennesseans would cite those values as reason to deny Muslims a place to meet and pray.

• The Humanitarian-Military Complex (Huffington Post, 08 August 2010)

We should be clear that the third sector is simply one of a multitude of international actors whose work is being compromised by greater militarisation. Academics (human terrain teams), journalists (embeds) and diplomats (Hilary Clinton has demanded 7,000 fully armed security operatives to protect the US embassy in Iraq) are all experiencing a similar trend. In place of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s concerns over a military-industrial complex we may be heading toward a military-industrial-academic-media-diplomatic-NGO complex whose eventual hegemony could prove unchangeable.

• Reclaiming the humanitarian space: One of the legacies of the Afghan adventure is the blurring of lines between humanitarian and military operations (The Guardian, 07 August 2010)

An entirely new space has been created between wartime and peacetime development – “stabilisation operations” – which are driven by the military leadership despite its alarming similarities to the work of humanitarians. These operations include support from the newly formed human terrain teams, which have also brought the independence of academia into question.

• A Hybrid That Won’t Run: The Green Berets as an Armed Peace Corps? (CounterPunch, 06-08 August 2010)

The armed Peace Corps idea is not just a fantasy or red herring propaganda. It has been promoted and institutionalized by a new generation of pseudo-intellectual militarists who are trying to synthesize a military/anthropological strategy for restructuring failed imperial adventures in other cultures beyond Vietnam, like Iraq and Afghanistan. To accomplish this, the army instituted a program in Iraq in 2007 labeled “The Human Terrain System.” This program was an actual formal effort to use anthropology to bridge the gap between the Green Berets and the Peace Corps. Not surprisingly, it was roundly criticized by the American Anthropological Association and not surprisingly, it has had the support of General Petraeus.

• Tomgram: Ann Jones, In Bed With the U.S. Army (TomDispatch, 01 August 2010)

Several interpreters told me, however, that every meeting includes some young American soldiers whose locker-room-style male bonding features bouts of hilarious farting.

To Afghan men, nothing is more shameful. A fart is proof that a man cannot control any of his apparatus below the belt.  The man who farts is thus not a man at all.  He cannot be taken seriously, nor can any of his ideas or promises or plans.

Blissfully unaware of such things, the Army goes on planning together with its civilian consultants (representatives of the State Department, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and various independent contractors who make up what’s called a Human Terrain Team charged with interpreting local culture and helping to win the locals over to our side).  Some speak of “building infrastructure,” others of advancing “good governance” or planning “economic development.”  All talk of “doing good” and “helping” Afghanistan.

• Karzaï, le Parrain de l’Afghanistan (14) l’enquête embarrassante (AgoraVox, 21 July 2010)

Le constat que dresse Allison, lui, est encore plus clair : c’est celui d’une attitude déplorable et constante de terrain conquis. Les afghans étant …les nouveaux indiens  : “ce n’est finalement pas si différent de ce que les Américains d’origine européenne ont fait aux Amérindiens. Maintenant, plusieurs générations plus tard, les histoires se sont transmises et sont profondément enfoncées dans la conscience collective de ces peuples indiens et leur façon de voir les Européens-Américains d’aujourd’hui, et ont un effet sur la façon dont ils perçoivent les programmes gouvernementaux, tentent de modifier leur point de vue sur le travail, l’alcool et la drogue, etc’.

• Should Anthropologists Help Contain the Taliban? (TIME, 01 July 2010)

Sometimes, however, the line between civilian and military is blurred. During one stop, a man swore that his neighbor was working with the insurgents. Although the accusation could have potentially serious consequences for the person in question, Carnahan didn’t hesitate to pass the information to company officers. “If we get something that’s a threat to a unit, then we turn it over to them,” he says. “One way or another, you’re involved.”

• ‘Human Terrain’ hits rocky ground (Nature, 22 June 2010)

Asked about the programme in a meeting with reporters in March, US secretary of the army John McHugh said that he was “neither happy nor unhappy” with the HTS. “Whether it’s a long-term solution or one in which we can glean short-term lessons and then move forward is still something we’re not able to judge,” McHugh said.

• Professor Carroll Goes to War (Vanderbilt University, Spring 2010)

Not only did Carroll learn to confront fears head-on, she also began to understand the U.S. military, a topic she hopes to continue to study. While she has spent much of her career studying Middle East politics, the military was a foreign concept. That is, until a recruiter knocked on her Vanderbilt office door in June 2007 looking for professors to embed with a unit.

• Katherine Carroll – The Battlefield Professor (Nashville Scene, 04 March 2010)

In the summer of 2007, Carroll heard that the Army was searching for Ph.D.s with specialties in Middle Eastern culture and history to embed with combat brigades, to “help them take into account the social, political and cultural context,” she says. Carroll just happened to have the required doctorate, in her case from the University of Virginia in political science with a specialty in Middle Eastern politics. She sought advice from everyone she knew. “By November, it was clear I wanted to go.”

Image by isafmedia via Flickr

In an earlier article, “More European Press Coverage of the Human Terrain System,” I referred to an article in Germany’s GEO Magazine which carried an extensive article about anthropology and the Human Terrain System, on 05 May 2010, the whole of which can be viewed and downloaded from here, titled “Ein Ethnologe im Krieg.” Online you can also see GEO’s “Odyssee in Afghanistan” (“Odyssey in Afghanistan“), mostly part of an electronic diary by war photographer Marco di Lauro and his exchanges with Ted Callahan, the anthropologist enlisted in the Pentagon’s counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan.

Now, thanks to the generous work volunteered by a German friend of ZA in Twitter, ZA can offer the following English translation–all minus one page which was originally scanned in a manner that rendered the text entirely illegible (apologies for that, but we do not possess the original).

What becomes apparent from the translation is that this is a unique article–it consists of the diary entries of Ted Callahan, from a log he kept for GEO magazine (with all of the intended candor one has when writing a diary for the public). In some instances, notably under the heading of pages 2 and 3 below, the article is written in another voice, apparently that of the reporter who presents the piece. We must wonder about the special arrangement that produced this piece, given that HTS employees cannot be interviewed without army clearance. On the other hand I must admit: this is probably the most interesting piece on HTS that I have read from the mainstream print media.

“In my imagination I transform more and more into a kind of Lawrence of Arabia…”

A few disparate comments for now about the contents of the article. It contains a number of strange factual errors, notably about Michael Bhatia. It also contains a series of very interesting reflections and perhaps unintended confessions, or statements made without those massaging the message understanding how they could be read for contrary purposes. Callahan balances his writing  between occasional bravado when speaking down to anthropologists who are against the war, with frequent (in)direct confirmation of their criticisms. He appears indifferent to being criticized by unnamed anthropologists for being a “mercenary,” saying that if they had been to Afghanistan, they would understand the need to do things his way. Surely that misses the whole point of the criticisms: one does not go, and is not obligated to go, into any situation that will lead a social scientist into unethical conduct. But then Callahan comes up with what he thinks is a valid argument: this isn’t real ethnography, so ethical standards do not apply. He’s wrong, but his remarks are also useful.

Do the locals see Callahan as a member of a category apart from the military? Interestingly, Callahan is not just mistaken for a U.S. soldier, but for a member of the Special Forces. Moreover, the very soldiers assigned to protect him think he is with Special Forces or the CIA. He seems to take pride in becoming a virtual GI, and seems to have spent some time trying to become more like the soldiers who themselves seem ambivalent about his presence, even his safety. Thus we learn more about the minimal protection of HTS personnel during an attack, with little guidance about what to do.

Life on a forward operating base–not as rough as some might imagine–is briefly described by Callahan as one that is relatively privileged, with all sorts of opportunities to gain weight on a host of imported goodies, as one is catered to by a population of local servants. (No one, for all of their counterinsurgent “savvy,” seems to have invented the idea of eating local, as a way of building relationships through food, generating income for local producers and keeping a tab on the state of local agriculture…or even being aware of the devastating famines that have swept parts of Afghanistan during the course of the occupation, barely reported in Western media.)

Callahan’s comments about his colleagues are also rather enlightening: all female, one who wears an alluring top (probably part of the Patriotic Tits Against Fundamentalism brigade, the militarily correct bastardization of feminism). The other is unflatteringly portrayed as a complete dunce (not to say bimbo) who got the job because she is from “the third world,” and spends the day surfing the Web.

What he also describes–even though Robert Young Pelton was howled at by HTS supporters for describing much the same–is rapid, hasty, drive-by ethnography: of 69 hours spent outside of the base, four produce any kind of useful information, and one cannot expect more frequent patrols, no matter the proximity (100 meters) of the nearby village. He will not get to see a place more than once. Half of the population is closed off to his research: local women.

“In the future, wars could be good times for ethnographers.”

Page 2
Dear reader,
Sociology defines culture shock as the sudden feeling of anxiety and displacement, when meeting with a foreign culture.

The US anthropologist Kalervo Oberg dissected the experience and processing of a culture-shock in the 1950s into four phases. First, the bright curiosity of the unknown, second the crisis-like feeling of not knowing your way around, third the slowly growing insight and fourth the adjustment. Overcoming cultural shocks one can understand this as the foremost task of journalists vicariously experienced by readers. There are topics, in phase one for which the emphasis cannot be demanded from the best reporters though. Who would for example go euphorically to Afghanistan? And it cannot be an obligation for journalists to reach step four. But possibly move quickly from phase two to three, from the lack of understanding to gaining perspective. Sort of like the people in Papua New Guinea who carry their mummified relatives around on chairs. Ted Callahan went as an ethnographer to Afghanistan on the side and request of the US army to find out the HTS, the human area there. Background: a Military doctrine which also aims to conquer hearts and minds apart from the use of weapons arsenals. Prerequisite: the appreciation of a strange culture. Therefore, the avoidance of cultural shocks. This was Callahan’s order. Establish peace through conversations. You don’t only see a Kunduz-crazy mission? In any case this looked fundamentally significant to us, in light of what German Soldiers also do or not do in Afghanistan. So we asked Callahan to keep a diary for Geo. It turned out to be a document of ambivalence, more informative in the detail as the communiques out of the Ministry of Defense. Callahan, a U.S. citizen, knew the Afghans already from a winter research stay in the high-lying valleys of the Pamir, and spent time in the Caucasus, in Nepal, and China. He was astonished not just by foreign places, but also by his own people. He wrote about the troops in an e-mail to us: “Most of them are very isolated from the population and think like in a vacuum, or in an echo chamber.”

Page 3
An ethnographer at war

The soldiers call him “Ted the tongue”: Because he always only asks questions and talks. His insights about of the Afghan culture should help the international protection forces to understand friends as well as enemies better. His colleagues at the university labeled Ted Callahan the mercenary. However, he thinks they have no idea…

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An ambush

Septembers, 2009, Harawara, a village in the east of Afghanistan: “What may I buy for you?”, asks the second lieutenant of the Afghan National Army with a generosity which I love very much in this country.

We run down a bumpy way, which leads to a creek shore. The village store, a hovel with walls made of loam, is there. I want to answer, but dust splashes up in front of me like raindrops falling to the ground. A hissing sound, the rattling of a gun, many guns.

My body reacts in a movement which seems to be withdrawn from my will. I jump over a rubble heap, crawl further on knees and elbows. In front of me a retaining wall – safety. I hide behind her. A few minutes ago I sat with about two dozen US soldiers and afghan police in front of an old mosque and talked with village elders. The men excuse themselves after an hour. It is Ramadan, they hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since sunrise and wanted to lie down. I should have noticed, how quick they disappeared.

And now this surreal transformation of the village to a battlefield. I feel like a figure in a computer game. Bullets pelting the ground everywhere, above floats a roaring helicopter. A soldier runs over and shouts to me against the noise: Everything Ok? Two hours later in our camp: nobody is injured, but the excitement of the attack seems to have spread. The soldiers assemble. This is every day life in this war: Young men, early 20′s, moved with good intentions, barely escaped death, have to discuss their next actions.

Text for Picture on page 6:
Soldiers secure the villages if Callahan wants to go there and talk with the residents about their circumstances. If he spends to much time on kindnesses, the Soldiers get restless. Even an ethnographer doesn’t find find out where the soldiers are hated, so fast either. A sudden attack will be what makes them notice it.

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That is how the HTS was established in 2006. It was controversial from the beginning, so much that the researchers risked not getting a job at a university later on. The initiator of the program gave me this warning, when I called her and expressed interest in the program. The advocates of the HTS cling to a statement of a commander before the US congress: Only with help from the scientists did he find out that not the village elders, but instead the Mullahs are in power. Through allying with them he was able to reduce fighting by 60%. An assertion hard to prove, but a testament to the nobility of HTS. Nevertheless most scientists think it’s objectionable to go to war. The American Anthropological Association condemned the program: Can people get killed with the knowledge provided by social scientists? Does a respectable science risk degenerating into espionage? Who determines that the Afghans speak freely to the scientists and are not forced? Can one conquer hostile people? Even I asked myself the same questions. I consider this war to be justified and my earlier field research of 18 months taught me that the majority Afghans feels the same. They abhor the Taliban and ask themselves why the protection troops do not succeed in defeating the 35,000 rebels and provide progress. Perhaps I can be the voice of the Afghans vis-à-vis the military. Eight years after beginning of this war I wanted to promote this country.

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It annoyed me that the critics of “mercenary ethnography” took cover in principled arguments. I wanted to form my own opinion about the HTS. I have to admit, I also wanted to experience firsthand one of the major events of this century. When I climbed out of the cargo space of an airplane, full of ammunition, onto the crushed rock track of the military base, Salerno, I was unsuspecting of the dangers that were ahead of me; I had no idea how I would investigate the lives of the Afghans in the middle of this war.

My transformation

Forward Operating Base Salerno, nicknamed ‘rocket city,’ lies close to the city of Khost and is one of the ugliest places which I have ever seen. Rows of containers, concrete walls and tent halls, enclosed in what must be thousands kilometers of barbed wire. I carry my baggage into my new home: 10 square meters in a finished house, walls made out out of hard fiber disks, then I run to the Ethnology office in order to say hello the colleagues. They are females. One wears tight jeans and a provocative top: That is Amy. In one and a half years she has absorbed an encyclopedic knowledge about this area which comes flowing out of her mouth. You have to understand that there are many tribal conflicts over here, she says. Then there’s Patti, she doesn’t know anything. A U.S. immigrant from Thailand, in her mid forties, her English is clouded hopelessly by her Asian Accent. She studied business economics and stated, as far as I understand her, that her origin from a third world country qualifies her to work in Afghanistan. Besides, Patti looks like a Hazara, many Afghans despise this ethnic minority. To go with Patti to a village is dangerous. Since this helpless woman sits in the office and surfs the internet, she can cause no harm. Obviously the army does not always hire the most qualified people for the HTS. I also believe that ethnographers should do research alone and not in a team.

I’m in the heartland of the war, home of the Pashtun. This group lives along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pashtun think that the border is meaningless; their thinking is based on striving for independence. They say that the revolution against the communists started here in the province of Khost; Osama maintained his camps here, the first U.S. soldier died here. The leaders of the Taliban are mostly Pashtun. They have withdrawn into the lawless areas of Pakistan and send their followers over the most dangerous border of the world to attack the international protection troops in Afghanistan. The area in which I will live is a gigantic transit region for fighters of the holy war. The Afghans name it “Yagistan” – “Country of the Unruly”. In FOB Salerno one does not notice that aside from the occasional rocket attack. Here are fitness studios, fast food restaurants, massage parlours. Every meal we have comes with ten choices: four sorts ice cream, three sorts of pie: cherry, apple, pecan. Everything is flown in, nothing’s recycled. We use 30,000 plastic bottles of water daily. Once per week, there is lobster, shrimp, crab. An army of Indians, Nepalese, Kyrgyzstan nationals and Afghans look after our comfort.

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We drive ‘outside the wire’ as the soldiers that go on patrol like to say. ‘Outside the wire’ - that term does not even let you imagine the shock that hits you once you leave the main gate. A seemingly archaic world, populated by men with turbans, women in burkas, and donkey carts. On my 5th day I saw the other side for the first time. Nothing special, just a meeting with the village elders nearby. I put on my body armor, roughly about 40 KG of weight. I’ve decided to be armed and receive a 9-millimeter pistol, later a M4 assault rifle will follow. Many civilian ethnographers get excited about the fact that their colleagues carry weapons. It violates the code of conduct of research, not to pressure people into talking. These scientists have never been in Afghanistan. The last thing that frightens a Pashtun is a gun. He thinks that everybody not carrying a gun is strange. In the village we drink tea and converse friendly. One of the hosts points at me and asks: “Special Courses?” I answer: “Yes, one can say that!” He shakes his head and asks again: ”Special Courses?” It goes back and forth until he corrects himself and asks: “Special Forces?” Then I understand, I’m not wearing a name tag and I do have a long beard, the man thinks that I belong to the US Special Forces. I accept that as ethnographic routine: My transformation into a soldier is complete. A GI comes along, points at me laughing: “No special forces! Hippie, Tree hugger!” The Afghan looks perplexed and leaves.

My first mission

It’s common knowledge that Michael Howard (commanding officer) knows everything about guerrilla warfare. When I introduce myself, I meet a thin, red-haired giant, with the aura of a racing dog with long limbs which are constantly moving. Howard is offhand, but conveys the feeling that he thinks that the HTS is a good thing. He wants to know what is going on with the Kuchi. These nomads live at the borders to Pakistan in remote villages. The Army does not have a grip on the area; unknown persons had kidnapped three of the nomads, possibly raped them then stabbed to death. Has this escalation anything to do with the Taliban? Is it an everyday sort of crime or is it due to other conflicts? It should take 40 minutes to drive to the Kuchi. We leave with four armored cars; trucks or humvees are not safe enough because of landmines. One of my predecessors (Michael Bhatia, professor at Oxford University) died in 2008 on the streets of Khost in a Humvee. He was the third scientist of the HTS that got killed over here. So we use the armored cars. The arms race with the bomb builders continues; they already have extremely powerful projectiles.

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All of a sudden I don’t hear a thing. My electronic ear protector is silent. The sergeant across from me moves his lips: “Bomb!” We’re still driving so it can’t be that bad. Looking out of the window I see the other armored car covered with smoke. We stop, someone opens the door and tells the sergeant to position himself for battle. I asked what my translator and I should be doing. “Do what you want!” So we jump outside and do not know what to do. The soldiers have gone to cover at the street embankment, waiting for an attack. The patrol leader advises us to look for cover. Waiting, nothing is happening. One of the soldiers shows us what the bomb did to his sleeping bag that was hanging outside the vehicle. The axis of the vehicle is broken so we receive orders to gather all of our belongings, then we take off, it’s dark and we camp on a pasture, determine who’s on guard and go to sleep. Next morning I wake up to a familiar Afghanistan, a country I long for if I’m not there. A nomadic group crosses our camp and disappears in a Kuchi village. Nothing embodies the magic of central Asia like loaded camels which walk about a wild desert, and the stabbing sun. My romantic whims fade when we leave. Amy, myself, our translator and 10 Infantrymen in riot gear, protected by two machine guns and a grenade launcher.

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When we walk into the bleak village which consists of a gas station and half a dozen shops, I feel ridiculous. The soldiers deploy and assume position. Amy immediately astonishes a Kuchi man with questions about conflicts in the area. He does not know what to say. Rex and I approach a group of men, I put my right hand on my heart, say “hello” in Pashto and ask for a conversation. Soon we’ll sit together and have tea. Ethnography is a chaotic discipline, more art than science. It’s important to ask the right questions at the right time. The problem is that the Army expects concrete investigative leads, without me knowing what I’m looking for. So I take the approach of asking questions about tribal structures, livestock, trade and property. Perhaps a picture with useful aspect for the army might arise. Rex explains to the Kuchi men that we’re there to help and to get a better understanding of their lives. They nod their heads in a friendly manner. I start with friendly chit-chat, the soldier that’s assigned to protect me interrupts and requests that I get to the point. So, the murdered girls? The men claim no knowledge about that. The Taliban? They never saw any. I don’t get any further with that, so I asked about their daily lives, about trade and camels. They warm up and talk. As soon as they notice that I understand, they’ll lift their hands and say: “Azeemat!”, Well done! The soldier looks bugged, carefully I try to redirect the conversation to my original questions. I learn that the Kuchis move from pasture to pasture with their cattle. But after years of drought and some complicated tribal conflicts they have now settled down. Since then they have had problems. A man reaches for the soil, letting sand trickle through his fingers. “This soil is not good. Wheat does not grow here and if the rain comes it turns into mud,” he complains. “But the government has given the land to us. We live here now and other tribes claim we stole their land. They prevent us from driving to Khost, attack and kill us. The government does nothing!” More nodding in agreement. Nobody has anything else to say. The message is clear, “if you don’t help us, we take side with the Taliban.” The logic of the rebellion is of compelling clarity: No ideology plays a role, no religion. Only the conflict around resources and the desire for safety and progress. In my thoughts I agree with these men. Besides, Kuchi probably were the ones that planted the roadside bomb for our convoy by order of the Taliban. My protecting soldier wants to go home when an order reaches us: the Artillery would like to test grenades; the target is near our night’s lodging, the soldiers should guard the area. I would like to get back to Kuchi to get to know more, however, the rules are that several soldiers are needed for patrol. And to run the 100 meters to the village is considered a “patrol.” So I sit in an armored car and wait. It took three days until we returned to our home base. The result: 69 hours on our way, an eight-hour interview with the Kuchi, and of that maybe  four hours of useful information about the reasons for the outbreak of violence in the area. This first mission taught me the most important military rule: time is not at one’s disposal. With such restrictions I will hardly succeed in diving into foreign way of life. Patient research is regarded as the greatest ethnographic virtue–it doesn’t play a role in HTS.

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Rarely will I have one to two hours, to jump out of the armored car (protected by soldiers), to find conversation partners, to construct the rudiments of a  good relationship, to ask a few questions. Once I notice that more than likely I will not visit a place more than once, I get disappointed. I also realize that I will never see a woman here. The tribal code of the Pashtun requires that a man must protect the honour of his wife and hide her from strangers.

The critics of this program assume that real ethnography is practiced here. Therefore, we should hold to all standards of the field. In truth our work is more like journalism in a hurry. No ethnographer spends months in the same Pashtun village and gains the confidence of the residents, so nobody is being betrayed. On the other hand, the southeast of Afghanistan has been lying in the dark for our ethnographers for a long time. During the revolt against the Soviet Union only few researchers could explore the way of life over here. So things remained the same in the civil war, under Taliban dominion with the entry of the defense force. Even though our military is waging war and wants to gain confidence of the people at the same time, long-term studies are taboo.

The Afghanistan conflict

How it began

After the departure of the Soviets in 1989, Afghanistan slides into civil war. The Taliban gain victory and proclaim theocracy. After 9/11 Americans and Brits expel the Taliban regime which granted refuge to Osama bin Laden. The ISAF is stationed there. The aim: reconstruction of the civilian society.

What goes wrong?

Taliban and Al Qaeda grow stronger again–they make their way to Pakistan and attack the ISAF soldiers from there. Even though, the west builds schools, hospitals and streets, a lot of the government money seeps into the government machine. The Taliban who finance their war by opium trade, force the tribal chiefs into alliances and control long a wide area of Afghanistan at present

And now?

This much is clear: In the spring of 2010 the international community is looking primarily for a perspective to keep conflicts in check and bring about the withdrawal of their own troops. In 2015 the Afghans should manage their country themselves: with this aim the politicians justify the drive for power, which should lead to a turning point, with more troops and better training of the Afghan policemen and soldiers, and funds increased for civilian construction.

Who will win?

Hard to say. In this guerrilla war it isn’t clear what ‘victory’ means. Fact: if the foreign troops departed now, Afghanistan would sink into chaos. Because of this, most experts agree that the new approach of counterinsurgency makes sense. The tactic to strengthen the tribal leaders, to offer an exit perspective to supporters of the Taliban, to negotiate even with their leaders, could perhaps stifle the rebellion. The price for that will be high: In 2009 alone 520 foreign soldiers and 2,412 civilians died. The aim to transform this government into a western democracy is not mentioned anymore.

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Refugees from the battle zone wait for the distribution of aid supplies. Shortly after this picture was taken they survived a mortar attack of the Taliban. The impact, only 400 meters far away.

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An unforgettable success

It’s after midnight when Rex (my translator) and I jump out of the Black Hawk. From above a second helicopter is securing our departure, while a machine-gunner heaves our baggage to the ground. “Have fun!” The Black Hawks disappear. We hurry to the battle outpost of the Americans: a hut surrounded by sand embankments and four watch towers. It’s not advisable to approach the native country of the Zadran-tribe during the day. The power of the government doesn’t reach to up to this area, the state structure is nonexistent. For most GI’s Zadran is synonymous with Taliban, because the biggest Pashtun tribe of the southeast has produced some of the most violent rebels. Amongst them, Jalaluddin Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani network and a pioneer of suicide-attacks in Afghanistan. Commander Howard requests that we find indications as to how the Zadran could be dissuade from supporting terrorism. In the morning I climb a watchtower with my coffee in hand and talk with the young guard. A truck loaded with wood drives down the road. They’re driving by frequently the guard tells me. Why, where to? Nobody knows, but everybody knows that it means something. So detective-work begins: with a simple observation. I decide to ask the Zadran about the wood. Next time we have tea with the tribal leader I point to a forest and ask why its untouched. Those are Jalghoza (Pine). If you cut trees there you will be punished. We have men guarding the forest right now. I never was interested in pine, but find out that the Zadran collect pine cones. Women mash up the cones with stones to get the nuts. They are dried, brought to Khost and sold as a delicacy in the whole country. My search is difficult and lasts weeks. In this time I undertake many trips to a dozen different villages of the Zadran.

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In the end the fact remains: different than previously thought, only a third of the nutrition of the Zadran comes from agriculture since they live too far away, in the mountains. The pine cones and the felling of trees make up 70% of their income. The rapid growth of the population threatens to destroy their livelihood. The danger: every impoverished Zadran can become a supporter of the insurgents, but one can’t assume that the groups moving through the mountains day and night in September are Taliban. On account of my findings the pilots are ordered to be careful with attacks during the harvest. I explain to the special unit how they can recognize the cone collectors: they smell of pine and donkeys. I am possessed by my subject. I develop afforestation plans, draw transportation routes, write business plans: a kilo of pine kernels is sold for five dollars in Afghanistan, in the USA for forty five. Why not offer the products in New York specialty shops? This would be a sensible measure in the fight against terrorism. To investigate the world of the Zadran comes close to my dreams of an ideal HTS. I drive to remote places and do work which hopefully saves human lives. In my imagination I transform more and more into a kind of Lawrence of Arabia, and I take more risks. I venture out on trips along the ‘rat line’: Taliban supply routes. I venture out on the streets without protection by the GI’s, a stupidity which violates all rules. We have flown to a heavily accessible and dangerous Zadran District and set up our camp in the office of the District Governor. The soldiers provide safety over here; I accompany them because I would like to continue my pine research. Our provisions are used up five days after our arrival. “We ate them,” claim the Afghan soldiers and police in our team. Impossible. They must have sold the food. Because our request for air evacuation is rejected, I offer to go buy a few chickens. I leave with a translator and three policemen. The first store across from our camp is closed, the next one too. We drive a few kilometers and are out of range for our radios. The villagers in the third store look surprised and hostile. They advise us to drive somewhere else, where there are chickens in abundance. It’s like a smell. At this moment I think I sense an ambush. Pictures of people whose faces are scratched away are hanging in the store. The Taliban have been here? I hastily buy some vegetables and think about what to substitute for the chicken. I ask for a goat. The answer: “We go get one that takes about 30 min. Please wait here…” We rather drive back to camp. I order my companions to assume fighting position. I act in a way I imagine a soldier would act. I don’t feel afraid, rather I’m elated to be alive. Perception is increased: I think I never did hear so well or had such clear vision. It’s rather tense and time seems to stand still, finally a pick-up with a goat on board approaches. When I pinch the goat to check her condition, the seller screams: ”Be careful! We’ve hidden a bomb in her body.” In Afghanistan one can expect danger in everyday business. That makes me nervous, sometimes hysterical. Shortly after that I talk with the villagers, accompanied by Afghan policemen, to whom I promised some mineral water afterwards. We ask: “Why do you let the Taliban travel through your land?” An old man with a long black beard answers: “You requested that we surrender our weapons and that we did. How should we defend ourselves against the Taliban now, with sticks?” I write everything down. A second man, with the aura of a thinker says: “In your country notepads like yours must fill whole houses. In the past eight years every American that visited us, logged everything we said. But never did anyone return to help us.”

Soldiers and the new war

The longer I stay here, the more I ask myself what good am I doing. Certainly I achieved some successes, perhaps made life for the Zadran easier. But will the situation improve notably, will they be saved from mistaken attacks by the army? Did the soldiers understand how meaningful the development of a pine economy would be? I do not know and I’m going to leave soon. My writings may disappear forever in archives. Do I succeed in leaving some traces in the thinking and action of some of the GI’s?

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A U.S. army helicopter flies soldiers to the province where they will protect polling places for the parliamentary election. After the landing Callahan and the soldiers guard the ballots, until they are securely transported further.

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They call me “Ted the Tongue,” the guy that always wants to talk. It’s agonizing for these young men to protect me. They have to sit in the hot sun for hours, while I question bearded old men. At times the questions are monotonous to me as well. On the other hand I can’t force the GI’s to listen. They perform a dangerous job and receive thankless orders on a daily basis. The last thing they want, is a guest who gives advice. Unfortunately soldiers of the lower ranks are harder to convince of the idea, to go to war and conquers the hearts of the population. In this case counterinsurgency is reduced to accompanying me while I talk with old men. A duty, which they carry out like an air raid, it’s frustrating for them as they do not see any results in the end. I’m dealing with men, who’s training consists of killing the enemy. Nobody taught them how to build up trust with strangers. In practice, the HTS did not reach the combat troops as yet. Tell this to the men: “We’re going to occupy this village!”- and they’re not going to hesitate to risk their lives for a piece of bleak land. My standard message is: “So, you’ve been six times in this village, everything remained the same. You know nothing about the inhabitants. Go with me on patrol and we can learn a few things that might be useful later on.” Seldom do I encounter enthusiasm. So-and-so died serving his nation while collecting empirical data for a socio-cultural profile of the “human terrain”: which GI wishes for such an epitaph? Here everybody doesn’t seem to understand how much effort is necessary to attain knowledge about the Afghans. We sit in the planning center, surrounded by laptop computers and surveillance monitors on which the harsh countryside of Afghanistan flickers, and clean our guns. A redundant evening ritual. Today we’ve been to a bazaar. The people there refused to answer any questions. Somebody whispered. “Caution! the Taliban are near by and they’re watching you.” The soldiers tensed up and the Afghans grew nervous and the soldiers did get more fearful. I suggested that we leave. A soldier asked: “And? Found something out today?” I answered in the negative. “You see, talk about communication is crap. We should do it like the Russians did back then.” To provoke me, he added: ”We have to throw those motherfuckers from the roofs.” “Don’t know if that will help,” I replied, “I’ve not seen a house over here, higher than two floors.” There are moments, when I’m satisfied knowing that the GIs believe that I’m an ethnographer. Too often they believe that I’m from the Special Forces or CIA and just made up a cover story. They can’t imagine that this stranger is a researcher, who’s there to help them. In that they resemble the Afghans. On another day a platoon leader asks me to escort him. He wants to announce a “pro-GIRoA-message”: praise the government of the Afghan republic. In the village, after drinking his tea hastily he gets up and recites from a cheat sheet.: ”GIRoA means progress, the coalition troops do help the population. GIRoA means progress. GIRoA means progress!” The old folks have heard it all before.

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They dictate their list of demands for new road to the troop commander. A ritual like cleaning guns. Nonetheless, even in a setting like this an ethnographer can do well, I’m convinced of that. To connect the world of the Afghan rural population with the one of the occupation forces, beyond unimportant phrases and good intentions, has to be the most important component in a new draft of warfare. What I’ve learned from the Pashtun isn’t enough for a dissertation. But neither the soldiers nor those secret service agents which want to track down merely Taliban would ever have come this far. I cannot shake off the ambivalence. In a restricted sense I’m only a researcher in a combat zone. I gave up my independence, my findings have to pass the Army’s ‘so-what-test’, or to put it differently, they have to be useful. But I don’t feel like a spy. So, I live interstitially and hope that my successors will achieve more. In the U.S. there are private companies that hire former soldiers as armed ethnographers. I think it’s only a matter of time before the first researchers start to work in those companies. In the future, wars could be good times for ethnographers.

The Farewell

In the command center of the FOB Salerno the chairs and tables are arranged in a horseshoe shape, Colonel Howard and I are in the middle. I’ve just received an award for civilian services which doesn’t go to my head because my incompetent colleague Patti also got one. I have to give a farewell speech in front of the collected brigade staff. Mixed feelings race inside me. I feel relieved that I can go back home healthy, but also sad because of the farewell. I feel bad to have to leave the soldiers behind. I feel embarrassed because I have to speak to fighters now who end every meeting with the battle cry: “Sparta lives!” Meanwhile, I understand the Army well and start my speech with the same aphorism, which is ascribed to Napoleon: “War and prostitution often have in common the fact that often the amateur is better than the professional.” As the laughter fades away, I say that I have come here to study the life of the Afghans. My life has depended on the Army, as she has given me food, safety and accommodation. The only thing I could give back was information. That’s my capital, nothing else. No, I’ve not been elated about what the soldiers did with the information. But they are here voluntarily and are risking their lives. That’s why I’m telling them that they taught me more than I could: Things like guts and courage and how to perform a job with a minimal amount of staginess. Ethnographers learn a lot and teach less, that’s how it goes.

GENERAL COUNSEL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
1600 DEFENSE PENTAGON
WASHINGTON D. C 20301 1600

AUG 16 2010

Timothy J. Matusheski, Esq.
P.O. Box 15758
Hattiesburg, MS 39404

Re: WikiLeaks

Dear Mr. Matusheski:

I understand that you represent yourself to be an attorney for WikiLeaks and that you, on behalf of that organization, sought a conversation with someone in the United States Government to discuss “harm minimization” with respect to some 15,000 U.S. Government classified documents that WikiLeaks is holding and is threatening to make public. In response, I was prepared to speak with you yesterday at 10:00am EDT and convey the position of the Department of Defense. Despite your agreement to be available by telephone yesterday morning, we could not reach you at that time.

The position of the Department of Defense is clear, and it should be conveyed to your client in no uncertain terms:

WikiLeaks is holding the property of the U.S. Government, including classified documents and sensitive national security information that has not been authorized for release. Further, it is the view of the Department of Defense that WikiLeaks obtained this material in circumstances that constitute a violation of United States law, and that as long as WikiLeaks holds this material, the violation of the law is ongoing.

The Secretary of Defense has made clear the damage to our national security by the public release by WikiLeaks of some 76,000 classified documents several weeks ago, and the threat to the lives of coalition forces in Afghanistan and to the lives of local Afghan nationals as a result. As the Secretary has also stated, we know from various sources that our enemies are accessing the WikiLeaks website for the purpose of exploiting WikiLeaks’ illegal and irresponsible actions, to pursue their own terrorist aims.

The threatened release of additional classified documents by WikiLeaks will add to the damage. Among other sensitive items, we believe the classified documents contain, like the first batch of released documents, the names of Afghan nationals who are assisting coalition forces in our efforts to bring about peace and stability in that portion of the world.

Thus, the Department of Defense will not negotiate some “minimized” or ”sanitized” version of a release by WikiLeaks of additional U.S. Government classified documents. The Department demands that nothing further be released by WikiLeaks, that all of the U.S. Government classified documents that WikiLeaks has obtained be returned immediately, and that WikiLeaks remove and destroy all of these records from its databases.

Jeh Charles Johnson

Related Articles

• Pentagon Refuses WikiLeaks’ Offer to Help Review Classified War Documents (politicsdaily.com)
• Pentagon says no to ‘sanitized’ WikiLeaks release (alternet.org)
• Pentagon Rebuffs WikiLeaks’ Request for Help (blogs.wsj.com)
• Correspondence From The Pentagon To Wikileaks Surfaces, Confirming They Have Talked (mediaite.com)
• Pentagon denies WikiLeaks talks about documents (sfgate.com)
• WikiLeaks says Pentagon offers Afghan files help (cbc.ca)

As far as the Wikileaks story goes, we see the sheer impotence of the Pentagon in doing anything more than suggesting threats, or asserting danger to U.S. troops without as yet demonstrating any. Sweden, in the meantime, has emerged as another Wikileaks “safe haven,” with a party in parliament offering to host its website, and a local paper hiring Julian Assange as a columnist, effectively routing what Fox News had triumphantly declared to be an insufficient lack of Swedish legal protection for Wikileaks.

In the meantime, what one commentator has called a “dogpile” has been taking place, with Amnesty International, other human rights NGOs, Reporters Without Borders, and one wannabe secrecy site/false front choosing to make public statements critical of Wikileaks. We then saw most of them then backing away and issuing near retractions.

I have had my own differences of opinion with some of Wikileaks’ methodology, but like others, I wonder what on earth could lead anyone in the Pentagon, or Fox News (Pentagon Media Department), to even jokingly suggest that we would then be silent or even support any action taken against Wikileaks.

These are some of the more important recent reports and debates we have been tracking concerning Wikileaks from the past week. In addition, various organizations and websites have been created to support the person accused of leaking the Collateral Murder video to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning–and those are listed as well. Finally, I am happy to note that my “War on Wikileaks” article last week in CounterPunch has been translated into Spanish and appears on Spain’s Rebelión, then becoming the basis for a lengthy article in the Venezuelan newspaper, Correo del Orinoco.

Sweden as Safe Haven for Wikileaks

Pirate Party to host WikiLeaks servers – The Local
18 August 2010, Sweden
The Swedish Pirate Party confirmed on Tuesday that it has agreed to host a number of new servers located in the country by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. “The Pirate Party will provide bandwidth and hosting to WikiLeaks free of charge as part of its political mission,” the party said in a statement. “We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party,” Assange was quoted as saying in the statement. “Our organisations share many values and I am looking forward to future ways we can help each other improve the world.”The Swedish Pirate Party, created in 2006 to campaign for more freedom on the Internet, scored a breakthrough in the 2009 European elections by taking 7.1 percent of the vote in the Scandinavian country.

Swedish Pirate Party Agrees to Host WikiLeaks Servers
17 August 2010, Jared Moya
“The contribution of WikiLeaks is tremendously important to the entire world,” says Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate Party, in a statement. “We desire to contribute to any effort that increases transparency and accountability of power in the world.” The Pirate Party will begin providing free bandwidth to the site much as it has already done for Swedish BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. “This is one of our signatures,” adds Falkvinge. “We don’t just talk. We act. Using our own resources and time, we help change the world rather than pass the buck, commission reports, and avoid responsibility like other politicians.” “We hope that the new Parliament will give serious consideration to further strengthening Sweden’s press protection legislation,” says Assange. “Western democracies are not always as free as one might think, and freedom of the press needs constant vigilance. In particular, we would welcome Sweden copying Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative, something that the Pirate Party also desires.” The Pirate Party, for its part, knows that by hosting WikiLeaks servers the threshold for the confiscation is much, much higher. “If the servers are placed at an ordinary web hotel the threshold is of course already high when it comes to making a raid and removing them,” says Anna Troberg (PP), deputy leader of the Pirate Party. “But the political price for touching the servers of a political party is even higher. So we can offer them some added protection, of which they are in great need.” Some have also argued that WikiLeaks lacks the publishing certificate needed for full press freedom protection in Sweden. Now that The Pirate Party is hosting WikiLeaks the matter is no longer of concern.

DailyTech – Wikileaks Chief to Write Monthly Column in Top Swedish Online Tabloid
15 August 2010, Jason Mick
If one picked a tabloid to write for, they’d be hard pressed to find one more storied than Aftonbladet. The publication was founded in 1830 by Lars Johan Hierta. In its early days it was banned and renamed 26 times by Sweden’s king before he finally gave up and consented to its publication. The publication was among the first tabloids worldwide to jump online, making the transition in 1994. It is consistently ranked among the top five Swedish websites in traffic, along with Swedish-founded torrent-giant The Pirate Bay. There’s a couple of potential reasons why Assange might pick to write for Aftonbladet other than merely a love for tabloid journalism. Wikileaks operates a number of servers in Sweden and is currently seeking a license to get full journalistic protections. An official column in Aftonbladet could help its case.

Swedes Protect WikiLeaks, Hire Assange as Columnist
14 August 2010
Aftonbladet Interview Transcript

Army Analyst Linked to WikiLeaks Hailed as Antiwar Hero | CommonDreams.org
16 August 2010, Michael W. Savage
For antiwar campaigners from Seattle to Iceland, a new name has become a byword for anti-establishment heroism: Army Pfc. Bradley E. Manning. Manning has become an instant folk hero to thousands of grass-roots activists around the world….In the logs, Manning said he had seen “incredible things, awful things” in classified government files. It’s “important that it gets out . . . I feel, for some bizarre reason,” he said. Phillip Bailey, an Italian IT specialist living in Croatia, set up a Facebook page to support Manning after he learned of the case. In less than a week, the page had more than 6,000 members. “When I read [Manning] had been arrested, I knew I had to do something to help the guy,” Bailey said. “For me, he has done something really incredible. He did something brave, with a big risk.” Like Bailey, Mike Gogulski, a U.S. citizen living in Slovakia, has never met Manning. He has, nevertheless, set up the Bradley Manning Support Network, a Web site devoted to the cause. “The story grabbed me,” Gogulski said. “It seems to be a new kind of cause. You’ve got a charismatic young whistleblower being linked to what I’ve heard called the story of the decade.” Although most of those who contact the Web site are in the United States, Gogulski said he has also received calls from Spain, Germany, Canada, Australia, Italy and Britain. The group co-coordinating Gogulski’s campaign, Courage to Resist, has developed a line of Manning memorabilia, replete with images of the boyish-looking private. There are “Save Bradley Manning!” badges, posters and T-shirts. The products’ tagline: “Blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime.” Jeff Patterson, head of Courage to Resist, said the group has set an initial goal of $50,000 to support Manning’s defense and has already raised $33,000. The campaign extends beyond the Internet. More than 100 supporters gathered at a hastily organized rally Sunday in Quantico, where Manning is being held at the Marine Corps base. Another took place Thursday night in Oklahoma City, the capital of his home state. Plans are being drawn up for an international day of solidarity. “It is like the story of the boy who cried out that the emperor was wearing no clothes,” said Gerry Condon, president of Seattle’s branch of Veterans for Peace and a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network. “He’s really becoming a focus that could help revive what has been a somewhat weakened antiwar movement.” Daniel Ellsberg, who was imprisoned for leaking the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, said he felt “great identification” with Manning. “He’s a hero to me,” he said. “I haven’t seen someone make an unauthorized disclosure on this scale, that would lead to serious charges, for 40 years. It seems he believed, as I did, the stakes involved justified that kind of risk.”

Free Bradley Manning

FreeBradley.org * Be An Army Of One For Bradley Manning

Bring Home Bradley Manning | Facebook

Free Bradley Manning! | Facebook

Bradley Manning Support Network | Facebook

Courage to Resist – Support the troops who refuse to fight!

Bradley Manning Support Network

Wikileaks Losing Support from its….Supporters?

Reporters Sans Frontières – “Criticism of Wikileaks is not a call for censorship or support for the war”
17 August 2010
We reaffirm our support for Wikileaks, its work and its founding principles. It is thanks in large part to Wikileaks that the world has seen the failures of the wars waged by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also thanks to Wikileaks that we have seen how the US army deliberately targeted a Reuters crew in Baghdad in July 2007. The video of this tragedy has been posted on our website ever since it was leaked. The controversy has resulted in a real threat to the website of closure in the United States and targeted persecution of its contributors. The US authorities would be very mistaken if they tried to use our criticism as support for a decision to silence Wikileaks. The Obama administration made a serious mistake when it broke its promise to reveal the human, moral and financial cost of the “war against terror” launched by President George W. Bush. Wikileaks has rightly defied this blockade on access to information.

Reporters Sans Frontières – Open letter to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange: ‘‘A bad precedent for the Internet’s future”
12 August 2010
But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous. It would not be hard for the Taliban and other armed groups to use these documents to draw up a list of people for targeting in deadly revenge attacks….Nonetheless, indiscriminately publishing 92,000 classified reports reflects a real problem of methodology and, therefore, of credibility. Journalistic work involves the selection of information. The argument with which you defend yourself, namely that Wikileaks is not made up of journalists, is not convincing. Wikileaks is an information outlet and, as such, is subject to the same rules of publishing responsibility as any other media.

Probing war crimes in Afghanistan « RAWA News
15 August 2010, IRIN
The leaked US/NATO war documents, however, point to possible war crimes committed by pro-government forces, according to the founder and director of Wikileaks, Julian Assange….Immediately after the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a 10 August report on civilian casualties, the UK-based Amnesty International said the Taliban must be prosecuted for war crimes. “The Taliban and other insurgents are becoming far bolder in their systematic killing of civilians. Targeting of civilians is a war crime, plain and simple” Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director, said in a press release….The leaked US/NATO war documents, however, point to possible war crimes committed by pro-government forces, according to the founder and director of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.

FOXNews.com – WikiLeaks Next Document Dump Losing Support
13 August 2010, Justin Fishel
WASHINGTON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is threatening to release a second set of classified Pentagon documents related to the Afghan war, but fallout from his first document dump has left him with virtually no support. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Friday accused Assange of seeking more attention for himself and said if Assange chooses to release these documents he’s simply helping the enemy….Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who took questions from sailors in San Diego late Thursday, said if WikiLeaks goes through with this again it will have direct consequences on the battlefield….Nevertheless, the administration is not the only voice calling for Assange to use restraint. A new Fox News opinion dynamics poll shows two thirds of Americans believe WikiLeaks should be condemned for leaking military secrets. Sixty one percent of those polled consider it an act of treason. Even Reporters Without Borders, an organization that fights for international press freedom, sent Assange a letter saying it regrets the “incredible irresponsibility” shown by releasing the initial 77,000 secret war documents. Clothilde Le Coz, a spokesman for Reporters with Borders, told Fox News on Friday “we supported WikiLeaks on many cases and on many things before, but this is going way too far and we can’t support that.” Le Coz said not only does Assange demonstrate a lack of sympathy for the sources and lives he’s putting in danger, but he may give cause for international governments to control content on the Internet.

Wikileaks: Giving Leaks a Bad Name | Secrecy News
16 August 2010, Steven Aftergood
One initial response to Wikileaks’ clumsy disclosure has been to bolster public support of the classification system, which was presumably not the intended result. Sixty-seven percent of respondents polled endorsed the view that “When media outlets release secret government documents relating to the War in Afghanistan [they are] hurting national security,” according to a July 30-31 poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Groups Ask Wikileaks To Censor Civilians’ Names
10 August 2010, Huffington Post

Why WikiLeaks Won’t Stop the War — In These Times
03 August 2010, Noam Chomsky
The War Logs, however valuable, may contribute to the unfortunate and prevailing doctrine that wars are wrong only if they aren’t successful—rather like the Nazis felt after Stalingrad….Democratic societies rely not on force but on propaganda, engineering consent by “necessary illusion” and “emotionally potent oversimplication,” to quote Obama’s favorite philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr. The battle to control the internal enemy, then, remains highly pertinent—indeed, the future of the war in Afghanistan may hinge on it.

Unafraid

Wikileaks double dares Pentagon hawks • The Register
‘More explosive’ documents just weeks away
16 August 2010, Dan Goodin
“This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group,” Assange told reporters this weekend while in Stockholm. “We proceed cautiously and safely with this material.”

Cyberwar Against Wikileaks? Good Luck With That | Threat Level | Wired.com
13 August 2010, Kevin Poulsen
…a previous U.S.-based effort to wipe WikiLeaks off the internet did not go well. In 2008, federal judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco ordered the WikiLeaks.org domain name seized as part of a lawsuit filed by Julius Baer Bank and Trust, a Swiss bank that suffered a leak of some of its internal documents. Two weeks later the judge admitted he’d acted hastily, and he had the site restored. “There are serious questions of prior restraint, possible violations of the First Amendment,” he said. Even while the order was in effect, WikiLeaks lived on: supporters and free speech advocates distributed the internet IP address of the site, so it could be reached directly. Mirrors of the site were unaffected by the court order, and a copy of the entire WikiLeaks archive of leaked documents circulated freely on the Pirate Bay.

WikiLeaks says it won’t be threatened by Pentagon
14 August 2010, Keith Moore, AP
WikiLeaks will publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents within a month, despite warnings from the U.S. government, the organization’s founder said Saturday. The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks’ initial release of some 76,000 war documents. “This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group,” Julian Assange told reporters in Stockholm. “We proceed cautiously and safely with this material.” In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that if U.S. defense officials want to be seen as promoting democracy then they “must protect what the United States’ founders considered to be their central value, which is freedom of the press.”…”There are no easy choices for our organization,” Assange said. “We have a duty to the people most directly affected by this material, the people of Afghanistan and the course of this war which is killing hundreds every week. We have a duty to the broader historical record and its accuracy and its integrity. And we have a duty to our sources to try and protect them where we can.”…Assange told the AP that while no country has taken steps to shut down WikiLeaks, some have been gathering intelligence on the organization. “There has been extensive surveillance in Australia, there has been surveillance in the United Kingdom, there has been the detainment of one of our volunteers who entered the United States a week and a half ago. But he was released after four hours,” Assange said. He didn’t give details of that incident.

WikiLeaks preparing to release more Afghan files
13 August 2010, Raphael G. Satter and Anne Flaherty, AP
The Pentagon says it believes it has identified the additional 15,000 classified documents, and said Thursday that their exposure would be even more damaging to the military than what has already been published. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell described the prospective publication as the “height of irresponsibility.” “It would compound a mistake that has already put far too many lives at risk,” he said….Taliban spokesmen have said they would use the material to try to hunt down people who’ve been cooperating with what the Taliban considers a foreign invader. That has aroused the concern of several human rights group operating in Afghanistan — as well as Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which on Thursday accused Wikileaks of recklessness. Jean-Francois Julliard, the group’s secretary-general, said that WikiLeaks showed “incredible irresponsibility” when posting the documents online. “WikiLeaks has in the past played a useful role by making information available … that exposed serious violations of human rights and civil liberties which the Bush administration committed in the name of its war against terror,” Julliard said in an open letter to Assange posted to his group’s website. “But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous.” WikiLeaks, through its account on micro-blogging website Twitter, dismissed the letter as “some idiot statement, based on a bunch of quotes we never made.”…Defense Department spokesman Col. David Lapan dismissed WikiLeaks’ claims that they were reviewing the documents and removing information that could harm civilians. “They don’t have the expertise to determine what might be too sensitive to publish,” he said. As for when the Pentagon expected WikiLeaks to release the documents, Lapan said: “WikiLeaks is about as predictable as North Korea.”

The Associated Press: Australia working with US on WikiLeaks files
13 August 2010, Rod McGuirk, AP
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia is working with the United States to investigate WikiLeak’s publication of thousands of secret Afghan war documents but has not been asked to act against the website’s Australian founder, the foreign minister said Thursday. Australia, which has some 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, launched its own investigation last month into whether the posting online of some 77,000 classified military documents had compromised the national interest or put soldiers in danger. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was asked by The Associated Press at a public function Thursday whether Australia had been approached by Washington about pursuing possible criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, or about putting restrictions on his travel. “I have not had representations made to me about the matters you refer to,” Smith said. “But quite clearly we’re working closely with the United States on these matters,” Smith said, citing Australia’s Defense Department and the Pentagon as the agencies working together. “These are very serious matters for concern.” Of Assange, Smith said, “I’ve had no applications or request to me in respect of the individual Australian citizen’s passport to whom you refer.” Internet news site The Daily Beast earlier this week cited unnamed American officials saying the U.S. government had asked Britain, Australia, Germany and other allies to consider criminal charges against Assange over the Afghan documents.

Remembering What This Is About

WikiLeaks in Baghdad | The Nation
29 July 2010, Sarah Lazare and Ryan Harvey
The three former soldiers say they support the decision to leak these videos to the public. “Avoiding talking about what’s going on is going to make us continue making the same mistakes and not learning our lesson,” insists Stieber. About the most recent WikiLeaks revelations, Stieber says, “People all over the world have been confronted once again with the realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” adding that the latest release “confirms what veterans like Ethan, Ray and I, and so many other veteran witnesses, have been talking about.”

Wikileaks Viewed Differently in the Middle East
29 July 2010
Middle East writers and analysts interpret Wikileak disclosures as the “shock and awe” of a war that has been sanitized by the western press. In the Middle East, however the leaks are viewed as far more than the fog of war. They corroborate the daily experiences of civilians in the war zone and point to the need for US troops to abandon Afghanistan. Zaka Syed writes that the Wikileaks disclosures “paint a picture” that is worse than anyone could have imagined, “including the blissfully clueless Americans.” Zakaria comments that, “For ordinary Americans, the Wiki leaks controversy could be the much-awaited wake-up call that would force them to pay attention…” Evan Hill (Aljazeera, July 30, 2010) concludes that “Afghanistan, the reports seem to show, is a place where the citizens themselves have lost much of the ability to shape the events of their own lives.”

The Unrepentant Ones: Pentagon Propaganda

AFP: Petraeus denounces ‘reprehensible’ Wikileaks
16 August 2010, AFP
WASHINGTON — The top US military commander in Afghanistan on Sunday blasted as “reprehensible” the release of Afghan war documents, saying that US partners named in them have been put at risk. In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Petraeus said he was not sure what might be in the unreleased documents, but said the files released so far have contained information that compromised people working with the international forces.”As we have looked through it more and more, there are source names and in some cases there are actual names of individuals with whom we have partnered in difficult missions in difficult places. “And obviously, that is very reprehensible.”

FOXNews.com – WikiLeaks Founder Describes Possibility of Casualties as Acceptable Risk
16 August 2010
Any U.S. and allied casualties that result from the publication of classified Afghan war documents would be an acceptable risk, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange suggested Monday, saying “such information is also likely to save a great many lives.”…Assange expressed concern that the U.S. government could force Twitter, where WikiLeaks has a following, to ban his group and said WikiLeaks reportedly has already been placed on a “financial blacklist” in Australia.

WikiLeaks shouldn’t chill info sharing, ex-CIA chief says – Page 1 – Government
04 August 2010, Jaikumar Vijayan
The recent publication of classified military documents on the whistleblower site WikLeaks should not be allowed to chill information sharing that’s been going on within the military and intelligence communities, the former director of the CIA said Tuesday. In an interview, retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who led both the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), expressed concern over the potential for knee-jerk restrictions on data sharing in response to the incident. “Senior leadership in the country will have to guard against over-reaction,” Hayden cautioned. “Clearly, we need to be careful. We have to pay more attention to security,” he said. According to Hayden, the incident highlights the risks associated with information sharing that has been going on within the military for sometime. Networks such as the Department of Defense’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network or SIPRNet, which Manning is alleged to have accessed, are designed to pass along important information as quickly and efficiently as possible. “You can’t be hierarchical. Information has to be accessible at the node and be available and retrievable in a way as to allow our nodes to be as agile as our enemy,” Hayden said. “We are an information-based military.”…”The worst thing that can happen is an over-reactive policy that locks down and completely stovepipes the intelligence community’s efforts,” Rodriguez said. “It would reverse the success and advancements of information sharing.”

Leaks undermine Afghan support for NATO: UK | Top News | Reuters
05 August 2010
LONDON (Reuters) – A leak of thousands of classified U.S. military documents has damaged the ability of foreign forces to gain the support of Afghans against the Taliban, a British military spokesman said on Thursday. Major-General Gordon Messenger told reporters the leak last month by whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks had not given Taliban insurgents a tactical advantage, but the documents’ disclosure of Afghan contacts could deter further cooperation. “I think the damage that I would highlight is to the Afghans that were named. We rely upon very, very many Afghans who are prepared to nail their colors to the legitimate Afghanistan, and do so sometimes with much courage,” Messenger said. “If we do anything that undermines that trust, that expression of loyalty, then I think that is going to have an impact,” he added.

WikiLeaks risked agents’ lives, U.S. intelligence officials say
28 July 2010, Alex Spillius, Daily Telegraph
The lives of informants and double agents have been placed at risk by the publishing of tens of thousands of secret military documents, U.S. intelligence officials say. Col. Dave Lapan, a U.S. Defence Department spokesman, said the military might need weeks to review all the records to determine “the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners.”…Robert Riegle, a former senior intelligence officer, said: “It’s possible that someone could get killed in the next few days.”

Following Wikileaks Scandal, National Guard Announces ‘Social Media Guidelines’
14 August 2010, EricMack on Aug 14th, 2010
…there’s also this passage in the official press release that would seem to be aimed directly at would be WikiLeakers:

Posting internal documents or information that the National Guard has not officially released to the public is prohibited, including memos, e-mails, meeting notes, message traffic, white papers, public affairs guidance, pre-decisional materials, investigatory information and proprietary information.

Guard members are also not allowed to release National Guard e-mail addresses, telephone numbers or fax numbers not already authorized for public release.

No Big Deal?

Less Than Meets The Eye to Latest WikiLeaks Threat – Newsweek
13 August 2010
In fact, according to people close to the controversy, the 15,000 Afghan War field reports in question were already made available to the three news organizations, which were free to make journalistic use of anything in the entire archive of 92,000 classified documents to which WikiLeaks had given them access. A second person familiar with WikiLeaks’ media dealings confirms that all three news organizations were given the whole collection of 92,000 documents, including the 15,000 that Assange left out when WikiLeaks posted the other 76,000. According to this source, the Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel used their own judgment as to what they would publish, and the three organizations believe they’re finished with the material now. All the same, the source adds, it’s conceivable that the organizations might look again if and when WikiLeaks posts the remaining documents.

The Toronto Sun, a notoriously right wing tabloid, said of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that it had become “unhinged,” that the CBC has “truly lost its collective mind over the WikiLeaks release of the Afghan war logs.” Another piece in the Sun concluded, “leave it to the CBC to smear our troops.” What egregious act had the CBC committed? It quoted a record found among those released by Wikileaks, that stated that four Canadian soldiers had in fact been killed by a U.S. bomb, and not by the Taleban. Given that the record was written by one of “the troops,” it’s interesting how quoting one military source, to question another military source, becomes an act of “smearing the troops.” But then that doesn’t really count as a military source, says the Sun, with a long history of its own smears and hyperbole–no, you see, what the CBC was also guilty of doing was using “a piece of raw data, collected illegally and posted on a website committed to ending the war.” If the Sun wants us to start shooting messengers, its staff should start practicing duck and cover. What the Sun refuses to admit is that nothing it says above actually does anything to challenge the validity of the data, especially not by substituting hysterical howling for reasoned analysis. The other “problem” for the right wing is that the CBC is “state owned” (which in their minds means only one thing: den of communists)…forgetting that the very day after the release of the documents, it was the conservative and privately owned CTV that published this: “Leaked file suggests 4 Canadians killed by friendly fire.”

But if everything so far sounds utterly demented, it is only an opening act. Christie Blatchford at The Globe and Mail, decided that the “friendly fire assertion” was not just “offensive to the families” but that quoting a record written by the American military is actually the equivalent of holocaust denial:

“This is akin to saying, well sure, there is plenty of evidence the Holocaust occurred, and testimony from survivors, but the mere existence of Holocaust deniers raises doubts.”

Holocaust denial, on top of smearing the troops, and offending families–way to hit all the right emotional buttons, and to link a study of archival materials to a form of hate speech. Blatchford misses the irony that she herself is serving in the position of “holocaust denier,” by denying a report written from within military ranks, one that not only was never withdrawn or amended by the U.S., the very same record was in fact updated a year later. The Canadian military refused to even ask its American counterparts for an explanation of the discrepancy between American records, and what is now very clearly the preferred official Canadian view of the events.

Then, of course, there is the fact that the CBC quoted U.S. Army Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski. Both the Sun and the Globe and Mail devoted paragraphs to slamming her record as an officer–not that it isn’t prone to slamming. They could have gone further–they could have called Karpinski an alcoholic, a meth addict, someone given to performing public striptease on solemn occasions, and a part time clown at Chuck E. Cheese. They could have, because it’s all irrelevant. None of it proves that Karpinski, herself a military insider of high rank, doesn’t know her stuff or that she is wrong. None of these people seem even vaguely familiar with the logical fallacy of ad hominem arguments–or they are, but hope their readers are too ignorant to know any better, are easily fooled, and their passions just as easily aroused. And what passions? Passion for a war that has been consistently opposed by the majority of Canadians from the outset?

How does Karpinski enter this story? She is placed as the counterweight to Rick Hillier, retired Canadian General, former Chief of Defence Staff of the Canadian Forces, in the following exchange produced by the CBC:

But Hillier said the U.S. military, like any bureaucracy, produces millions of documents, including “some written by people as first response who don’t know what they’re talking about and have the facts wrong.”

“When I was a commander on operations, we always had a rule — first reports are wrong, and the second reports are wrong and the third reports are wrong,” Hillier said.

“Only after that do you start to get the validity and the truth [to] come out.”

In response:

However, Janis Karpinski, a former U.S. brigadier general, countered that the initial incident log is more valid than subsequent reports.

“When it’s convenient, when it is politically correct … you’re not going to get the truth as the conversations develop,” she said.

“They’re going to be coaching you in the direction they want you to respond over time. That’s why those logs are so critically important. Because they do contain the truth. That’s the first response — the event as it’s being reported as it’s happening.”

Hillier, with his simplistic and formulaic response (a trademark of his many sad public utterances), is clearly vulnerable to a well targeted response from Karpinski. His statement is one that should invite even further controversy: this is a man who apparently throws out reports from intelligence people on the ground, and keeps throwing them out until people start saying what he wants to hear.

We should have had, then, an interesting debate about how to go about ascertaining the validity and legitimacy of the Wikileaks documents. In this exchange, Karpinski wins out, in my view, especially since Hillier never explains why he would dismiss all initial reports out of hand. From where does Hillier derive his sources of truth then?

However, instead of having this debate, we are treated to the delirium of war mongering gone berserk which, as we always knew, hides behind “heroism” and “supporting the troops.” Oddly enough, unlike the family of Pat Tillman, which was outraged at the pure bullshit cooked up by General Stanely McChrystal and other higher ups in the Pentagon, that their son’s memory was not to be used as a cheap political football, or as a cover for mistakes made, it seems that four Canadian families are far less complex in their thinking–they are “stick to the fucking story!” types whose only consolation, and only attempt at finding meaning in the bizarre and pointless loss of their sons, is to insist that they were heroes. Their deaths, apparently, achieve greater value if caused by the Taleban. Those are “good deaths.” Canadian pro-war commentators have lost the ability to make sense, if they ever possessed it; they certainly don’t want to also lose the ability to make myths and make them stick.

Update:

My latest article about Wikileaks, which is relevant to the post above, “Unhinged at the US State Department and Pentagon: A War on Wikileaks?” was published yesterday by CounterPunch. I am thankful for all of the great email messages I received from readers. A version translated into Portuguese will appear on another site.

I was also interviewed yesterday by Toronto’s NOW Magazine, for a story about the impact of the Wikileaks release in the Canadian media. That should come out anytime over the next month.

An earlier article of mine, dealing with Wikileaks, was translated into Arabic and appears on the Al Jazeera site:
“نواقص في تسريبات ويكيليكس“

For related posts, see:

• The Military’s Media Whores: On Ethics, Power, Rapport and Responsibility
• Militainment: U.S. Military Propaganda in the News Media, Hollywood, and Video Games

Should any of these videos “expire,” as so often happens on YouTube, one can always check the same batch, re-uploaded recently, starting here.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I had the opportunity in the past months, to be involved in the Army’s controversial Human Terrain Teams program that was the brain child of a retired colonel and struggling anthropologist. It is all about making as much money as possible for selves and cronies, and the training in my view will get a few more starry-eyed team members killed, before congress pulls the plug.

The program is choc-full of civilian misfits and prima donnas who have never set foot outside their hometowns, oh sorry, some had had the opportunity of travelling as students or tourists to some third world countries, and so they were the experts. Others had read a book or two on terrorism (apologists’ books), whereupon these social scientists, research managers and even analysts, would argue vociferously about how America was in the wrong and Islam was really a religion of peace. When asked if they had read the Koran, or ever really lived in a Muslim country, these pathetic civilians looked sheepish and usually had this brilliant response, “What does that have to do with it!”

It gets better, one of the team leaders (they all had to be at least a Major and up in the army) had spent a short tour in Afghanistan and claimed the Pashtoons had always talked about family to him, and so my recommendation that talking about a Pashtoon’s womenfolk was a big no no, was rebutted with “that’s not true”.

Asked if he had shown pictures of his wife and daughters to the locals, the answer was “Of course.” Nice! Now asked if the locals had shown him pictures of their wives, and daughters – “Eh, what does that have to do with it!”

“Nothing, oh nothing, and I bet they (the women) had been introduced to you no? You mean you never even got to know their names, and only saw them as living shrouds, and …”

“Look, I just got back from a tour there, and those are their customs. They are illiterate, short, smelly guys, and not the brightest people in the world.” And these are the guys, team leaders, who will be leading teams of anthropologists, social scientists etc in Iraq and Afghanistan – teams which are supposed to be winning hearts and minds for us!

Most of the colonels in the program were a pleasure to be with, especially Mark, but then the retired colonel in charge of overseeing the program with the holier than thou title of “Seminar Leader” was the most officious ass you could ever come across, under whose watch those with the most to offer the program with language and cultural skills, were let go. No wonder we are in the situation we are in, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Even after the killings of a few members of these ill-trained teams, it seems the powers that be are totally inept at understanding the need for truth in training and learning from their mistakes. This is truly a case of the blind leading the blind, the thieves laughing all the way to the bank, and Mr. and Ms. taxpayer getting screwed again.