| |
 |
|
|
Science Forum Index » Anthropology Forum » Enabling the Kill Chain by David Vine
Page 1 of 1
|
| Author |
Message |
| 20817 |
 Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 8:50 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 54, Issue 14, Page B9
Enabling the Kill Chain
By DAVID VINE
David Vine is an assistant professor of anthropology at American
University. Princeton University Press will publish his book, Paradise
Stolen: Expulsion and the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia, next
fall.
Anthropology, long the handmaiden of empires, is once again being
called upon to assist with warfare, this time in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and elsewhere in the "war on terror." The U.S. military, the CIA, and
some other government agencies and military contractors are recruiting
a small but growing number of anthropologists and other social
scientists to provide cultural knowledge and analysis, ethnographic
research, and what the military calls "human-terrain mapping" to
bolster counterinsurgency and other combat operations. Generally those
involved wear military uniforms. Some are armed.
While this kind of work has generated considerable controversy among
anthropologists concerned that it violates the discipline's code of
ethics, its significance extends far beyond academe.
In a frenzy of recent articles and media appearances, military
officials have trumpeted the work of anthropologists and Human Terrain
Teams deployed inside six combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan
(with an upcoming $40-million expansion to all 26 brigades across the
two countries). Officials warmly credit anthropologists with providing
knowledge about local cultural sensitivities, assisting with
reconstruction efforts, and reducing the need for combat. Many
journalists have unquestioningly repeated the military's upbeat but
uncorroborated assertions about the effectiveness of the human-terrain
program, offering no independent evidence or investigation of the
operations involved.
The news-media campaign suggests that the military's recruitment of
anthropologists is part of a broader strategy to rebrand the wars,
putting a kinder, gentler face on occupation, both for the occupied
and for those on the home front. In Afghanistan, for example, a Human
Terrain Team says it's creating good will by talking to Afghans and
providing medical services -- though, as a Christian Science Monitor
story pointed out, those efforts were undermined when casualties
caused by a U.S. helicopter attack "made people angry and bent on
revenge." In the United States, the program is part of an effort to
change the image of the wars with feel-good stories and the softer,
scholarly visage of culturally sensitive "warrior-intellectuals." Here
the Ph.D.'s and M.A.'s of anthropologists offer a veneer of
professionalism and humanity to the violent work of war and
occupation, helping to justify keeping troops overseas.
And despite the assertions of military officials and journalists about
saving lives, the true nature of anthropological collaboration appears
far darker. A U.S. Army advertisement seeks anthropologists and other
social scientists to work on "psyops," psychological operations. Human-
terrain positions require security clearances and the ability to
integrate ethnographic information with traditional military-
intelligence gathering. Above all, team members provide knowledge
about local populations -- what is sometimes called "ethnographic
intelligence" -- to assist combat troops regularly engaged in battle
and the work of killing. In the words of one soldier whose writing is
circulating on Internet mailing lists, anthropology is helping "to
better know my enemy." Indeed, U.S. Army personnel from Fort
Leavenworth, Kan., home of the human-terrain program, call their
brainchild "a Cords for the 21st century," referring to the
controversial Vietnam War project. Intelligence operatives in the
Phoenix Program, which was part of Cords (Civil Operations and
Revolutionary Development Support), identified and assassinated more
than 26,000 suspected Vietcong. Most chilling of all, an unclassified
February 2007 presentation by Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of
Defense John Wilcox at a meeting in Arlington, Va., asserts that in
the global war on terrorism, human-terrain mapping "enables the entire
kill chain."
Anthropologists are being used as new military tools -- weapons, as
some proponents describe them -- to directly and indirectly assist
counterinsurgency operations and troops whose job requires taking
human lives. Providing cultural-sensitivity training in a classroom or
briefing peacekeepers charged with preventing violence and protecting
civilians is one thing. But when an anthropologist steps onto the
battlefield to assist soldiers at war, occupying another nation,
engaged in regular, active, lethal combat operations, a line has been
crossed. Which is what makes this kind of collaboration fundamentally
unethical for anthropologists. In fact, the American Anthropological
Association's executive board has recently found as much, with a
statement expressing "disapproval" of the human-terrain program and
"grave concerns" about what the board termed "an unacceptable
application of anthropological expertise."
Like the Hippocratic Oath, the association's Code of Ethics demands
that anthropologists "avoid harm or wrong" and "do everything in their
power to ensure that their research does not harm the safety, dignity,
or privacy of the people with whom they work." Supporting military
combat operations and other counterinsurgency activities that are
inherently violent and have caused the harm and deaths of thousands
crosses that threshold. Anthropology is, after all, the discipline
whose aim is to understand human lives, not to help end them.
Participation in the Human Terrain System and other such work further
violates ethical standards in that it can be covert or secretive,
breaching faith with the people with whom anthropologists work by
gathering information for purposes not known to them. Even under the
most open of circumstances, the anthropology board's statement warns,
anthropologists will "work in situations where it will not always be
possible for them to distinguish themselves from military personnel
and identify themselves as anthropologists. This places a significant
constraint on their ability to fulfill their ethical responsibility as
anthropologists to disclose who they are and what they are doing."
Battlefield anthropology further fails to follow mandatory scientific
practices of obtaining informed, voluntary consent that is free of
coercion, force, and duress. Even if Human Terrain Teams ask for some
form of permission to speak with locals, how could the requests be
anything but coercive when anthropologists are armed or accompanying
armed troops? Indeed, the work begins to resemble the tragic case of
anthropologists in World War II who worked in, and assisted in the
operation of, Japanese-American internment camps, where prisoners had
no say in being studied.
Finally, collaboration with the military casts suspicion on
anthropologists everywhere as potential spies and military operatives,
possibly foreclosing future research that could actually help build
better cross-cultural understanding and a more peaceful world. In
recent fieldwork in Mexico, Roger N. Lancaster, an anthropologist at
George Mason University, recently wrote to The New York Times,
"Invariably, one of the first questions I was asked was, 'Are you here
to spy on us?'" Headlines about anthropologists working in war zones
will only compound the problem, Lancaster said.
Given the gravity of these ethical issues, 10 colleagues and I have
called on anthropologists to sign a pledge "not to undertake research
or other activities in support of counterinsurgency work" and other
combat operations in the "war on terror." Far from calling for a
retreat to the ivory tower, members of this coalition, the Network of
Concerned Anthropologists, are actively involved in and advocate work
proposing new directions in foreign and military policy to end such
wars and to protect the lives of U.S. troops and peoples around the
world. One member (a former U.S. Army soldier) is investigating the
dangers of using biotechnology and pharmaceuticals to enhance fighting
ability. Another has studied nuclear-weapons policy for decades. My
work focuses on how the creation of U.S. military bases can harm
native peoples.
While some anthropologists may indeed be bringing much-needed cultural
sensitivity to soldiers and, in some cases, reducing incidents of
violence, collaboration in lethal counterinsurgency campaigns is
ultimately not only unethical but also strategically wrongheaded: It
represents an effort to forestall bringing troops home -- on the
assumption that if only we could understand the culture of the people
in Iraq and Afghanistan, we could fight smarter and be victorious.
Such thinking is extending the time that soldiers and civilians are at
risk and represents the continuation -- not the reversal -- of the
tragic policies that have left the United States mired in these deadly
and deeply unpopular wars. This at a time when a growing consensus
here and abroad understands that there can be no military solution,
that only diplomatic, political, and economic efforts will end the
wars.
And that is precisely where anthropologists and other social
scientists could be most helpful. Not on the battlefield, not
assisting in combat operations, but in offering their skills in
understanding other peoples and the social, political, economic, and
historical contexts in which those peoples live in an effort to aid
the search for diplomatic solutions.
There may be some hope, however, in the military's approaching
anthropology for guidance in the morass that is the "war on terror."
One can see it as an encouraging sign for the future that more
soldiers and policy makers want to think anthropologically, to see and
understand the world from the perspective of others. If only military
and government officials had come to anthropologists and other social
scientists for insight about Iraqi culture, society, and history
before the invasion of Iraq, perhaps we could have avoided this tragic
war.
Anthropologists and others should not now throw their skills and
support behind failed strategies searching for a military solution
that will only guarantee continued warfare and keep troops and
civilians in harm's way; they should throw their skills and support
behind work to find the political, diplomatic, and economic solutions
that are the only way to bring peace to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the
world. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| |
|
Page 1 of 1
All times are GMT - 5 Hours
The time now is Sun Jul 27, 2008 3:49 am
|
|
