Anthropologists apparently not marching off to war any time soon?

Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Marshall Sahlins on anthropologists in Iraq

I came across the above anthropology blog post via Small Wars Journal. I thought it was appallingly self-righteous and ignorant–the original post and most of (DB added 19 Oct) the comments that follow it. (I suppose they would say the same thing about this blog). But it is a useful eye-opener for those, including myself, who have argued that a key to successful COIN is an understanding of the human cultural landscape in which operations take place. Unfortunately, anthropologists, the mappers of the cultural landscape are saying they don’t want to be anywhere within cannon shot of the military. This is self-defeating on multiple levels for the military and, I think, for anthropology. Marcus Griffin, an anthropologist working in Iraq with a US Army Human Terrain Team (featured in a recent BBC article US Army Enlists Anthropogists) explains Why the use of anthropology is a contentious issue better than I can. Have a look. In fact, his blog From an Anthropological Perspective seems highly worthwhile repeat visiting. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the guru of contemporary COIN, David Killcullen, is a PhD in political anthropology. It’s a discipline which would appear to generate more useful insights into how to fight ‘wars amongst the people’ than many others. We need a lot more Griffins and Kilcullens.

Update: From the comments has come a recommendation from a couple of anthropologists in training to read a recent exchange of views on this matter by David Kilcullen and Montgomery Fate responding to an article by Roberto Gonzales in the journal Anthropology Today. Some KOW readers may have access to the journal–I encourage you to read it if, as I am, you are interested in the relationship of the academy and the military in war time. For those readers who are not here are some excerpts which convey the gist:

Roberto Gonzales ‘Towards Mercenary Anthropology: The New US Army Counterinsurgency Manual FM3-24 and the Military-Anthropology Complex’, Anthropology Today, Vol. 23, Iss. 3 (June 2007).

Counterinsurgency consulting is the latest phase in the ‘weaponization of anthropology’ – the process by which military and intelligence agencies employ social science as just another weapon on the battlefield (Price 2006). When such work is carried out covertly and without informed consent it represents a grave breach of the AAA’s code of ethics. When it is carried out by anthropologists working as cultural mercenaries – hired to design or implement culturally specific counterinsurgency campaigns or extreme interrogation tactics17 – the ethical transgressions are graver still.

David Kilcullen:

Dr González raises important issues. His unease about the cost of conflict does him credit, and I share his concern. There are two questions here: the first is whether using anthropological knowledge in counterinsurgency is ethical, that is, whether it engenders the greatest good of the greatest number. Since the greatest number is the non-belligerent population, the people’s welfare (not that of insurgents or governments) is what counts. This is jus in bello – right conduct in war once engaged, not jus ad bellum – rightness in deciding to wage war. Field evidence suggests that the more anthropological knowledge is available to counter-insurgents, the more humane their operations. For example, early in the Iraq war, some coalition units alienated friendly communities by failing to understand the social networks through which local, religious and political threads of identity are modulated in Iraqi society. Others arrested innocent

bystanders through failure to understand the culture of weapons possession among Iraqi families. Units unnecessarily detained hundreds because they did not understand kinship systems, and lost track of detainees through misunderstanding Arab naming conventions. Some leaders misapplied etic identity categories, or worked on the assumption that constructs like ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’ and ‘rule of law’ apply universally in isolation from a cultural meta-context. Specialist knowledge – from area experts, linguists, historians and anthropologists – has solved or is helping to solve all these problems. I have seen instances where ethnographic knowledge significantly ameliorated

the effect of conflict on populations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa as well as Iraq. I have witnessed, as a participant observer, situations where understanding of kinship systems, honour codes and modes of traditional warfare helped meet legitimate grievances, disarm or win over adversaries bloodlessly, or greatly reduce violence.

I have never witnessed the misapplication of such knowledge to increase suffering; on the contrary, the overall effect, in my observation, is almost always to reduce violence. To my mind, therefore, the answer to the first question seems clear: the evidence suggests that anthropological knowledge (properly applied by people who understand both the discipline and the security environment) does contribute to the greatest good of the greatest number, and its use in counterinsurgency is therefore ethical, in my view.

Montgomery McFate

Professor González appears to believe that direct engagement of anthropologists with the military or the intelligence community is somehow unethical. On the contrary, anthropological knowledge applied to military problems has the power to save lives, both military and civilian, and it has done so in many 20thcentury wars. Although Professor González seems to enjoy quoting selectively and out of context from my published work (for example, he incorrectly interprets my 2005 statement that al-Qaeda is grounded in both ‘history and theology’ as a dismissal of their modernity, a position I have never taken), he fails to address any of the substantive points that I raised: that socio-cultural knowledge reduces violence, creates stability, promotes better governance and improves military decision making.

A handful of anthropologists working with the military and intelligence communities have again made the discipline directly relevant to national security after a very long divorce. The door is now open for other anthropologists to

enter the national security arena if they choose to do so. Of course, many anthropologists will never engage with the military because they view Iraq as a ‘bad war’. Perhaps one ought to ask, why exactly is it a bad war? Some of the many reasons might include: problematic government policies, flawed intelligence, counterproductive strategies, etc. In each of these cases miscalculations resulted, in part, from a lack of understanding about other societies. Aren’t anthropologists then obliged to educate the military and policy-makers to prevent mistakes in the future? Speaking truth to power should mean something more than sniping from the ivory tower – rather, it should mean constructive engagement with the national security community in a spirit of open-minded discourse.