by John Stanton

Sunday, 07 February 2010

Steve Fondacaro and Montgomery Carlough, senior program management of the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS), were warned as early as 2007 that Human Terrain Team members in Iraq and Afghanistan would become prey for insurgent groups. They were advised repeatedly that training must emphasize the dangerous environment HTS employees would be operating in. That training needed to  focus on  practices and procedures for handling life threatening situations to include kidnapping.

Issa Salomi, a 60 year old HTT member operating in a combat zone, was taken in January 2010 by an Iraqi insurgent group and a video of him was released on the Net in February 2010 by the same group. This tragic event drives home, once again, the core failings of the Human Terrain Team System: the inability to find qualified personnel, to train them properly and to, quite simply, take care of them. Some allege that many team leaders and HTS management itself have no clue where many of their teams are. “Some HTT members disappear for days and then return.”

“They will tell you they are addressing this in the curriculum redesign but it’s too little too late. The students currently in training are not been thoroughly briefed on the situation on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan . There does  not  appear to be any attempt to implement anything in training regarding kidnapping. This is criminally negligent,” said observers.

Observers also indicate that those in charge of revising the HTS curriculum and training new batches of HTS students are not qualified to do so as their expertise is in private sector organizational behavior.  Some have had no military or field experience and, what’s more, hardly understand the US military culture they are embedded in. Yet they are offered contracts that extend, in some cases, close to one month at $1200 per day.  Some allege that conflicts of interests abound within HTS with one of them centered around the outlay of $2 million to a group called Cornerstone.

How much more will it take until the word “accountability” becomes relevant to the US Army’s HTS program? Where are the IG’s or the US Congress? Secretary of Defense Robert Gates may have held accountable the program manager for the Joint Strike Fighter whom he recently fired but no one died in that program.

Who in HTS, and those that command above it, will be held to account for the deaths,trauma and lives ruined for a military/sociological experiment gone wrong? Those below, and their families, deserve much more than a mention on the HTS.mil website or in court/medical records for their efforts. [MF: Note that the website for HTS has been down for at least several days now.]

Michael Bhatia, Nicole Suveges, Paula Loyd, Don Ayala (and the Afghan National murdered), Wesley Cureton,  Scott Wilson, Issa Solomi, and  those unidentified US soldiers wounded in their company.

John Stanton is a Virginia Based writer specializing in national security and political matters. His recent book is General David Petraeus’ Favorite Mushroom: Inside the US Army HTS. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

UPDATED — MORE NEWS:

• IRAQ MOQAWAMA WEBSITE
• Story/Video on Iraq Moqawama –> Translated into English
• “Missing US contractor Issa Salomi paraded by terrorist group,” Times Online, 08 February 2010
• “Shiite Militant Group Posts Video of Abducted American in Iraq,” FOX News, 06 February 2010
• “Video Of US Hostage Held In Iraq Released,” Sky News, 06 February 2010
• “Officials confirm kidnapping of U.S. contractor in Iraq,” Washington Post, 06 February 2010

A shoplifter greedily eyed the expensive items in the store’s electronics section. She thought of making a move, then decided not to. She was taking anti-theft measures.

A gangster proposes to a baker that if he pays him a weekly sum, no harm will come to the baker, his family, or his store. He was offering the baker protection.

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Hold Still While I Protect You

It begins with this article posted prominently on Yahoo! by the Associated Press for this date, titled “Marine mission to protect Afghans slows progress.” (In fact, the same AP article was reproduced by numerous news organizations on this date.) It was to me, and hopefully to anyone with a memory capacity larger than a gnat’s, possibly the most outlandish headline to be seen in a long time. The Marines are protecting Afghans? The Marines? Protecting?

One would have to ignore the thousands of civilians killed in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion, that are directly attributable to the U.S. and NATO occupation forces, and that are caused by U.S./NATO actions and the responses they provoke. One would have to forget the torture and murder of detainees in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base, where hundreds remain in detention without charge and without trial. One would have to be oblivious to at least several wedding parties butchered by the US Air Force. One could then choose to ignore the documentary made available below, Taxi to the Dark Side, winner of an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. If one successfully blinds and deafens oneself, then the AP headline is not so outrageous.

However, what is even more striking about the AP piece is the actual content of the report, which essentially reads in the same way as the three vignettes above. The Marines, in not being allowed to raze a village and mow everyone in their path, are “protecting” civilians, clearly from the Marines themselves:

The British jet called in by the U.S. Marines had the Taliban position in sight, but the pilot refused to fire, a decision that frustrated Marines on the ground….

The Marines themselves didn’t attack militants shooting at them from a compound Wednesday during the same battle because women and children were there….

By holding fire, McChrystal hopes to avoid the massive civilian casualty cases of past months and years and help win over Afghan villagers….

McChrystal’s order to protect civilians applies to all forces in the country.

“Sure, that’s frustrating, but we’ve got to deal with it,” said Capt. Zachary Martin, commander of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines….

The Marines say they can avoid civilian casualties with the help of the sophisticated surveillance technology they have. Strict orders have also been issued for the Marines to use proportional response when attacked….

But many of the riflemen voiced frustration at the limited options they were left with when trying to expand control of the town on Wednesday. The orders to hold fire appeared to have slowed their advance in Dahaneh, where after a full day they held only a small foothold outpost.

Since the Marines are frustrated that they cannot fire, they are “protecting” civilians, as if they should be praised for doing what is legally required of US/NATO occupation forces under the international legal conventions that they signed on to, and that acquired force as part of their domestic laws. Not being excessively aggressive, and committing war crimes, is reconstructed as benevolence, rather than a basic minimum. Not being an outright brute, is represented as moderation. It’s a very short and smooth road to sainthood for warriors forced to respect the mandates of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) (see also here). This is humanitarianism, as a default starting point.

What this also affords us yet another opportunity to witness how the Western, and specifically American, news media fold in with the official propaganda of the government and military, reproducing the authorized rhetoric without so much as batting an eyelid in disbelief. The reason: the intention is to train all of us into credulity, sympathy, and obedience. The chosen vocabulary of doublespeak keeps growing, while erasing the more accurate, honest, revealing vocabulary needed to name reality. Thus we have collateral damage to mask the butchering of civilians through excessive force; we have private security contractors (sometimes shortened to just private contractors), who are in fact mercenaries, guns for hire, soldiers of fortune…and not innocent, ordinary security guards and dry wallers. We have incidents to gloss massacres. Now we have protection. One has to simply listen to/read the mass media — the terms of official-speak are plainly there, reproduced frequently, without question, with ease.

Newspeak Outlaws Reagan and Rambo

To some extent, the state and the media exercise in public re-education works, perhaps with just that part of the population that is predisposed to credulity, possibly the same part that believes that Jesus walked with dinosaurs, that angels exercise an active presence in our lives, that health care for the poor is the “dismantling of America,” and that stepping on a crack really will break your mother’s back.

Just today in Twitter, I spotted this statement: “Rough time 4 soldiers fighting terrorists and building communities in Afghanistan.” Building communities — after massive aerial bombings over a period of eight years. Building communities — as if Afghanistan had no communities before Americans slammed into the country. “Fighting terrorists” as if those who fight soldiers, foreign invaders, can now be re-branded as “terrorists” in spite of common definitions premised on the idea that terrorism involves the deliberate, indiscriminate killing of non-combatants, a category that automatically excludes soldiers.

What is equally astonishing is that these “terrorist” branders completely go against the rhetorical grain of their great American hero, the Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan. It was President Reagan who said:

in Afghanistan, the freedom fighters are the key to peace. We support the Mujahadeen. There can be no settlement unless all Soviet troops are removed and the Afghan people are allowed genuine self-determination. (Applause.) (7th State of the Union speech)

“To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom. Their courage teaches us a great lesson—that there are things in this world worth defending. To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors.” (March 21, 1983).

At the time, popular culture followed. The closing credits to Rambo III dedicated the movie to the Afghan “freedom fighters” who battled the Soviet invaders. Having just seen the film, Ethnografix read the final dedication, to the “gallant people of Afghanistan.”

It’s a significant, successful coup in producing a newthink and newspeak that turns its back on figures such as Reagan and Rambo, and that leads some Americans, at the highest levels, to adopt Soviet-style propaganda. Let us not forget that many of these gallant, freedom loving, heroic mujahideen became what we know today as the Taliban. If they are now the terrorists, then the USA must now be the USSR.

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Trying Again: The Armored Angels

The latest attempt to torture reality in order to exculpate American military aggression comes in the form of yet one more attempt at beautifying the story of Paula Loyd, herself an Army reservist, then a civilian employee for the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System when she was killed by an Afghan. Abdul Salam, her attacker, was then killed by a mercenary in the employ of HTS, Don Ayala, while  Salam was under detention, subdued, and unarmed — a war crime by the strictest interpretation. Don Ayala was let off with a slap on the wrist from a U.S. court, and not even charged under war crime laws to begin with (see here). The accepted excuse? He killed out of “stress” induced from being in a war zone. To my knowledge, such generous sympathies have never been offered to those who have lived, on an everyday basis, full time, in a war zone: the Taliban themselves. Nor was such a compassionate understanding expanded to embrace Loyd’s own killer. Of course not, American commentators and judges only invent such excuses for those they deem human to begin with.

The latest attempt I alluded to above comes in the form of an article by an American human rights lawyer currently based in Afghanistan, Erica Gaston, in her article in The Huffington Post titled “Has Kandahar Already Fallen?” (10 August 2009). In that article she produced the following paragraph:

Most humanitarian workers and journalists have simply pulled out of Kandahar because they cannot operate under the intense security restrictions. Those who remain are prisoners to their compounds. The incidents that have happened when they do leave their compounds are chilling. A brave researcher, Paula Loyd, was doused in cooking oil and set on fire when she ventured out of her compound last year.

Read it again. The paragraph begins with “humanitarian workers and journalists” — as if Paula Loyd was either one, yet that is where Gaston places her. Still speaking of independent civilians, not in the employ of an occupying army, and not residents of a military base, Gaston notes that they are “prisoners to their compounds.” Then Gaston continues, speaking of “incidents that have happened when they do leave their compounds” and immediately points to Paula Loyd. Loyd did not leave her “compound” when she was killed. She was stationed on a U.S. military base. She was in the company of a military patrol.

Don Ayala and Paula Loyd

She was armoured and helmeted, indistinguishable from a U.S. soldier in most people’s eyes. Indeed, she was what journalist Robert Young Pelton described of other military patrols that take HTS employees with them, who “look like the ultimate Imperial Stormtrooper,” part of a “made-in-America, million-dollar-a-copy, fuck-you occupation parade” (source). It’s not just Pelton’s view, it’s also David Kilcullen’s, Kilcullen the counterinsurgency theorist, icon of the “small wars” crowd, in his book The Accidental Guerrilla: “We are aliens — imperial stormtroopers with our Darth Vader sunglasses and grotesque and cowardly body armor” (p. 136). One reader pictured Loyd’s entry to the village in these terms: “a young blonde woman parading around in a power suit (military uniform) surrounded by armed guards send[ing] the message to the locals that ‘I am what your future looks like,’ which is an antagonistic message.”

Paula Loyd was not just researching, nor was she as brave as someone who travels alone through Afghanistan, without an army. Loyd was most certainly not a humanitarian worker.

I don’t know what people see in that photo above, but I imagine that few would be willing to bet their wages that there is a woman in that photo. I also cannot imagine how she would look like anything other than a soldier to a Taliban attacker, and thus nothing less than a legitimate target, and nothing more.

Let’s finish with an exercise in newspeak turned against itself. Salam was a liberator. He liberated Loyd from a prolonged career of selling her services to militarism, and thus to terrorism. Never again would she be used as a human shield by the American terrorists. However, Salam did not kill everyone on her patrol: that’s because he was protecting them.

We’re all saints now.

[Addendum: I recognize that undereducated, lunatic members of the extreme right in the U.S., notorious for their reading comprehension difficulties, and willful blindness, will have difficulty understanding Orwellian newspeak, since they practice it ignorantly and unconsciously. However, if that paragraph above "We're all saints now," reads as "offensive," then: one, tough, grow up; and, two, replace the details with those of an Afghan, and see how offensive you are in Afghan eyes. That's the point. Missed by the irreparably dumb and the duped.]

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Taxi to the Dark Side

Part 1 of 8	Part 2 of 8
Part 3 of 8	Part 4 of 8
Part 5 of 8	Part 6 of 8
Part 7 of 8	Part 8 of 8

1. Whitewashing a U.S. War Crime in Afghanistan: The Trial of Don Ayala, “Human Terrain” Mercenary (1,090 views)

2. Open Anthropology Cooperative (735 views)

3. No Time in Jail for a U.S. War Criminal: A Mercenary Gets Away with Murdering a Detainee in Afghanistan (643 views)

4. On the Militarization of Anthropology: Report #1 from the CASCA-AES Conference in Vancouver (533 views)

5. The War Criminals’ Roundup: Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Israel (489 views)

My personal favourites were quite different from those of viewers. They include:

• Single-Cell Resistance in the TimeSpace of Kairos
• “Deep Obeah,” by Roi Kwabena
• “Useless Anthropology”: Strategies for Dealing with the Militarization of the Academy

and

• A Vehicle for Protest: The Van in Vancouver

Is it a surprise any more, that Paula Loyd should be resurrected for one more promotional tour for the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System? I am referring here specifically to the piece by Amy Yee, in the June 2009 issue of The Progressive, conveniently titled “A Friend Falls in Afghanistan” (thanks to a commentator on the previous related post for the notice). It is important to analyze these articles, especially now that we are seeing the propaganda go through some fine tuning, little adjustments made here and there, but with the same slices against critics of the Human Terrain System, and ultimately against Afghanistan. What also remains is the intent to make the story of Paula Loyd’s death into what is ostensibly, but deceptively, simply a story about a great person — except that no article, Yee’s included, has ever restricted itself to that basic and simple narrative. I do not doubt for a moment that to her friends she was an excellent person, nor do I think that she or anyone else “deserves” to die, and certainly not to die such a death. The death was to be expected, and the only good news is that overall only a tiny minority of all HTS employees have met with death. The bad news is that, in death, points are being scored for a military program in their name, obviously without the consent of the dead who are turned into gruesome political sock puppets. Contrasted with Montgomery McFate, the “senior social scientist” of the HTS, Paula Loyd would make for a perfect poster girl, and HTS knows that. No one can speak ill of Loyd, because she was wonderful, and she is dead, so critics lose both ways.

Let us look first at what is different about Yee’s attempt. First, the article is published in The Progressive, the first indication that this will not be a jingoistic sales pitch from a right wing perspective that unquestioningly justifies outright, unbridled war against all who would stand in the way of American domination. (Montgomery McFate herself, on her “I Luv a Man in Uniform” blog, wrote: “I’m a Democrat for fuck’s sake!” — so we know this angle already.) It manifests more adaptive tactics, because Obama, the new war president and imperialist-in-chief, has fashioned a liberal narrative to justify the same ends: American dominance (a phrase that he himself uses).

That a liberal narrative is used as a promotional lubricant, suited to the realignments that have occurred in Washington, is also evidenced within the piece itself. Paula Loyd, working for a counterinsurgency program and accompanying a military patrol, wearing a U.S. military uniform that identified her as the right kind of target for insurgents, is instead cast as a civilian and humanitarian. We are told — and this is not a new trick — that she was “unarmed” and then reminded that she was a “woman”. The two are meant to go together so as to suck on the trope of helpless innocence and thus amplify the brutality of her attacker, if not his bestiality: who would kill an unarmed woman? The Taliban would — chalk up another point for American propaganda against the monster insurgents. Yes, she was unarmed — and in the company of an armed military patrol,  under the ineffective protection of an additional mercenary, Don Ayala. She was as unarmed as a crime boss in the company of armed body guards can be said to be unarmed. At the very least, she was as unarmed as those that U.S. and NATO forces bomb to bits without blinking and who are promptly declared to have been “human shields”.

The critical paragraph is this one, in my view, for tactfully advancing Obama’s call for a “civilian surge” in Afghanistan, retroactively applying it to Loyd, and for using a liberal narrative to justify imperialism:

“She thought it was our responsibility to rebuild that country,” Isabella [Yee's and Loyd's mutual friend] replied. “She hoped her new role as a social scientist would reduce casualties”.

To rebuild the country — to rebuild suggests that the aim is to restore the country to what it was. To what it was…when? To what it was under the Soviet occupation? To what it was under the Taliban? Of course not, neither applies. To “rebuild” is meant to be understood as to build anew — to build a new country. In this case, the words put in Loyd’s mouth could have been scripted by none other than the crusader for counterinsurgency himself, Lt. Col. John Nagl: the aim of U.S. military operations should be “not just to dominate land operations, but to change entire societies” (see Andrew Bacevich, “The Petraeus Doctrine,” The Atlantic, October 2008 — I thank Greg Feldman for underscoring the significance of this point and for highlighting how liberal discourse is used to justify HTS and counterinsurgency, so that all liberal critiques of such programs are immediately destined to founder.)

“Our responsibility”. Why is it up to an American to assume responsibility for someone else’s country? Would Americans tolerate hearing the citizens of a foreign power speak in the same way about the U.S., and would they call it anything other than imperial arrogance that provides shade for a grab for power? From where does this “responsibility” derive its sense of entitlement? Did Afghans forfeit the right to chart their own course?

“Her new role as a social scientist would reduce casualties”. Given the fact that she became one herself, and that yet another Afghan become one in revenge, is more than just ironic. It points to the fundamentally untenable position being advanced by such statements — the fact is that the program she served supports a mission of violence on many different levels, administered by the most lethal institution on earth, the Pentagon. Casualties in Afghanistan have dramatically risen, and that is since HTS was deployed there. Not only that, the number of innocent civilians killed by the U.S. and NATO forces now exceeds the number of those killed by the Taliban. In fact the number of civilians killed by the US/NATO has risen by 600% compared to this time last year, and that is the low estimate; the other estimate is that the number has risen by over 1000%. The numbers of civilians killed by the Taliban have dropped significantly, down by 30% compared to this time last year (source) — apparently the Taliban have a much better program for reducing casualties. So the “hope” may be that HTS will reduce casualties (yet, it is a land-based system, whereas the U.S. Air Force is the one that continues to drop gigantic bombs on villages), but the facts tell another story.

One certain way to reduce casualties is for high-minded scholars who want to see action, to take action as anti-war activists and call for the withdrawal of U.S. and other NATO forces. That will lead to zero deaths for those forces, and zero deaths that those forces might have otherwise caused in Afghanistan. This solution, however, is constantly removed from consideration, because the supporters of HTS, and their media sycophants, ultimately do want war, and HTS employees go to serve in war with the ultimate aim of defeating “the adversary” and seeing their nation’s policies triumph. Getting killed while doing that kind of work is merely par for the course.

Paula Loyd, Yee writes, was seeking to, “understand a dangerous, complex situation on the ground so that lives could be saved”. Perfect liberal interventionist discourse, and as Greg Feldman argued, a clever appropriation of the sales pitch usually made in Anthropology 101 classes: gaining a cross-cultural understanding will lead the world toward peace. What it tells us is that, not just that the narrative is sentimental tripe, but that we have to confront and tackle liberal discourse and our standard anthropological tools of naive self-promotion.

The second thing that is different about this article is that it offers a slight tip in the hat of the direction of re-humanizing Loyd’s attacker, Abdul Salam, acknowledging that the story told thus far has been unabashedly one-sided, a selective display of warm humane feelings for one party only, while demonizing and dehumanizing the other. Yee writes:

Why not write about Abdul Salam? Well, I did not know Salam, but I think if I did—if I really knew him—I would write about him and his tragedy, too. Somehow we need to understand how a person’s heart could turn so dark that he would believe setting an unarmed woman on fire would be a salve to his pain and anger.

Well done. Except for one thing that is forgotten as usual — there are two murderers in a story reduced to this small stage, the other of course being Don Ayala, a mercenary who committed a war crime. After all, it is thanks to his actions that Yee can never know Salam. Did Ayala’s heart turn any less dark that he would believe that blowing out the brains of an unarmed and subdued detainee would be a salve to his pain and anger? We do not know what Yee would say, because by that point in her article she has conveniently excluded Ayala from her little play. That silence speaks for her now.

What the article by Yee does no differently than any of the others we have seen, and is its ultimate goal, is to assimilate all that is good, wholesome, and holy about Paula Loyd to HTS. This is not an article about a friend, by a friend. This is an article about how a friend was employed, produced by a friend with an agenda. If the only point of the article was, as Yee dishonestly claims, to “respect” Loyd, then she could have restricted herself to merely commenting on her wonderful personal attributes. But no. Instead, as yet another act of zombification, what Yee does is to build a pyramid of charming and cheerful facts about Loyd, and tops it all off with her work for HTS. Her work with refugees is thus placed as a lead up to her employment with HTS. Loyd’s last act is used to redefine her whole life. Loyd was, “caring, concerned, intelligent, rational, humane, and impassioned,” and having joined HTS, these qualities transfer to it: HTS is where the caring, concerned, intelligent, rationale, humane, impassioned, go to work. Yee says she could have instead chosen the “sedate” route and entered a PhD program, but she was “unconventional” — like Indiana Jones is unconventional, and we all just love Indy, right? Besides, Loyd also made “honey walnut cream cheese,” so for crying out loud how could critics mutter anything “not nice” after they got a mouthful of that? Can we not imagine ourselves “eating waffles” with “Paula” in Boston, along with the other good white people of super privileged backgrounds? The army, well…the army simply offered Loyd “adventures and challenges” — not the army that the rest of the world knows to be a genocidal killing machine that is directly responsible for the murder of millions of innocent civilians since its inception. [And if you doubt that, read some history: tally the killing of civilians by the U.S. military in the Philippines,  World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the numerous U.S. invasions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Or, you can take the easy route, and pretend such things never happened, and continue to rewrite world history in a way that makes the U.S. always appear angelic.]

Amy Yee succeedes in getting some extra frequent flyer miles for her zombie. Where she fails utterly is to take us to a new destination. You are right, Amy Yee, you are definitely not “glorifying” Paula Loyd. As for the corpse that is HTS, it does not matter how much deodorant you spray on it, it still stinks.

Is there any surprise to how American “justice” works when it comes to American war criminals? Have there not been enough minor sentences, and enough kangaroo courts of foreign detainees, to establish this fact?

Following John Stanton, who was present for the sentencing of Ayala at the Eastern District Court division in Alexandria, Virginia (I am grateful for the notices he sent by email), the Associated Press and Wired reported that Don Michael Ayala, is to go free. The mercenary employed by the Human Terrain System, who executed a handcuffed and subdued detainee who had attacked Paula Loyd (an anthropologist and army reservist serving the Pentagon) will not serve time in jail. Instead, as Wired explained, “U.S. District Court Judge Claude Hilton sentenced Ayala, a member of the Army’s Human Terrain social science project, to five years probation and a $12,500 fine.”

While Loyd’s attacker, Abdul Salam, was handed an immediate death sentence by his unlawful executioner, that executioner, Don Ayala, walks away free.

Abdul Salam was indeed “guilty” of having the courage to rebel, to fight for his land, and to say his piece. His actions demonstrate that “liberty or death” was a philosophy that he valued and understood intimately. He attacked both the foreign military presence, and he attacked the role of mercenary anthropologists who volunteer to facilitate that domination. The attack had the intended shock value, coming back from the direction of those who have been “shocked and awed” during eight years of U.S. bombings.

Meanwhile, Don Ayala, the mercenary whose adventurism and quest for cash propelled him into someone else’s home, into the lives of strangers, in an effort to faciliate their control by an alien power, is essentially thanked and even praised at home for his services in murdering an Afghan detainee — another to be added to the dozens already murdered while in U.S. detention. What few care to note is that the man once assigned to protect Hamid Karzai, failed to protect Paula Loyd. He conducted a revenge killing, asking an interpreter to tell Salam, “I think he’s the devil,” in a desperate effort to remedy his own failure.

This sentence sends the clearest possible message: the rules of war do not apply to the United States; international law has been replaced by the law of the jungle; and, mercenaries have the freedom to execute foreigners in detention. Afghans, unable to look to U.S. investigations and courts for justice, will have to exercise their own form of justice against invaders, and all is now legitimate.

Innocent civilians who have been detained, and tortured, as prisoners in Guantanamo, ended up serving more time, for having done absolutely nothing, than a confessed killer like Ayala. The “rule of law”? NATO soldiers allegedly dying for freedom and democracy in Afghanistan? The behaviour of a “civilized” nation? There was no surprise here, this is exactly the outcome that one should have expected from this farce of a trial, as I stated in the last post.

My condolences go to the family and friends of Abdul Salam.

Emotional pleas from friends, colleagues, and even members of Paula Loyd’s family, including her military fiancé, have poured in to defend Ayala, seeking a light sentence that would exclude any time in prison. Ayala served nine years in the military as a decorated member of the Army Rangers and worked six years as a mercenary in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, his defense claims, he was not prepared for the “horror” of what happened to Loyd. To be absolutely clear: Ayala executed a subdued detainee, in clear violation of the human rights conventions to which the U.S. is a signatory.

Nonetheless, this has not stopped those who would support Ayala’s heroism in illegally executing an unarmed detainee who could not fight back, having failed in his job of protecting Paula Loyd in the first place. A local “news” service, Nola.com, has gone as far as producing a “documentary” in defense of Don Ayala, shown below. That same source has Ayala rescuing “U.S. hostages from Granada” — they likely meant Grenada, during the 1983 U.S. invasion, also unprovoked, and where there were no U.S. hostages. It’s not the only self-serving and self-glorifying myth presented in this story, and many stemming from this case have already been rubbished on this blog.

Ayala’s legal defense “described” the actions of Abdul Salam as “a violent and incomprehensible attack upon an unarmed, vulnerable American woman who was actively working to improve the lives of all Afghans, including her assailant.” Leaving aside that kind of puffery and the low grade sentimentality, Salam was a member of a vulnerable population under the domination of the U.S. military occupation, who fought back and chose as his target a member of a U.S. military program. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Ayala’s defense claims, as the ultimate challenge to credulity, that the U.S. military is in Afghanistan to improve the lives of the Taliban. The attack on Loyd is only incomprehensible to those who have been nurtured in the propaganda that stipulates that not only is God on America’s side, America is God, and therefore any attack on an American, even one in military uniform and part of an invading force, is an attack on all that is good and holy. Let it be noted that all of this is forthcoming in the same week as news of another indiscriminate massacre of Afghan civilians by the U.S. Air Force, with the deaths of at least 120.

The following article by John Stanton, and the attached court document, were sent to me by John with permission to reproduce it here. John Stanton’s earlier articles on the Human Terrain System are also available here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14,  15, and 16.

A warning to readers: some of the photographs that follow show graphic violence.

Before anyone disingenuously protests that Paula Loyd is being used as a “weapon” by opponents of the Human Terrain System, let us keep the facts crystal clear: the only agencies that come anywhere close to having used Loyd almost literally as a weapon are the U.S. Government, the U.S. military, and the Human Terrain System specifically. No longer able to use her as an instrument of war, HTS has found one more use for Loyd: cheesy propaganda that almost has Loyd jumping up, saluting, and winking, following her attack. Americans can be wonderful, can do! types in such familiar renditions of retro-style military propaganda.

Finally, I will respectfully disagree with John on the final section of his article, not necessarily on a factual basis, but for reinforcing the one-sided attention to women’s rights that has become the standard for the war in Afghanistan, as if violence and discrimination against women, including the many reports of violent sexual assaults within the U.S. military itself, not to mention gay bashing (both literal and otherwise), were somehow alien to the U.S. Paula Loyd did not need to travel to Afghanistan to encounter gender discrimination. Paula Loyd did not need to travel to Afghanistan to “help improve people’s lives.” And the U.S. will not be teaching lawfulness and gender equality through illegal executions.

Regardless of the sentence, the case is a farce to begin with. It is another in-house show trial for which the U.S. has become notorious in pursuing its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

ADDENDUM:

While it is highly unlikely that we will ever know the exact details of the event, especially as absolutely no Afghan eyewitnesses have ever been heard in any report, as if the entire village was absent, one can see from the photographs alone that some details of the official story are suspicious at best. For example, there is no evidence in the photos of any market or bazaar, unless Afghans like to set up their goods in the village drainage ditch. Yet HTS claims Paula Loyd was interviewing Abdul Salam in a market. Also, given the depth of the scorching of the ground, and the details presented by John below, the notion that the flames were quickly or even immediately extinguished is hardly credible. In addition, that ditch does not appear to be a “stream.” One may suspect that by piling dirt on her open wounds, then dragging her on the ground, and then rolling her into what may be sewer water, that Loyd’s injuries were significantly exacerbated.

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USA v Don Ayala:
HTS Management, Army Leadership on Trial Too

06 May 2009

by John Stanton

“This example also provides a glimpse into the type of person that is needed to operate in this environment and the training that must take place in order to effectively work with foreign nationals. Not just anyone can do this kind of work, and there is a need for a set of inherent personality traits needed by operators in order to achieve the desired end state no matter the obstacle. A degree of moral flexibility and an understanding the political and strategic significance of handling delicate cultural issues are just a few of the characteristic needed in order to function in this environment.”–Major Kevin Burke, USA

On May 8, 2009 at 9:00AM Eastern (USA) Don Ayala, a member of a Human Terrain Team (HTT) operating in Afghanistan, will be sentenced by Judge Claude Hilton in the Eastern District Court of Virginia. On February 3, 2009, Ayala pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter of Abdul Salam, an Afghan national who doused Paula Loyd, a fellow HTT member, with a lit container of flammable liquid and set her alight. Loyd suffered burns on 60 percent of her body and ultimately succumbed to her wounds dying on January 7, 2008.

According to court filings, she was “engulfed in a ball of flame large enough to force those near her to involuntarily back away to a distance of 3 to 5 meters”. Loyd screamed in agony as flesh and clothing burned. A US platoon medic tried to put the fire out by using dirt but ultimately dragged her by her foot to a nearby drainage ditch where “helmetfuls” of water were applied to put out the flames. All her clothing burned off leaving only her helmet and body armor intact.

According to court documents, Salam “fled immediately from the scene and ran 50 meters towards Ayala. Ayala drew his sidearm but did not fire and instead pinned Salam on the ground on a commonly traveled path. Salam resisted violently but was eventually flex-cuffed and restrained with the assistance of members of the accompanying platoon. Ayala kept his sidearm “trained at Salam’s head”. Moments later, a US soldier and interpreter approached Ayala and Salam.

The interpreter “yelled at Salam, punched and kicked him and dragged him into an adjacent creek. Ayala retrieved Salam from the creek and put him back on the path,” pinning him down with knee to chest. According to court documents, Ayala was advised of Loyd’s status and subsequently shot Salam in the head killing him instantly. Ayala agreed to the factual nature of these events and entered a plea of voluntary manslaughter.

A photographic packet contained within court filings [see exhibits below] shows US Army’s Criminal Investigative Division (CID) personnel examining the scene and reenacting portions of the crime. The same photographic packet contains an unsettling picture depicting the narrow pathway and the scorched earth where Loyd lay burning. A picture of Salam’s corpse is also included. Tragic events like this one have followed every conquering force that has attempted to pacify Afghanistan. Now it’s the USA’s turn. The Ayala-Loyd-Salam tragedy could very well have been pulled from The Wasted Vigil by Nadem Salem, a novel of war and tragedy in Afghanistan. The Wasted Vigil should be read by anyone deploying to Afghanistan.

Ayala’s defense team has, as expected, argued that the act of manslaughter by Ayala can’t be decoupled from Salam’s assault and, ultimately, murder of Loyd. As such, the defense team argued that “a sentence of three years of supervised probation is sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply with the sentencing set forth in 18 USC 3553 (a) [Imposition of a Sentence, Factors, etc.]. Any imprisonment of Mr. Ayala would violate the stricture of 3553(a) and further compound the tragedy…”

According to court documents, Ayala, already suffering from prior “dormant combat stress injuries” described the thoughts he felt upon learning of Loyd’s status that would ultimately determine Salam’s fate.

“I was overcome with the horror of what had been done to her, knowing that she was suffering and that she would never be the same, even if she lived. Immediately after the incident I was allowed to go see Paula. I will never forget hearing Paula cry “I’m cold” over and over as the medic tried to treat her wounds.”

Court filings reveal 54 letters of support have been written on behalf of Ayala. The Times-Picayune of Louisiana has also posted a documentary video in support of Ayala here http://www.nola.com/news/?/base/news-1/124158792126600.xml&coll=1.

HTS, COIN, Involvement in Afghan-Pak on Trial

“In this situation, all sense of fairness is shattered and the rules of combat broken. This is not a scenario that anyone is trained for, prepared for…” said LTC David Thomas, USA (Ret.) in a court filing supporting Ayala.

Rules of combat in Afghanistan? Fairness? Why not prepare? Why is this scenario not rehearsed for a country where “western values” do not apply to women?

What the hell is going on with HTS and US Army leadership, training and recruitment!? Does anyone involved (contractors/government) with US Army cultural, human, counterinsurgency efforts actually know what they are doing? Do they really know the environment to which they are sending warfighters and contractors? What’s the end-game in Afghan-Pak?

It is common knowledge that women who are unlucky enough to be born into various tribes in Afghanistan are generally treated horribly. Women have few rights in Afghanistan save the right to be silent, and only speak when spoken to. Beatings are common. Being doused with acid is not uncommon. Women are cautious about reporting crimes committed against them by their male counterparts. “In many parts of the country, a majority of women report being assaulted by their husbands. Global Rights, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights organization, surveyed 5,700 households in 16 of the country’s 32 provinces. Fully 87.2 percent of respondents reported they had experienced at least one form of abuse, which included psychological, physical and sexual acts of violence as well as forced marriages. Fifty-two percent of respondents reported physical violence; many described being regularly punched, kicked, hit with sticks, cut with sharp objects, or having their hair pulled and clothes torn. One child bride, for example, reported that she had been woken up one day by her in-laws pouring a kettle of scalding hot water over her body (http://www.herizons.ca/node/263).

And it seems not much better for young males in Afghanistan. According to Major Kevin Burke writing in Civil Reconnaissance:  Separating the Insurgent from the Population, “…incidents of homosexual rape and bestiality among the Afghans has become an excepted [sic] fact in working with the Afghan nationals and other predominately Islamic countries. The act is not isolated within their military, but is practiced among the rural Afghan nationals and witness by most who spend any significant amount of time living among them. This example also provides a glimpse into the type of person that is needed to operate in this environment and the training that must take place in order to effectively work with foreign nationals. Not just anyone can do this kind of work, and there is a need for a set of inherent personality traits needed by operators in order to achieve the desired end state no matter the obstacle. A degree of moral flexibility and an understanding the political and strategic significance of handling delicate cultural issues are just a few of the characteristic needed in order to function in this environment.”

The Ayala-Loyd-Salam case is a portent for the larger tragedy that is sure to follow as America’s attempt to Westernize Afghanistan and Pakistan gains momentum.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in political and national security matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com.

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The following photographs were taken by the U.S. military both on the day of the attack, 04 November 2008, and the day after. The rest of the photos can be seen here.

Abdul Salam, lying where he was after shot in the head by Don Ayala, with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Flash burns to Salam's arm

Salam's body in place after the zip-cuffs were cut off. A body bag is in the background. View is from the south end of the alley facing north.

The scorched ground where Paula Loyd lay burning alive after being attacked by Salam.

1LT Pathak demonstrating how Ayala knelt on top of Salam, who was subdued and handcuffed when shot in the head by Ayala.

1LT Pathak demonstrating how Ayala knelt on top of Salam before shooting him in the head.

It may be necessary for me to file a legal change of name, to Dr. Max Rat, which oddly enough has a pleasant ring to it, and nice symmetry. Before I misrepresent anyone, especially rats and haters of rats, let me say that this is a name I have given myself as a result of a recent exchange on this blog, one of too many that have occurred as a result of the attack on, and then death, of Paula Loyd, an American army reservist and anthropologist who was employed with the Human Terrain System in Afghanistan. She was set alight by Abdul Salam on November 4, 2008, and died on January 7, 2009, in Texas, as a result of her injuries. Salam was executed while in detention, at the hands of a mercenary, Don Ayala, who has since pleaded to “voluntary manslaughter” (manslaughter, you can hear a man’s laughter in this) and will likely get a light sentence this coming May.

The story refuses to die, and many commentators want to persist in raising it with me, time and again, until — it seems — I can learn to grieve like them, to grieve like an American for an American. Given my own general fed-up-itude with the discussion, which was almost always conducted with great acrimony and on a personal level, arguing with people who barely spent a moment trying to understand anything I said, I closed the comment function on each of the Paula Loyd stories after a while. This is not a Paula Loyd blog, this is not the place for a soap opera to be played out concerning her life. Nonetheless, the latest exchange, and the reaction it provoked, was interesting to me and I decided to replay it here, on the front of the blog, with a couple of additional notes at the bottom. The exchange occurred today, between a certain “Satchel” and myself. (That’s right, a rat got into an argument with a bag, a rat who collaborates with a seagull — that’s the Internet for you.) Satchel posted his/her comments on my “About the Blogger” page, probably because there was nowhere else to post it (although the report of Don Ayala’s plea in court is still open to comments). Satchel, I have problems with your message, not with you (especially since I do not know who you are). You should feel welcome to come back and post a rebuttal, and I guarantee you will have the final word.

[Previous posts dealing with issues arising from the attack on Paula Loyd are:

1. “Civilian Contractor” Pleads Guilty to Voluntary Manslaughter of Afghan Detainee
2. John Stanton: Hamas’ IT Tops Human Terrain System IT in Internet Capability, Savvy (2.1)
3. Gassing Puppies, Burning Women, and Playing Tennis
4. The Unreported Death of Staff Sgt. Paula Loyd of the Human Terrain System: Third Researcher to Die
5. Human Terrain System: Murder, Espionage, Paranoia
6. On the conduct of military “contractors” in Afghanistan: In the words of Paula Loyd (1.7)
7. Me Today … You Tomorrow
8. Selectively Outraged, Half Humane, All American (1.7)
9. HTS “Contractor” Who Murdered Afghan, Now in Custody, Awaiting Trial (plus Stanton’s sixth article on the Human Terrain System)
10. Is the Human Terrain System Imploding? (Let’s hope so.) — John Stanton’s fifth article on HTS
11. Updated: Human Terrain Researcher Set on Fire in Afghanistan; plus new Articles on the Human Terrain System]

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SATCHEL:

Submitted on 2009/02/12 at 9:31am

“[Salam] … lit his jug on fire and engulfed the 36-year-old Loyd in flames

The attack on [Paula] Loyd, who died in a Texas hospital on Jan. 7 after a two-month struggle for her life, has reverberated from the Wellesley campus, where people grieve for the energetic scholar who seemed to be a natural peacemaker, to national academic circles, where anthropologists carry on a heated debate over whether social scientists should be working for the military, to the Afghan mountains, where soldiers vow to give meaning to her death by fighting on.

Then in a twist of events out of the Wild West, upon seeing the extent of her injuries, “…her fellow researcher shot and killed the man [Salam]…”

Yet you write:
“Salam got murdered in his own country by foreign occupiers,” Maximilian C. Forte, assistant professor of anthropology at Concordia University in Quebec, wrote on his website, Open Anthropology. “Try, just as an experiment, to see things from that angle for a moment.”

Salam murdered a woman by setting her on fire. Why do you defend this rat person? His type also kill girls going to school in Afghanistan. Remove the borders consider us all citizens of the world. Salam still deserved to die.

Or keep the borders in place, and consider that I should torch an Illegal Immigrant Occupier here in the US? Will you bring your PhD and come defend me?

Some people need to be made dead. Salam was one of those. Don’t let your cerebral existence in the ivory towers of academia, and your political leanings whatever they are, prevent you from seeing that.

DR. RAT (aka Max Forte):

Submitted on 2009/02/12 at 1:25pm

If this is an ivory tower, and I am here, then note that you are also here with me. Please drop the petty jealousies and the smug anti-intellectualism, and then maybe we can have a respectful conversation. I don’t know what your job is, and I promise not to class your thinking as that of a dental assistant if that is what you do.

Your intervention here is wrong on so many levels that I don’t know where to begin, or why I should have to explain once more what I have already written about at great length many times already.

Your comparison of foreign military occupiers who have killed thousands of locals, and Mexican tomato pickers in the US, is foolish and extreme beyond repair, and the fact that it represents such a desperate reach indicates to me, and to you too, that you know your argument is shaky, to be polite.

“Salam murdered a woman.” That’s how you choose to present it, and it’s not the only way that it can be presented. It serves your purposes, and that vulgarized feminism that serves imperial purposes, to present this as a gender issue. I say “Salam murdered a foreign occupier.” I am not incorrect, and I absolutely do not, and will not retract what is a statement of fact.

Do I like Salam? I don’t know the man. You don’t know the man. We will never hear from him. His story remains a mystery. But, that doesn’t stop you from charging in with your assumptions that he belongs to a “type” that “kills girls”. Remove the borders and consider us all citizens of the world? How very convenient for you! Then in that case let’s see the Taliban given full and free rights to carry out their campaigns in shopping malls in Los Angeles, and in the countryside of Wisconsin, in a world without borders.

Let me submit to you that you could not give a shit about a world without borders, your aim is instead a world without opposition, where your movement alone remains unimpeded.

So why shouldn’t I defend the “rat person” who fights to resist foreign occupation, who does nothing worse than your countless high altitude bombings and white phosphorous bombings have done to his people, and to the people of Iraq, where your cluster munitions have wiped out whole families…why shouldn’t I? It’s clear why, because you would prefer that I defend “rat persons” like…yourself, and the other fools who stomp around Afghanistan as if it was their personal, private real estate.

If you don’t like it, then stay the fuck out of Afghanistan, and you won’t get killed.

Now, was that too “Ivory Tower” for you, or were you actually able to follow this time?

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POST-CRYPT:

There are three things that I should add.

One has to do with what I admit is an attractive, compellingly humanistic appeal to a world without borders, as Satchel tried to do above. In such a world, only two things matter: Paula Loyd was a human. Wait, that’s just one thing. In such a world, Abdul Salam is also a human being, not a rat. We thus have a story of two humans, no states, no borders, no flags, no “local” and no “foreign.” When I constantly make reference to Salam as a local fighting against foreign domination, I am using and reinforcing the language of nation-states, sovereignty, borders, etc., precisely all those things that I detest.

Or am I? After all, this is not a world with just humans, and just inter-personal interactions. Loyd was where she was thanks to the workings of geopolitics, state power, and a rebordering of the world being effected by her home government. You can remove the borders from your mind, but you cannot get away with decontextualizing an analysis of things as they are. And what you cannot do, as a good cosmopolitan humanist, is elevate one side to humanity, and degrade the other side as rats. That’s another border, not an anti-border.

Secondly, what I resent most, and this now overlaps with my debates with self-described Zionists both here and in Twitter, is this notion that only one side, only one party to a conflict, only the citizens of certain states possess the property we call “humanity”– “coincidentally,” the citizens of the states with all the wealth and the most firepower. The rest are … rats. The choice of that particular term is loaded with history, Nazi history in fact. What was used against Jews, is now used against Muslims, against “brown” people. Anti-semitism is bad (if directed against Jews, not the other Semites), but Islamophobia and Arab-bashing is alright, because it is the accepted norm. I do not need to obey nor conform to the new Nazi order. I willingly, and gladly defend all rat people, including myself as a rat person.

But what I gather some people wanted to hear most, is this: that I think that Paula Loyd’s death was gruesome, ghastly, tragic and deeply sad. I absolutely do think that. I would not wish her death on the worst enemy, and she was not my worst enemy. I also think that her family, and fiance/husband (I do not know the details here), were grievously injured and traumatized. Her mother was apparently at her side every single day she was in hospital. As someone who has suffered loss, and brutal loss at that, I know that her mother in particular is another victim here, deeply marked for the rest of her life. Paula Loyd’s family did not start the war in Afghanistan, they are not to be held responsible for it, and they are largely innocent bystanders in all of this, who nonetheless have suffered permanent loss. Paula Loyd was her mother’s baby, and her mother had to watch her baby come back to her burned. It’s really unspeakable. Paula’s mother knows that never again in this life, never again on this earth, will she have the pleasure to see her daughter, hear her voice, or hold her. That is gone, and gone for good (or until the next life depending on your beliefs).

Of course I know these things. And having said them now…what has this achieved?

Addendum:

Having said the above, I personally think that Loyd’s family is making a serious error of judgment in considering involving itself in Afghanistan by supporting Afghan girls going to study at Wellesley (source1, source2). They could be exposing those girls or their families to violent retribution, and should the Taliban succeed in regaining power (a possibility that I think is likely), such a program is almost certain to be torn to shreds. In addition, her family members have also called for a lenient sentence to be handed to Don Ayala, dubbed “her avenger” in one newspaper headline.

Given the heightened concern for, and interest in, issues of women’s rights that this story seems to have provoked, I will say what I said before: there is much work to be done at home, in the U.S. without having to involve oneself in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch, for example, has recently reported “soaring rates of rape and violence against women” in the U.S. The concern with Afghan men, as “animals” who abuse women, seems more than just a little misplaced, and hypocritical.

Understanding the grief of those who knew Loyd, does not explain or excuse the tendency to act as if Afghanistan is their personal real estate, that everything should be made comfortable for them as they engage in adventures abroad, and that they should be able to go to war and yet not have to die. These ideas are simply irrational, and I make no apologies for exposing them as such.

It seems that the most fitting conclusion to this story is that the program for which Paula Loyd work, is effectively being terminated, by her own government.

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Press release from the United States Attorneys’ Office, Eastern District of Virginia:

03 February 2009

From:

Peter Carr
Public Information Officer
Phone (703) 842-4050 Fax: (703) 299-2584
Email: usavae.press@usdoj.gov
Web Address: www.usdoj.gov/usao/vae

Civilian Contractor Pleads Guilty to Voluntary Manslaughter of Afghan Detainee

(Alexandria, Virginia) – Don Michael Ayala, a civilian contractor stationed in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty today to voluntary manslaughter in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in the death of Abdul Salam while on patrol in Chehel Gazi, Afghanistan, on November 4, 2008. According to court documents, Salam had doused Ayala’s civilian contractor teammate, Ms. Paula Loyd, with gasoline, ignited it and fled in the direction of Ayala and several U.S. soldiers. Ayala and the soldiers tackled Salam and restrained him. Minutes later, when Ayala was informed of Ms. Loyd’s condition and while Salam was still restrained, Ayala fired a single round in to Salam’s head, killing him instantly. The maximum sentence Ayala could receive is 15 years.

Ms. Loyd, 36, suffered second- and third-degree burns over 60 percent of her body and was subsequently evacuated to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where she died from her injuries on January 7, 2009.

U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton set a sentencing date of May 8, 2009. Dana J. Boente, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Rita M. Glavin, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division, made the announcement.

This case is being investigated by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Michael E. Rich, Special Assistant United States Attorney Zachary Richter and former Domestic Security Section Trial Attorney Christopher Graveline.

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THE STATEMENT OF FACTS in the case against Ayala by the U.S. Government.

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Contradictions and Questions

According to at least some definitions, “voluntary manslaughter” involves a notion of killing committed as an “act of passion,” where there was no prior intent to kill, and that the circumstances of the killing were of a kind that would cause a reasonable person to become emotionally or mentally disturbed (source, source). As someone without legal training, there is a limit to what I can understand and interpret about how this can be deemed as applicable in this case.

First, any mercenary goes into a war zone with an intent to kill, so that is locked in from the start.

Second, if the attack on Paula Loyd was what caused Ayala to become emotionally or mentally disturbed, like a reasonable person, then what does that say about the rest of the team and the soldiers who were present? To say that “anyone would have acted like Ayala under the same circumstances,” does not explain why it was only Ayala who acted in that manner.

Third, the Human Terrain System’s own “In memoriam” page for Paula Loyd, casts Ayala’s state of mind in doubt — he could not possibly have been as agitated as his plea would suggest. The HTS website claims the following: “Her [Paula Loyd's] teammate, who was standing close by, immediately submerged her in a stream, extinguishing the flames. After the flames were out, Paula (with remarkable courage and aplomb) looked at her hands and said, ‘Gee, these look bad. Do you think I’ll be able to finish my report?’.” Loyd was immediately submerged in a stream — she could not have suffered wounds to the extent that we all know she suffered, but which nonetheless HTS suggests must have been far less severe. Loyd was also in fairly good shape, she could speak, and she even joked about the matter — or at least so her employers claim. If Loyd seemed to be less than agitated, why was Ayala instead driven hysterically mad?

Fourth, why was Ayala not handed over to Afghan authorities to be tried in Afghanistan, for a crime against a national, on Afghan soil?

By accepting Ayala’s plea bargain, and proceeding to sentencing, the court has made no room for such basic questions to even be aired. They are null and void. What “justice” there can be without even a semi-adequate discussion of these and others questions, is something that is up in the air. More down to earth, one fact remains: cowboy justice has prevailed. In this, there is nothing new, nothing surprising.

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Cynical Imperial Prose that Only Begs Questions

However, HTS seems to have just released a new page dedicated to Paula Loyd. Unfortunately, in an extremely cynical move, HTS uses the opportunity to transform the meaning of the attack into one over gender rights, with the implicit characterization of all Pakistanis (Loyd was in Afghanistan) as performing similar acts of violence against all professional women. Why the dislocated reference? The result is to remove from the picture the fact that Loyd was not just a professional, but a professional employed as part of a foreign occupying military force, accompanied by both soldiers and at least one mercenary on the day of the attack. Again the suggestion is: it’s not our imperialism that is the problem, it’s their backward culture. It goes further, Loyd’s attacker is portrayed as insane (a suggestion repeatedly made on this blog by one HTS supporter who suddenly appeared the day before Loyd’s death, and on the day itself): Salam is described as warmly thanking HTS members and then suddenly, without warning, attacking Loyd. A madman from an inferior culture, that hates women, blindly.

If this is the kind of sensitive anthropology that gathers cultural information, it not only discredits HTS, it does a disservice to the professional abilities of Loyd and her reputed love for Afghanistan, its peoples and its cultures.

Since the Taliban took official credit for the attack, the suggestion is one of premeditation, not insanity, and since Loyd was chosen as the target, another viable and plausible question that no one is thinking of asking is whether the Taliban knows about HTS and is seeking to target its employees whenever it can.  HTS members and Loyd’s well wishers have often made the point about how well known and well liked Loyd was — which would also suggest that it would be very easy for the Taliban to have known about her. That discussion would have a chilling effect on recruitment, and no wonder then that it is a discussion that HTS and its supporters do not wish to entertain.

In an outrageous and bizarre rendition of events, HTS’ “report” also has Loyd up and talking, chatting and joking after her attack, with the flames immediately doused. She looks at her burnt hands (she still has eyesight, they imply), and wonders aloud if she will be able to finish her report — no trauma, no shock, all bravado. She is told she will need some plastic surgery, and she allegedly jokes that she always wanted to have some things done.  This account — to abuse the word “account” — is also problematic since it begs the question as to why she would need two months of intensive treatment,  what qualified her condition as “critical,” with the injuries so severe that eventually they overpowered her after more than two full months of constant care. Instead, HTS has Loyd virtually ready to join Cirque du Soleil moments after the attack. One might reasonably suspect that HTS is taking the opportunity to create a “hero” story from this incident, accompanied with a suitable golden girl photo, a story line that was anticipated on this blog. In fact, their report almost seems to follow the main lines of criticism produced on this blog regarding the reinterpretation and media projection of the Loyd incident.

I also have reason to be very suspicious of the account of Loyd being immediately immersed in water. I do not believe it happened so quickly. As any of us who have witnessed people pouring lighter fluid on their skin and setting it alight, no harm  is done, as the layer of fuel burns itself off, the performer smothers the flame before it reaches actual skin and starts to burn it. If Loyd had been immediately submerged in water, little harm would have been done, and she might really have been in a position to joke about it. Instead, she sustained third degree burns over 60% of her body, and died from the injuries, two months later, even with constant care.  The fact that a local blood drive in San Antonio was being conducted for Loyd, and raised 47 pints of blood, even weeks after she was admitted to hospital, suggests constant blood loss and very extreme injuries. Moreover, in the same tale told by HTS, when in hospital, Loyd was merely “sometimes responsive” (responsive being a word normally used in such circumstances when someone gives a sign of reacting to a stimulus, not usually talking back). It’s almost as if Loyd had suffered her worst injuries not from the attack, but after the attack, while under constant care — which either makes no sense, or implies something quite perverse.

That someone is fabricating a tale is certain; what is open to speculation is the reason for the story-telling.

There is also the question of why Don Ayala, the mercenary who executed Loyd’s detained attacker, was so enraged (as alleged or implied by reports thus far), that he felt the need to kill Salam — if Loyd was so lightly affected by her attack, as HTS suggests. And did Loyd, then on her feet and joking, according to the HTS account, not have any say in the matter of Salam’s fate? Or is HTS suggesting that she knew and agreed with the execution? This could even have legal implications in the case against Don Ayala. This is the kind of mess this amateurish piece of HTS propaganda is creating.

Lastly, HTS admits: “For the duration of her hospitalization, HTS provided a uniformed military staff member to support Paula’s family and ensure that she received adequate care.” Then this also helps us to make sense of a fact that transpired on this blog. By “curious coincidence” on January 6 I started to receive comments about Loyd, on an old post. At the same time, an anonymous message appeared on another blog announcing that Loyd had died — on January 6. The next day, someone who claimed to be a relative of Loyd’s, corrected that, and said the she instead died on January 7. So what? It suggests that someone from HTS was present at the hospital, as admitted above, and was told by, or overheard, a doctor suggesting the possibility that Loyd’s condition was worsening dramatically and that she might not last another 24 hours. Again, so what? It also suggests that someone else further along the chain misunderstood what was reported from inside the hospital, and took her death as final, and then decided to attack the blogs. At that time, starting prematurely on January 6, people who are likely in HTS, or affiliated with it, started appearing on this blog to try to rally some argument since I have been clearly identified, in international media, as a vocal critic of HTS — they were using her death in a vulgar attempt to shame me into silence, and several such messages were posted here, and not approved. This act of cynicism, if true (I challenge anyone to come up with a more plausible explanation of the facts), would fall in line with the kind of outrageous cynicism produced in HTS’ “report” on the death of Loyd.

As a result, what HTS produces is a botched piece that certainly does no service to the memory of Loyd, nor to the feelings of her family, while further discrediting themselves.  One gets the impression that HTS managers sought to use every ounce of Loyd to fabricate one more propaganda attack, even trying to convert her death into points scored, which tells us more of what all  of us should already know about this atrocity called HTS.

And, it is not the first time that HTS, or those employed by it, have sought to exploitatively ventriloquize one of their dead (see Tom Garcia’s obituary to Michael Bhatia). One would think that, if not for Afghans, they would have more respect for their own dead and allow them to rest in peace.

Final revision: 19 January 2009

•••••••

John Stanton’s nine earlier articles are available here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. His latest article, also published in Pravda, is reproduced here with the writer’s permission.

•••••••

Hamas IT Tops Human Terrain System IT in Internet Capability, Savvy

14 January 2009

by John Stanton

“I’ve experienced the loss of close comrades before but it never gets easier. Paula Loyd is now free from pain caused by the doing the job we believed in.”

“My mind boggles, especially at the apparent lack of official interest by ‘Big Army’ in addressing and rectifying this situation.”

“Everyone with half a brain knows that this thing is totally in disarray. No one knows their asses from holes in the ground!”

“The end result is clear and quite simple to see: A group of inept, incompetent, self-serving contractors whose only desire is to promote their personal agenda. This single fact is the reason that the HTS program, no matter how noble, will ultimately fail.”

“The management of the Human Terrain System (HTS) program hiring practice is based on not what you know, but who you know, or who you’re related to. Qualifications are secondary.”

It seems that the information technology (IT) department of Hamas is far more qualified than its counterparts in the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS). And Hamas management apparently is more sensitive to its fallen combatants, plus its presence in the Internet, than Steve Fondacaro, the program manager of the HTS program, and Montgomery McFate, the Senior Social Scientist. The Hamas website (http://www.alqassam.ps/english/) is vivid, updated, and displays dozens of the obituaries, with pictures, of many of its KIA’s-some very recent. It appears standard operating procedure for the Hamas IT staff and management to get that information online ASAP.

In contrast Paula Loyd’s obituary finally appeared on the HTS website on 13 January 2009 (http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/paula.html) only after a very loud outcry from current and former HTS staff, academia, and other interested parties. Moreover, at this writing, the HTS website has not been overhauled since October 2008. The simple task of maintaining a website is just one more in a long list of troubles that the HTS program has. Yet hand it to Fondacaro and McFate, they keep the money rolling in (for a copy of the Fondacaro-McFate road-show/status briefing titled HTS Information Briefing for Army G3, 16 October 2008, contact cioran123@yahoo.com). This should raise questions about the caliber of US military leaders who buy a program that has no hard audit of its measures-of-effectiveness (MOE) and has a documented history of troubles dating back to its days in JIEDDO.

Outsource to Hamas IT?

According to sources, the delay in memorializing Loyd’s death was because the former HTS IT department lacked the expertise/military accreditation to edit the site since it resides on a military domain. Montgomery McFate requested that the website be updated when Loyd was first injured but that did not happen because the webmaster, a former S6 in the US Army, had just completed his mobilization tour at Fort Leavenworth. According to sources, the remaining IT staff at Fort Leavenworth (mainly contractors) did not possess the skills required to edit the website. They also did not have the required military credentials to maintain a US Department of Defense web site.

“The website is technically broken. The menu bar at the top of the page is supposed to contain white text that displays a blue text drop down menu when the user places the curser over the word. But it’s all blue now, aesthetically very unappealing and difficult to read. It has not been fixed/updated, due to the shortcomings of the HTS IT department,” said sources.

Unqualified HTS IT staff may also explain why the nonfunctioning MAP-HT software package has been completely outsourced to Overwatch Tactical, a subsidiary of Textron.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Fondacaro and McFate were recently pitching the HTS program to AFRICOM and, according to Wired’s Danger Room, were successful. According to sources, “They have been very successful in wasting the government’s money. The HTS concept was sound at one point but management lost sight of the purpose of the program and is responsible for trying to grow the HTS Empire so quickly that it cuts corners in critical areas like training. Instead of trying to fix identified program problems, Fondacaro and Steve Rotkoff (Deputy Program Manger) fire those that ask questions and refuse to resign, and then hire and train staff who quickly learn not to ask questions about inadequate training.”

Another source wondered how AFRCIOM could buy the “‘capabilities’ and services of HTS even if there are no units deployed to AFRICOM. Why would they have any need for HTTs?”

According to sources, HTS management employs people that do not have directly relevant experience nor should they be allowed the privilege of holding a US security clearance. Two recent cases have come to light. In one case, there is a social scientist that spent most of her time in Southeast Asia and has resided in Jakarta. One source had this to say: “What does she expect in Afghanistan! This is war! These people do not have the foggiest idea of what they are getting involved in.

In the other somewhat disturbing instance, if true, there is an HTS staff member who allegedly “has a known drug problem that has been brought up to the higher-ups but nothing has been done. There are people who are refusing to go to Afghanistan with him or to be on his team. He also has a severe gambling problem and before joining the program was living out of his car. He got the job because he knows McFate. Everyone with half a brain knows that this thing is totally in disarray. No one knows their asses from holes in the ground! There are those who started this program thinking it would be a good thing and that it would help the soldiers. You really see now that it is about Greed. The leadership is incestuous.”

According to other sources, competent staff who tried their best to make things work have been punished. “Another HTT Team Leader, Timothy W. Johnson (Retired Special Forces Major) and one of his Social Scientists (Retired Special Forces), both assigned to the USMC in Anbar, Iraq, were ordered home by Steve Rotkoff, per Steve Fondacaro. Reason: repeatedly asking for support from HQ Building 48. Social Scientist, Wayne Blye (Retired Navy Captain), is still waiting for a meeting with Rotkoff and Fondacaro. He was ordered to return from Iraq more than six weeks ago for a meeting. Until then he waits in a hotel.”

With the approval of HTS management, sources say, University of California Irvine English Professor Carol Burke, a noted folklorist, was “observing” HTT’s in action. Burke is scheduled to present a paper on Combat Ethnography on 5 March 2009 at the University’s International Studies section. It may well be that her travels and observations were in preparation for that event. She has been contacted for further details on her effort.

Or, maybe the HTS program will be reborn as the Combat Ethnography Program.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security and political matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

While originally lamenting the “distraction” from discussing the invasion of Gaza by shifting the focus to the story of a single person, the now deceased Paula Loyd, I realize that was the wrong reaction. The story of Loyd is not that of a single actor, unless one focuses it that way, and it encapsulates many of the same colonial and imperial themes to be found in the war against the people of Gaza. In that vein, I offer some further commentary.

In the mass of the usual racist and jingoistic commentary to which Danger Room plays host, and perhaps we should thank them for these fragments of insight into the mentality of some of their readers, as an example of the intellectual monstrosities being generated or nurtured by an American culture of war and fear, I was particularly impressed by those who nonetheless tried to bring some balance and perspective to the discussion provoked by Loyd’s death, in particular these two comments:

My heart goes out to all of the Paula Loyds not blond enough, not pretty enough, not white enough, not Christian enough, not American enough to warrant mourning when maimed or murdered for having the temerity to live on top of natural resources America claims as its own.

A little perspective…

She wasn’t killed walking her kids to school or to the local library. She was killed as a willing member of an imperial force which deprives sovereign human beings of life and property in direct violation of international and moral law. (source)

Also,

These aren’t just social scientists. They are employed by the US military to conduct research with a goal of helping the military more effectively carry out the occupation. If I were living in a country that had a much stronger foreign power occupying it, I would probably consider such people valid targets as well. (source)

Otherwise, a great many of the other comments ironically serve to undo whatever they allege was the great good done by Loyd in building bridges of understanding, lessening opportunity for American cultural offense, and loving the Afghan people she was trying to supposedly help. Instead, they opt for extremely vulgar expressions of racism and hatred against Afghan people. It seems that Loyd’s work would have had better application at home, perhaps as a missionary among the readers at Danger Room itself, as it degenerates into a substitute for the Aryan Nation’s website when it is not serving as the Pentagon’s better buying guide to the newest military gadgetry. But that is just my opinion.

The larger issues raised here have to do with what some consider to be imperial and right behaviour. It is a serious mistake to reduce imperialism to aggressive military action alone — indeed, in the literature on imperialism since the late 19th century, military force is neither the central nor necessary component in understanding imperialism. This is apparently irrelevant to those who claim that Loyd was unarmed — as if that mattered, since she was traveling in the company of both soldiers and at least one mercenary, Don Ayala. Attached to a military unit, and the fact that she was a low ranking army officer, seems to vanish as some translate her into a “noncombatant” akin to a nurse, doctor, or priest. As expected, for some her image has morphed into one of a saint, even a Joan of Arc. At the extreme, she is cast as some kid doing a social science project for school. As an American, killed abroad by an opponent of American domination, in the minds of some she automatically becomes a hero; heroism is also transferred to the mercenary, Don Ayala, and for some the death of Loyd offers convenient cover for Ayala. So many transfers are being made, that soon the entire Human Terrain System will be made to look like a battalion of righteous Joans of Arc. Indeed, there is little doubt that was the cynical intention behind some of the propaganda that was mounted in blogworld just in time for the leaked news of Loyd’s death.

At another extreme, she is raised as a martyr for the great American feminist cause, which right wing America only discovered once it invaded Afghanistan and decided that it would assume the right to chart another nation’s course and rewire its society to be more aligned with American interests. There was a moment, early on, when it also seemed the American state might even adopt an animal rights discourse, when the media began to release videos of golden puppies being used by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to test poisonous gas — except that they were  more likely American videos, filmed in the U.S., and that story was dropped.

There is a growing theme here: the aggressor casting himself/herself as a victim. In “Hate brings her back to loving town,” Cary Clack deploys stock images contrasting the superior American with the Afghan barbarian, as if reverse engineering a postcolonial studies course in English. It almost works as a sketch for a movie on the Lifetime channel. Examine some of the tropes deployed by the writer about Loyd:

• reaching out to a stranger when it happened
• trying to remove the veil of mystery and suspicion
• making herself a bridge between cultures
• a charming young girl eager to learn and full of joy
• one of the world’s beautiful people
• they too often meet human nature’s evil side
• her comfortable upbringing is part of what gives Loyd her sense of mission
• had a sense of security and a safe and loving environment in which we could learn
• [devoted] especially to little girls
• took art classes…learned how to tend a garden…perfected our tennis
• Paula represents a sweet time in our lives
• she is admired and respected by people worldwide

Never could one expect to see such a loving, beatifying, recognition of the warm humanity of an Afghan victim, let alone Abdul Salam. The images are of  white, middle class people, enjoying comfort and leisure, their safety, education, and basic goodness. All of these images are relational, and to understand the other text, or subtext of this piece, one has to see what their opposites would be, since that describes the side of “hate” (first word in the title of the piece) and the “evil side” — a more skillful colonial writer would have implied it, not stated it. She lifts the “veil” — the word and its Islamophobic meanings are not accidentally chosen. Her focus is “the little girls” — except she was “interviewing” a man when she was set ablaze. As I argued before, these are moments that afford us additional insight into what it means to be “selectively outraged, half humane, and All American.”

Loyd the person becomes Loyd the persona who then becomes a mere icon that is used to whitewash a brutal imperial mission. The actual person is left far behind and she becomes an ideological construct in the service of war. I personally know nothing at all about Loyd the person, nor does that matter.

The issues I raise go beyond Loyd the person, and to how “humanity” is selectively appropriated and monopolized by other Americans, as if it were uniquely theirs, and appropriate Loyd as a symbolic vehicle. The reality of their own brutality is conveniently pushed out of sight. Indeed there are countless Afghan “Paula Loyds” about whom we never hear, will never know, nor mourn. In fact, when they are killed by American forces, the rush is not to mourn them, to reflect on their personal qualities, but to debate either the logistics of targeting, or in some extreme cases, to blame the victims for their own deaths.

Dismissing the generation of extreme circumstances of struggle and deprivation, such writers from our colonial comfort zones reel when faced by those who emerge as the mirror image their state helped to create: the extremists. Their mistake lies in abstracting and extracting the extremist as an aberration, insane, an animal, a brute, and as is convenient now, a man. They preserve their vision from turning to their own many acts of extremism against Afghans…the bridges they preemptively torched that then created employment opportunities for the imperial bridge builders, sweetly setting up beachheads inside the minds of villagers. And all of the claims of inherent American goodness comes from a society with a history of lynchings, of forced marchings of natives, of slavery, of detention camps, of daily police brutality, and of its own steady interpersonal and institutional violence against women and the poor. The hypocrisy is inexcusable, but what is a real challenge is understanding how easily some find refuge in such unmolested states of absolute self-affirmation at the expense of the others they dehumanize and then demonize. Is it taught in school? In the church? In the home? Likely it is taught in all of these arenas, and no wonder then that in some places anthropology courses stand as a severe challenge to these received “truths” of imperial America. At its best, anthropology poses as a Trojan horse of the anti-empire.

We need to turn our attention to the question of foreign noncombatants and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, and whether or not we include Loyd as a noncombatant is irrelevant. Whats interests me here is the use of non-military and even NGO personnel as part of imperial attempts to occupy and reengineer a nation to move along several courses. The influx of self-appointed saviours in Afghanistan, turning their backs on poverty and homelessness in their own countries (that is, until those begin to look more like security issues that raise the hackles of fear), proposing to win Afghan hearts and minds (only incidentally for the good of empire?), pacifying the restless, stabilizing a situation unsettled to make room for greater incursion, all of these would be obvious to anyone on the receiving end of an invasion.

The videos below, of a conference in which Paula Loyd was a speaker, certainly made it clear that there is a “link” between “development assistance” and “military operations” in what the conference strangely calls “post-conflict areas” (the terminology itself carefully chosen to advance linguistic pacification and to civilize violence). Security and development, civil-military relationships, scholarship and policy: all of these are coupled, rendering any retroactive attempt to distill the Loyds from this context and relocate them to the side of civilian peacefulness impossible. It is not the Taliban who invented the realities that the American state enacted, but they certainly have some understanding of precisely that which Lee Hamilton below refers to: the blurring of the line between the civilian and the military in U.S. domination., and they attack that blur. Loyd, at best, stood in that zone of blur, and any attempt to translate her as somehow remote from occupation does two things: it misunderstands, but it also confesses to the fact that there is something troubling about her work with the military, an  incongruous moment of denial in an otherwise jingoistic stream of self-assurance.

The first video features parts of Lee Hamilton’s introduction, and the second video is a new video of Loyd that I have edited, forced to abridge it to fit within YouTube’s 10 minute window.

Lee Hamilton on Civilian-Military Cooperation in Conflict Zones

Paula Loyd, 2006, Civil-Military Affairs Officer, U.N. Mission to Afghanistan

_______

Sphere Related Content

This is John Stanton’s seventh article on the Human Terrain System, as mentioned in an update at the end of the last post, far outstripping the work of any other “journalist” in uncovering the spectacular failures of the program and the wrong doing of some of the persons in charge of it. Once again it is reproduced here in its entirety with the permission of John Stanton, to maintain a copy for this blog while helping to amplify its dissemination online.

One might also note that John Stanton has opted for an open access approach, unlike some other articles on the Human Terrain System, even while getting his articles published in newspapers in Russia and South Korea, for example, thereby also helping to increase the international visibility of this issue.

Finally, as noted on previous occasions, none of his articles have been publicly contradicted by anyone in HTS, nor has any competing writer yet been able to challenge the accuracy of the details that he has documented, or to prove that his work has been factually incorrect in any regard. This is quite amazing, congratulations to John.

Needless to say, John has been able to tap into some powerful leaks within HTS, a fact that belies the sales pitches to which we are sometimes treated on other anthropology blogs. One has to be impressed by the fact that those who traveled to Afghanistan and embedded themselves with a Human Terrain Team were unable to convey even a fraction of these details. Indeed at least one of those writers has opted to patrol blogs to attack Stanton’s work on style but never able to challenge him on content. These facts reverse what might be common assumptions about the value of embedding versus reporting from a distance, and give us a better indication of where to find the more valuable and credible reporting.

My only quibble is with John’s tendency to reproduce many military acronyms without first spelling out what they stand for, and in some cases over quoting his informants to the extent that all of their typographic errors and verbal bungles are reproduced without editing (or at least this is how it appears to me).

An “Irrational” Attack?

The report below also reports some new information regarding the case of Human Terrain murderer, Don Ayala, also the subject of the last post. As indicated in the last post, I must respectfully disagree with the interpretation (reproduced below), that the attack on Paula Loyd was simply, solely or even mostly a gender issue, one that reads all Afghan men as being identical in their beliefs and actions (which is not even true of the Taliban leadership, let alone their followers), while overlooking the obvious fact of the invasion and occupation itself, and the resistance it has helped to generate. The other interpretation aims to grab for Western feminist approval of the invasion, as if it was meant as a women’s rights crusade.

AFRICOM and HTS

One brief observation: both the new Africa Command and HTS represent a blurring of the lines between civilian and military action in U.S. foreign interventions, with a greater degree of militarization of U.S. foreign policy in both examples. While protests against AFRICOM have been large, public, and very well orchestrated, attracting the involvement of celebrity scholars, poets and even actors such as Danny Glover, HTS has not benefited from the same level of exposure outside of academic criticism. It’s not immediately clear why that should be the case, especially as one of the “promises” was that HTS would find its way into AFRICOM. There is no indication that either program will be terminated by the incoming Obama administration, which has reportedly chosen to retain many of the same architects and proponents of these programs who served under Bush.

•••••••

Human Terrain System: Murder Charges, Espionage, Paranoia, General Sacked

by John Stanton

26 November 2008

An amended complaint and related documentation was filed November 24-25 by the US government against defense contractor Don Ayala, the human terrain team (HTT) member who, according to US military witnesses, allegedly shot in the head and instantly killed a previously subdued and zip-cuffed Afghani national. The Afghani had doused fellow HTT member Paula Loyd with flammable liquid and set her ablaze, a fate that all too often befalls Afghani women who show signs of independence-an insult to many Afghani males. Sources say Paula Loyd’s conditions grows increasingly worse. She is suffering from numerous infections and pneumonia.

The amended complaint filed in the very conservative Eastern District of Virginia Court (VAED) indicates “premeditated” murder in the second degree, an apparent move by the US government to solidify intent on the part of Ayala.

According to Court filings, VAED Pretrial Services determined that Ayala be remanded to a third party/handlers and released on $200K (US) bond. He is allowed, upon notifying his handlers, to travel to and from New Orleans, Louisiana (his home), and within the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area. According to a spokesperson for VAED in Alexandria, Virginia, “Mr. Ayala was released under certain conditions, not quite his own recognizance….He is electronically monitored, there’s a 3rd party custodian, and a $200,000 secured bond.” Judge Theresa Buchanan is currently presiding over the case and has signed off on the orders.

As life often imitates art, it’s not hard to envision some sort of Seven Defense on the part of Ayala’s defense team led by the formidable John Tranberg, In the classic serial-killer movie Seven the distraught character Detective Mills (played by Brad Pitt) executes John Doe (played by Kevin Spacey) upon learning that Doe has severed Mill’s wife’s head and placed it in a box.

As has been widely reported, Ayala is charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) of 2000-HR3380. In the Act’s very interesting legislative history (www.usdoj.gov/criminal/dss/meja/), the direct intent of the Act was to close a jurisdictional gap that was allowing US citizens who support or accompany the US military to avoid prosecution for crimes like murder, rape and assault (as many as 53 in one year). The US Congress, US Department of Defense and the US Department of Justice all reviewed and signed off on the Act. According to a US Justice Department official in Washington, DC, all questions concerning what may be the precedent setting applications of MEJA in USA v Don M. Ayala get sent right to public/media affairs offices of Justice or Defense.

Another HTT BAE Systems contractor, Issam Hamama, was was just arrested and charged recently by the US District Attorney in Maine for espionage. He is an alleged Iraqi spy who was hired for the HTS program. He was under investigation by the CI while attending training. That case was closed in the State of Maine on November 25 and transferred to the US Eastern District of Michigan.

Paranoia in the Field

The Human Terrain System (HTS) continues to operate in standard SANFU mode. This report from multiple sources in-theater has become commonplace and evinces the frustration of an HTS member trying to make things work. “This team [IZ8] is severely short of an adequate number of “trained” personnel to support this BCT properly. I will break it down for you. [The team] is losing its only SS in two weeks. He is fluent in Arabic and is an expert on Middle East culture and Iraq. We are also losing our best HTA… in January. What does that leave [the team] with? A team leader, one RM, and one HTA that are doing the work of 2-3 people each. We have one RM that is pretty much worthless as he was hired with no computer skills and requires constant supervision, is introverted and is somewhat paranoid. And lastly, we have one HTA that is shy-hesitant to talk with Iraqis and does not read Arabic. This is not a good enough combination to support the MAIN EFFORT BCT of the ME AO for Iraq.

I have been addressing the issue of…leaving for 2 months and particularly the last month since being moved south…has stated since signing on with the program that he was leaving in December 2008. So the fact that we do not have a replacement here now doing a battle handover is not good. The BCT Commander has simplified our mission for us by recognizing our personnel shortcomings and asking the team to focus on just one small area of one of his three provinces. So that leaves two and a half provinces with no HTT personnel to focus on them. The Commander and the staff have been amazed at what we have accomplished in the short time we have been here. They deserve so much more. Give us the personnel we need so we can support [them] right.”

According to other sources, all the HTT’s are in the same boat as IZ8. HTAT IZB was dismissed by the 4th ID division commander for failure to function and integrate. A retired Georgia US National Guard Major General was forced to resign by a Corps Commander for failure to integrate HTRAC. Now, HTS management back at Fort Leavenworth is sending in another team that is under staffed and under trained. All this to keep the Corps Commander happy.

Finally, one source had this to say. “That’s interesting, but not too surprising. I know the team was trying to use him [the retired US Army general] as leverage to get them “favors” but it wasn’t going over too well. Kind of like how they “try” to send all the contractors over as GS15′s so they get private accommodations and favoritism during Space A travel. But, since some of these guys only have a bachelor’s degree it was, is, causing a lot of strife from the US Army Active Duty folks.”

Another HTT member is returning home after reported complications resulting from an RFP attack on Nov 11, 2008.

It seems that the US Army and its civilian leadership in the Pentagon will fix the HTS program in the most reliable Pentagon fashion: classify the program or drown it in money.

__________

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security and political matters. Reach him at cioran123[at]yahoo.com

Paula Loyd, June, 2006

Since Paula Loyd (36 years old) was set on fire by an Afghan Taliban man, Abdul Salam, on November 4, 2008, there has been a considerable outpouring of messages of grief and condolences for Loyd online, in the United States particularly. Another member of the U.S. Army Human Terrain Team to which Loyd belonged, a military contractor named Don Michael Ayala of New Orleans, executed Salam by firing a gun into his head, once he had already been captured, subdued and restrained. According to an indictment filed in a U.S. court (Ayala was removed from Afghanistan and is now out on bail), the execution happened about 10 minutes after the attack on Loyd, once Ayala heard that she had suffered severe burns to most of her body. Once that news came to light, condolences and prayers for Loyd were joined in multiple online forums by extreme expressions of hatred and revenge from commentators, most of whom were far removed from the situation. At present, among the things we do not know are:

• the actual content of the exchange between Loyd and Salam;
• Ayala’s reasons for taking the law into his own hands;
  
• and, of course, Salam’s side of the story.

Nonetheless, when surveying opinions expressed on Wired’s Danger Room (see here, here, and here), the four most common themes that are apparent are:

1. Ayala is a hero, and a defense fund should be set up to help him with his legal battle;
2. Loyd’s attacker is a representative of the savages that populate Afghanistan;
3. Perhaps the root of the problem lies in the Muslim religion, given that the “attacker” was a man, the “attacked” a woman, and there were rumours spread in the media that she may have been “immodest” in appearance; and,
   
4. Afghans are worse than mere savages, they are animals, and they invite invasion, domination, and perhaps outright extermination;

The last theme is a fundamentally racist one — these are not humans, they are inferior — and it promotes genocide. This is an image of Western opinion that favours the arguments of Osama Bin Laden the most. The third theme is an ethnocentric one, but one that also leaves out the central mediating factor between Loyd and Salam — the invasion and occupation: the problem is with his religion, something ethereal, abstract and metaphysical, appropriate to a defective and unbalanced mind, and not related to the fact that Loyd is a foreigner working on behalf of foreign domination of people like Salam.  Moreover, Salam was inherently incapable of understanding his own domination, and thus was left only to express extreme indignation against a woman…because his religion supposedly told him to act that way. The second theme is an ethnocentric and evolutionist one — and thus far we have a fairly predictable and representative range of imperialist opinion that manifests in virtually all such situations over the past five centuries of (Greater) European expansion. The first theme is very interesting as well. What is not entirely predictable is the response to it, and the source of the response, as we shall see in a moment.

The first theme is the good guys and bad guys theme, familiar to anyone exposed to American “cowboys and Indians” movies. Ayala is the avenger in white, Loyd an innocent white female, and Salam the dastardly Indian scalper. One blog framed her this way: “Taliban set woman on fire for crime of social science research,” afterwards adding, “Am I the only one that wants to give Don Ayala a medal?” (see comments on those posts here and here). Ayala is thus cast as performing an honourable service to his nation, and Loyd is cast as a meek woman who only wanted to study. She is the victim, the female victim.

Who is Paula Loyd?

According to an introduction to her at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in June of 2006, Paula Loyd was then a Civil Military Officer at the UN mission to Afghanistan. Staff Sergeant Paula Loyd also served in the U.S. Army Reserve. (Suddenly, the dividing line between civilian and military becomes rather blurred.) In fact, Loyd had been in Afghanistan years before the Human Terrain System was even instituted. In her words, there was some confusion on the part of locals as to whether she was a man or a woman, and local norms were not applied to her as an outsider (countering the notion that she was attacked, according to the stereotyping accounts, for being a woman who dared to step out of line with tradition):

”Sometimes I’ll be talking to the men in a village and they’ll turn to the interpreter and say, ‘Is that a man or a woman?’ But I haven’t had any problems with them. They’ve all been very nice,” Loyd said….Loyd said Afghans do not expect their societal norms to apply to her because she is not from their culture. ”So the fact that I’m a woman doesn’t mean I need to be in a burka and they can’t deal with me. They take me for who I am, they accept me for who I am. And they’re willing to work with me,” she said. (source)

About contractors

What is especially interesting, and now timely, are Loyd’s comments on military contractors (these were simply called mercenaries until 2003), people such as Don Ayala, her alleged avenger. We do not know what she might think of them at present, but in 2006 she had some especially sober remarks to make in a presentation that was otherwise very positive and optimistic about that the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.

In case the reader could not access the video, this a transcript of the exchange:

Questioner:
– that the PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams] in Iraq, the Pentagon has just reluctantly agreed, as I understand it, to provide security for them. There still is a lot of question feeling, as I also understand that a lot of that, however, may fall to contractors who also do a lot of other security jobs in Iraq. My question is how do they fit in the equation. You talk about the sensitivity, particularly of different kinds of military units. How do contractors fit into that equation, which were playing, as I understand, an enormous role? Thanks very much.

Paula Loyd:
Well, that’s actually a very good question, because you’re right, that’s another very large component that we can’t ignore. A lot of my complaints also come about contractors. You know, sometimes there are certain contractors that are providing security for different projects, who are rearming previously disarmed militias. You know, there are contractors who have terrible reputations for driving worse than the military forces. So I think that if we also don’t address the issue of contractors and what they’re doing, and hold them accountable for some of their actions, then again, it’s not going to help us win the war, at least in Afghanistan.

While some are appalled by the arrest and trial of Don Ayala, it is interesting to hear what Loyd had to say about the excesses of contractors (mercenaries) and how they impact on the U.S. campaign — not that the success of that campaign is in any way a goal valued by this blog. It does not sound as if she was ready to recommend medals for contractors or ask fellow citizens to set up defense funds on their behalf. In the meantime, Ayala has been indicted under the “Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act” — the meaning that is lost by such a masking is that this was an extrajudicial execution of a civilian prisoner, by all means a war crime, and far more than a mere jurisdictional matter.

*******

Afghan President Hamid Karzai today criticized the U.S.’ “Provincial Reconstruction Teams” (PRTs) as constituting what is effectively a parallel government, a minimalist statement of the situation. Karzai also complained about “private security forces” forming a parallel structure to Afghan security forces. Thousands of Afghans with criminal backgrounds have been employed by these foreign mercenary agencies. A “senior NATO official” told the Associated Press that there are 40,000 such mercenaries in Afghanistan today, larger than the number of U.S. uniformed troops. (source)

*******

For more current articles on the Human Terrain System, see:

“Human Terrain System: Murder Charges, Paranoia, General Sacked,” by John Stanton, The Seoul Times, Thursday, November 27, 2008

and a slightly differing version with added information,

“Human Terrain System: Murder Charges, Espionage, Paranoia, General Sacked,” by John Stanton.

Past articles by John Stanton can be found on this blog, on cryptome.info, on Pravda, and The Seoul Times. The above constitute the seventh in a series of articles by Stanton.

*******

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• using white phosphorous to burn civilians in their homes in Fallujah
• bombarding civilian populations in Iraq with cluster bombs delivered by artillery shells
• using shells coated with depleted uranium that then cause thousands of cancers and birth defects among civilians
• bombing dozens of women and children in villages and wedding parties in Afghanistan
• torturing innocent civilians during “extraordinary renditions”
• handing over captives to be tortured by Afghan warlords-turned-governors and their forces
  
• murdering prisoners
• mercenaries employed by the U.S. government massacring a square full of civilians in Baghdad
• raping teens, executing their families, and setting them ablaze

then one can be certain that a few voices who protest for human rights and fight against war will make themselves heard in the U.S. However, they have routinely been more than matched by those who praise such actions as justified in the “war on terror,” and more than drowned out by the rushed attention or overwhelming silence of both the media and in our sphere of interest, academic bloggers. The justifications will range from lazy “war is hell” pronouncements, to disingenuous claims about “human shields”, to mendacious distortions of the events, to stone-faced “mistakes were made,” to brazen claims that unhinged maniacs low in the command chain are all to blame, to more truculent and blood thirsty cheers for more because ultra-violence is all that the “sand niggers” and “camel fuckers” can ever understand.

But when I write of the killing of an academic hired by a military contractor like BAE Systems and serving in the Human Terrain System, or of the burning of another, and I fail to produce the appropriate eulogy for the dead and an adequate elegy of the heroism of the survivor then — as if suddenly — outrage pours into this blog, and suddenly the cold and the truculent turn warm and humane.

And yet, neither of these persons just mentioned could fit even the stretchiest definition of “innocent civilian”. Both of these volunteered for a war effort, to get paid handsome sums, and apparently when the reporters are not around it’s “fuck anthropologists, fuck ethics” all the way. Both of these individuals were members of an occupying force, shielded by two types of mercenary (the “private contractor” and the volunteer soldier, the pay levels are what differentiate the two the most), ready to engage in armed violence themselves given the Human Terrain Team members who carry weapons. They form part of an effort to “rewire” Afghan cultures and the larger society they inhabit, as part of a grotesque imperialist debauchery called “the global war on terror,” where “global” means “America and some NATO friends”. It is not even remotely a war of self-defense, as neither the Taliban, nor Afghanistan as a whole, ever attacked either the U.S. or any of its NATO allies. It has only been the recipient of such attacks, and some fight back.

Indeed, had no one fought back in either Afghanistan or Iraq, one wonders what might have been the trajectory of U.S. imperialism, if it would have run itself into such a costly crisis situation as it has, accelerating the demise of U.S. dominance. It’s a matter of speculation of course. One can speculate that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis peacefully protesting in the streets, in the face of American brutality, might have achieved the same or more. One can speculate that since these twin wars of occupation and counterinsurgency were fought on borrowed funds — with a special thanks to East Asia and certain Gulf states — that any action, any military build up in the U.S. would have eventually mounted costs that the U.S. can no longer afford. All we know is what happened: resolute, sometimes massive, sometimes spectacular violence in opposition to U.S. invaders and in resistance against U.S. occupation.

Civilian academics employed by the Human Terrain System necessarily encounter these forces in person, and such encounters will continue to happen. It may even be that attacks against such persons will become even gorier, planned in advance, to dissuade anyone from taking the place of those who die while in “the field”. Perhaps some will be captured and tortured, or beheaded live on the Internet — there is no limit to the grisly possibilities in a conflict such as this. What such militarized academics cannot do, nor can their mourners and cheerleaders, is to magically transcend the game which they joined, to stand apart from and above the bloodbath. They play this game, and this game promises no victory.

What is striking about the few times any outrage is manifested on this blog is that it comes only when the mourners and cheerleaders speak up in defense of their slain or wounded colleagues in the Human Terrain System. Otherwise, one never — ever — hears from them. And some of these distinguished persons with wonderful pedigrees from prestigious institutions will not lose time in launching into diatribes and petty personal insults to push their point across.

So why the selective display of outrage, the only partial, momentary display of warm and fuzzy sentiment?

A large part of the answer has to be not just that they feel little or nothing at all for those they do not know, having been trained by their media to view war from the bomb’s point of view anyway, but that also the lives of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq simply do not count as much for them. They are not of the same value, they are less entitled to have their dignity respected, they are simply less, even less human. They are different, but different in an inferior sort of way.

It is therefore a valuable lesson that one can learn from reading this blog and others like it, because we come into first hand contact — contact of an ethnographic sort in fact — with the intersections between the values of careerism, nationalism, racism, and imperialism. What the Human Terrain System brings to light with such clarity — with such clarity that one has to wonder at the degree of impaired judgment that prevents so many American readers from seeing it — is how notions of service, hard work, and altruism are bent to suit military goals, praised as heroic even, and with utter disregard and contempt for victims on the other side. It is not just a matter of careerism alone, or else all the other work at building a cheering section for the Bhatias and Loyds would be wasted. Nationalism adds the necessary blinkers, seeing the careerism as service to something larger than narrow self-interests. Imperialist ideology converts nationalism from something about love and pride for homeland into something more trenchant, a right to rule the world. But what does not get said often enough, not even on this blog, it is racism that serves as the underlying glue that binds all three, that justifies a career at the expense of others, that mandates that a nation has a manifest destinty to dominate and lead, and that dismisses the value of other human lives and that fails to recognize the humanity of the oppressed.

And in these senses, American nationalism, imperialism, and more narrowly the Human Terrain System are all fundamentally racist. Having condemned all of these, it would be perplexing in the extreme to suddenly offer supportive platitudes once one side starts to finally get hurt. Complain if you must, but don’t expect an approving reception.

•••••••

It is easy to be humane when one’s view of humanity refuses to recognize the rage of those who act against invaders who have shown extreme hostility to everything and everyone other than themselves. It is easy to sound humane when wondering why the brutal counter-brutality of the oppressed fails to meet with universal disapproval. This is nothing more than patting oneself on the shoulder, looking in the mirror and repeating, “You really are great, you know that? You are a wonderful human being, everyone likes you, and you’re better than every one. You are Number One.”

Try to keep things in perspective.

Armed strangers are not entitled to warm welcomes.

Who proclaimed that if you are not with us, then you must be against us?

Who labeled entire nations as “rogue” and “failed” even when dismissing international law, ignoring massive worldwide protests, and slouching toward Baghdad with an economy owned by foreign creditors and based on little more than hedge funds, derivatives and other forms of speculation that created fake money?

Who produces lyrics about freedom and democracy while holding others at gunpoint?

So many more questions, and so few willing to even consider them.

Sympathies do not come cheap. What would be worse still is to simply waste and misplace sympathies, to shed a tear for the conqueror while turning away and saying “oh well” about the conquered. So much has been perverted already, by a nation and even a species in rapid decline, so many suicidal habits inculcated, that it is always amazing to see when someone notices this constant sleight of sight, that props up the butcher and denounces the meat.

Don’t blame me if you can’t understand why you are hated by some, reviled by others, and distrusted by many. Your acceptance is not mandatory, and I bet you are surprised to hear that.

See the formal indictment here.

and see

Contractor who shot Afghan stands trial
PakTribune
November 20, 2008

DOD contractor charged in death of Afghan man
Jeff Schogol
Stars and Stripes, November 22, 2008

U.S. charges defense contractor with Afghan killing
Matthew Barakat
Associated Press, November 20, 2008

Contractor Charged With Murder in Afghan’s Death
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 20, 2008; Page B05

U.S. Contractor Charged with Slaying
UPI, November 20, 2008

U.S. contractor charged in Afghan’s death
Adam Levine
CNN, November 20, 2008

Army ‘Human Terrain’ Contractor Charged with Murder
DANGER ROOM
November 20, 2008

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This is the newest and sixth article on the Human Terrain System by John Stanton. Previous articles by John Stanton on the Human Terrain System can be found here, here, here, here, and here. It is reproduced on this blog with the permission of the author.

My question arising from this article is this: Why has Ayala, a foreign civilian charged with murdering an Afghan, not been turned over to the allegedly sovereign government of Afghanistan? Has the government of Afghanistan agreed to have foreign civilians who can be armed and who can pursue local targets? In fact, how is the government of Afghanistan involved in any way with this case?

Stanton seems to be sympathetic to the plight of Ayala. I can certainly understand the irrational rage that would have overcome Ayala having seen his colleague set on fire. I can certainly understand the rage of the Afghan who set Paula Loyd on fire. While the latter appears to have been a premeditated attack (possibly by a child if one believes Taliban claims), I doubt that Ayala engaged in cold-blooded calculation, although there appears to now be reason to believe that. Ayala was clearly wrong to act, and the soldiers that presumably were in the company of this Human Terrain Team were wrong not to stop him, assuming that they did nothing to impede him. Ayala has murdered an Afghan civilian, in what may in fact be a war crime, and there is no way that he can be released until justice is served.

•••••••

17 November, 2008

Guantanamo Treatment for US Civilian Human Terrain Team Member

by John Stanton

Don Ayala of Human Terrain Team AF‐4 Blue is being held in detention at Bagram AB in Afghanistan under excruciating circumstances. The Commanding General, Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, 101st Airborne Division and Lieutenant Colonel Roger Neil reportedly control Ayala’s legal fate and are responsible for the quality of Ayala’s treatment while incarcerated. According to sources, Ayala is receiving treatment akin to that of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, enemy combatants. He is apparently being denied limited or any form of due process under US military or US civilian law.

Ayala is imprisoned, according to sources, for allegedly tracking down, shooting and killing an Afghani national that doused fellow Human Terrain Team member Paula Loyd with flammable liquid and set her to flames. They report that Ayala is being kept in solitary confinement in a cage, not a cell, that does not meet US military or US federal government standards. Ayala is reportedly in leg irons and is harassed nightly by non‐military police personnel assigned by 101st Airborne Command.

Ayala was allegedly held for four days before being allowed to talk to his lawyer or anyone in his chain of command. He has not been allowed to use shower facilities on a consistent basis, sometimes as long as a three day period. He is not allowed any exercise, socialization or entertainment privileges and remains under a 24‐hour‐a‐day watch.

Sources allege that the fair hearing to determine confinement or protective custody was pure theater. They also indicate that the US military may have no legal jurisdiction over Ayala due to details involved in deployment and chain‐of‐command orders.

Reportedly the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) has the ability to assert jurisdiction. USDOJ has thirty days from incident report date in order to do so or the case will remain in the lap of the US military. Sources indicate that Ayala has not been assigned military counsel (due to venue matters) and the cognizant military magistrate determined that he should remain incarcerated at Bagram AB.

Human Terrain System management has derailed and wrecked the train. When will they be held accountable?

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John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in political in national security matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

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