Human Terrain Systems Handbook Leaked

Anthropologist David Price describes the training Handbook of the embedded anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here

The recently leaked (unclassified) Human Terrain Team Handbook (September 2008) reflects Human Terrain’s vision that by aiding in the more sensitive occupation of populations, Human Terrain Teams are reducing violence. The Handbook states that, “the end-state of Human Terrain Team support is to provide the unit the reasons why the population is doing what it is doing and thereby providing non-lethal options to the commander and his staff.” This statement expresses the Handbook’s internal logic that: anthropologically based non-lethal subjugation = good; lethal subjugation = bad. The Handbook ignores more traditional political and ethical considerations of anthropologists’ responsibilities following a logic more aligned with notions that subjugation of other cultures = bad. Such traditional anthropological considerations are outside the logical scope of the Handbook; it takes anthropologically aided subjugation as an acceptable goal from the outset.

Social scientists and the war on terror

Also from Culture Matters. They are talking mostly about anthros, of course, but have their been ethnomusicologists involved in this sort of thing? I've heard rumors of ethnomusicologists being involved in programming post-Taliban-sounding radio in the initial post-9/11 offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but nothing beyond that.

Anyhow:

"Wired magazine has just reported that the Pentagon has kicked off ‘Minerva’, its project to include social scientists and other academics into the “War on Terror”. The article also mentions the debate that has been going on in anthropology over the US military’s new-found enthusiasm for culture and social science methods.

Wired also has covered this issue in surprising detail, and there is a good archive of related stories at the bottom of their article."

AAA Opposes U.S. Military’s Human Terrain System Project

The American Anthropological Association’s Executive Board recently passed a Statement regarding ethical aspects of the U.S. Military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) project. The project, which has received widespread national and international media coverage, embeds anthropologists and other social scientists in military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ethical and procedural concerns regarding anthropologists working with U.S. Military and Intelligence agencies have been under investigation by an ad hoc commission of the AAA. The Commission will submit their final report on this subject—which extends beyond the particulars of the HTS project—during the AAA’s Annual Meeting in Washington DC.

To facilitate discussion on this subject, the AAA has created a blog as a forum for members to post comments regarding the Executive Board Statement and related issues.

For more information, see the links below

• AAA Executive Board Statement on HTS
  
• AAA Blog on HTS
  
• AAA Code of Ethics
  
• Info about the Ad Hoc Commission
  
• Media Coverage on the Issue
  

Militraizing anthropology or anthropologizing the military?

Anthropology and the US military in Afghanistan
Link

Colombia = Afghanistan?

Not even the conservative Huffington Post thinks so. Link
No lo piensa ni el blog conservador The Huffington Post. Enlace (en traducción)

Colombia a model for US policy (what are they, stoopit?)

The view from outside Colombia on what's going on there is pretty sanguine - the view from there is just plain bloody. If the Uribe administration has the confidence of the US, the confidence of the Colombian people, it would seem, has begun to falter. So here we are, incredibly, with this Colombia being put forward here as a model for anti-drug cultivation strategies in Afghanistan, and here to deal with the insurgency in Iraq, which is even more insane . Some reactions to the unfortunate Afghanistan idea here and here. As for the blogger's suggestion that Colombia (where the war is increasingly bloody and with no end in sight) is a model for dealing with the Iraqi insurgency, nobody seems to have made any serious response...