Most discussion of the Human Terrain System, Army's social science program, usually focuses on the "sharp end," pictured here: the social scientists and anthropologists embedded within combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they rarely examine another key function: the HTS Research Reachback Center back in the United States.
These research cells, staffed by military and civilian analysts at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Oyster Point, Va., are tasked with producing customized, open-source research on key issues of concern to commanders and forward-deployed social science teams in both Iraq and Afghanistan. DANGER ROOM has obtained a number of these unclassified reports, which give some unique insights into how the program works -- and what kind of cultural knowledge the military wants to master.
The reports vary widely in content and sourcing: some cite academic studies, others rely heavily on newspaper articles and information culled from the Web. But the most current reports on Afghanistan reflect a recent push into Wardak and Logar, provinces in Regional Command-East that have in the past seen a limited coalition presence. These studies give a general sense of the kind of general information commanders are looking for: "Historical Averages for School Attendance, Logar and National"; "Strategic Marriage"; "Wardak Soil and Crops"; "Grafitti [in] Logar Province"; "Logar-Wardak Governors' Bios."
Other Afghanistan reports, for instance, drill into the origin of local conflicts in Afghanistan, probing resource issues, boundary maps and ethnicity. Interestingly, the researchers reject definition of these conflicts as "primordial" or "intractable" -- looking instead for causes of conflict that are grounded in recent history and politics. A study of Tajik-Hazara conflict in Bamiyan Province, for instance, states: "The RRC does not see the question of Tajik-Hazara conflict as a symptom of some inherent and continuous conflict between two groups who have different ethnic backgrounds or religious beliefs. To the contrary, people in conflict use the idea of ethnic difference to rally support to achieve some specific goal that brings benefit to the self-defined group."
Military commanders are also interested in administrative boundary shifts, and how these changes might affect their operations; several of the reports chart out unofficial or unincorporated district boundaries.
Another research report is in response to a request from Task Force Spartan, which is interested in learning more about the places where Kuchi nomads historically settle during the summer.
One of the major problems confronting social science research in
Afghanistan is the lack of statistics because of the prolonged conflict that began in the late 1970s. A study of soil and crops in Logar
Province notes warns up front: there is "very little district-level information on crops grown in Logar." That study, in part, relies on a
U.N. land use survey from 1962.
Perhaps the most interesting is a preliminary report prepared for a brigade on the Yusufzai tribe in Logar. The report tries to untangle the groups to which the name Yusufzai could refer; it also summarizes previous social science reports on Yusufzais/Yusufkhels in Logar Province, including some work by Michael Bhatia, a Human Terrain researcher killed last year by a roadside bomb.
This report also appends a bibliography of the Yusufzai confederation in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province -- described as "for future reference only" -- that draws upon information collected by British officers during the era of the Raj as well as by Western anthropologists.
Later on, I'll take a closer look at some individual reports to see what kind of issues are driving some human terrain research. It's only one sliver of this controversial program, but it sheds some light on how, exactly, the military is employing social science.
[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]
