The New Dark Age

12 December, 2008

“Human Terrain Team”

The end may be nigh for the US military’s controversial and sometimes fatal attempt to embed hundreds of anthropologists and social scientists into military units under the “Human Terrain Program” or HTS. Yesterday saw two major releases from Wikileaks and the journal Nature relating to the effort.

Wikileaks released the unpublished, “bible” of the program, the 122 page “Human Terrain Team Handbook”, dated Sep 2008. The contents confirm allegations made by the American Anthropological Association last year that the teams helped in “identifying and selecting specific populations as targets of US military operations”.

Nature, the international science journal, called for the program to be scrapped, saying that it was “plagued by deadly mistakes,” and “needs to be closed down”. HTS contractors and employees stand accused, variously, of murder, dousing each other in petrol, and spying. Additionally, social scientist Michael Bhatia was killed in Afghanistan in May and Nicole Suveges, a doctoral student from John Hopkins University was killed in Iraq the following month.

The US military has attempted to paint the teams as assisting military “cultural sensitivity”, but it is clear from the handbook that the teams report to military unit commanders and are used to map family, political and other relationships for general operations and irregular warfare.

Consequently the program appears to have attracted both enemy fire and the bottom of the recruitment barrel–social scientists with few opportunities who are willing to sell out the values of their professions and Arab translators willing to assist in the targeting of Arab or Afghani Moslems.

In these latter respects there is a parallel to the US military’s use of psychologist and psychiatrist teams to interrogate detainees in Guantanamo, Camp Bucca, Bagram and other prisons. These teams, Behavioral Consultation Teams, or BCTs, have been similarly condemned by professional bodies and exposed by Wikileaks whistleblowers.

Further Reading:

Prof. David Price’s readable analysis (appears in today’s Counterpunch):
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_Leaky_Ship_of_Human_Terrain_Systems

Nature article:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Failure_in_the_field

The full leaked handbook:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_military:_Human_Terrain_Team_Handbook%2C_Sep_2008