Last February, the Pentagon launched a new program to change the way our troops think about their enemies. The program consists of “Human Terrain Team,” a group of anthropologists and other social scientists who travel to warzones to educate U.S. soldiers about the people they’re fighting. Through the program, the Pentagon hopes to have our soldiers gain a greater perspective on the battles they’re in and in turn minimize combat operations.
Among American academia, the Human Terrain Team program has raised a few eyebrows.
“I don’t want G.I.’s just shooting locals randomly, and vice-versa,” said Northwestern’s own Charles Moskos, PhD., a professor of Sociology and former Clinton administration Military sociologist. “I think both sides are better off to have anthropologists around.”
In March 2007, Moskos published a report on the current situation of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In it, he outlined provisions for translators in the field and wrote in favor of the recently deployed Human Terrain Teams. The report was sent to top military officials, and, according to Moskos, received a response by General Petraeus.
Contrary to Moskos, other top academics disapprove. Roger N. Lancaster, director of the cultural studies doctoral program at George Mason University, said in a recent letter to the New York Times that associating anthropology with action on the front lines “augurs ill for the future of a discipline that studies populations distrustful of power…” A colleague of Lancaster, Hugh Gusterson, a professor of anthropology at George Mason, has been circulating an online pledge to boycott the Human Terrain Team program. So far, ten other anthropologists have given Gusterson their full support.
The first Human Terrain Team has been deployed with American paratroopers in the Shabak Valley in Afghanistan. The team’s goal is to transform the soldiers into a more incisive fighting force by educating them about their enemies. Instead of treating the insurgents as a monolithic group, which often creates more insurgents, the Team is exposing the troops to local tribal disputes and in turn, giving them a view of the Afghan side of things.
So far, reports have shown that the Human Terrain Team is a success. In response to work with the anthropologists, the 82nd Airborne Division, currently deployed in the Shabak Valley, has decreased its combat operations by 60 percent. Now, the Division is focusing its efforts on resolving political and economic tensions. Recently, they were able to dissolve a land dispute that involved Taliban agression towards the local people.
Moskos dismissed the argument made by many other academics, who said that having social scientists in the warzones have the potential to corrupt the information they’re seeking.
“If they’re working for the military, one of the things they’re supposed to find out is what the population is thinking,” he replied. “That’s what they’re there for.”