PrairiePundit

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 ...

Washington Post: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is calling on "eggheads" to help the military unravel questions about the recruitment of terrorists, the resurgence of the Taliban and messages delivered in militant Muslim religious schools. Many eggheads are wary. The Pentagon's $50 million Minerva Research Initiative, named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and warriors, will fund social science research deemed crucial to national security. Initial proposals were due July 25, and the first grants are expected to be awarded by year's end. But the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, which includes professors from American and George Mason universities, said dependence on Pentagon funding could make universities an "instrument rather than a critic of war-making." In a May 28 letter to federal officials, the American Anthropological Association said that it was of "paramount importance . . . to study the roots of terrorism and other forms of vio...

Washington Times: Of all the tactical moves Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made in March to wrest control of southern Iraq from Shi'ite extremists, none was more important than his government's meetings with tribal sheiks. Behind the scenes, as his troops fought street by street to gain control of the city of Basra, Mr. al-Maliki reached out to Bani Tamim. Tamim is one of the largest Arab tribes in the Middle East. Its Shi'ite-Sunni mix is especially influential in southern Iraq, where Iranian-backed bands of militants regularly launch attacks on allied forces and impose their will on much of Basra. Mr. al-Maliki's strategy, U.S. sources said, was to meet with tribal leaders at the same time he was ordering troops into Iraq's second-largest city. He wanted to persuade the tribal leaders to join his risky counterterrorism campaign in which a Shi'ite-dominated government was moving against Shi'ite fighters, some led by firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. ...

David Ignatius: This remote, mountainous patch of Afghanistan is near where Rudyard Kipling set his famous story "The Man Who Would Be King." And as you listen to Lt. Col. Chris Kolenda rattle off the names of the region's tribes and subtribes, you realize that he and other Americans here might be Kipling characters themselves. Kolenda's base truly is "the back of beyond," as 19th-century British travelers sometimes described this part of the world. It's located in a hauntingly beautiful region of northeastern Afghanistan, a few miles from the Pakistan border -- a land of steep mountains, narrow river valleys and primitive terraced farms. There are no paved roads, and in most villages there is no electricity and no running water. You reach the base by Black Hawk helicopter , soaring above the rushing rivers and isolated canyons of the Hindu Kush. Kolenda talks like an amateur ethnologist as he explains the tribal makeup of Kamdesh, an area just nort...

Reuters /NY Times: ... An anthropology professor from the East Bay campus of California State University near San Francisco, he's a self-described peacenik who opposed the war in Iraq, did his academic research in Guatemala and never carries a gun. "I'm a Californian. I'm a liberal. I'm a Democrat," he says. "My impetus is to come here and help end this thing." Matsuda is part of the U.S. military "Human Terrain Team" (HTT) program, which embeds anthropologists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan in the hope of helping tactical commanders in the field understand local cultures. The program is controversial: the American Anthropological Association denounced it in October, saying it could lead to ethics being compromised, the profession's reputation damaged, and worst of all, research subjects becoming military targets. Matsuda says the concern is based on a misunderstanding of what he has signed on to do. "Ther...

NY Times: In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a soft-spoken civilian anthropologist named Tracy. Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team’s ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations — in one case spotting a land dispute that allowed the Taliban to bully parts of a major tribe — has won the praise of officers who say they are seeing concrete results. Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with the anthropologists here, said that the unit’s combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the scientists arrived in February, and that the soldiers were now able to focus more on imp...