Donate NowVanessa Gezari, for the Pulitzer Center
Journalist Vanessa Gezari answers your questions about her story on the Human Terrain program in Afghanistan for The Washington Post Magazine. She writes from Helmand Province, where she is embedded with a Human Terrain team attached to the Marines. Comments and questions for Gezari are marked in italics.
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I'm thinking People Magazine after reading this. Well written, of course, but absent much substantive depth. I'm guessing the writer gets a passing grade by the Imbed Program Vetting Personnel as she obviously will be returning for more. Not her fault, I believe. This is the standard for MSM reporting on HTS. Don;t forget this is General Patreous' program. And don't forget that the WAPO, NYT and WSJ really are the official organs of the US Gov/Corp state.Once you get that, it is easier to digest information filtered through their information gatherers. I await the Life Time Channel movie on the Human Terrain It should be based on John Tesh's Entertainment Tonight music background.
Editor's note: This comment originally appeared on the Washington Post site.
Posted by: sponge1 | August 31, 2009 at 07:35 PM
Hi sponge1, In the interest of full disclosure, the author of this post, John Stanton, has written frequently and critically about HTS.
I've never aspired to write for People magazine, and while I'd happily watch a Lifetime channel movie about HTS, I don't have any plans to help craft one. I do think that narrative journalism is a great vehicle for writing about complicated subjects, and I'd like to see it used much more often in foreign policy stories. Real human characters and a comprehensible chain of events can engage people who wouldn't normally read something about Afghanistan or a new Army program that offers a window into bigger strategic changes there.
I don't think I'm wrong in detecting an element of gender bias in this comment, one that's all too common in the mostly male world of foreign policy and analysis. The thinking is that men write (often unreadable) stories of great "substantive depth" and women (while taking a break from watching the Lifetime channel) produce superficial, "well-written" stories about people and their hopes and dreams. But telling a complex story with real human characters is neither easy nor shallow. A detailed account of human experience has value, especially when you're writing about something as complicated and overwhelming as war.
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The author failed to do due dilligence on the Army Human Terrain progam and all the problems it has faced from the start. Haste, poor selection of personnel, poor training, no discipline, bullying, sexual harrassment,and failure to coordinate with the Dept of State on key aspects of the program have destroyed a good idea. The program is a failure. It needs to be reorganized in a proper way and lessons learned should be applied. Trimphalism is one of the big enemies of the program and this article reflects it.
Editor's note: This comment originally appeared on the Washington Post site.
Posted by: Diplomat2 | August 31, 2009 at 07:36 PM
The writer's concerns are echoed by many in HTS. My story focused on the experiences of two members of a Human Terrain team for whom these concerns weren't paramount, but I think that everyone, including the guys I wrote about, agrees that the Human Terrain project is a work in progress, with its share of dysfunction and problems. I wouldn't call it a failure yet. That's not how it's viewed by the field commanders I've talked to, who work with the teams. I don't feel triumphant about much that we're doing in Afghanistan, so if that's what the article conveyed, it was unintentional. I do think that our most recent ideas about how to fight this war are better than our previous ones, but some of those early ideas were pretty bad.
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It is impossible to conduct truly valuable and meaningful social science inquiry in uniforms with weapons and through similarly outfitted interpreters. Ask an anthropologist who has worked in ANY other context what would happen to their data (or relationship with their informants) were they to arrive at an interview in a tank and the answer would be very clear: it would be skewed beyond the point of sensible use. Moreover, the villagers would be put at extreme risk due to their participation with the "researchers". In this case, undoubtedly the Taliban have eyes and ears who know which villagers have contact with members of the Human Terrain team. It is a travesty to the academic discipline to cal their military tactic anthropological.
Editor's note: This comment originally appeared on the Washington Post site.
Posted by: IdeaLibre | August 31, 2009 at 07:36 PM
This view is shared by members of the American Anthropological Association who objected to the program in 2007, and by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, a group that has been vocal in its criticism of HTS. The writer is correct that most Afghans view civilians in military uniforms asking questions as indistinguishable from soldiers. The Human Terrain team members I've talked to are aware of this and most – though not all – are comfortable with it. Some have told me they'd much prefer to wear civilian clothes. Especially in the south, Afghans are generally concerned for their safety when speaking with coalition forces in public, be they soldiers or Human Terrain team members.
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This Human Terrain crap can't possibly work becaus first of all most of those ppl don't understand the Afghans any better than the troops do. They are just do-gooders, and will be seen as missionaries, which they, in fact, probably are. And that is clear, too, because, just as Karl realized, you can't do much good where there is no security. But to achieve security you can't do any good. That's the box the Taliban knows we are in and they exploit it at every turn. We'd know better than to try this in our own ghettos. How in the world do you expect to do anything where you can't even walk down the street in broad daylight? These ppl are, in this respect, worse than the Viet Cong. The only way this can even begin to work is if there are so many allies in country that the Taliban has no room to stand up without being noticed, and that probably for a couple of generations. Or you can do what we did in Vietnam: move all the good guys into secure zones, and make the rest free-fire zones. But I don't see any "oil slicks" occurring. Personally I can't think of anybody more useless than a "conflict-resolution" professional. That's a scam, like low-fat yogurt, worthy of Mandeville's scorn. If this Karl is 64, how did he avoid service in Vietnam, where he might have learned something of real value? It is highly unlikely even without conundrums that the villagers are all just good ppl awaiting deliverance from tyranny anyway, or certainly, no more good little capitalists than those on our own welfare rolls.
Editor's note: This comment originally appeared on the Washington Post site.
Posted by: remant | August 31, 2009 at 07:38 PM
I cracked up reading this, especially the comparison between a conflict-resolution specialist and low-fat yogurt, so thanks for that. In all seriousness, the commentator raises some interesting points. As I said earlier, people join HTS for all sorts of reasons, some more realistic than others. Some view their deployments as a way to distribute a form of humanitarian aid (sometimes they do this literally, having been drafted by military folks to help hand out medicine or candy because they're viewed as the "softer side" of the deployment). Some HTS members seem to think of the project as a kind of combat zone Peace Corps, and some approach it with a zeal that's more common among missionaries than soldiers. I don't think that being a "do-gooder" is necessarily a bad thing. But sometimes they need a reality check. This isn't Kansas – where the Human Terrain teams train – anymore; this is a war, and there's a lot at stake, especially for Afghans.
It's not correct to say as a blanket statement that HTS members "don't understand the Afghans any better than the troops do," but in many cases they understand Afghans only marginally better. This is regrettable, and I hope that as the program evolves it will change. And yet, as I've said, Human Terrain team members do bring something to this effort that soldiers don't. They've been tasked with learning about this culture, and the smartest ones do, more effectively than many soldiers. They also can bring a degree of common sense and emotional intelligence that's sorely lacking on the front lines. Believe it or not, there is a need in Afghanistan for Americans who do something other than fight or spend their deployments in offices behind razor wire. I don't mean to imply that there are no other civilians on the ground here, but there are too few. I hope there will soon be many more.