Rough Terrain, by Vanessa Gezari, The Washington Post Magazine
28 Aug 2009 21:07:31 GMT Source: Pulitzer center
Vanessa M. GezariThe Washington Post MagazineAugust 28, 2009The American soldiers gathered in a makeshift conference room where
fine dust coated the
long table and maps hung on the walls. The maps
showed the area around the base in careful detail: the villages,
shallow valleys and fields, the thin band of Highway 1 running west
from Kandahar.Army Lt. Terrence Paul Dunn, a 24-year-old from Fredericksburg,
stood in front of the map. He pointed to a rectangular patch of fields
and compounds across a low stretch of land a few hundred
yards from the
base. This was Pir Zadeh, the friendliest village in his unit's
operating area.The soldiers sat on benches along the wall. They were young, with
regulation haircuts and a mix
of boredom and nervousness in their eyes.
Among them were a big man with a full beard and extra clips of
ammunition strapped to his chest, and another who wore wire-rimmed
glasses with his Army-issue
camouflage. They were civilians, members of
an experimental Army project called the Human Terrain System that
embeds anthropologists and other social scientists with front-line
units to advise
soldiers about local culture.Dunn traced the route they would take. Pir Zadeh lay within sight of
the base, but it was too risky to walk. They would drive in MRAPs,
heavy, armored vehicles
designed to minimize the effects of makeshift
bombs, then would get out and move west through the village. The
soldiers would create a secure perimeter as they walked, Dunn told
them. Any villager who
wanted to pass the patrol would have to enter
the perimeter and be frisked for weapons. The patrol would work its way
along a narrow alley that led between high compound walls where, if
they were
attacked, they could be easily boxed in."Today we're maintaining lots of standoff," Dunn said. "We're going
to make sure that people who are in our perimeter stay in ourperimeter, and people who are outside stay outside."The men nodded. This semi-urban topography made them anxious, though
the surrounding open dunes weren't much better. Eight years into
the
war, Dunn and the other soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Regiment,
1st Infantry Division -- known as Task Force 2-2 -- were the first
international troops to patrol Maywand district in
significant numbers.
Most days, the sand flats and wheat and poppy fields of western
Kandahar province were deceptively quiet. But Maywand was a key transit
area for fighters and drugs, and the
Taliban controlled it,
intimidating people who knew the local government couldn't protect
them. For a time last fall, more makeshift bombs were planted there
than any other place in Afghanistan or
Iraq. In October, the Taliban
pulled passengers off a bus and beheaded them, leaving the bodies near
the road.The deployment of U.S. soldiers to Maywand was an experiment. So,
too, was the
Human Terrain project and the road map to progress
envisioned by the bespectacled social scientist joining the patrol that
day. The war had not gone well. This was not a time for old approaches
but
for bold new ones that might seem crazy or that just might work.Karl Slaikeu had asked for this assignment. A 64-year-old
psychologist and conflict-resolution specialist from Texas, Karl hadbeen nursing an idea that he thought could change the course of the
war. He was looking for a village that, with concerted attention, could
be turned into a model of development and security. Pir
Zadeh, where
the patrol was bound, was a place where locals had formed a
neighborhood watch and where the village elder seemed to like
Americans.Dunn wrapped up his briefing. "Any
questions?"The bearded Human Terrain team member, who went by the nickname Banger, asked what to do if the patrol came under attack."If we take contact, you guys are
getting down," Dunn said. "You're
going to stay down until instructed otherwise, obviously finding
cover."Before heading out, Banger and Karl huddled with their AfghanAmerican interpreter. Banger was a former Marine whose background had
prepared him for missions such as this, but Karl had arrived in
Afghanistan only a month earlier and had never before been to a
war
zone. Like the other social scientists on the Human Terrain teams, he
had been offered the option of carrying a weapon and had been issued an
M-16, though he acknowledged he wasn't fully prepared
to use it.Now Banger told Karl to be aware of his surroundings when
interviewing villagers. If we're attacked, he told the older man, wait
until the last minute to shoot."Only
engage if you have to," Banger said. "That avoids any accidental perceptional issues, not knowing where anybody is.""Got it," Karl said.***Karl
and Banger had good reason to be watchful. On a clear day last
fall, a Human Terrain social scientist named Paula Loyd and two of her
teammates walked with a group of soldiers to a village just
outside the
base where Karl and Banger met to discuss their patrol.A 36-year-old from Texas, Paula had a wide, heart-shaped smile,
degrees from Wellesley and Georgetown and years of
experience as a
soldier and aid worker in Afghanistan. On a lane near the bazaar, she
talked to a villager about the price of the jug of gasoline he was
holding. Without warning, the Afghan doused her
with gas and set her on
fire. The soldiers and one of Paula's Human Terrain teammates, a
46-year-old former Army Ranger named Don Ayala, caught her attacker.
When Don heard that Paula had been badly
burned, he pulled out his
pistol and shot the man in the head.Don pleaded guilty to manslaughter and in May was sentenced to five
years of probation and fined. Paula was flown to a hospital
in her home
town of San Antonio, where she died in January. She was the third Human
Terrain social scientist killed in the field in eight months. Karl
Slaikeu had been sent to take her place.Known to his teammates as Doc, Karl had attended seminary as a young
man and considered becoming a minister like his father. Instead, he got
a PhD in psychology, taught at the University of South
Carolina and
started a conflict-resolution business for corporate and private
clients in Austin.In the eight years since Sept. 11, as his Marine son deployed to
Baghdad and he watched the
United States slip deeper into two complex
wars, Karl had grown frustrated by his own helplessness. The
possibility of his son's death in combat forced him to think hard about
U.S. policy."As a parent, I had to prepare to lose him if he was going to be
over there," Karl said. "So I had to decide, 'What do I think about
this?' "He began reading everything
he could find, looking for ways that
ordinary citizens like him could engage and sacrifice. Then he heard
about the Human Terrain System. Born of a realization within the
Pentagon that soldiers and
commanders didn't have enough cultural
knowledge to win irregular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the project
embeds civilian social scientists with military units to advise
soldiers on factors
including tribal structures, local economics and
politics. The first Human Terrain team deployed in 2007, and today
there are roughly 20 teams in Iraq. In January, U.S. Central Command
asked the
project to more than double the number of teams it deploys to
Afghanistan, from six to 13.The project is emblematic of a bigger change sweeping the Army under
Gen. David Petraeus, the
architect of the "surge" in Iraq and a
co-author of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Unlike the "shock and
awe" tactics used during the invasion of Iraq, a counterinsurgency is
a
low-tech form of warfare focused on understanding and meeting the needs
of local communities. Soldiers in Maywand spend more time offering to
dig wells than shooting Taliban, and yet they are still
trained
primarily to fight and kill. They lack a nuanced understanding of their
environment, and in a counterinsurgency, that's a fatal shortfall."You can't establish a democracy, build
a school, build a banking
system unless you know something about the society that you're working
in," said Montgomery McFate, the anthropologist who helped create the
Human Terrain System with
retired Special Operations Col. Steve
Fondacaro.Military commanders and the project's architects say that it helps
make soldiers more knowledgeable, thus minimizing casualties and
civilian
deaths. But the number of highly trained social scientists
with extensive knowledge about Afghanistan and Iraq is extremely
limited, and most of them don't want anything to do with the military.In 2007, the American Anthropological Association came out against
the project on the grounds that anthropologists working alongside
soldiers would become indistinguishable from the military,
making it
harder for the scientists' subjects to freely consent to be
interviewed. The association also noted that the information gathered
by the Human Terrain teams could be used to target opponents
in combat,
violating ethics rules that require subjects not be harmed in the
course of research.Despite contractor pay in 2007 and 2008 of $250,000 and higher, many
scholars were hesitant to
join. (In early 2009, Human Terrain team
members became government employees, a change that cut their pay by
roughly a third.) When Karl first learned of the Human Terrain project,
he wasn't sure they
would want a conflict-resolution specialist who had
never been to Afghanistan. He also wasn't sure he wanted to join a
project that had been so intensely criticized.He studied, prayed and
talked it over with friends, academics and
his wife, Diane. He eventually decided to join but still harbored
misgivings. As he went through the four-month training at Fort
Leavenworth, he reevaluated
the project, he said. He was still doing
that in Maywand, watching for anything that might jeopardize ethical
standards by endangering local people."It just hasn't come," he said,
"and I've been looking for it."Most days, Karl worked with Banger. His real name was Stephen James
Lang, but everyone called him by the nickname he'd earned playing
rugby. He was
40, weighed more than 300 pounds in his body armor and
scowled through his thick beard. But he could talk to almost anyone and
wore a beaded bracelet -- a gift from his teenage daughter -- beneath
the
cuff of his camouflage uniform.Banger had grown up on a farm near Sioux City, Iowa, and served in
the Marines for 11 years before injuries ultimately forced him out. He
moved home to Arizona
and took courses in political science and Islam,
earning a bachelor's degree. He had served in Iraq during the Persian
Gulf War and later in Saudi Arabia, but like Karl, he had never been toAfghanistan.In Maywand, Banger used his childhood experiences on the farm to
connect with the farmers he met on patrol. But his most important job
was to protect Karl who, at 6-foot-3 with a
shock of sparkling white
hair, made an easy target.***On the morning of the patrol to Pir Zadeh, Karl and Banger piled
into MRAPs with Dunn and his soldiers. The convoy pulled onto
Highway 1
and rolled past the bazaar, rows of rickety wooden stalls edging the
road. A suicide bombing there in January had launched Karl on his
current quest. The soldiers with whom he was now riding
had been
patrolling the bazaar when a man strapped with explosives blew up in
front of them. Two U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed,
along with 15 civilians; 53 Americans and Afghans
were hurt.That winter, Karl and Banger had been at an Army training center in Louisiana when Karl heard about the bombing."How the hell did that happen?" Karl thought,
then answered his own
question: "They're walking through a village that's not secure, and
they get blown up."That started him thinking: What if soldiers provided real,
dependable
security to even one Afghan village? If the village were
actually safe, development and jobs could follow.In counterinsurgency circles, this is called the "oil spot"
strategy. The
term was coined by the French soldier and administrator
Louis Hubert Lyautey, who was sent to colonial Morocco and Indochina in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Hanoi, he watched as
soldiers
set up a network of military posts to protect villagers and
keep out insurgents, and armed locals to defend themselves. With
"pacification a great band of civilization advances like a spot ofoil," Lyautey wrote.In the months before Karl's deployment, his enthusiasm for this
approach had grown so noticeable that Banger and others had taken to
calling him Oil Spot Spock. Karl
envisioned soldiers securing a single
village or area -- the first spot of oil -- and using its success to
spread safety and development drop by drop. Areas outside the chosen
villages would be
treated as battle zones, where soldiers would know
unequivocally that they were at war. If the conflict were divided into
hot and cool zones, Karl thought, soldiers could focus their
humanitarian aid
and development efforts in friendly areas and fight in
unfriendly ones. They might have a better chance of avoiding an
explosion such as the one in the bazaar.The convoy pulled off the paved
road onto sand flats, lurching over
dunes and finally rolling to a halt at the edge of a dense, green wheat
field. The soldiers saw a man walking with a little girl and asked him
to lift his shirt to
make sure there wasn't a bomb strapped to his
chest. Banger watched disapprovingly. Asking villagers to lift their
clothes might earn the Americans more enemies than friends, he thought.
But since the
bombing in the bazaar, the soldiers of Task Force 2-2's
1st Platoon didn't take chances, calling in air support whenever
helicopters were nearby, searching villagers thoroughly even when they
seemed
friendly and patrolling with their guns up and at the ready.
Dunn knew that helicopters buzzing overhead intimidated the enemy, but
the sound also frightened the locals they were trying to win over.
"Do
I protect these guys and risk alienating the people?" Dunn wondered.
"Or do I make more rapport with these people and put my guys at risk?"The patrol wound its way
through a web of alleys surrounded on both
sides by high walls of yellow mud. Arched doorways led to smooth mud
passageways, mysterious and medieval. A stream of clear water flowed
alongside the lane,
shaded by mulberry and pomegranate trees. After 40
minutes' walk, the patrol rounded a corner and came to the gate of the
village elder's compound. He had a white beard and turban, sun-baked
skin and
leathery hands covered in dirt. He smiled at Dunn, revealing a
few missing teeth.Dunn asked about security. The old man was grave. He said a Taliban
emissary had been coming to the village
to threaten him and ask for the
wheat seeds the Americans had given out in an attempt to cut poppy
cultivation."Why do they want wheat seeds?" Dunn asked.They want them
to eat, the old man said, to grind into flour."Tell them you don't have any more," Dunn said. "You can't give them what you don't have."Dunn pulled out a
business card. On it was an emergency phone number for the American base."Just remember that if the Taliban come in your village, or any bad guys, just give us a call," he said.The old man took the card reluctantly. He didn't have a phone, he
told the lieutenant. And everyone knew that the phones didn't work at
night, when the Taliban made their rounds, because the
insurgents
coerced local cellphone operators to shut down their towers.Karl had been listening, writing quickly in his notebook. He sensed
the old man's frustration. There weren't enough
U.S. and Afghan
soldiers in Maywand to provide reliable security, and the Afghan police
didn't leave their barracks at night. But if the troops focused their
limited resources on creating a secure
perimeter around Pir Zadeh, they
might have a chance of winning the elder's loyalty.The Americans shook hands with the old man, walked over the sand flats to their armored vehicles and drove
away.***Over the spring and summer, Karl sketched a blueprint for the oil
spot strategy in Maywand. He called his approach "Oil Spot Plus,"
because it was based on a
tradeoff in which villagers would help
international forces secure the area in return for services like water,
electricity, health care and education. He envisioned negotiated
agreements between
villagers and international soldiers. The model
could work in a village such as Pir Zadeh, but Karl shifted his focus
to villages nearer the bazaar, where municipal government offices could
act as an
anchor. He hoped that more settlements would be inspired to
follow.With his background in conflict resolution, Karl saw the
relationship between Afghans and international forces as akin to atroubled marriage, in which each side's entrenched views had to be
revised if they were to get along amicably. But the reality was
infinitely messier. There was no baseline trust between Afghans andcoalition forces on which to build the deals he hoped for. And even if
soldiers did strike a deal with local stakeholders, that didn't mean
the Afghans would be powerful enough to enforce it, or that
they
wouldn't strike a contradictory deal with the insurgents. Karl sensed
this, but he also knew that the current approach wasn't working."The day of throwing money at the problem by
digging a well,
building a school or opening a clinic -- without first establishing a
secure perimeter in cooperation with villagers -- should end," he wrote
in a paper published this spring in
Small Wars Journal, an online
magazine focused on counterinsurgency. "The old model is too risky,
since an IED [improvised explosive device] or other attack can turn the
effort into naught in an
instant."In the selected oil spot villages, he suggested buying and burning
the current poppy harvest, subsidizing the transition to a different
crop, and targeting drug lords, labs and
traffickers. He also wanted to
start a paid informant program to create income for villagers who might
otherwise work with the Taliban. One spring day, Banger went to
Kandahar to meet with a Canadian
officer. He called Karl with exciting
news: The Canadians were already working on a similar initiative. They
wanted to know more about Karl's oil spot approach.In late June, the Canadians
unveiled their own "model village"
project. In the village of Deh-e Bagh south of Kandahar city, they
established security, erected solar-powered streetlights and put 120
villagers to work
on community projects.Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new commander of NATO in
Afghanistan, flew down to visit the village, strolling around with
Canadian Brig. Gen. Jonathan Vance.
McChrystal called the initiative
"valuable" and said he would like to see similar efforts around
Afghanistan.Karl pushed excitedly forward with his project.Then, in
mid-July, the Taliban attacked an Afghan army post outside
Deh-e Bagh, killing one Afghan soldier and wounding seven others."Because it's such a threat to the insurgency, it makes it a
likely
target," Canadian Maj. Mario Couture told the Canadian Press news
agency. "Is this a surprise? No. Are they going to try again? Most
likely. But the place is well-defended."Karl was still optimistic. But in Maywand, too, violence was rising.In late July, Karl was at breakfast in the dining tent. He had just
taken a bite out of a bagel with strawberry cream
cheese when a mortar
landed with a colossal boom about 50 meters away. He hit the floor,
then ran for a nearby bunker. The following day, he and Banger
accompanied a patrol to a village nearby. Banger
had been there before,
but the mood had chilled."Something's different here," Banger told Karl. "It wasn't like this before."They climbed into their armored
vehicles and headed back toward the
base. Five minutes later, the ground ahead of them exploded. A giant
plume of black smoke rose, and the MRAP carrying Banger and Karl ground
to a halt.Someone cursed. The vehicle in front of them had hit a makeshift bomb.It took hours for a recovery crew to arrive, search the area for
more bombs and load the disabled MRAP onto a truck.
Medics treated the
soldiers, none of whom was seriously hurt. Inside the hull of his heavy
vehicle, Karl thought about Michael Bhatia, a Human Terrain social
scientist who had died in eastern
Afghanistan when his Humvee drove
over such a bomb. He thought about Paula Loyd, who had e-mailed her
mother shortly before she was attacked to tell her not to worry because
"we are riding around
in these new vehicles that look like tanks.""Of course, it doesn't protect you in the situation she was in," Karl said later.When the disabled MRAP had been hauled
away, Banger and Karl's
vehicle roared to life again. The convoy slowly rolled back to the
base.At the chow hall, Banger grabbed bottles of cold water and loaded
trays with quesadillas while
Karl waited in the gravel lot. He stared
at the three MRAPs parked in a line. There had been four when they left
that morning. Later, he would joke that everyone had better stay away
from him. He'd
endured two near-misses in two days. He couldn't say
what would happen next.Vanessa M. Gezari is writing a book about the Human Terrain System
and its work in Afghanistan. She can be
reached at vgezari@gmail.com.Travel in Afghanistan for this article was partially funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.See this article as it originally ran in The Washington Post Magazine.Learn more about this reporting project.
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