The Dearing Dialogue

This week the American Anthropological Association (AAA) layed out their long awaited position on the Human Terrain System (HTS).  Essentially, they criticized the US military for thinking it can use anthropology in an unjust war (Iraq and presumably Afghanistan included), but left open the future use of anthropology in the military, but of course only under the guidance of the AAA.  However, the only idea of guidance they provide is what the AAA considers “ethical”.  Are we ever to be in a circumstance which they can agree is completely “ethical”?  Anthropologists can not even agree upon precise definitions.  Thus, it should be little surprise that support of the AAA is waning.  I would not be surprised to see it break apart into splinter groups over this very topic.  The level of elitism spewing out of the ivory tower of the AAA leadership is paramount to the same arrogance they accuse the US leadership of. 

AAA Resolution

In the context of a war that is widely recognized as a denial of human rights and based on faulty intelligence and undemocratic principles, the Executive Board sees the HTS project as a problematic application of anthropological expertise, most specifically on ethical grounds.  We have grave concerns about the involvement of anthropological knowledge and skill in the HTS project.  The Executive Board views the HTS project as an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise.  

 

The Executive Board affirms that anthropology can and in fact is obliged to help improve U.S. government policies through the widest possible circulation of anthropological understanding in the public sphere, so as to contribute to a transparent and informed development and implementation of U.S. policy by robustly democratic processes of fact-finding, debate, dialogue, and deliberation.  It is in this way, the Executive Board affirms, that anthropology can legitimately and effectively help guide U.S. policy to serve the humane causes of global peace and social justice.

From NY Times, Sunday, July 22:

(…) when asked how the United States would respond if Al Qaeda were to plot a successful attack on the United States from the tribal areas (Pakistan), the answer from one intelligence officials was direct: “We’d go in and flatten it.”

Jon Lee Anderson writes a brilliant piece in the New Yorker on opium farming in Afghanistan.  Anderson travels to Oruzgan Province (red area on map) with the Afghan Eradication Force (AEF) and US DEA counternarcotics agent Douglas Wankel, who is overseeing the eradication process. 

Opium has now become a major counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan.  Since last year, the production of opium has increased in Afghanistan by 60%.   The Taliban, who once considered opium harvesting unholy, now uses it as a means to control the population in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan - areas of greatest Taliban influence.  The coalition is at odds in how to deal with a product that is both sustaining the power of the Taliban and the livelihood of local residents.  Dutch forces are using a stand-off approach focused on making the Taliban an irrelevant presence and an unpopular choice for residents by promoting alternative crops.  DEA agent, Wankel is apprehensive:

“Most or all Europeans are opposed to eradication—they’re into winning hearts and minds,” he said. “But it’s our view that it isn’t going to work. There has to be a measured, balanced use of force along with hearts and minds.” He conceded, however, that the Uruzgan operation fell squarely on the use-of-force side of the scale. Later, he told me, aid, seed, and fertilizer would be offered to the farmers around Tirin Kot, but not yet. Other Americans were frankly contemptuous of the Dutch policy, which they regarded as softheaded.”

Of course, when alternatives don’t exist, the farmers will fall back on what they know best and what has supported them in the past.  Opium will give them over $500 an acre of harvest, while wheat may net $50 an acre.  At the same time, development from the Kabul is unequal and often corrupt.  It is based on tribal loyalties according to one local Afghan in Anderson’s article:

“The Karzai government doesn’t give the money to poor farmers growing poppy. It gives it only to its friends who grow it”—corrupt officials and landowners with political influence. (Many of the farmers were sharecroppers.) “We would be happy to stop growing opium if they would give us some help, and stop giving the money meant for us to thieves.” Instead of receiving aid from government officials, Ahmad said, “if they tell us to break the poppies, we must pay them not to.”

At the same time, areas where the Taliban are strongest tend to go untouched in the eradication process.  Whereas, areas with the greatest influence from the central government are hit hard and tend to alienate the local residents. 

It has also proven virtually impossible to conduct in districts where the Taliban are relatively strong, thereby inevitably penalizing farmers in pro-government districts.”

And corruption is enemic within the central government.  In a previous entry, I explained how one governor was arrested for holding tons of opium in his provincial office.  In Anderson’s article, he finds the AEF police providing security are working with sticky hands:

I walked past one of the jeeps where some of Qassem’s policemen, dressed in robes and sparkly skullcaps, were laughing and talking with the opium growers. I caught a whiff of something burning as I passed. They were smoking hashish.

The opium harvest is a linchpin that must be addressed in the broader context of the Taliban insurgency.  We must focus on alternatives for local farmers and provide those as incentives to steer residents away from Taliban influence.  Understanding the human terrain of Oruzgan and other provinces is the only way to ensure we quell insurgent complicity, but to prevent it from perpetuating itself.

According to today’s L.A. Times article (Influx of Al Qaeda), money is flowing from Iraq to Pakistan to fund the scores of terrorist training camps there.  A former CIA official remarked:   “that the resurgent Taliban forces in Afghanistan are ‘being schooled’ by Al Qaeda operatives with experience fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.”

The CIA is further developing a new form of covert operative since 9/11, one that can use both the analysis and operations side of the agency.

These so-called “targeting officers” are given a blend of analytic and operational training to become specialists in sifting clues to the locations of high-value fugitives.

The CIA’s ability to send spies into the tribal region is limited, officials said.

“We can’t go into the tribal areas without protection,” said the former CIA official who was involved in the planning of the surge. “For the most part they have to travel with [the Pakistan intelligence service] and their footprint is not small because they’re worried about getting shot too.”

Instead, the effort is designed to cultivate sources in the outer perimeters of the security networks that guard Bin Laden, and gradually work inward.

The aim, another former CIA official said, is “to find people who had access to people who had access to his movements. It’s pretty basic stuff.”

Still, without an inside look at the the clan and tribal elements from where insurgent and terrorist factions arise out of, the CIA is not likely to get even close to breaking up these cells.  Looking with binoculars from an ISI Toyota at the guy who sells bread to the guy who goes to the mosque with the guy that once saw Zawahiri at the public toilet, is a waste of money.

James Risen’s article in the NY Times (Poppy Fields Are Now a Front Line in Afghanistan War) has given a greater perspective on the urgent need to confront the drug trade in Afghanistan.  The drug trade inevitably fuels the insurgency as Taliban commanders profit off of the trade of poppy for international arms.  More so, as Risen points out, many in the Afghan government leadership also profit off of the drug trade (one regional governor being caught with a stash of 9 tons in his office).  The US leadership is slow to react to the poppy economy, which fuels roughly 50% of Afghan exports.  The current operation is slow and disoriented.  Their is no plan to transition farmers from poppy to another profitable crop.  The US can not use another Columbian effort that has yet to curb the flow of cocaine from Columbia after 20 years. 

The current export revenue of poppy in Afghanistan is 3 billion a year.  We could easily purchase the entirety of poppy, use it for morphine production in the US, and offer incentives for the growth of new crops (how about corn?).  Instead, the DEA is thinking of flying crop dusters over Afghan farms.  Imagine the cultural implications. 

In the meantime, Afghans are picking and choosing farms to destroy based on tribal loyalties.  They send out a hundred or so men to destroy poppy plants by hand while US contractors provide security from Taliban reprisals.  However, the growth of poppy production is scheduled to grow.  It is currently producing at levels above global demand.  A new, logical alternative is needed for farmers and for the Afgan government.

A Dutch and Afghan military patrol in Oruzgan Province of Afghanistan rolled into a police station and found:

The police officers there were cultivating poppy within the compound’s walls, openly participating in the heroin trade. The Afghan Army squad that visited them, itself only partly equipped, did nothing.  (NY Times)

Poppy production is the #1 export for the new Afghan economy.  Eradicating the problem will take more than simply burning fields or preventing the harvest of crops.  Professor Thomas Johnson at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey suggests the US buys all existing poppy and use it for medicinal purposes in the States, such as production of morphine.  Then we provide the Afghan farmers with the knowledge and means toward producing new, sustainable crops that have both domestic and export value.  The Bush Administration does not support such a plan however.  Could Afghanistan become another Columbia solution?