U.S. Army Human Terrain Systems Program
I wanted to get the Disinfo commenters opinions on this. The army is embedding anthropologists into units in Afghanistan to report on the Afghani cultures there to help it prosecute the war.
HTS Overview: HTS was designed to meet the military’s requirements for socio-cultural knowledge across a spectrum of operations that the U.S. may encounter in today’s world. Most importantly, understanding foreign societies can be critical during stabilization, security, transition and reconstruction (SSTR) operations in order to identify flash points, deter war, reduce violence, and promote peaceful economic and social development.
In a counterinsurgency — such as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan — one of the military’s objectives is to influence the population through non-lethal means (such as economic development), to support the host nation government and/or to reduce support for insurgent groups (like the Taliban). Thus, the commander and staff must look beyond their traditional military mission focus (enemy, terrain, weather, friendly troops, support, and time available). The local civilian population in the area of conflict — the human terrain — must be considered as a distinct and critical element of the environment.
Brigade and regimental combat teams currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan often lack the operationally relevant socio-cultural knowledge and expert staff necessary to optimize their military decision-making process. Commanders are limited by the lack of a Joint, Service and Inter-agency integrated capability (people, organization, methods, tools) to effectively gather, consolidate, analyze, visualize, understand, store and share socio-cultural information. While processes and organizations exist to assist commanders in visualizing friendly and enemy forces, no similar system exists for providing understanding of the local civilian population. This deficiency is felt most by the battalions, companies, platoons, and squads that are closest to the local population in their daily tactical actions.
In the words of LTG Peter Chiarelli, former Commanding General, Multi-National Corps-Iraq: “I asked my Brigade Commanders what was the number one thing they would have liked to have had more of, and they all said cultural knowledge.”
Therefore, the Human Terrain System program seeks to integrate and apply socio-cultural knowledge of the indigenous civilian population to military operations in support of the commander’s objectives. As one HTT member said, “One anthropologist can be much more effective than a B-2 bomber — not winning a war, but creating a peace one Afghan at a time.”
