Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain

Pledge of Non-participation in Counter-insurgency
We, the undersigned, believe that anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the "war on terror." Furthermore, we believe that anthropologists should refrain from directly assisting the US military in combat, be it through torture, interrogation, or tactical advice.
US military and intelligence agencies and military contractors have identified "cultural knowledge," "ethnographic intelligence," and "human terrain mapping" as essential to US-led military intervention in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. Consequently, these agencies have mounted a drive to recruit professional anthropologists as employees and consultants. While often presented by its proponents as work that builds a more secure world, protects US soldiers on the battlefield, or promotes cross-cultural understanding, at base it contributes instead to a brutal war of occupation which has entailed massive casualties. By so doing, such work breaches relations of openness and trust with the people anthropologists work with around the world and, directly or indirectly, enables the occupation of one country by another. In addition, much of this work is covert. Anthropological support for such an enterprise is at odds with the humane ideals of our discipline as well as professional standards.
We are not all necessarily opposed to other forms of anthropological consulting for the state, or for the military, especially when such cooperation contributes to generally accepted humanitarian objectives. A variety of views exist among us, and the ethical issues are complex. Some feel that anthropologists can effectively brief diplomats or work with peacekeeping forces without compromising professional values. However, work that is covert, work that breaches relations of openness and trust with studied populations, and work that enables the occupation of one country by another violates professional standards.
Consequently, we pledge not to undertake research or other activities in support of counter-insurgency work in Iraq or in related theaters in the "war on terror," and we appeal to colleagues everywhere to make the same commitment.



The above is the petition from the Network of Concerned Anthropologists. Anthropologists, including Roberto J. Gonzalez and David H. Price, started the site and Gonzalez and Price also contributed "When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents" (CounterPunch) on Friday:



In fact, David Kipp of the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas describes HTS teams as a "CORDS for the 21st Century"-a reference to the Pentagon's Vietnam-era Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support project. The most infamous product of the CORDS counter-insurgency effort was the Phoenix Program, in which CIA agents collected intelligence information used to "neutralize" (read assassinate) suspected Viet Cong members. Between 1968 and 1972, more than 26,000 suspected Viet Cong were killed as a result, including many civilians.
Kipp's comparison of HTS and CORDS begs a series of ethical questions which have gone unanswered. If anthropologists on HTS teams interview Afghans or Iraqis about the intimate details of their lives, what is to prevent combat teams from using the same data to one day "neutralize" suspected insurgents? What would impede the transfer of data collected by social scientists to commanders planning offensive military campaigns? Where is the line that separates the professional anthropologist from the counter-insurgency technician? Although the answers to these questions are not clear, the history of anthropology should give us pause. During World War II and the Cold War, US military and intelligence agencies tended to use anthropologists' work to help accomplish immediate goals, and discarded all other information that was counter to their beliefs or institutional models.
Other wars brought anthropology to the battlefield, but with mixed results, and lingering questions remain about the ethics and the efficacy of these interactions--even in wars with much broader support than the current misadventure in Iraq. These engagements have always raised deep ethical questions within the discipline. Even during the Second World War, a number of anthropologists were troubled by the use of specific cultural anthropological knowledge for warfare, and as Laura Thompson in 1944 worried, what would become of anthropology if its practitioners became nothing more than "technicians for hire to the highest bidder?" After the war, CIA operatives like Edward Lansdale tapped ethnographic knowledge for campaigns in the Philippines and Vietnam; and when disclosures about the use of anthropological data in the Vietnam War were made public, the resulting clash within the American Anthropological Association created rifts that remain evident to this day.



In this community, the topic was first addressed in C.I.'s "When Dumb Ass Met Dumb Ass." (December, 2006) when War Hawk George Packer (so fidgety on Bill Moyers Journal last week -- as hard not to notice as the ever increasing bald 'spot') wrote (in The New Yorker) with glee over a freakish woman (who cackles to Packer, "I'm engaged in a massive act of rebellion against my hippie parents") and her involvement in a program that should have gotten massive attention. C.I. wrote:



She's now a consultant for the Pentagon and quite a bit more. She majored in anthro and now uses her doctorate for bad. (No surprise to anyone who remembers her tantrums as a child.)

She's Packer's kind of people, a supposed hippie child (in her dreams) who woke up to reality and now will use knowledge of a people against them which is what her talk of "culture" is about -- using it to conquer a people. She was frightening as a child, she's more so today.

This is the new phase, what's giving Bully Boy hope that he can still eek out a 'win' in his illegal war, the 'culture' ammo that Monty and others will provide him with. The department is called Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain and it's tasked with using research against a people. An unnamed Marine is 'quoted.' It's apparently what he told Monty but for some reason Packer presents the quote as though he heard it himself: "We were focused on broadcast media and metrics. But this had no impact because Iraqis spread information through rumor. We should have been visiting their coffee shops."

To tell the truth? No, to spread their own rumors (which was all the military was doing with their broadcasts and their leaflets). Propaganda, the US military hopes, will go down easier with the help of Monty and her ilk.

This is such a betrayal of the sciences and anyone who says otherwise is a liar or a fool. The closest Packer can get to that reality is when he speaks to another anthropoligist (think of them as Conquering Apologists) who wants far less of the limelight than Monty (she always wanted the limelight) and goes unnamed but does state: "I do not want to get anybody killed" and offers that people are so offended by her work that "I end up getting shunned at cocktail parties."

Oh boo-hoo. In a just world, you'd be stripped of your degree and possibly imprisoned for war crimes. You do not misuse science. You do not gather information under phoney pretexts or study a people so that you can conquer them -- not in the social sciences. (That's done by marketing majors.) (A joke.)



If we've noted this here before, it would have been in a roundtable or an editorial. C.I. and Elaine have repeatedly revisited this topic this year. You have to wonder why independent media (broadcast) can't say the same?



Hopefully, the petition will garner some attention. If not, it will just be one more aspect of the illegal war that independent media has been AWOL on.