I wandered onto as Army website page last week in search of info about bunker-buster bombs, and read briefly about the Human Terrain Systems project (started in 2006), an 'initiative of the Army Training and Doctrine Command; career info is here.  The photo above is from the page.

HTS is a new proof-of-concept program, run by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), and serving the joint community. The near-term focus of the HTS program is to improve the military's ability to understand the highly complex local socio-cultural environment in the areas where they are deployed; however, in the long-term, HTS hopes to assist the US government in understanding foreign countries and regions prior to an engagement within that region.  General Petraeus is apparently a big fan.

• HTS was developed in response to identified gaps in commanders' and staffs' understanding of the local population and culture, and its impact on operational decisions; and poor transfer of specific socio-cultural knowledge to follow-on units.
• The HTS approach is to place the expertise and experience of social scientists and regional experts, coupled with reach-back, open-source research, directly in support of deployed units engaging in full-spectrum operations.
• HTS informs decision making at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.
• The HTS program is the first time that social science research and advising has been done systematically, on a large scale, and at the brigade level.  

It sounds fine, yes?  Then why did the hair on the back of my neck stand up?

The US military has had gigantic holes in their understanding of Iraqi and Afghan culture, languages, history, tribal allegiances, etc.  So a big group of social scientists and anthropologists could aid in...wait for it   ; informing decision making at the tactical, operational and strategic levels in the war?  The peace?  Counter-insurgency strategies? Building and rebuilding infrastructure?  Yes; aid in Clear, Hold and Build. 

  A couple out-takes from their Mission Statement page say:

HTS does not conduct lethal targeting, manage infrastructure projects, or provide schoolhouse pre-deployment cultural training.

By developing an understanding of the societies and cultures in which we are engaged, HTS believes that the U.S. military can reduce the need for and negative repercussions of lethal force.

The HTS Mission is to provide commanders in the field with relevant socio-cultural understanding necessary to meet their operational requirements.

  I started poking around, and found other people wondering about the uses the military could put all these revelations dug out by the HTS employees, who are outside the military and can carry guns or not...wondering also what kind of down sides there might be to all this alleged humanitarian effort.  Plenty, as it turns out.  But the distinctions are subtle, and the program is an easy sell, as its step-children will be in the future.  Keep in mind as you read that it is funded as a Military Intelligence Program.

Scandal seems to swirl around it, including sexual harassment and alleged rape of its female employees.*

  Dave Price writes about HTS at Counterpunch; he'd subtitled the piece A Better Way to Kill? (Dec. 1, 2009)

 The anthropologist Montgomery McFate has become the public spokesperson for Human Terrain, and while she has increasingly pulled back from public discussions of the workings and implications of Human Terrain, in reading her early writings on British counterinsurgency operations against the IRA, we find a model of how she (and, it appears, her military sponsors) view anthropology working as a tool for military conquest.

Human Terrain Systems is not some neutral humanitarian project, it is an arm of the U.S. military and is part of the military's mission to occupy and destroy opposition to U.S. goals and objectives. HTS cannot claim the sort of neutrality claimed by groups like Doctors Without Borders, or the International Committee of the Red Cross. HTS's goal is a gentler form of domination. Pretending that the military is a humanitarian organization does not make it so, and pretending that HTS is anything other than an arm of the military engaging in a specific form of conquest is sheer dishonesty.

  Noah Sachtman at wired.com says this about HTS:

But violence has shadowed the program, as the Human Terrain Teams burrowed deeper into their local cultures. In May, Michael Bhatia, an Oxford-trained political scientist working in eastern Afghanistan, was killed, along with two soldiers, by a roadside explosive. Less than two months later, a bomb detonated inside the Sadr
City District Council building in Iraq. Social scientist Nicole Suveges was inside.
She and 11 others died instantly.

 

  Both the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) and the American Anthropological Association (AAA) have condemned the project on the grounds that even its field manual illustrates that there are no protections to keep civilians protected; when armed HTS employees approach locals for interviews, it doesn't meet the organization's requirements for 'voluntary interviews'.  The organization is clear that:

"... anthropologists' primary loyalties be to those studied, that research not lead to events harming research participants", which would not fit with aiding a war or an occupation.

  Journalist John Stanton writes on intelligence; his article from Nov. 2006 is titled contains this:

 'Fewer know that Cultural Operations Research - Human Terrain System (COR-HTS) -- now simply HTS -- was originally funded by the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). Coincidently, JIEDDO was formerly under the command of Steve Fondacaro, who now runs the turbulent HTS program.'

 In May of this year he asks:  HTS: More Feared Than the CIA?

 At zeroanthropology.net Stanton lists HST employees killed in the war.

 The program looks like a blend of Psyops, intelligence gathering, a manual for happy occupation, and maybe even along the way fulfills a need for soldiers' understanding of indigenous cultures.  But these appear to be the tactics of the future, as asymmetrical mechanized warfare dominates more and more.  It's clear more effort will go into gauging human reactions on the ground to assess the strategies in place. 

Even some within the military are wary about its employees and effectsAnthropologist David Price warns:

The notion of using anthropologists and other social scientists to gather information, probe and soothe the feelings of those living in these environments, increasingly monitored and controlled by machines, strikes me as an anthropological abomination. Given what we know anthropologically about the complexities of how culture works, it also seems doomed to failure.

And

Whether or not HTS continues to exist as a program in the future is unclear, but regardless of the program's future, the military's appetites for ethnographic information and intelligence for counterinsurgency operations will continue. Because counterinsurgency has become the Obama administration's alchemical solution for the problems of Iraq and Afghanistan, we should consider the philosophical roots supporting the sickly promise of military victory, not simply stability, through culturally informed counterinsurgency.

The House Armed Services Committee held hearings about the program in May, and offered some mild rebukes and ordered some guidelines to be followed.  Yessir; look out, Congress in on the case.

 This unclassified DOD report: Precision Strike Winter Roundtable: Precision Engagement -Strategic Engagement for the Long War gives some hints for the future of contactors and programs in the Human Terrain area.  Take a look at it.

  There are apparently plans to turn HRS over to the army, assumedly as a PR move; stay tuned.

*Foreign Policy Magazine has this from 2009:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/08/reality_check_human_terrain_teams?page=0,1