Mapping the human terrain around the battle space

DPA:

The young Texan woman talking to the Afghan tribesman wears a US military uniform and carries an assault rifle, but she's not a soldier.

Her training is in anthropology, which is proving an effective tool for negotiating the complexities of Afghanistan's honeycomb tribal structure and, according to a senior US commander, significantly reducing the need for 'kinetic,' or combat, operations.

'We describe the environment that the bad guys operate in, build a foundation for units so they can understand their area,' said Audrey Roberts of the seven-member Human Terrain Team (HTT) in the eastern Khost province. 'It's important so our soldiers can ask informed questions and so we don't walk round in circles.'

Translated into actions, that means for example that units are able to quickly tap the real powerbrokers as they push into guarded and often fearful rural communities.

'Their expertise rapidly identified who to talk to in the village,' one officer was quoted as saying during a review in the US Congress about the work of the HTTs since their inception in 2007.

'We were just ricocheting around before they got here, talking to random people. The HTT saved me an enormous amount of time - 10 to 20 hours per village - in terms of who to talk to,' he said.

And beyond the initial orientation, misunderstandings and blunders that might have led to bloodshed were avoided.

'By better understanding the human terrain, we reduced the number of kinetic operations that otherwise would have occurred,' concluded Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Brigade combat team that during its 15-month deployment worked in tandem with the first HTT in Khost. 'We must understand the culture to win.'

Since the radical Islamic Taliban militia was ousted from power in 2001, learning what makes the tribes tick has been a major challenge for the United States and other armies in the 40-country International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

No easy task, given that there are about 60 main Pashtun tribes and 400 sub-tribes in the conflict-ridden east and south. Those can consist of a few families to hundreds of thousands of members and be entangled in ancient rivalries; they may have election processes and legal codes that vary from one village to the next.

Some tribes may support ISAF, others fight it actively with the resurgent Taliban, or simply sit on the fence.

But the Pentagon is now looking for a healthy dividend from the teams of contracted civilian anthropologists, political and social scientists, ethnic Afghan cultural advisers and army officers.

...

At a recent meeting with elders of the Mangal tribe, one of the largest in Khost, HTT personnel mingled and chatted to guests through Pashtun interpreters while stressing that they are not conventional military intelligence gatherers.

Whether the tribesmen really get the distinction is unclear, but partners in the local government seem receptive.

'This is the first time we had such a meeting with the coalition forces, I think it was productive,' said Mirzaman Sabari, deputy head of the provincial Department of Tribal Affairs.

'If they listen to the elders and take their advice then they can properly get to know Afghan tradition and culture.'

It is an important element of counter insurgency warfare. As difficult as it may have been to get some in the military to accept the human terrain mapping it has been even more difficult to get many in the anthropology community to work with the military on the project. The anti war puke element of the academenic community has raised strong objections to the involvement, but evidently some have risen to the challenge. Those who have are both patriotic and intelligent and they are making the warfare less bloody in the process.