The Routledge Handbook of War and Society

The Routledge Handbook of War and Society

This new handbook provides an introduction to current sociological and behavioral research on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan represent two of the most interesting and potentially troubling events of recent decades. These two wars—so similar in their beginnings— generated different responses from various publics and the mass media; they have had profound effects on the members of the armed services, on their families and relatives, and on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Analyzing the effect of the two wars on military personnel and civilians, this volume is divided into four main parts: Part I: War on the Ground: Combat and Its Aftermath Part II: War on the Ground: Non-Combat Operations, Non-Combatants, and Operators Part III: The War Back Home: The Social Construction of War, Its Heroes, and Its Enemies Part IV: The War Back Home: Families and Young People on the Home Front With contributions from leading academic sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, military researchers, and researchers affiliated with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), this Handbook will be of interest to students of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, military sociology and psychology, war studies, anthropology, US politics, and of youth. Steven Carlton-Ford is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. He recently served for 5 years as the editor of Sociological Focus. Morten G. Ender is Professor of Sociology and Sociology Program Director at West Point, the United States Military Academy. He is the author of American Soldiers in Iraq (Routledge 2009).

The Routledge Handbook of War and Society Iraq and Afghanistan

Edited by Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender

First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors, their contributions

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Routledge handbook of war and society : Iraq and Afghanistan / edited by Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender. p. cm. 1. Afghan War, 2001- 2. Afghan War, 2001—Social aspects. 3. United States–Armed Forces– Afghanistan. 4. Americans–Afghanistan. 5. Sociology, Military–Afghanistan. 6. Iraq War, 2003- 7. Iraq War, 2003—Social aspects. 8. United States–Armed Forces–Iraq. 9. Americans–Iraq. 10. Sociology, Military–Iraq. I. Carlton-Ford, Steven. II. Ender, Morten G., 1960DS371.412.R68 2010 956.7044’31–dc22 2010008365

ISBN 0-203-84433-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-56732-7 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-84433-5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-56732-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-84433-5 (ebk)

To our students—both civilian and military

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Editors Contributors Acknowledgments Foreword Christopher Dandeker Introduction Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender Part I War on the ground: combat and its aftermath 1

2

x xii xiii xvii xx

1

7

Fighting Two Protracted Wars: Recruiting and Retention with an All-Volunteer Force Susan M. Ross

9

Fighting the Irregular War in Afghanistan: Success in Combat; Struggles in Stabilization Brigid Myers Pavilonis

20

3

Learning the Lessons of Counterinsurgency Ian Roxborough

4

Twenty-First Century Narratives from Afghanistan: Storytelling, Morality, and War Ryan D. Pengelly and Anne Irwin

32

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T A BL E O F C ON T E N T S

5

6

Two US Combat Units in Iraq: Psychological Contracts When Expectations and Realities Diverge Wilbur J. Scott, David R. McCone and George R. Mastroianni

56

Capture of Saddam Hussein: Social Network Analysis and Counterinsurgency Operations Brian J. Reed and David R. Segal

68

7

Apples, Barrels, and Abu Ghraib George R. Mastroianni and George E. Reed

8

The War on Terror in the Early Twenty-First Century: Applying Lessons from Sociological Classics and Sites of Abuse Ryan Ashley Caldwell and Stjepan G. Mestrovic

78

88

Part II War on the ground: non-combat operations, non-combatants, and operators 101 9

Policing Post-War Iraq: Insurgency, Civilian Police, and the Reconstruction of Society Mathieu Deflem and Suzanne Sutphin

103

10 Policing Afghanistan: Civilian Police Reform and the Resurgence of the Taliban 114 Mathieu Deflem 11 Managing Humanitarian Information in Iraq Aldo Benini, Charles Conley, Joseph M. Donahue and Shawn Messick

125

12 Role of Contractors and Other Non-Military Personnel in Today’s Wars O. Shawn Cupp and William C. Latham, Jr.

137

13 Evaluating Psychological Operations in Operation Enduring Freedom James E. Griffith

149

14 Armed Conflict and Health: Cholera in Iraq Daniel Poole

163

15 Iraqi Adolescents: Self-Regard, Self-Derogation, and Perceived Threat in War 174 Steve Carlton-Ford, Morten G. Ender and Ahoo Tabatabai Part III The war back home: the social construction of war, its heroes, and its enemies 16 Globalization and the Invasion of Iraq: State Power and the Enforcement of Neoliberalism Daniel Egan viii

187

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17 The Pakistan and Afghan Crisis Riaz Ahmed Shaikh

200

18 Mass Media as Risk-Management in the “War on Terror” Christopher M. Pieper

211

19 Talking War: How Elite US Newspaper Editorials and Opinion Pieces Debated the Attack on Iraq Alexander G. Nikolaev and Douglas V. Porpora

222

20 Debating Anti-War Protests: The Microlevel Discourse of Social Movement Framing on a University Listserv Mark Hedley and Sara A. Clark

234

21 Making Heroes: An Attributional Perspective Gregory C. Gibson, Richard Hogan, John Stahura and Eugene Jackson 22 Making the Muslim Enemy: The Social Construction of the Enemy in the War on Terror Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills Part IV The war back home: families and young people on the home front 23 Greedy Media: Army Families, Embedded Reporting, and War in Iraq Morten G. Ender, Kathleen M. Campbell, Toya J. Davis and Patrick R. Michaelis 24 Military Child Well-Being in the Face of Multiple Deployments Rachel Lipari, Anna Winters, Kenneth Matos, Jason Smith and Lindsay Rock 25 American Undergraduate Attitudes Toward the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Trends and Variations Morten G. Ender, David E. Rohall and Michael D. Matthews Index

245

257

269

271

283

294

306

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List of Illustrations

Figures 13.1 Afghanistan and seven geographic regions from which respondents were selected 13.2 Stages of persuasive message communication and its effects 13.3 Radio Malumat: linkages among message characteristics, communication, and action 13.4 Newspaper Sulh: linkages among message characteristics, communication, and action 18.1 Model of risk manufacture and management 20.1 Framing schema of microlevel discourse 24.1 Number of deployments by problem behavior scale scores 25.1 Percentage of Americans supporting Iraq War, 2003–09 25.2 Percentage of American undergraduates supporting Afghanistan and Iraq Wars by race, ideology, and military affiliation

154 155 159 159 214 241 290 296 301

Tables 13.1 Exposure to Radio Malumat and Newspaper Sulh and self-reported evaluation of communication characteristics 15.1 Correlations of threat and self-esteem with social statuses, faith importance, national issues, and personal concerns 15.2 Multiple regression of self-regard on threat to nation, demographic background, importance of faith, personal issues, and national issues 19.1A A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: All op-eds 19.1B A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: Editorials only x

157 180 182 227 228

L IS T OF ILL U ST R A T IO NS

19.1C A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: All op-eds with neutral removed 19.2 Distribution of arguments by periodical 19.3 Distribution of arguments by periodical: editorials 21.1 Hypothesized conditions in vignettes 21.2 Means, standard deviations, and valid cases (N) for variables used in hero vignettes 21.3 Unstandardized regression coefficients (and standard error) from attribution conditions and indices, regressed on hero status 24.1 Weighted means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables 24.2 Problem behavior regressed on deployments and other variables 25.1 American undergraduate support for war in Iraq, 2002–07 25.2 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by race, 2002–07 25.3 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by political ideology, 2002–07 25.4 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by military affiliation, 2002–07 25.5 Logistic regression results for American undergraduate support for Iraq War by status and time

228 229 231 248 250 252 288 289 300 301 302 302 303

xi

The Editors

Steven Carlton-Ford is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. He studies the well-being of children and adolescents. His most recent research, published in International Sociology and Armed Forces & Society has focused primarily on the impact of war and militarization on children’s mortality rates. Other recent research has examined the effect of the threat of armed conflict on the self-image of adolescents. Morten G. Ender is Professor of Sociology at West Point, the US Military Academy interested in military matters. His books include Military Brats and Other Global Nomads: Growing Up in Organization Families (Praeger, 2002) and American Soldiers in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? (Routledge, 2009).

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Contributors

Aldo Benini is an independent researcher with over 20 years’ experience in assisting the victims of war. Until recently he served as a socioeconomic analyst with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and has worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Ryan Ashley Caldwell is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Soka University of America, USA. Kathleen M. Campbell is Associate Professor of Leadership and Management Studies in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Military Academy. Steven Carlton-Ford is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Sara A. Clark has taught sociology at colleges and universities in the St Louis (USA) area. She is now a Reference Librarian at Heartland Community College. She currently researches the relationship between access to information and social inequality. Charles Conley is the Chief Information Officer for the Information Management and Mine Action Programs, USA. O. Shawn Cupp is Associate Professor at the Combined Arms Center, Department of Logistics and Resource Operations at the US Army Command and General Staff College. Christopher Dandeker is Professor of Military Sociology in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, UK.

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Toya J. Davis is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Adjutant General’s Corps. She is currently serving in Baghdad, Iraq as the Multi-National Forces – Iraq Deputy Director for Personnel. Mathieu Deflem is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina, USA. Joseph M. Donahue is the Chief Executive Officer of the Information Management and Mine Action Programs, USA. Daniel Egan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA. Morten G. Ender is Professor of Sociology and Sociology Program Director, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Military Academy. Gregory C. Gibson received his PhD in Sociology from Purdue University, USA. Currently he is the Research Director for the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians. James E. Griffith is a senior research psychologist currently working as a Program Area Director for the National Center for Education Statistics, USA. He is the Past President of Division 19, Military Psychology, American Psychological Association. Mark Hedley is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville, USA. Richard Hogan is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University, USA. Anne Irwin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Calgary, Canada. Eugene Jackson is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University, USA. William C. Latham Jr. (LTC, US Army [Retired]) is Assistant Professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College. Rachel Lipari is the Senior Scientist with the Human Relations Surveys Program Evaluation Branch, Human Resources Strategic Assessment Program at the Defense Manpower Data Center, USA. George R. Mastroianni is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Air Force Academy. Kenneth Matos is a Psychologist on the Human Relations Survey team for the Defense Manpower Data Center, USA. He is the lead analyst on DMDC’s congressionally mandated surveys of racial/ethnic harassment and discrimination in the military. xiv

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David R. McCone is Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Air Force Academy. Michael D. Matthews is Professor of Engineering Psychology at the US Military Academy. Shawn Messick was the Technical Director of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation’s Information Management and Mine Action Programs; he was seconded as the Technical Manager of the UN Humanitarian Information Center Iraq. He has over 20 years’ experience working with complex emergencies. Stjepan G. Mestrovic is Professor of Sociology at Texas A& M University, USA. He has written widely about the sociology of war crimes. Patrick R. Michaelis (LTC, US Army) serves as a Special Assistant to the Vice Chief of Staff of the US Army. Alexander G. Nikolaev is Associate Professor of Communication in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University, USA. Brigid Myers Pavilonis (CDR) is Associate Professor of International Relations at the US Coast Guard Academy, USA. Ryan D. Pengelly is an MNRM Candidate in the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Christopher M. Pieper recently earned his doctorate in Sociology from the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He specializes in Political Sociology. Daniel Poole is currently pursuing his doctorate in Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Utah, USA. Douglas V. Porpora is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University, USA. Brian J. Reed (LTC) has served most recently as the commander of 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry (Stryker). LTC Reed is a graduate of the US Military Academy and has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Maryland, USA. George E. Reed is Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership Studies, School of Leadership and Education Sciences, at the University of San Diego, USA. Lindsay Rock is a Social Science Analyst on the Human Relations Survey team for the Defense Manpower Data Center, USA. She is the lead analyst for the congressionally mandated surveys of sexual harassment and sexual assault among active duty and Reserve component members. xv

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David E. Rohall is Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Western Survey Research Center at Western Illinois University, USA. Susan M. Ross is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of Criminal Justice at Lycoming College, USA. Ian Roxborough is Professor of Sociology and History at Stony Brook University, USA. Wilbur J. Scott is a resident Sociologist in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, USA. David R. Segal is Professor of Sociology, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and Director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, USA. Riaz Ahmed Shaikh is Associate Professor at the Institute of Business and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan. Jason Smith is a Consortium Research Fellow on the Human Relations Survey team at the Defense Manpower Data Center. He is pursuing his PhD in Sociology at George Mason University, USA. John Stahura is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University, USA. Erin Steuter is Professor of Sociology in the Sociology Department at Mount Allison University, Canada. Suzanne Sutphin is a Research Associate at The Center for Child and Family Studies at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA. Ahoo Tabatabai recently received her doctorate in Sociology from the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Deborah Wills is Associate Professor in the English Department at Mount Allison University, Canada. Anna Winters is a Social Science Analyst on the Human Relations Survey team for the Defense Manpower Data Center, USA. She is the lead analyst for military spouse surveys.

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Acknowledgments

Many people and organizations helped make this edited volume possible. First and foremost, the Department of Sociology and the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, all at the University of Cincinnati, provided financial and institutional support in housing Sociological Focus, which published the original versions of most of the papers on Iraq. Louis Hicks was instrumental, as guest editor, in shepherding those papers through to publication as two special issues. The first of those issues was published at the University of Cincinnati; Dean Birkenkamp and Paradigm Publishers produced the second. The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center helped support my research on adolescents in Baghdad. Morten Ender and Ahoo Tabatabai were superb collaborators in that research. Cindy Carlton-Ford provided continuous support and encouragement in developing the Handbook project. Paula Dubeck and Frank Cullen provided encouragement and read early drafts of the book proposal, suggesting substantial improvements. Debbi Felker and Teisha Murray proved invaluable in the process of editing the previously published manuscripts to a length suitable for the handbook and in preparing the newly authored chapters for publication. They were assisted by Donielle Boop and Kelli Chapman in the process of formatting all of the manuscripts for the volume. Andrew Humphrys and Rebecca Brennan at Routledge have been unfailingly helpful and patient. Also, I need to extend many thanks to my sons Hal, Ware, and Hollis. They have, with their general good cheer, borne the brunt of my bouts of anxiety and ill temper; they always help me keep life in proper proportion. Finally, both my mother and father, Lewis and Elaine Ford, nurtured my sociological imagination; for that I will be ever grateful. Steven Carlton-Ford A number of colleagues contributed in vital ways either as co-authors or behind the research scene supporters making the chapters in this volume possible. These folks include, in no particular order, Lené Baxter, Kathy Campbell, Toya Davis, Pat Michaelis, Tom Kolditz, Mike Matthews, Dave Rohall, Ahoo Tabatabai, Pat Buckley, E. Spain, Brad Booth, and Jim Gallup. A huge shout out goes to Louis Hicks for his guest editing xvii

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and stewarding of the two special issues of the journal Sociological Focus in which many of these chapters (including “Greedy Media” [Ender et al.])—initially appeared. Grants from the US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and the Faculty Research Committee at the US Military Academy provided financial support on my research projects, resulting in the chapters published here; I gratefully acknowledge them for their assistance. Finally, all thanks and praises to my wife Corina and son Axel. I am far less complete without both of you in my life. Thanks for all your support, knowing just when to get me out of the house, especially during the New York winters, and for keeping me laughing during almost a decade of war. My portion of this work is, however, in the end, an individual undertaking. Thus, the views of this author are his own and do not purport to reflect the position of the US Military Academy, the US Army Research Institute, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense. Morten G. Ender The material in Chapter 3 was adapted from: Roxborough, I. (2006) “Learning and diffusing the lessons of counterinsurgency: the US Military from Vietnam to Iraq,” Sociological Focus 39(4): 319–46. The material in Chapter 5 was adapted from: Scott, W., McCone, D. and Mastroianni, G.R. (2006) “Psychological contracts in two US combat units in Iraq: what happens when expectations and realities diverge?” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 301–17. The material in Chapter 6 was adapted from: Reed, B. J. and Segal, D. R. (2006) “Social network analysis and counterinsurgency operations: the capture of Saddam Hussein,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 251–64. The material in Chapter 7 was adapted from: Mastroianni, G. R. and Reed, G. (2006) “Apples, barrels, and Abu Ghraib,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 239–50. The material in Chapter 9 was adapted from: Deflem, M. and Sutphin, S. (2006) “Policing post-war Iraq: insurgency, civilian police, and the reconstruction of society,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 265–83. The material in Chapter 11 was adapted from: Benini, A., Conley, C., Donahue, J. and Messick, S. (2006) “Challenges of humanitarian information management in Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 285–300. Chapter 15 was adapted from: Carlton-Ford, S., Ender, M.G., Tabatabai, A. (2008) “Iraqi adolescents: self-regard, self-derogation, perceived threat in war,” Journal of Adolescence, 31: 53–75. Chapter 16 was adapted from: Egan, D. (2007) ”Globalization and the Invasion of Iraq: State Power and the Enforcement of Neoliberalism,“ Sociological Focus, 40(1): 98–111. The material in Chapter 19 was adapted from: Nikolaev, A.G. and D.V. Porpora. (2007) “Talking war: how elite US newspaper editorials and opinions pieces debated the attack on Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 40(1):6–25. The material in Chapter 20 was adapted from: Hedley, M. and Clark, S.A. (2007) “The microlevel discourse of social movement framing: debating antiwar protests on a university listserv,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 26–47. The material in Chapter 21 was adapted from: Gibson, G.C., Hogan, R., Stahura, J., and Jackson, E. (2007) “The making of heroes: an attributional perspective,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 72–97 xviii

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The material in Chapter 23 was adapted from: Ender, M.G., Campbell, K.M., Davis, T. J. and Michaelis, P.R. (2007) “Greedy media: Army families, embedded reporting, and war in Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 48–71.

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Foreword Christopher Dandeker

Notwithstanding deep-rooted hopes expressed from within the main traditions of sociological enquiry that warfare is a temporary feature of the human condition, wars (if not states and specialized armed forces) have occurred as long as human societies have existed. They remain a key feature of the international scene. We should also note that “[o]n a more personal scale, wars provide some of the most intense as well as brutal of human experiences, bringing out the best as well as the worst in people – heroism, comradeship and self-sacrifice as well as cruelty and viciousness” (Freedman 1994: 3). However regrettable wars may be, sometimes they are in pursuit of a just cause, command popular support (being perceived as legitimate, not just legal, acts), and also are fought according to the principles of just war. Other wars are less so. In addition, ethical issues arise for all participants in war; this has applied, for example, to the scientific community ever since it became an integral feature of the conduct of war as a result of the process of industrialization. There is a line in history connecting operational research, military psychology, and human factors research through to the application of the social sciences to, for example, using social network analysis to hunt for military targets, and human terrain analysis in contemporary war. This can occasion controversy within the academic community, as it has done recently in the fields of anthropology and psychology (Glenn 2007; Shachtman 2008). Von Clausewitz (1832) reminds us that political leaders who are set on launching wars should be mindful of the need to think about the objectives that are to be achieved by such an extreme act and the methods by which those objectives are to be carried out. Of course, no one can know in advance the exact consequences of such an act because of the fog and friction of warfare; yet contingency planning for a range of plausible outcomes and a provision of adequate resources for dealing with them is a reasonable expectation (indeed a duty) of political and military leaders. Some pass this test; others do not: this has been a source of controversy with regard to the preparation for and conduct of operations in Iraq since 2003, especially the process of occupation and reconstruction. This controversy is not just a matter of the science of planning; it is also a moral issue: if a state removes a xx

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regime, it has to think about the moral question of “what condition should it seek to leave behind it when it leaves the scene?” (see Mahnken and Kearney 2007). This book deals with two wars: the ongoing conflicts in Iraq (from 2003) and Afghanistan (from 2001). It is marked by representing not just a historical reflection on the past but also a systematic reflection on unfolding events. It adopts, for the most part, the perspective of the state that has played such a central role in initiating and fighting these two wars: the United States. The US will also play the key role in concluding them. Yet the effects and the meaning of these conflicts are global: few remain unaffected by them, by how these conflicts are conducted and how they will end. This includes small states that have played their part in ongoing coalition operations; to mention just one example, Estonia’s role in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan: its contribution and losses may be small in absolute terms and compared with the US, but its sacrifice is, for Estonia (and relative to its population size), very substantial indeed. As far as sociologists are concerned, it is my hope that this volume will help to shift the curriculum of their discipline, by helping to make war and military affairs more central to students’ inquiries, whether at upper-level undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate levels. War is too important a subject to be left to the other disciplines of international relations: military history and political science. Indeed, this book shows that to understand war properly a “war and society” approach, drawing on a multiplicity of disciplines (not just sociology), can be invaluable. The book follows in the footsteps of others who have sought to understand war in its historical, political, and wider social context, including the founder of the department from which this foreword is being written (Professor Sir Michael Howard) and those who subsequently developed that vision (see Freedman 1994; Howard 1976; Holden Reid 2009). Although wars share certain fundamental characteristics (including the experiential dimension mentioned earlier) their character changes. The two conflicts with which this book is concerned have provided the occasion for a further reevaluation of the distinctive features of contemporary warfare, a process that has engaged policy and academic communities for the two decades that have elapsed since the end of the Cold War. For example, political and military elites find it more troublesome now to talk of the conclusion of these conflicts in terms of “winning” and “victory” than in terms of success (see Dandeker 2010). And success involves defining a complex set of objectives and milestones in terms of how it might be measured. These lengthy missions (together both conflicts have now involved the US for nearly a decade) may well conclude without a sharply defined “victory” but rather a satisfactory “security condition” (see Smith 2005, 2010 for the development of these terms). In Iraq, for example, a political settlement amongst Sunni and Shia constituencies that avoids a breakdown of the polity into civil war would be a precondition for US withdrawal of its 96,000 troops. Yet continued internecine conflict and weak security would encourage the US Administration, with reluctance, to continue its military commitment even while affairs in Afghanistan press upon its attention. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the idea of being able to withdraw once the Afghan military and police forces can provide their state with adequate security may well falter in face of continued infrastructural weaknesses and political corruption. Clearcut victory, as opposed to satisfactory conditions for withdrawal, looks a chimera. The operational space of these two conflicts also has some novel features. Notwithstanding the centrality of the US, these operations have involved complex forms of coalition building. This is not just because of a need for burden sharing but also in terms of building legitimacy for military intervention; indeed the elder Bush’s efforts in this xxi

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regard in 1990–91 were far more effective than those of the younger Bush in 2003, although, to be fair, the circumstances of 2003 in terms of what the UK’s ex-Prime Minister Blair has referred to recently as the “calculus of risk” were different. With coalitions of the kind operating in Afghanistan, a trade-off will arise between the benefits of political legitimacy and the costs of uneven military capacity, which is most graphically highlighted by the presence of the “national caveats” that states place on how, where, and when their forces might be deployed. This is a well-known source of frustration amongst the political and military leaders at the core of the coalition. A good deal of effort has to be expended to make these intermilitary relationships work, and this is only one aspect of a complex of interorganizational relationships that need to be managed, extending from military (including regular and, increasingly, part-time reservist elements) as well as non-military organizations from a host of participating states (police and others, such as Foreign Office and Development components of government), nongovernmental organizations, contractors, and journalists. The operational space is a very crowded landscape indeed. This space is also one that might be summarized in numbers: 360–24–7: operations increasingly take place in spaces that are not bounded with front lines and rear safe areas: one can be shot or blown up by an improvised explosive device potentially anywhere in 360-degree warfare. This has interesting implications for the employment of women. For example, in the US and the UK, rules restricting women in combat roles are increasingly anomalous and breached in practice. Of course, the essentials of infantry fighting are in some ways eternal (digging out and eliminating the enemy), but the context in which these skills are applied is different from the conventional battlefield of interstate war. Meanwhile, the space is monitored 24–7 by media that link it to the virtual space of the global community, a point to which I shall return later. Further, in this operational space are the people amongst whom war is increasingly fought; contemporary wars are increasingly “wars amongst the people” (see Smith 2005). Wars are less a matter of violent contests between uniformed armed forces of contending states and more conflicts in which intervening armed states seek to balance the need to defeat armed insurgents (who are often supported and resourced by other states) with that of protecting the people and attracting them to engage in political institutions whose strength and functionality will provide the conditions under which those intervening states will make a judgment that allows them to withdraw. Ensuring that there are subtle balances of kinetic (violent) and persuasive (hearts and minds) strategies is the key challenge for contemporary armed forces. Although a continuity with wars from the past is the importance of the “home front”, today this is part of a broader process whereby the operational space is integrated into the information networks of a global “theatre of war,” in which events on the ground are monitored and given meaning by a variety of audiences using what Shaw (2005: 47–70) has insightfully referred to as the resources of “global surveillance.” These audiences reflect a paradox of war for Western democratic states: with the spread of the allvolunteer force, populations may be virtually connected to war, and their opinion matters in terms of providing the support needed for governments to continue long-term military campaigns. But their involvement in the realities of war is routinely distanced by being mediated; the real practice of war is confined to a minority: the volunteer military. Yet this situation cannot be guaranteed: the wider public’s distant involvement can be interrupted suddenly and without warning by visceral and violent attack as those who oppose interventions in conflicts abroad express their opposition through terror attacks, some mounted from within the homeland itself. xxii

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The audiences in the theatre of war include the local population in a conflict, regional audiences, and wider global opinion, including of course the publics of intervening states and the families of military personnel who have been deployed. Political and military leaders know that they are actors in the theatre of war, which means that success on the ground means little if it is not translated into narratives that persuade watching audiences that the objectives of a campaign are understood, that progress is being made, and that the sacrifices are worth the success achieved. A key problem for those constructing narratives is that, with complex political objectives focused on delivering a “security condition”, how are narratives and their plot lines to be given grip and traction amongst the public? In this regard, we know that governments are less able than before to rely on censorship and have to be inventive in ensuring that the narratives of war that they wish the media (and public) to follow are indeed taken up and that misfortunes (such as noncombatant deaths) are explained in ways that do not set back the central message. Some leaders realize that public opinion is not so much casualty shy or averse (something of a myth in recent years) but increasingly shy of futile casualties: deaths and injury that (so it is felt) could have been avoided. It is interesting to ask if such aversion to futile death and injury is a sentiment increasingly present in military populations, including their families, not just in wider public opinion. For military personnel themselves, we have moved to a world less of Krulak’s (1999) “strategic corporal” and more to one of the strategic private soldier: actions at the very lowest levels of command can (for good or for ill) have potentially strategic consequences in terms of the reputation of a country’s armed force or indeed perceptions of the success and value of a mission. The need for politically aware soldiers able to calibrate kinetic and non-kinetic activities by using their judgment as appropriate in a given context is a key feature of the contemporary military landscape. The implications of this point for the political and ethical education of soldiers deploying to missions have become serious matters for the military profession. For the military involved in these missions, the wear and tear on equipment and personnel can be costly. It is important that the health and well-being of regular and reservist personnel are kept under review; that families are given the support they need (including monitoring the effects of deployments on the children in military families); and that personnel’s obligations to deploy on multiple occasions are balanced with their need for personal and family time. As readers think about the contents of this book, let me encourage them to attend to two issues concerning the future of the military. For the all-volunteer force, it would be foolish indeed to think that any short-term features of the business cycle will remove the challenge of recruiting and retaining the quality personnel who are needed for the challenging missions that continue and the new ones that lie ahead. There is also a need to ensure that ex-service members return to civilian society not only to decent employment but also to the honor and respect they deserve for their sacrifice. When these conflicts end, will society honor, remember, and memorialize them? What will this entail if the conclusion is not victory but a satisfactory “security condition”? The second issue (and this is not confined to the US) is whether the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are constitutive of the conflicts that the US needs to be prepared to engage in or just one kind of conflict, with a need to be ready for the interstate wars that the US military has for so long been prepared for and has preferred to fight. Is the recent recovery of the memory of counterinsurgency, and its refinement as a doctrine that is a genuine advance on what has gone before, an example of a much-needed adjustment of xxiii

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the war-fighting mindset of the US military? Or is it an example of the pendulum swinging too far and causing a distraction from other more serious troubles that lie ahead? One persuasive answer to this question is that it poses a false choice: the future will bring a complex blend of elements from different kinds of conflicts, interstate and other: in short, what has been termed “hybrid war” (Hoffman 2007). Christopher Dandeker Department of War Studies King’s College, London March 2010

References Dandeker, C. (2010) “From victory to success: The changing mission of western armed forces,” in Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duvesteyn (eds) Modern Warfare and the Utility of Force, London: Routledge. Freedman, L. (ed.) (1994) War, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Glenn, D. (2007) “A policy on torture roils psychologists’ annual meeting,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 7). Online. Available http://chronicle.com/article/A-Policy-on-TortureRoils/27548 (accessed 11 March 2010). Hoffman, G.F. (2007) “Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars,” Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Arlington, VA. Online. Available http://www.potomacinstitute.org/images/stories/ publications/potomac_hybridwar_0108.pdf (accessed 11 March 2010). London: Routledge. Holden Reid, B. (2009) “Michael Howard and the evolution of modern war studies,” Journal of Military History, 73: 869–904. Howard, M. (1976) War and European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krulak, General C.C. (1999) “The strategic corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War,” Marines Magazine, 28: 26–32. Mahnken, T.G. and Kearney, T.A. (eds) (2007) War in Iraq: Planning and Execution, London: Routledge. Shachtman, N. (2008) “Army anthropologist’s controversial culture clash,” Wired.com (23 September). Online. Available http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/09/controversial-a/ (accessed 11 March 2010). Shaw, M. (2005) The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq, Cambridge: Polity Press. Smith, General Sir R. (2005) The Utility of Force, The Art of War in the Modern World, New York: Penguin, Allen Lane. ——(2010) Foreword to J. Angstrom and I. Duvesteyn (eds) Modern War and the Utility of Force, London: Routledge. Von Clausewitz, C. (1832/1968) On War, New York: Penguin.

Introduction

Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender

In 2005 about 35 wars and conflicts were being waged throughout the world (GlobalSe curity.org 2010). The Routledge Handbook of War and Society provides readers with a set of unique perspectives on two major wars: the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most handbooks are written in retrospect, summarizing long-term trends in research. In contrast, the chapters in the Handbook have all been written while the wars were being fought; each chapter provides a distinct angle on the wars and society as they continue to evolve. These perspectives purposefully eschew the omniscient view of many handbooks, instead providing theoretically informed research perspectives on the war-associated phenomena they examine. The chapters provide some of the first empirical social and behavioral science research on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More research will certainly follow. As of the middle of January 2010, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the US government alone over $950 billion dollars (National Priorities Project 2010), expenditures that have contributed to an increase in the national debt – a debt that will have to be paid off by the coming generation. Roughly three-quarters of the cost has been incurred in Iraq, with the rest resulting from the war in Afghanistan. The wars have resulted in nearly 4,700 deaths of coalition soldiers in Iraq and nearly 1,600 more deaths in Afghanistan. In addition, 31,616 US troops have been injured in Iraq and another 9,496 US troops injured in Afghanistan (iCasualties.org 2010). Estimates of civilian deaths vary widely (see Schwartz 2008) and the psychological and cognitive costs are only beginning to be understood (Talielian and Jaycox 2008). Because these wars are not over the casualty toll will continue to mount. These well-known facts serve as the backdrop to the chapters in this handbook, which explore the national and international lead-up to these wars, as well as the broader human costs of these wars; costs that range from how militaries fight and are funded to the effects these wars have on civilians far from combat. Since World War II (WWII) few countries have fought conventional international wars: wars fought by uniformed national armies along relatively clearly defined fronts. Instead, armies have been called upon to fight non-conventional wars: wars fought primarily against insurgent groups, who for strategic reasons avoid battles along conventional fronts. Civilians increasingly are the target rather than soldiers. Although most of these wars have been internal (aka civil) wars (Harbom and Wallensteen 2009), some have involved internal conflict as well as the armed forces of other countries, as in Iraq 1

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and Afghanistan. Not only has the face of war changed, so too has the organization and recruitment of national armies. Since the end (in the 1970s) of the post-WWII boom in economic growth, the national militaries, particularly the US military, that have been called upon to fight these wars have also changed dramatically, from conscription-based armies to all-volunteer forces (Moskos et al. 1999), supplied by an increasingly professionalized and diverse body of service members (Ender 2009) as well as a contingent of civilian contractors (Miller 2007). The present volume covers two major and traditional regions of war: the war front and the home front, and the blurring of lines within and between these two geographical spaces. We begin with part I, which examines the war front, combat, and the aftermath. In particular, dramatic changes in the type of war being fought in conjunction with the sea-change in how national militaries are recruited and funded reveal severe gaps between what the military is called upon to accomplish and what it can sustain (see Ross). The lack of clearly defined fronts in fighting complex insurgencies required militaries to apply a variety of non-conventional models in solving strategic problems. These changes have affected the way in which war is fought more generally (see Roxborough, as well as Pavilonis). For soldiers, war in Afghanistan has dramatically affected how they see themselves, their relationship to stated military missions, and their descriptions in public forums (see Pengelly and Irwin). In a parallel development, there are severe gaps between the types of war soldiers are trained to fight and the wars they are called upon to fight. This gap, between the ways in which soldiers have been trained and how they have to fight, has created psychological dilemmas for these soldiers (see Scott, McCone and Mastroianni) but also innovative strategies in understanding enemies such as Saddam Hussein (see Reed and Segal). Similarly, these new wars, in which captives do not fall neatly or obviously into the standard categories of “civilian” or “combatant,” have exposed severe problems with the way in which armies treat captives. This issue is most clearly illustrated by the treatment of detainees at the US prison at Abu Ghraib (see Mastroianni and Reed, as well as Caldwell and Mestrovic). The next part of the volume features chapters highlighting non-combat operations, which involve non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and military contractors, as well as non-combatants. Thus, changes in the way militaries are organized, in conjunction with the rise of international NGOs and civilian contractors, have dramatically complicated the non-combat landscape in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the 20 years preceding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, international NGOs grew dramatically, fueled in part by increasing activism at the grass-roots level, but also by dramatically increased funding that pumped billions of dollars into that sector (Reimann 2006). In addition, the dramatic changes in military organization alluded to above meant that many of the functions previously performed by the military had to be contracted to civilian companies. As a result, the organizational landscape in Iraq and Afghanistan is exceptionally complicated, requiring careful coordination between the military, NGOs, and civilian contractors; coordination that would be difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances. Such chaotic conditions stem in large part from the insurgents’ attempts to destabilize the civilian police institutions traditionally tasked with maintaining day-to-day order (see Deflem and Sutphin, as well as Deflem). As analyzed from the point of view of the NGOs themselves (see Benini, Conley, Donahue, and Messick) as well as the military (see Cupp and Latham) such coordination is attempted in the absence of mutual trust and under the chaotic conditions engendered by conflict. Faced with such chaotic conflict, the military has attempted to combat these conditions through information campaigns 2

INTRODUCTION

designed to build support among the civilians – attempts that meet with varying success (see Griffith). Finally, these wars affect civilians in indirect and often unanticipated ways. Wars destroy public health infrastructures, diminishing a country’s ability to generate electricity, treat sewage, or pump clean water (Carlton-Ford 2004). The result often is increased mortality and morbidity among civilian populations, an outcome seen as a result of the Iraq war (see Poole). In addition, wars affect the psychological well-being of those involved. Typically children are adversely affected, experiencing higher levels of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-like symptoms (Attanayake, McKay, Joffres, Singh, Burkle, and Mills 2009). The impact on adolescents is, in contrast, extremely underresearched; research (see Carlton-Ford, Ender, and Tabatabai) suggests that Iraqi adolescents react to conflict very differently compared with children. Iraqi adolescents, whose identities are most threatened by conflict, seem to rally their self-image. Next we turn to the home front during war and social reactions to the war fighters – both heroes and enemies. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted from complex global processes that have continuing international implications, all of which are debated in and shaped by the media. The long-term lead-up to the Iraq war is framed and influenced by the national political and economic interests of the US and its allies (see Egan). The course of the war in Afghanistan, although triggered by the attacks on the Twin Trade Towers in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington, is influenced by complex international relationships among Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US; these relationships were formed during the Reagan era, as the US attempted to thwart the Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Matters are further complicated by the relationships that were formed between Pakistan’s military and the groups that became the Taliban and Al Qaeda, as well as by fears concerning the potential involvement of India and China (see Shaikh). The mass media are not simply independent reporters of events leading up to or during these wars. The way the media gather and report their information plays a significant role in a country’s ability to manage risk (see Pieper). Further, the coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq war in major national newspapers, rather than promoting a liberal anti-war bias, presented a truncated discussion of the political, diplomatic, and legal implications of pursuing unilateral preemptive military action (see Nikolaev and Porpora). There were similar discussions carried on in other, and more novel public venues, of much more limited scope (see Hedley and Clark). Ultimately, as one might expect given Coser’s (1956) prescient discussion of the ways in which war generates internal solidarity, national discussions have nominated some individuals as heroes, which must be understood as a result of a complex process that involves the characteristics of the individuals, the situations in which putative heroes found themselves, and the characteristics of the individuals who attribute heroism (see Gibson, Hogan, Stahura, and Jackson). A mirror process involves the construction of the enemy. This type of process has been described in detail for Japan and the US during WWII (e.g. Dower 1986), and we see today (Steuter and Wills) how the process has played out during what has become known as the global war on terror. In the last part of the volume we turn to the American home front, specifically army families, military children, and college students. In many respects the war has not directly affected the lives of most US citizens. There have been no calls for general war-related sacrifices; there have been no bond drives to pay for the wars; with much smaller, all-volunteer militaries, civilians are less likely to know individuals in the military, and as a result much less likely to know someone killed or injured in the wars. For US Army 3

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families the situation is different; the impact of the wars has been magnified by the ease of communication provided by cell phones, the internet, and live television concomitantly placing the war electronically in the home and the home front in the war front (see Ender, Campbell, Davis, and Michaelis); the multiple deployments required by small militaries to fight wars that have now lasted longer than WWII have also taken a toll on the children in military families, although these children also show surprising resilience (see Lipari, Winters, Matos, Smith, and Rock). Attitudes of young people toward the wars (see Ender, Rohall, and Matthews) have changed over the course of these conflicts, and have been importantly shaped by political affiliation, with significant differences between students at military academies and those in other universities. As we close this introduction in early 2010, the outcome of these wars is uncertain. The US military is withdrawing troops (i.e. Marines) after an apparently successful new strategy for involving Sunni Muslims (the so-called Anbar Awakening) coupled with a troop surge that took place between January 2007 and the middle of 2008. The newly elected Iraqi government is not fully institutionalized and serious disagreements over political representation and the disposition of national resources continue among representatives of the Sunni Muslims, Shi’a Muslims, and ethnic Kurds. In Afghanistan, the Taliban appears resurgent and the US military is preparing to increase its presence there by 30,000 additional troops. Many members of Al Qaeda appear to have moved to areas of Pakistan that border Afghanistan. The US has used drones to strike Al Qaeda in Pakistani territory and the Pakistani military, apparently under significant pressure from the US as well as its own people, has begun operations designed to undermine insurgents in the border areas. Military strikes by the Pakistani Army appear to be increasingly motivated by bombings that have struck very close to key military centers in Pakistan. The outcome of the two conflicts is not clear; our chapters provide important perspectives on these wars – perspectives we expect will be modified and extended in the future.

References Attanayake, V., McKay, R., Joffres, M., Singh, S., Burkle Jr., F. and Mills, E. (2009) “Prevalence of mental disorders among children exposed to war: A systematic review of 7,920 children.” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 25: 4–19. Carlton-Ford, S. (2004) “Armed conflict and children’s life chances.” Peace Review 16: 185–91. Coser, L.A. (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Free Press. Dower, J.W. (1986) War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Random House. Ender, M.G. (2009) American Soldiers in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? New York and London: Routledge. GlobalSecurity.org (2010) The World at War. Online. Available http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ world/war/index.html (accessed 27 January 2010). Harbom, L. and Wallensteen, P. (2009) “Armed conflicts, 1946–2008.” Journal of Peace Research 46: 577–87. iCasualties.org (2010) “Iraq coalition casualty count.” Online. Available http://icasualities.org (accessed 18 January 2010). Miller, C.T. (2007) “Contractors outnumber troops in Iraq,” Los Angeles Times, 4 July, Online. Available http://www.articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/04/nation/na-private4 (accessed 27 January 2010). Moskos, C.C., Williams, J.A. and Segal, D.R. (eds) (1999) The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces After the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press.

4

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National Priorities Project (2010) “Total cost wars since 2001.” Online. Available http://costofwar. com/ (accessed 18 January 2010). Reimann, K. (2006) “A view from the top: International politics, norms, and the worldwide growth of NGOs.” International Studies Quarterly 50: 45–67. Schwartz, M. (2008) War Without End: The Iraq War in Context. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Talielian, T. and Jaycox, L.H. (eds) (2008) Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

5

Part I War on the ground: combat and its aftermath

1 Fighting two protracted wars Recruiting and retention with an all-volunteer force Susan M. Ross

Following nearly a decade of continual troop involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates summarized the conundrum involved in fighting two protracted wars with an all-volunteer force (AVF). On the one hand, Gates (Department of Defense [DoD] 2008) noted optimistically: Overall, our service men and women and their families have shown extraordinary resilience. Morale is high, as is recruiting and retention – particularly among units either in or just returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldier for soldier, unit for unit, the Army is the best trained, best led, and best equipped it has ever been. On the other hand, he continued: This is the second longest war in American history since our Revolution, and the first to be fought with an AVF since independence. To be sure the stress is real. There are metrics that need to be watched – such as the number of waivers granted to new recruits, suicides, as well as incidents of divorce and other signs of wear on military families. Striking an even blunter appraisal of the situation while testifying before the Senate Armed Service Committee, US Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard A. Cody (2008) stated, “Today’s Army is out of balance. The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen echoed the same message during a similarly timed press conference, noting, “It is a very fragile situation. … There is this incredibly delicate balance between continuing in two wars [and] making sure we don’t break those same forces” (Bender 2008: A1). By the middle of 2009, more than 1.8 million American soldiers had served in Afghanistan and Iraq since the outset of these wars in October 2001 and March 2003 (DoD 2009). Although 1.8 million soldiers represent less than one percent of the entire 9

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US population, they represent nearly three-quarters of the approximately 2.5–2.7 million personnel who comprise the active duty and reserve components of the AVF (US Census 2003, 2009). While there is little doubt that the AVF has created a stronger fighting force compared with that which can be developed and maintained under a system of conscription (Bacevich 2008; O’Hanlon 2004), fighting the global war on terror (GWOT) has created tremendous strains on the AVF, leaving many (including top military leaders) to question the viability of the AVF. This chapter examines challenges faced by the American AVF as it has undertaken heavy troop engagement for nearly a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly recruitment and retention within the US Army. Given that neither war has drawn to a close, this analysis is necessarily incomplete. With the Taliban’s movement into Pakistan and the uncertain political stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Obama announced in late 2009 the plan to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing the troop levels in the region to nearly 100,000 personnel (Obama 2009). Meanwhile, in Iraq, combat troop drawdown has been slower than anticipated, as President Obama had to backslide on his campaign pledge to bring combat troops home within 16 months of his taking office (DeYoung 2009). Military leaders serving in Iraq suggest that American soldiers could be engaged in combat until at least 2015 (Ricks 2009). Before turning to the issues of recruitment and retention for an AVF, it is important to provide a brief historical context to the emergence of the AVF as an alternative military manpower strategy to conscription.

From conscription to an AVF The current structure of an AVF developed on the heels of the widely unpopular draft of the Vietnam War era. Having campaigned on a promise to end the draft, President Nixon authorized what became popularly known as the Gates Commission to study the viability of ending conscription and moving to an all-volunteer military structure (Rostker 2006). Although the Commission members were divided on the feasibility of such a structure, they ultimately recommended that the US end the draft and build its national forces through the recruitment of volunteers who would serve as professional soldiers. Having accepted the recommendation, Congress eliminated the draft in 1973 (Rostker 2006). The transition to an AVF has generated ongoing debate between proponents of national service, conscription, or volunteerism as a military manpower strategy (Moskos 1988). Segal (1989) identified five social trends that affected the choice of the AVF over national service or conscription:  the increase in complexity of military technology; the increased American involvement in peace-keeping missions and other forms of “lower-intensity” warfare;  the expansion of the welfare state, which reversed the citizen–state relationship from citizens having an obligation to the state to a system of “entitlements” of citizenship;  the “citizenship revolution” that broke the barrier to women’s and minority participation in the military, allowing for larger recruiting pools; and  declining fertility rates following the baby boom, which produce fewer males for a draft pool between the ages of 18 and 21. 10

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As a consequence of ending conscription, the military was transformed from an institution built on the obligation of a citizenry to serve their country to an institution required to compete with the civilian employment sector for suitable “employees” (Moskos 1977; Moskos and Wood 1988). In addition, the movement to an AVF seriously reduced the ability of the country to depend upon traditional citizen soldiers for wartime troop expansion (see e.g. Abrams and Bacevich 2001; Burk 2001; Cohen 2001; Moskos 2002). Although there is general scholarly consensus regarding these first major consequences of the military manpower policy shift, much debate exists as to the extent to which the emergence of the AVF resulted in a “gap” between the military and civilian sectors of society (see Rohall et al. 2006 for a review). In addition to the demise of the draft, there was a second, “quieter,” post-Vietnam policy that has greatly increased reliance upon the Reserve and National Guard during the GWOT, the likes of which has not been seen since the Korean War (Binkin and Kaufmann 1989). Frustrated by President Johnson’s refusal to mobilize the Reserve as part of the troop escalation, Army Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams returned from Vietnam swearing to ensure that America would never again go to war without pulling reservists from all walks of life. Abrams crafted the total force policy, which placed combat support heavily in the hands of the Reserve and ensured the need for the National Guard to round out combat brigades (Sorley 1991). Much of this policy and the expansion in the number of reserve troops available to the president went largely unnoticed by the public (Binkin and Kaufmann 1989) and, for that matter, the reservists themselves (Booth et al. 2007; Musheno and Ross 2008). In drawing this all-too-brief history lesson to a close, note that while the US has been functioning with an all-volunteer military force since the early 1970s, Presidents Carter and Reagan did bring about the reinstitution of the military draft registration system in the early 1980s (Chambers 1987; Segal 1989); young men are still required to register with the Selective Service within 30 days of their eighteenth birthday. Despite this ongoing system of registration, there seems little chance of the US moving to conscription from the Selective Service rosters. Gallup poll data gathered in October 2004 indicated that only 14.3 percent of Americans support a military draft (Gallup Organization 2004). Likewise, a 2004 House of Representatives vote on a bill to reinstate the draft suffered a decisive loss with a 402:2 vote (Crabtree 2009). The attacks of 9/11 brought about neither a national call for additional volunteers for the armed services nor public or political support for conscription, ensuring that the people fighting the GWOT would be the men and women of the AVF. Although it is not uncommon for American military peacetime participation rates to comprise less than 1 percent of the population, typically, there are spikes in the participation rate during extended wars, with three percent in World War I, nine percent in World War II, and about two percent during the Korean and Vietnam Wars (Segal and Segal 2004). The proportion of Americans bearing the military cost of the GWOT has remained below one percent of the total population.

Recruiting new troops to an AVF under the GWOT Recognizing the strain on the forces and problems regarding military recruitment, thenpresidential-candidate Barack Obama stated on his campaign Web site, “A nation of 300 million strong should not be struggling to find enough qualified citizens to serve” 11

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(Obama 2008). Although intended to lend an inspirational voice to military recruitment, President Obama’s campaign statement was oversimplistic. Although there are more than 300 million Americans, the primary military recruiting target group is young people between the ages of 17 and 24 years, who represent slightly less than 10 percent of the nation’s total population (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). After factoring in all of the disqualifiers to military service such as lack of educational achievement, poor physical health and fitness, over- and underweight, and criminal background, the Pentagon estimates that only 25 percent of America’s young people between the ages of 17 and 24 years are qualified for service in the armed forces (Miles 2009). In addition to being qualified to serve, new youth recruits must also have an interest to serve. As tracked by the DoD, youth propensity to serve dropped in recent years to about 10 percent following over a decade of relative stability at near 15 percent (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). Faced with the wartime decline in recruitment of qualified and interested youth enlistees (particularly before the 2008 economic recession) the Army responded by opening recruitment to some previously unqualified individuals. Much media attention was given to the Army’s shortfall in meeting its educational attainment goal among new recruits (Bender 2009; Scott Tyson 2009) and the increased number of “conduct waivers” for criminal offenses (e.g. misdemeanor drug offenses and some felony convictions) among recruits (Scott Tyson 2008a). Additional controversial programs included the Army’s temporary increase in the maximum enlistment age for the reserve from 35 to 42 years (Miles 2006) and the decision to open recruitment to skilled immigrants in possession of temporary visas, a program that has not been available since the Vietnam War (Preston 2009). By the beginning of 2009, the Army had also introduced a waiver program to allow overweight recruits to be given provisional enlistments (Lubold 2009a). The cost of recruiting, particularly given the Army’s goal of an additional 65,000 troops, has not come cheap. While the DoD has been increasing its advertising budget for recruiting since 1994, it accelerated these efforts since the outset of the GWOT and has also drastically increased enlistment bonus expenditures (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). The heavy emphasis on financial recruiting incentives, coupled with a long-standing correlation between the youth unemployment rate and the military’s ability to attract high-quality youth enlistees (see Bicksler and Nolan 2006), has prompted the term “economic draft” to describe the unequal distribution of social classes in the AVF (Zweig 2008). The research concerning social class participation rates in an AVF is somewhat consistent, finding that neither the highest nor the lowest socioeconomic groups have strong rates of military service. Rather, this burden continues to be borne disproportionately by the lower, although not the lowest, classes (see Kilburn and Asch 2003; Kleykamp 2006; Segal and Segal 2004); however, military fatalities in Iraq show no social class patterning (Ender 2009). Some scholars argue that the social class inequality of service as well as the overrepresentation of African-Americans (discussed later) within the AVF are actually strengths of the institution as they provide a reasonable avenue for social class mobility; better compensation and health care benefits than individuals of similar age, experience, and background can obtain in the private sector; and one of the most racially progressive atmospheres of any of society’s social institutions (Moskos 1991; O’Hanlon 2004). Although enlistees may find the military to be a more financially lucrative option than the civilian employment sector, on exit from the military the young veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have higher unemployment rates than their similarly aged civilian counterparts who chose not to serve (Zoroya 2009). 12

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Even in the absence of the GWOT, the military faces demographic shifts within the youth population that pose challenges to recruitment. Although the youth population is expected to increase from about 32.6 million in 2005 to 34.7 million by 2025, much of this growth will take place among Hispanics, who, despite being more interested in serving than their White and African-American peers, have traditionally been less able to meet the educational requirements (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). With proactive programs to help Hispanics complete high school, Maxfield (2008) noted that the Army’s efforts increased its percentage of enlisted Hispanic soldiers from 3.9 to 11.9 percent between 1985 and 2008. Conversely, while African-Americans currently remain the most overrepresented racial group in the AVF (Kleykamp 2006), between 1985 and 2008 their representation within the Army dropped from 27 percent to 20 percent, with the highest decline within the enlisted ranks (Maxfield 2008). Two factors reducing youth propensity to serve are the adult influencers in youth lives and increased college participation rates among high-school graduates (Bachman et al. 2001; Bicksler and Nolan 2006). Propensity tends to be inversely related to the increase in youth college enrollment (Bachman et al. 2001). Second, with the passing of the WWII and Korean War generations, there are simply fewer veterans who serve as role models to young people. With the concentration of Army and Marine bases in the southern region, propensity to serve is even lower among young people outside the South (Kleykamp 2006; Segal and Segal 2004). Similarly, parents, who themselves are less likely to be veterans than in previous generations, are typically unsupportive of military enlistment of their children during times of active warfare (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). On a more positive demographic note, the changes to the DoD’s Direct Ground Combat Assignment Rule in 1994 widen the career specialties available to woman soldiers (Maxfield 2008). With more desirable military career options available, recruitment of young women, particularly as officers, has increased.

Straining the troops: retention issues Retention of experienced personnel in order to fight the GWOT was an immediate concern of the Pentagon. Shortly after the attacks on 9/11, the highly controversial “stop-loss” policy (often referred to as a backdoor draft) was instituted to retain soldiers beyond their contracted discharge date (Wooten 2005). Stop-loss affected more than 140,000 soldiers between January 2002 and October 2008, with non-commissioned officers (NCOs) disproportionately targeted by the policy (Vanden Brook 2008). Secretary of Defense Gates did announce a plan in March 2009 to phase out the stop-loss policy by 2011 and retroactive compensation was extended to troops affected by stoploss (Dao 2009); however, earlier efforts to minimize the use of stop-loss have been hampered by troop level pressures (Shanker 2009). Between the planned troop increase of 65,000 (which demands a greater number of captains and majors) and the higher departure rate by the Army’s West Point graduates than in the years before the wars (Bowman 2009), the Army is struggling to maintain experienced junior officers (Scott Tyson 2008b). Retention bonuses of up to $35,000 for captains have helped to stem the tide of departures, but family pressures and attractive civilian employment options push and pull young officers from service (Dempsey 2008). The result has been faster promotion of captains to the rank of major than typically desired, with military police, military intelligence officers, and transportation among 13

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those branches experiencing the greatest junior officer shortages (Scott Tyson 2008b). Shortfalls among enlisted ranks have been countered, in part, through emphasis on re-enlistment bonuses of up to $19,000 depending on career field (Miles 2006). Another point of considerable strain has been the pace and length of deployments for the Army and Marines. Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen have expressed the desire to create more adequate “dwell time” at home between deployments (Garamone 2009; Graham 2009). Although the Army has shortened deployments from 15 to 12 months, increased dwell time beyond 12 months is not anticipated until late 2010 or mid-2011 (Graham 2009; Quigley 2009). The stress of the pace of deployments has probably been amplified by what Ender (2009) calls “hyperutilization” of soldiers on the ground. Whereas traditionally war-zone soldiering has been associated with periods of boredom that reduce combat stress, Ender (2009) found that many soldiers in Iraq experience hyperutilization of missions, allowing for less time away from military action. The reserve makes up 45 percent of the Army’s AVF and has supplied as much as 40 percent of the troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the reservists and Guardsmen activated in 2001 and 2002, more than 60 percent had two weeks or less advanced notice of the activation (Booth et al. 2007). The heavy reliance on the reserve has come at retention costs. Reporting on survey data with National Guardsmen and reservists who had recently returned from deployments, Griffith (2005) found that only 71 percent of the soldiers planned to re-enlist, a figure well below the National Guard Bureau standard of 85 percent. In terms of the mental health toll the GWOT is taking on the troops, Tanielian and Jaycox (2008) found that approximately one-third of a random sample of recently returned service members reported symptoms of mental health problems or cognitive conditions, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injury. Not surprisingly, the US Army Surgeon General’s Mental Health Advisory Team found that as the number of deployments increased for NCOs, so did the likelihood of exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress (Shanker 2008). Similarly, investigations of suicides in the Army between 2004 and 2008 show the stress of long deployments as a contributing factor (Alvarez 2009). Although soldiers serve in the actual deployments, their families can also feel the strain of two protracted wars. While many soldiers and their families show remarkable resiliency under these wartime conditions (Booth et al. 2007; Hosek et al. 2006; Musheno and Ross 2008), we would be wise to heed the words of the Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard A. Cody, who stated, “Lengthy and repeated deployments with insufficient recovery time have placed incredible stress on our soldiers and our families, testing the resolve of our AVF like never before” (Shanker 2008). One of several demographic transformations of the movement to the AVF that has increased the overall pool of individuals whose lives are disrupted by military locations and deployments is the increase in the number of married military personnel (Binkin 1993; Segal and Segal 2004). Even in peacetime, working military spouses face frequent relocations across state lines that create a host of problems, including transferring of college credits, finding suitable daycare, state-anchoring of professional licenses (e.g. teachers and lawyers), and civilian counterpart wage gaps (Dempsey 2008). The wartime deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq exacerbate the stress military families experience by more frequent and less predictable separations than before (Booth et al. 2007). The strain of the separations and the subsequent “work–family balance issues” are reasons frequently invoked by soldiers and their families for wanting to leave the military (Booth et al. 14

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2007). Junior enlisted personnel and their spouses are most likely to express the greatest difficulties in their personal lives and mental health; however, Booth et al. also noted the stress produced by extended and rapid deployments is typically resolved within several months of family reunification. Among children and adolescents, Booth et al. (2007) reported that only about half of Army children show positive adjustment to parental deployments, with younger children and children whose mother’s adjustment to the deployment is not strong at most risk for experiencing deployment difficulty. Because the mass mobilization of reserve soldiers came as such a surprise to soldiers and family members alike, reserve families report having been less psychologically and administratively prepared to deal with mobilizations during the initial phases of the GWOT (Booth et al. 2007). Ironically, while the “Post-9/11 GI Bill” was designed to recognize the burden the servicemen and women have borne in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon expressed concern that an unintended consequence of this well-meaning social policy may actually hamper re-enlistment efforts within the US Army and Marine Corps (Lubold 2009b). To resist the potential flight of marines and soldiers who would otherwise be drawn into the civilian sector in search of education benefits, both the Marines Corps and Army’s annual retention budgets were significantly expanded, raising concerns about whether this generation of soldiers and marines can be weaned from lucrative re-enlistment bonuses (Lubold 2009b).

Conclusion The US currently has servicemen and women stationed in over 120 countries, including the protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Carden 2009). The feasibility of the all-volunteer military to react to another threat is questionable. The Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter W. Chiarelli told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on Readiness and Management in April 2009 that the Army would be unlikely to meet the needs of resting and retraining troops under the current pace of deployments: What has to change for us is the demand for forces. And right now, the demand for forces is as high as it’s ever been with our continued commitment to Iraq and the increase in Afghanistan. … To ensure our deployed and next-to-deploy forces maintain this high state of readiness, we have taxed our non-deployed forces and strategic programs for equipment and personnel. As a result, the majority of our non-deployed forces are reporting degraded readiness levels. (Carden 2009) Assistant Commandant General James Amos told the same Senate panel that the stretched situation also applies to the Marine Corps ground forces. It is unlikely, even while fighting two protracted wars at the outset of the twenty-first century, that the military manpower strategy will be drastically transformed. Although the military brass was initially skeptical of the movement from conscription to the AVF, they have now grown wedded to such a system, one that enables them to select from among the most qualified recruits (Bacevich 2008). For those who push for a draft on the moral grounds of more equitable distribution of service, it is worth noting that since three-quarters of the youth population currently fall outside the qualifications for military 15

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service, the draft would probably only create a more equitable distribution of service among those who actually meet the educational, health and wellness, and non-criminal activity standards. In addition, movement to national service or conscription would also likely bring more criticism about the military’s discriminatory practices regarding sexual orientation and the ban on women’s participation in combat roles. In his recently published polemic, historian and international relations expert Andrew Bacevich (2008) enumerated three major problems associated with operating an allvolunteer military, the first of which is embedded in General Chiarelli’s comments and illustrated in this chapter. Bacevich noted that an all-volunteer military “places a de facto cap on the army’s overall size” (2008: 138). There are only so many young citizens who are actually willing to serve in the military, and protracted wars deplete the pool of willing volunteers rather than enhance it. Second, an all-volunteer military is no longer an army of citizen soldiers, but a professional military that “has become an extension of the imperial presidency. The troops fight when and where the commander in chief determines” (p. 138). Last, the movement to an AVF essentially allows the vast majority of the American population to opt out of the responsibility of war. In essence, our nation has institutionalized sending other people’s children, husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters to fight on our behalf through either military service or civilian contracting. Although civilian contractors have been a part of American war since the Revolutionary War, the second half of the twentieth century involved increasing the privatization of several aspects of war (see chapter 12 in this volume; Lindemann 2007). Although increased privatization in Afghanistan and Iraq has brought with it a host of controversies and legal ambiguities surrounding the governance of civilian contractors (see Lindemann 2007), without these contractors, the military manpower policy of an AVF would be stretched even further to cover the work of the nearly 100,000 civilian contractors operating in Iraq (Merle 2006). Perhaps the answer to the strain placed on the AVF by two protracted wars is not increased privatization, conscription of additional troops, or national service of all young people. Instead, might the answer lie in rethinking an American foreign policy that so readily commits the AVF as a means to “solve” international conflicts? As Bacevich (2008) eloquently and unapologetically advocates: America doesn’t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller—that is, more modest— foreign policy, one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities. Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise. It also means reining in the imperial presidents who expect the army to make good on those illusions. When it comes to supporting the troops, here lies the essence of a citizen’s obligation. (p. 169) The viability of the AVF depends on the ability of our political leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflicts and to responsibly deploy troops for national security.

References Abrams, E. and Bacevich, A.J. (2001) “A symposium on citizenship and military service,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 31: 18–22.

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Alvarez, L. (2009) “Army data show rise in number of suicides,” The New York Times, 6 February, p. A12. Bacevich, A.J. (2008) The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, New York: Metropolitan Books. Bachman, J.G., Freedman-Doan, P., and O’Malley, P.M. (2001) “Should US military recruiters write off the college-bound?,” Armed Forces and Society, 27: 461–76. Bender, B. (2008) “Military scrambles to retain troops, interviews officers about incentives,” The Boston Globe, 7 March, p. A2. ——(2009) “Down economy boost military, enlistment figures spike,” The Boston Globe, 1 March, p. A1. Bicksler, B.A., and Nolan, L.G. (2006) “Recruiting an all-volunteer force: The need for sustained investment in recruiting resources,” Policy Perspectives, 1: 1–26. Binkin, M. (1993) Who Will Fight the Next War? The Changing Face of the American Military, Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Binkin, M., and Kaufmann, W.W. (1989) US Army Guard and Reserve: Rhetoric, Realities, Risks, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Booth, B., Segal, M.W., and Bell, D.B. (2007) What We Know about Army Families: 2007 Update, Fairfax, VA: Caliber. Online. Available http://www.army.mil/fmwrc/documents/research/whatwek now2007.pdf (accessed 18 September 2009). Bowman, T. (2009) “West Point revamps curriculum as threats change,” National Public Radio, 13 January. Online. Available http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99303154 (accessed 14 January 2009). Burk, J. (2001) “The military obligation of citizens since Vietnam,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 31: 48–60. Carden, M.J. (2009) “Army, marine corps juggle high demands for ground forces,” American Forces Press Service, 23 April. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54052 (accessed 2 May 2009). Chambers, J.W. (1987) To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America, New York: The Free Press. Cody, R.A. (2008) “On the readiness of the United States Army. Statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee,” 13 March. Online. Available http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2008/ April/Cody%2004–01–08.pdf (accessed 30 October 2008). Cohen, E.A. (2001) “Twilight of the citizen-soldier,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 31: 23–28. Crabtree, S. (2009) “Rangel to reintroduce military draft measure,” The Hill. 14 January. Online. Available http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/rangel-to-reintroduce-military-draft-measure-200901–14.html (accessed 14 May 2009). Dao, J. (2009) “US to give extra pay to troops held over.” The New York Times, 22, p. 26. Dempsey, L. (2008) “The military vs. wives,” The Washington Post, 19 February, p. A15. Department of Defense. (2008) “Remarks to the Heritage Foundation as delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates,” 13 May. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/ speech.aspx?speechid=1240 (accessed 30 October 2008). ——(2009) “DoD news briefing with Geoff Morell,” March 5, 2009. Online. Available http://www. defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4365 (accessed 1 May 2009). DeYoung, K. (2009) “Obama sets timetable for Iraq; Withdrawal is part of broader regional strategy, President says,” The Washington Post, 28 February, p. A1. Ender, M.G. (2009) American Soldiers in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? New York: Routledge. Gallup Organization. (2004). “Gallup poll social series – crime,” Survey conducted online. Available http://brain.gallup.com/ (accessed 2 July 2009). Garamone, J. (2009) “Gates hopes to increase ‘dwell time’ for troops,” American Forces Press Service, 10 February. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53037 (accessed 2 April 2009). Graham, H. (2009) “Chairman emphasizes need to ‘get it right’ for soldiers, families,” American Forces Press Service, 27 April. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx? id=53977 (accessed 2 May 2009).

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Griffith, J. (2005) “Will citizens be soldiers? Examining retention of reserve component soldiers,” Armed Forces and Society, 31: 353–83. Hosek, J., Kavanagh, J., and Miller, L. (2006) How Deployments Affect Service Members, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Kilburn, M.R. and Asch, B.J. (2003) Recruiting Youth in the College Market: Current Practices and Future Policy Options, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Kleykamp, M.A. (2006) “College, jobs, or the military? Enlistment during a time of war,” Social Science Quarterly, 87: 272–90. Lindemann, M. (2007) “Civilian contractors under military law,” Parameters: U.S. Army War College Quarterly, 37: 83–94. Lubold, G. (2009a) “To boost recruits, US Army relaxes weight rules. The waiver program allows overweight enlistees to get in shape after they sign up”, The Christian Science Monitor, 5 January. Online. Available http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2009/0105/p03s07-usmi.html (accessed 2 July 2009). ——(2009b) “Will improved military enlistment last? Retention rates may be hurt by the GI Bill’s expanded school benefits as well as potential budget cuts”, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 February. Online. Available http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2009/0209/p02s01-usmi.html (accessed 2 July 2009). Maxfield, B. D. (2008) The Changing Profile of the Army, FY 08, Washington, DC: Office of Army Demographics. Online. Available http://www.armyg1.army.mil/HR/docs/demographics/Changing %20Profile%20report%20December%202008.pdf (accessed 12 December 2009). Merle, R. (2006) “Census counts 100,000 contractors in Iraq,” The Washington Post, 5 December, p. D1. Miles, D. (2006) “Innovative programs help army maintain recruiting comeback,” American Forces Press Service, 10 January. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=14641 (accessed 17 August 2009). ——(2009) “Officials urge congress to protect recruiting, retention incentives,” American Forces Press Service, 3 March. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53310 (accessed 23 April 2009). Moskos, C.C. (1977) “From institution to occupation,” Armed Forces and Society, 4: 41–50. ——(1988) A Call to Civic Service: National Service for Country and Community, New York: The Free Press. ——(1991) “How do they do it? Why the military is the only truly integrated institution in America,” The New Republic, 5 August p.16–20. ——(2002) “Reviving the citizen-soldier,” The Public Interest, 147: 76–85. Moskos, C.C., and Wood, F.R. (eds) (1988) The Military: More than Just a Job?, Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s International Defense Publishers. Musheno, M. and Ross, S.M. (2008) Deployed: How Reservists Bear the Burden of Iraq, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Obama, B. (2008) Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plan for universal voluntary citizen service. Online. Available http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/NationalServicePlanFactSheet.pdf (accessed 23 October 2008). ——(2009) Remarks by the President in address to the nation on the way forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Washington, DC: The White House. Online. Available http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ remarks-by-the-president-on-a-new-strategy-for-afghanistan-and-pakistan/ (accessed 2 December 2009). O’Hanlon, M. (2004) “The need to increase the size of the deployable army,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 34: 4–17. Preston, J. (2009) “US Military will offer path to citizenship,” The New York Times, 15 February, p. A1. Quigley, S.L. (2009) “Chairman cites need for more ‘dwell time’ between deployments,” American Forces Press Service, 20 February. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle. aspx?id=53164 (accessed 2 May 2009). Ricks, T.E. (2009) The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006– 2008, New York: Penguin Press. Rohall, D. E., Ender, M.G., and Matthews, M.D. (2006). “The effects of military affiliation, gender, and political ideology on attitudes toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Armed Forces & Society, 33: 59–77.

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Rostker, B. (2006) I Want You! The Evolution of the AVF, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Scott Tyson A. (2008a) “Military waivers for ex-convicts increase,” The Washington Post, 22 April p.A1. ——(2008b) “Deployments are a factor in army’s deficit of Majors: Service’s plan for growth also contributes to a gap that could take five years to close,” The Washington Post, 17 August, p. A4. ——(2009) “Army more selective as economy lags,” The Washington Post, 19 April, p. A6. Segal, D. R. (1989) Recruiting for Uncle Sam: Citizenship and Military Manpower Policy, Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. Segal, D.R., and Segal, M.W. (2004) “America’s military population,” Population Bulletin, 59: 3–42. Shanker, T. (2008) “Army is worried by rising stress of return tours to Iraq,” The New York Times, 6 April, p. A1. ——(2009) “‘Stop-loss’ will all but end by 2011, Gates says,” The New York Times, 18 March, p. A20. Sorley, L. (1991) “Creighton Abrams and active-reserve integration in wartime,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 21: 35–50. Tanielian, T., and Jaycox, L.H. (eds) (2008) Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. United States Census Bureau. (2003) Special edition: US Armed Forces and Veterans. Online. Available http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/00 1630.html (accessed 30 April 2009). ——(2009) National Security and Veterans Affairs: Military Personnel and Expenditures. Online. Available http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/national_security_veterans_affairs/military_personnel _and_expenditures.html (accessed 14 September 2009). Vanden Brook, T. (2008) “Extended war tours likely to continue: Army plans to rely on policy through 2009,” USA Today, 27 October, p. A1. Wooten, E.M. (2005) “Banging on the backdraft door: The constitutional validity of stop-loss in the military,” William and Mary Law Review, 47: 1063–1107. Zoroya, G. (2009). “Jobless rate hits 11.2% for veterans: Poor market brings re-enlistment boost,” USA Today, 20–22 March, p. A1. Zweig, M. (2008) “The war and the working class,” The Nation, 286: 20–26.

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2 Fighting the irregular war in Afghanistan Success in combat; struggles in stabilization Brigid Myers Pavilonis

Nine days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in an address to the American Congress, US President George Bush demanded that Afghanistan’s Taliban government close all terrorist-based training camps and turn over all Al Qaeda leaders within its borders. President Bush also called for US access to all existing Al Qaeda bases. On that same day, President Bush declared a “war on terror.” Convinced of the direct link between Mullah Omar’s Taliban government and the 11 September attacks, President Bush waged the first “battle” of the American war against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban. Since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 until 11 September 2001, the US had suffered no direct attack on its homeland. But, unlike the attacks by Japanese warships in World War II (WWII), the enemy behind the 9/11 attacks was amorphous, hard to pinpoint, and, indeed, difficult to understand. The US military, well-practiced and comfortable at drafting war plans to face conventional forces, confronted an indistinct Afghan foe on an ill-defined battlefield. Arguably, plans for this unconventional war should have presented no challenge in the US for two main reasons. First, the US has a long history in asymmetric conflict, dating from the Philippine conflict in 1898, through Vietnam, to as recently as Somalia and Bosnia. Second, the US military is unrivaled in terms of technological capability and the size and quality of its fighting force. This chapter assesses US effectiveness in the “irregular war”1 in Afghanistan from October 2001 to 2009,2 and explores the difficulties encountered by the US military in fighting (and winning) the ongoing war.

Fighting the right enemy in the right way The US has the most powerful military in the world. Its technology is unparalleled and its military, in size and training, is unequaled. Despite these monumental advantages, the US has historically struggled to succeed in irregular war. The apparent disconnect between capability and performance seems to result from a traditional indifference toward irregular war. This underlying indifference, a pervasive attitude in war planning 20

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rooms and on the battlefield, may influence US effectiveness in preparing to fight irregular war. This chapter addresses two questions: first, did indifference toward irregular war, and the related preference for major combat, influence troop performance in Afghanistan? Second, how should the US reconstitute its doctrinal guidance on irregular war to effectively confront this problem in Afghanistan, and in future conflicts?

The US battle in Afghanistan: who fights and how? Even before President Bush took office in January 2001, he clearly stated his position: America’s military should be used to fight America’s wars. This conception of a narrowly defined role for the US military flows from the immortal words of General Douglas McArthur: “your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars” (McArthur, 1962). In 1973 American military historian and strategist Russell Weigley developed this idea in his famous work The American Way of War. He described the American military as being most adept and best-suited for major combat. Weigley argued primarily that America focuses and should focus on winning total wars; that limited wars, like Vietnam, which aim toward social and ideological outcomes, wrongly blur the ultimate purpose of war: military victory (Weigley 1973: ix–xv). In the early days of his presidency, President Bush echoed this idea in his statements indicating that US military force should be deployed only when absolutely necessary. In addition, when forces entered hostilities, the President was committed to limiting the soldier’s role to war-fighting. In an address on 7 October 2002, President Bush explained his rationale for war in Afghanistan and outlined his wartime objectives to the American people: the Taliban had not met his 20 September demands; therefore use of force was the only viable option. Consistent with a Weigley-style plan, the operation, titled “Enduring Freedom,” defined three limited and clear military objectives: to topple the Taliban, to destroy Al Qaeda, and to capture Osama bin Laden. The fundamental purpose of the war was to punish those who had made America suffer, and prevent a second Al Qaeda attack on the US (O’Hanlon 2004: 270). As the war dragged on, it became increasingly apparent that, in order to deny Al Qaeda’s resurgence, the US had to transform its solidly military approach to ensure that its second major goal (the denial of Al Qaeda’s resurgence) could be achieved. Throughout 2002–03, the US increasingly recognized the need for an effective stabilization effort, because its success was essential to creating an environment within which Al Qaeda would find it difficult to rebuild. Therefore, the critical issue for this chapter is to outline how US forces should deal with the stabilization effort. What was, or should have been, America’s role in Afghanistan after the Taliban fell? In addition, I consider whether the overthrow of the Taliban, in and of itself, creates a sufficient condition to bar the re-emergence of Al Qaeda. If it is necessary to rebuild in order to achieve the stability the US sought, why then did the US struggle in the post-combat phase? Were troops averse to stability missions? And, perhaps most importantly, how can the US ultimately “win the peace?” Operation Enduring Freedom: a successful combat operation Immediately following the 7 October address in which President Bush stated his wartime objectives, the US launched Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Within 3 weeks of 21

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the operation’s start, US forces destroyed nearly all Taliban air defenses, which led to the fall of the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif. By mid-December, special operations forces, alongside Afghan opposition fighters, quelled the residual insurgencies in the Tora Bora Mountains. On 22 December 2002, Hamid Karzai was installed as leader of the interim Government of Afghanistan (GOA) (US Army Center of Military History 2003). In 2 short months, the US swiftly achieved its military objectives and laid the groundwork for the nascent Afghan state. Despite immediate success in combat operations, nearly a decade later, the US still cannot claim a solid victory. Quite the contrary, extensive work remains, and that work focuses on the constitution of a successful stabilization mission. Simply put, to stave off the rebirth of Al Qaeda (thereby achieving its own stated pre-war goals) the US must assist in the creation of a legitimate political authority in Afghanistan (Crane 2005: 27). This chapter now turns to an exploration of the post-combat phase to determine its effectiveness in achieving US national security objectives. The uneasy transition to phase IV In stating the initial goals of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued that in addition to toppling the Taliban and routing Al Qaeda, US military forces would assist in alleviating the internal Afghan humanitarian crisis. Despite this comment, however, the war plans offered scanty direction for the reconstruction phase of the operation (Carothers 2003: 84). Discussions of reconstruction were excluded for two main reasons: the Bush administration’s focus centered on attaining combat victory; and stability operations were considered of secondary importance and treated as if they were not integral to the war itself. In the weeks between the 9/11 attacks and the US’s retaliatory attack against Al Qaeda, planning for the war operation centered on the combat mission. At the outset, the US made no definitive plans for stabilizing Afghanistan. In part, this lack of planning was due to failures in process. The Department of Defense was almost wholly responsible for drafting OEF, with little input from other governmental agencies. OEF was primarily an aerial campaign, with scant focus on the stabilization mission. Because of the few number of “boots on the ground,” American presence was insufficient in jumpstarting the complex rebuilding process. As a result, America relied heavily on its Northern Alliance partners to rebuild Afghanistan. This Afghan force was mainly composed of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek fighters, who were physically present in large numbers when Kabul collapsed. These prominent Northern Alliance fighters emerged in positions of leadership in the newly recreated Afghan state (Vaishnav 2004: 249). Unsurprisingly, some of the early troubles associated with the legitimacy of President Karzai’s government had to do with perceptions of political imbalance in Kabul, with many Pashtus questioning fair representation in the new state. Finally, policy-makers misunderstood the stabilization phase as occurring after the combat phase had ended. To be effective, combat and stabilization phases must happen concurrently. At the outset of the war, immediate goals had to center on winning battles, but some attention should have been paid to stabilization – even while bullets were still flying. As was the case in WWII when President Roosevelt met other allied leaders before the end of the war to discuss the peace, American policy-makers should have entertained more vigorous discussions in the fall of 2001 about the stabilization of Afghanistan. 22

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Stabilization is often viewed as “phase IV” and occurring after “phase III combat,” in part because stabilization operations are often referred to as “post-conflict operations.” This term contradicts the idea that stabilization and combat must occur concurrently, not sequentially. As military strategist and former US Army Colonel Joseph Collins observes, “in [Afghanistan], conventional war A was followed immediately by unconventional war B. In turn, war B, was complicated by the need to conduct simultaneous stabilization and reconstruction activities” (Collins 2006: 47). In other words, the US was challenged not only by a shift from combat to stabilization, but also by a shift from regular conventional combat to irregular combat. The transition proved difficult, but it should have been quite predictable – if pre-war planning were done properly. In sum, stability operations must always be understood against the backdrop of the ultimate purpose of the war, which is generally stabilization. If stabilization is necessary, then policy-makers must plan for it and understand two basic factors: first, the need for early planning is crucial, particularly if the combat operation is expected to end quickly; second, policy-makers must accept that combat and stabilization must move forward together; the success of one is directly related to the success of the other. Although America’s planning for stabilization was limited, eventually the US recognized the need for a stabilization plan and, with the help of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reinvested in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

The reconstruction mission: America as a reluctant leader In the early days of OEF, NATO offered military assistance to the US. The US rejected these NATO offers, preferring to act with complete autonomy in Afghanistan. Simply put, US policy-makers demanded that Washington not Brussels lead in combat. As the war progressed and combat operations drew to a close, Washington policy-makers gradually became more willing to accept the NATO offer (Perito 2005: 3). Partially due to the mounting pressures caused by the Iraq operation, Washington policy-makers ultimately agreed to incorporate NATO into the formerly US-led operation. In August 2003, the US agreed to a United Nations-established and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) “to support the Government of Afghanistan in providing and maintaining a secure environment in order to facilitate the rebuilding of Afghanistan.”3 The shift in the American position grew largely from a desire to expand resources committed to the operation, and as the US military resources were increasingly being drawn to Iraq, NATO was clearly viewed as a way of enlarging a Western footprint in Afghanistan. Despite US recognition of NATO as a force multiplier, the US had reservations about how extensively NATO should assume a leadership role. US policy-makers began searching for an alternate method to secure the Afghan countryside (Valasek 2001: 19). The answer came in the form of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).4 This new approach to traditional peacekeeping was a “cross between military-led stability operations and civilian led-reconstruction activities,” in that PRTs took responsibility for security, public safety issues, and infrastructure rebuilding. PRTs have emerged as an important tool in the stabilization mission, as they assist ISAF and the GOA as well as provide the backbone of the reconstruction effort. PRTs, however, face three major issues that hamper their ability to function effectively: first, as an operational unit, they lack a clear mandate and unified chain of 23

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command; second, the interagency nature of the team creates an uneasy relationship between civilian and military members; finally, PRTs are underfunded and underresourced, particularly by civilian agencies (McNerney 2005: 37). Undergirding these critical problems is that the military, although they are assigned leadership for the PRTs, generally prefers major combat to non-traditional missions like those assigned to these hybrid teams. The next section of this chapter analyzes the challenges experienced by PRTs and offers some guidance on how to overcome these hurdles. First, PRTs are often ineffective because they lack a unified command concept. Although all PRTs are charged with “extend[ing] the authority of the [Afghan] central government into the provinces” (Jones and Pickering 2008: 22) methods, strategies, and focus vary widely depending on the location and leadership of the team. At the outset, the tremendous flexibility for PRT commanders to individually determine their team’s focus was the strength of the concept. It allowed for a PRT in Kandahar, which had significant Taliban activity to fortify its counterinsurgency efforts, whereas the German PRT in Kunduz could direct its efforts toward economic recovery. Armed with this flexibility, individual PRT commanders displayed boundless innovation in addressing the needs and problems in their operational areas (Maloney 2005: 240). This type of malleable approach, however, presents some significant drawbacks, because an individual PRT commander might not fully grasp local struggles or overlook national policy goals. For instance, a PRT building a new school might miscalculate the tribal government’s ability to staff the school. Even more problematic, the PRT might inadvertently design an approach to education that controverts the national standards developed by the GOA Ministry of Education (USAID 2006: 9). These types of problems, however, are representative of a deeper, endemic issue with the PRT concept: effective civil–military relations. Second, PRT commanders face a constant challenge in establishing positive relationships between the military and civilian team components. A major problem in the civil– military relationship flows largely from a belief on the part of many in the humanitarian community that the military should not engage in development and relief work. Nongovernmental humanitarian agencies (NGHA) cite several reasons for their objection to the military’s involvement in such efforts. First, military professionals acting in a relief capacity can create confusion among local populations, who perceive all relief workers as subordinate to military authority and thus responsible for problems in both development and security (Sedra 2006: 101). In addition, the humanitarian community is skeptical of the military’s motivation for acting in “humanitarian space.” Principally, this is an issue of ideology, as NGHAs perceive themselves as altruistic, whereas the military is fundamentally driven by a desire to achieve national security objectives. Aid, according to the humanitarian community, is best provided with “no strings attached” (Borders 2004: 5). The humanitarian community’s deeply embedded concerns about the military acting in a relief capacity present a significant challenge to the effectiveness of PRTs, as these unnatural partners joined by fiat have distinctly different views of their own roles and their perceptions of the other’s. Third, civilian agencies assigned to PRTs are severely underfunded and underresourced, which hampers their ability to serve as part of the team. Often the civilian members of the PRT, designated as State, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) representatives, arrive in-country with little training and limited familiarity with military procedures, structure, or protocol. Worse, civilian positions frequently go vacant because the 24

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host agency lacks sufficient personnel for proper staffing (Hernandorena 2006: 147). In addition, the unfilled civilian positions create a more military-centric team that risks misunderstanding issues that development and relief experts would more easily solve. Clearly budgetary issues are a national challenge, but without proper resources, the PRTs are limited in their ability to successfully carry out their mission. One of the major limiting factors in PRT effectiveness is that the US military is performing a non-combat function, and many American soldiers and civilians simply reject a humanitarian role for the military (Shannon 2009: 16). This perception is problematic, short-sighted, and naive. Although the US military may not be the best agency for humanitarian work, their presence in post-combat states remains absolutely necessary. The military must be part of any stabilization mission because of its two-pronged objective: to guarantee security and deliver humanitarian support. The bottom line is that without security, humanitarian work is impossible. In short, the US military must be present in post-combat regions as guarantors of security. Capt. (Sel.) Jason Burke, Commanding Officer of the PRT in Ghazni from 2007 to 2008, makes the prescient observation that the “security and stabilization missions are intertwined … and the biggest risk [of failure for the operation] is complacency among our security forces” (Burke 2007). In other words, the humanitarian mission cannot succeed without requisite security; therefore the military must accept and be accepted as playing a critical role in the stabilization and reconstruction operation. Overall mission success depends on it. Fortunately, American policy-makers, and a growing number of military professionals, are taking note of the strategic value of PRTs and have stepped up efforts to improve training and provide the proper resourcing that they deserve. In a 2007 meeting with PRT leaders, President Bush declared their work as vital, explaining that “the job at hand is to help these folks recover, help the Afghans realize there’s a better future for them. And it’s hard work, but it’s necessary work for the security of our country” (Bush 2008). Although US policy-makers appear to gradually recognize and respond to issues related to the stabilization of Afghanistan, another major external factor confounds operational success: Pakistan.

Pakistan’s influence on Afghan security The US military performed spectacularly in its combat operation in Afghanistan. It toppled the Taliban, disrupted Al Qaeda, and installed an interim leader. All of this was accomplished in 2 short months. Despite these early gains, the US has experienced significant setbacks with the reconstruction effort. One of the US’s major problems in achieving success is Afghanistan’s neighbor to the east. The Afghanistan–Pakistan border is porous, which means that the achievement of an American combat victory did not translate into the disbandment of the Taliban. The Taliban did not collapse. They relocated. Taliban members found sanctuary with sympathizers living in the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) in Pakistan. These primarily ethnic Pashtu people along the 1500-mile Afghan border support resistance movements against the US-backed Karzai government. In 2006, General James Jones, then-Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that it was “generally accepted” that the Taliban was headquartered in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province (Bergen 2007). 25

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According to Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, Head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism research in Singapore, “FATA has become a sanctuary for research and development in explosives, training and directing global operations … As long as FATA is a sanctuary the incessant attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan will not stop” (Gunaratna and Bukhari 2008). Human Rights Watch reports that as many as 30 trucks cross from Pakistan each day carrying ammunition, fuel, rocket-propelled grenades, and artillery shells (Human Rights Watch 2001). Although it is unclear whether Pakistan does not (or simply cannot) control Pakistan’s northwest regions, it is clear that support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda is largely financed and supported by Pakistan. In addition to supplies moving into Afghanistan, the porous border also allows easy movement out of Afghanistan. During OEF, US troops found that Afghan resistance fighters could easily escape after battle by melting into the mountainsides or by slipping across the border into Pakistan. Some skeptics of the American war even argue that the fighting in Tora Bora was orchestrated by the Afghan resistance as a way to distract the Americans and give their brothers-in-arms a chance to regroup, rearm, and get away (Anonymous 2004: 65). In short, the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan causes a critical problem for the reconstruction effort, as the northwestern region of Pakistan has become a sanctuary for those supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan. To stabilize Afghanistan and jumpstart a meaningful rebuilding of the state, the US must look first at controlling movement along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border.

The way forward: stability, security, and success OEF was a resounding success on the battlefield. The US achieved its combat goals quickly and thoroughly, but the stabilization mission is yet incomplete. Insurgent activity persists in Afghanistan, and the Karzai government remains fragile. For the US to achieve its national security objectives in Afghanistan and ultimately “win the peace,” it must focus on three factors: first, the US military must fully accept responsibility for the Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR)5 mission and embrace the notion of an interagency approach; second, PRTs, as an integral part of security, must be properly funded and resourced; and, finally, the US must develop an effective approach for dealing with Pakistan in pursuit of its national security goals. The final section of this paper will address each of these issues as the impetus for the way forward in Afghanistan. The first step to achieving American national security objectives in Afghanistan is for US forces to accept responsibility for SSTR, and learn how to effectively perform these operations. The good news is that the US military is keenly aware of the need to accommodate these emergent mission requirements, and has redirected its efforts toward SSTR. Thus, military journals abound with discussions of counterinsurgency operations. The US Army has established a special training division in Fort Bragg, NC to prepare forces for stabilization work. The newly released Counterinsurgency Manual details how the US Army should prepare for this important mission. Despite these important first steps, writing or training alone will not accomplish the job. Indeed, the change in focus toward counterinsurgency requires a “seismic culture shift” by US forces. This change is possible, but will undoubtedly be slow as soldiers gradually relinquish their traditional preferences (Donnelley 2008: 252). Those concerned, however, about the American military’s willingness to depart from an American 26

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Way of War should be heartened by the US experience in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. Commanding Officer of Combined Forces Afghanistan (CFC-A), General David Barno is often heralded as a visionary in the realm of stability operations. When asked why he thought CFC-A experienced such great success in the early days of OEF, he cited the command’s forward-thinking approach, wherein his soldiers took responsibility for security maintenance, the presidential election, economic initiatives, and humanitarian assistance (Barno 2008). General Barno also gives significant credit for the success of CFC-A to the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, with whom he worked to draft Afghanistan’s constitution, run free and fair elections, and organize the first meeting of Afghanistan’s parliament, the Loya Jirga. It is precisely this relationship, which General Barno nurtured and developed, that inspired trust among the locals and encouraged a solid working partnership among the various agencies of the US government. In short, this solid partnership served as one of the key factors in creating a stable Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. Unfortunately, however, the Department of Defense–Department of State (DoD–DoS) partnership faded, as leaders changed out, ISAF stood up, and the situation on the ground shifted. Ultimately, strong relationships among military and civilian leaders are not guaranteed; rather they are largely based on the personalities of the individuals involved. Because a favorable mix of personalities is not always guaranteed and natural partnerships do not always emerge, policy-makers must institutionalize relationships between communities. One way to begin is at the highest levels of the government. The construction of a “Goldwater-Nichols-style,” interagency policy, which mandates a civil– military partnership and incorporates the two communities, provides one answer. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is engaged in a multiyear study to examine this issue and presciently observes that “achieving greater unity of effort across [the US government] requires institutionalizing standard ways of doing business, particularly in planning and conducting interagency operations” (Murdock et al. 2005: 44). In other words, the establishment of an institutionalized interagency approach will mandate partnerships between communities. Although volitional partnerships would obviously be most fruitful, instituted relationship will ensure consultation, which may even develop into mutual respect. The CSIS report’s recommendations are encouraging, but most promising is that the CSIS study has generated Congressional-level interest, which has the potential to deliver results in the form of funding. The second major factor influencing a successful outcome in Afghanistan is the need to capitalize on the structure and success wrought by the PRTs. Although it has been difficult to quantify their exact contribution, PRT representatives often measure their success by “the number of smiling Afghan children” (McNerney 2005: 42). While US policy clearly cannot be substantiated by the apparent happiness of Afghanistan’s young people, it is an important indicator of the intangible benefit that PRTs bring. After nearly a decade-long military presence in Afghanistan, many locals perceive US forces as an occupying force; the US must use PRTs to debunk that perception. For PRTs to fully succeed, US policy-makers must undertake several major reforms. First, Congress must properly resource these projects so that all agencies can effectively participate. In addition, US policy-makers must designate the PRTs’ purpose as a mechanism for bridging the gap between a clear-cut military operation and a humanitarian, development mission. Designed as a device to win the “hearts and minds” in a 27

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marginally secure environment, PRTs are uniquely positioned to achieve that stated purpose. As the CSIS report “Beyond Goldwater-Nichols” found, US policy-makers must confront the cultural divide between civilian and military communities and encourage the surrender of age-old stereotypes: the civilian community as undependable and the military as unconcerned for the locals and motivated by selfish desires. In sum, strong partnerships within the US government and increased focus on PRTs are fundamental keys to success. PRTs are a vital part of Afghan stabilization in part because they focus on the “humanitarian” piece of the stabilization mission. Yet, while feeding the hungry and rebuilding broken infrastructure is critical, those tasks cannot occur without security. In the last 3 years, security in Afghanistan has been tenuous, delegitimizing the accomplishments of PRTs and in some cases reversing the good that has been done. In early 2009, President Obama announced the deployment of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan; later that fall, he committed an additional 30,000 troops to the region. President Obama justified his decision by arguing that Afghanistan warrants strategic attention and the additional troops will “meet urgent security needs.” This troop deployment, or “Afghan surge,” was an important first step, as Afghanistan’s stability depends on having sufficient “boots on the ground” to partner effectively with regional allies and work with multinational forces. The final recommendation related to America’s progress in Afghanistan focuses on revamping its strategic partnership with Pakistan. It is no secret that America’s tricky relationship with Pakistan complicates the stabilization effort in Afghanistan. To be sure, America has dramatically altered its relationship with Pakistan since 9/11. In 2009, Pakistan is included on State Department lists as a “major non-NATO ally,” and according to a 2004 Congressional Research Service Report, Pakistan received over $3.9 billion dollars in foreign aid in recognition of its role as a “key front-line state in the war against terror.”6 Arguably, the funding is intended to improve Islamabad’s ability to control FATA and deny Taliban sanctuary through a strengthening of its internal forces. The title of “ally” and increased aid is offered as assurance that the US values the partnership. Despite American overtures, Pakistan remains skeptical of US interest. Pakistan perceives the “Afghan troop surge” as an American attempt to establish a long-term presence in Central Asia, where America can partner with India and strangle Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear power (Markey 2007). In short, Pakistan does not fully trust the US. The lack of trust is reciprocal as the US remains concerned about Pakistan’s candor and devotion to management of its northwestern territory (Rubin and Rashid 2008). To get past this underlying skepticism, America should adopt a holistic approach to solving the problem. The Obama administration has made moves in this direction. President Obama’s appointment of Richard Holbrooke as Ambassador to Central Asia is an indicator that the administration favors a comprehensive approach to regional problems. Furthermore, because of Holbrooke’s past record in complex conflict, his selection indicates seriousness in solving the problem in Central Asia. These changes offer promise to those who understand that the stabilization of Afghanistan depends on larger Central Asian regional stability. In sum, the US has the ability to stabilize Afghanistan by devising an approach that recognizes regional realities and confronts current challenges. First, troops are needed in sufficient numbers, and these troops must be well trained and appropriately stationed. Second, America needs to remain devoted to a policy that recognizes Afghanistan as one tile in a complex mosaic. By holistically thinking about Afghanistan’s geostrategic positions and broadly conceiving the stabilization operation, America can succeed in Afghanistan. 28

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Conclusion Despite the global reach of the US and its unparalleled power, America struggles to succeed in winning irregular wars. This difficulty emanates from the traditional preference for an American Way of War: one that prepares troops for conventional conflict and conflates wartime success with battle victories. I argue that this limited view has restricted America’s ability to stabilize Afghanistan, because planning for the “post-conflict operation” was insufficient, and American troops had traditionally preferred major combat to humanitarian/development-oriented missions. The US needs to move beyond these entrenched beliefs, and, indeed, evidence suggests that America is moving in the right direction. But as this chapter suggests more needs to be done to capitalize on these initial steps. The US must (1) fully accept stabilization as a key part of the Afghan operation, (2) fortify the PRT concept, and (3) capitalize on regional and allied partnerships. The bottom line is that the US must “get it right” in Afghanistan, not only for the purposes of stabilizing Central Asia, but also to ensure its own security. Flourishing insurgencies cause regional destabilization and provide a seedbed for terrorists, narcotraffickers, and piracy. These transborder threats represent some of the greatest challenges to US national security in the twenty-first century. Allowing these problems to fester and erupt is simply a risk that the US cannot take.

Disclaimer The views express herein are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Coast Guard or the US Coast Guard Academy.

Notes 1 Although scholars disagree on terminology, for the purposes of this chapter I will use the phrase “irregular warfare” to describe the operation in Afghanistan. For an informed discussion of the definitional challenges associated with the term “irregular warfare” see the DoD Special Study on Irregular Warfare conducted by US Joint Forces Command. See http://www.smallwars.quantico. usmc.mil/search/Papers/Irreg%20Warfare%20Special%20Study.pdf (accessed 10 March 2008). 2 After nearly a decade-long operation in Afghanistan, the US has experienced tremendous difficulty in quelling the pervasive influence of the Taliban, seemingly unending civil unrest, and a general unwillingness to take direction from a central authority in Kabul. Ann Scott Tyson. “US Learned its Lesson, US won’t abandon Afghanistan Again, Gates Says.” Washington Post. 9 September 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/08/AR2009090802802.html (accessed 17 December 2009). 3 This mission purpose language was drawn from the NATO, Allied Joint Force Command Brunnsom, Netherlands cite. http://www.afnorth.nato.int/ISAF/mission/mission_role.htm (accessed 17 December 2009.) 4 American PRTs typically comprise 60–100 personnel from military and civilian communities. Roughly half of the military personnel assigned to PRTs specialize in force protection, whereas the remaining soldiers are drawn from the civil affairs and administrative specialties. The civilian personnel assigned to PRTs generally include representatives from the Department of State, USAID, and USDA. There is usually an Afghan representative from the Ministry of Interior. Information drawn from “USG Provincial Planning and Operations” briefing to PRT Commanders. Fort Bragg, NC, 9 December 2007. 5 SSTR are defined “as a core mission that the US Department of Defense should be ready to conduct and support. … [SSTRs] are conducted to establish order and advance US interests and values.

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The immediate goal is to provide the local populace with security, restore essential services and meet humanitarian needs.” Defense Department Directive 3000.05, “Military Support to Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction Missions.” Washington, DC, 28 November 2005. http:// www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300005p.pdf (accessed 18 March 2008) 6 Of particular note, in 1994, Pakistan was not included on the list of those states receiving aid, supporting the notion that 9/11 caused the US to rethink aid to its newest allies in the War on Terror. Curt Turnoff and Larry Nowles. “US Foreign Aid: An introductory overview of US Programs and Policies.” CRS Report. Congressional Research Service. Washington, DC, 2004. http://fpc.state. gov/documents/organization/31987.pdf (accessed 18 March 2008).

References Anomynous (2004) Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s. Barno, General David, USA (Retired) (2008) Commanding Officer, Combined Forces Afghanistan, July 2003–July 2005. Interview with the author, 15 February. Bergen, P. (2007) Testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. 15 February. Online. Available http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/ber021507.htm (accessed 20 March 2008). Borders, R. (2004) “Provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan: A model for post-conflict reconstruction and development,” Journal of Development and Social Transformation, 1 November. Online. Available http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/moynihan/programs/dev/pdfs/borders1.pdf (accessed 21 March 2008). Burke, Jason. (2007) United States Navy. Commanding Officer, Provincial Reconstruction Team, Ghazni, Afghanistan. Interview with the author, 20 December. Bush, George. (2008) Presidential Address to a Joint Session of Congress. (20 September 2001) http:// www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2001/09/mil-010920-usia01.htm (accessed 20 March). Carothers, T. (2003) “Promoting democracy and fighting terror,” Foreign Affairs, 82: 84–97. Collins, J. (2006) “Planning lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq,” Joint Force Quarterly, 41: 10–14. Crane, C. (2005) “Phase IV operations: Where wars are really won,” Military Review 85: 27–36. Donnelley, J. (2008) “Small Wars, Big Changes,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly, January 28. Gunaratna, Rohan and Bukhari, Syed Adnan Ali Shah (2008) “Making Peace with Pakistani Taliban to Isolate Al-Qaeda.” Peace and Security Review, 1–25. Gurr, T.R. (2002) “Containing internal war in the twenty-first century,” in F. O. Hampson and D.M. Malone (eds), From Reaction to Conflict Prevention: Opportunities for the UN System, Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers: 41–62. Hernandorena, C. (2006) “US provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan, 2003–6: Obstacles to interagency cooperation,” in J. Cerami and J. Boggs (eds), The Interagency and Counterinsurgency Warfare: Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction Roles, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute: 121–70. Human Rights Watch. (2001) “Afghanistan crisis of impunity: The role of Pakistan, Russia, and Iran in fueling the civil war.” 13 July. Online. Available http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/index. htm#TopOfPage (accessed 18 March 2008). Jones, J.L. and Pickering, T. (2008) Afghanistan Study Group Report: Revitalizing Our Efforts, Rethinking Our Strategies. Washington, DC: Center for the Study of the Presidency. Maloney, S.M. (2005) “Afghanistan four years on: An assessment,” Parameters, 35: 4–15. Markey, D. (2007) “A false choice in Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, 86: 85–102. McArthur, D. (1962) “Duty Honor, Country.” Online. http://www.west-point.org/real/mcarthur_address. html (accessed 12 March 2008). McNerney, M. (2005) “Stabilization and reconstruction in Afghanistan: Are PRT’s a model or a muddle?” Parameters, 35: 32–46. Murdock, C.A., Flournoy, M. A., Campbell, K.M. et al. (2005) Beyond Goldwater Nichols: Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era. July. Online. Available http://csis.org/publication/beyond-goldwaternichols-phase-ii-report (accessed 10 March 2008).

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O’Hanlon, M.E. (2004) “The Afghani War: A Flawed Masterpiece.” The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Perito, R. (2005) “The US experience with provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan: lessons identified,” Special Report No. 15., October. Washington, DC: The United States Institute of Peace. Rubin, B. and Rashid, A. (2008) “From great game to grand bargain: Ending chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, 87: 30–44. Rumsfeld, D. (2002) “Transforming the military,” Foreign Affairs, 81: 20–32. Sedra, M. (2006) “Security sector reform in Afghanistan: The slide toward expediency,” International Peacekeeping, 13: 94–110. Shannon, R. (2009) “Playing with principles in an era of securitized aid: Negotiating humanitarian space in post-9/11 Afghanistan,” Progress in Development Studies, 9: 15–36. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (2006) “Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan: an Interagency Assessment,” June. Online. Available http://pdf.dec.org/pdf_docs/ Pnadg252.pdf (accessed 12 March 2008). U.S. Army Center of Military History (2003) “Operation Enduring Freedom: October 2001–March 2002.” Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History. Vaishnav, M. (2004) “Afghanistan: The chimera of the light footprint,” in R. Orr (ed.), Winning the Peace: An American Strategy for Post-Conflict. Washington, DC: The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Valasek, T. (2001) “The fight against terrorism: Where’s NATO?” World Policy Journal, 18: 19–25. Weigley, R. (1973) The American Way of War: A History of United States Military, Strategy, and Policy, New York: McMillan Publishing.

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3 Learning the lessons of counterinsurgency Ian Roxborough

Although the long-term outcome of the present conflict in Iraq may be difficult to foresee, it seems clear that initial US efforts to cope with the insurgencies in that country have followed a predictable course. American forces initially focused on overthrowing the existing regime, and accomplished this successfully. They were, however, largely unprepared for the support and stability operations, and then the counterinsurgency, that were to follow. There were several reasons for this, not least the hubris of the top civilian policy-makers, who believed that the invasion of Iraq would be a repeat of the liberation of France in 1944, with a rapid and unproblematic transition to democracy. In this article, I focus on one thread in a complicated story: the role of US military doctrine in explaining the approach to counterinsurgency adopted in Iraq. After 9/11, the American military found itself engaged in not one, but two, major counterinsurgencies as well as in a number of smaller operations around the globe. To make matters worse, several analysts had come to the conclusion that the global war on terror would be a protracted war, lasting decades, and would entail what military strategists increasingly came to call “global counterinsurgency” (Morris 2005; Hammes 2004). This definition of the strategic environment foresaw counterinsurgency as the principal task of military land forces for decades to come. Counterinsurgency is a difficult, and poorly understood, business. The intrinsic difficulties facing a counterinsurgent are compounded by a generally inadequate understanding, on the part of academic theorists and military practitioners, of the dynamics of insurgency and counterinsurgency. There is, at best, a list of “best practices” (Cohen et al. 2006; Sepp 2005). Military practitioners are, therefore, largely groping in the dark. Counterinsurgency is a time-consuming and difficult process, with no guarantee of success. The procedures of counterinsurgency run against the grain of “standard” military practices and thinking: it is seen as something different from “war,” which is taken to be the “real” concern of military organizations. As a result, expertise in counterinsurgency is often restricted to a small handful of officers, whereas the larger institutional military is generally reluctant to embrace the methods required for successful counterinsurgency. In short, organizational identity militates against organizational learning. 32

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Insurgencies can be and have been defeated. But success is most frequently a result of a combination of sustained effort, trial, and error, with a heavy admixture of luck, rather than the application of a well-understood analysis of the dynamics of insurgency and counterinsurgency. When US forces invaded Iraq in 2003, counterinsurgency thinking was an institutional orphan in the US armed forces and the lessons of previous conflicts had not been thoroughly assimilated throughout the military. Only a handful of experts in the military knew much about (or were interested in) counterinsurgency. Thus, the initial phases of US counterinsurgency operations relied on the default military response (the “kinetic” approach) to treat the insurgents as an opposing military force to be destroyed by firepower. Only later did US military forces grapple seriously with the specific demands of counterinsurgency. The unpreparedness of the US military for counterinsurgency was intellectual as well as organizational. Consequently, the conceptual ambiguities and debates that had characterized much of counterinsurgency thinking in the 1960s were reproduced, with similar negative results. This delay in coming to terms with the insurgency has had deleterious consequences. There are deeply rooted organizational reasons (largely having to do with issues of organizational identity and self-definition) why the US military finds it difficult to learn from its many previous experiences in counterinsurgency. Partly because of this, lessons that are learned are often mistaken or inapplicable. Only after the shock of finding that standard operating procedures do not suffice for counterinsurgency has the US military attempted to learn how to conduct counterinsurgency more effectively. Because there has been little incentive to institutionalize these lessons, they have never been properly diffused; each time the US military has confronted an insurgency, it has had to rediscover counterinsurgency theory ab initio. One is naturally led to ask whether the current relearning of counterinsurgency in Iraq will prove as ephemeral as previous cases.

Central theoretical issues in counterinsurgency There are five central, unresolved issues in counterinsurgency theory. The first is the relationship between the kinetic activity of military organizations and the political goals of counterinsurgency. The second concerns the weight to be attached to the struggle for the “hearts and minds” of the population. The third is the role of coercion and population control in defeating an insurgency. The fourth area of debate concerns how best to cope with the fact that counterinsurgency operations are protracted and highly political. Finally, the difficulties of controlling various kinds of security forces and militias are poorly addressed by counterinsurgency theory. From kinetics to politics The standard operating procedure is to focus on the kinetic task of killing and defeating the insurgents: the “iron fist” approach to counterinsurgency. This orientation is almost always counterproductive. Brute force operations alienate local populations and generate more recruits for the insurgents (e.g. US Army 2004: 2–13). Whether or not this matters depends on the kind and degree of legitimacy required to suppress the insurgency, and on the degree of population control exerted by either side (Kalyvas 2006). 33

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There was considerable variation in how different military units approached the task of occupying Iraq in 2003. With some exceptions (i.e. the 1st Marine Division, the 101st Airborne, and Special Forces), early efforts at counterinsurgency in Iraq by the US Army relied heavily on the iron fist approach. Some of these early military efforts in Iraq (like the vast sweep operations) may well have been counterproductive. No one takes kindly to having their homes burst into by heavily armed soldiers, particularly when they are culturally different and do not speak the local language. For many Iraqis, whatever benefits the American occupation may have brought, it also brought with it massive and often arbitrary violence, on the roads, at checkpoints, in prisons, and in homes. Whereas the revelations of abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison may have come as a shock to Americans, it simply confirmed what many Iraqis already knew or suspected. The US Army at the time of the Abu Ghraib abuses had come to understand that its intelligence on the insurgency was inadequate. It recognized that it was up against a serious enemy, but had no clear idea about the identity of this enemy. In response to the absence of good intelligence, in late summer and early fall of 2003 the US Army decided to “fight for intelligence” by initiating a series of offensive sweeps. Thousands of Iraqis were pulled into the net; somehow or other actionable intelligence was to be extracted from them. The intelligence and custodial services were simply not up to the task: facilities were overloaded, and military police were poorly trained and inadequately supervised. This was a classic instance of counterinsurgent forces slipping out of control, in this case stimulated by pressures from top commanders to develop better intelligence on a determined and poorly understood opponent. By 2005, many US military units had learned a lot and had greatly modified their tactics in Iraq. But by then the question had arisen of whether it was too late to suppress the insurgency. Hearts and minds? It is often said that counterinsurgency is a struggle for the “hearts and minds” of the population. This intuitively appealing slogan turns out, on closer examination to have various possible meanings, and policies designed to win hearts and minds turn out to be difficult to design and implement. Classic counterinsurgency thinking conformed to the “triangular” model: there were only two contending forces (government and the insurgency) and a third, largely inert, population whose allegiance was the object of struggle. The conflict in Iraq was not like this. There were many contending forces, few of which were “controlled” in any meaningful sense by the leadership of either the insurgents or the Iraqi government. This was not something that counterinsurgency thinkers properly understood, with their more or less explicit contrast between “insurgency” and “civil war.” The complex and hybrid nature of the Iraqi conflict was something for which they were intellectually unprepared. In the absence of solid social science knowledge, there has been a lack of careful discussion, and the substitution of “common sense” for analytic thinking. This kind of approach to winning hearts and minds is well illustrated by injunctions in the Marine Corps manual (published in 1980 but still current in 2006) and in the Army’s 2004 interim counterinsurgency manual, rushed into print during the current conflict in Iraq. Treating the population with “respect, tolerance, kindness, and understanding” (US Marine Corps 1980: 135) is an entirely laudable objective. But it is, at most, a necessary 34

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rather than a sufficient condition for the suppression of an insurgency. Further, the notion that improvements to the material standards of living of the population will win hearts and minds (US Army 2004: c-3) is an unexamined and frequently mistaken assumption; instead of simply improving conditions, rewards should be contingent upon government success (see Race 1972). Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, American counterinsurgency, in theory and in practice, continues to operate on the assumption that improvements in material conditions are the key to winning hearts and minds. Throughout the conflict in Iraq, American policy-makers have worried about the delivery of services to the Iraqi population: electricity, security, jobs, construction, etc. The general climate of insecurity, together with poor planning and implementation, has meant that much of this effort has been futile. However, even if the US had been more effective in the reconstruction of Iraq, there are reasons to doubt whether this would have had much impact on the insurgency. The notion that grievances can be ameliorated by improving government services, or by increasing the standard of living of the population, derives from a common sense (and very Western) notion of the origins of grievances. Anti-government behavior is seen as a response to poverty rather than to inequality and injustice or to issues of ethnic or sectarian identity. In this optic, incremental improvement rather than reform is the solution. For those who stress the importance of the delivery of services in creating legitimacy, “hearts” are won by the provision of material goods (see Metz 1995: 13). A slightly different take on the question of hearts and minds was to cast the issue not as one of material improvements but as one of the government addressing grievances, which would undercut the appeal of the insurgents. Unfortunately, governments (particularly those based on a narrow segment of the population) are seldom willing to recognize that subject populations might have legitimate grievances. Even if they recognize this, their ability to do anything about it without undermining their social base of support might be restricted. Recent counterinsurgency doctrine usually is quite explicit about the need to address grievances (see US Army 1990: 1–3, 2–1, and 2–9). In practice, the counterinsurgent state might do little to address grievances, and at the extreme may simply not recognize the existence of legitimate grievances at all. Certainly, it will seldom admit that the nature of the state itself might be the problem. There is sometimes a tendency to imply that satisfaction of grievances is a necessary and a sufficient condition for putting an end to an insurgency. It is not at all clear that the historical evidence supports such a proposition. In macro terms, as Jeff Goodwin (2001) suggests, the key variable is the openness of the political system. Perhaps more pertinently, 1980s counterinsurgency theory argued that governments that were not seen to be appropriately “representative,” that were seen as repressive, or that were seen to be hand-in-glove with foreign occupying forces, were all likely to be “the problem” rather than the solution. Nevertheless, by the 1980s American counterinsurgency doctrine had come to view addressing grievances as the center of the counterinsurgency effort. This generally required reforms typically of four kinds. First are efforts to promote land reform, usually one of the central concerns of peasants. Even the limited amount of land reform in the Philippines was enough to take the wind out of the Huk insurgency (Kerkvliet 1977). Reform of this kind seems not to be an issue in Iraq. Second are efforts to reform the army and control the militias so that military operations do not create unnecessary enemies. This has been a central issue in Iraq. Third, and often part of what a war is being fought about, is democratization. El Salvador is an exemplary case. The insurgency 35

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disappeared once meaningful elections were institutionalized and the military moved away from the center of power. The issue of meaningful elections in Iraq has been central to the conflict there. Fourth is national sovereignty, particularly in colonial situations or where foreign armies are present as occupation forces. Insurgencies have been most successful against colonial regimes and states relying principally on foreign military forces (as in Vietnam). The issue of national sovereignty is a central one in Iraq, and the US government is clearly intent on withdrawing from the limelight as rapidly as possible. The difficulty lies in creating an effective state and fostering a political accord that will enable the Americans to withdraw without major political costs. A foreign power will almost always have little legitimacy precisely because it is foreign. Inevitably, the burden of reform and of counterinsurgency will have to be passed to the host nation. To the extent that indigenous state institutions are non-existent, weak, corrupt, or at the service of illegitimate elites, the ability of the host nation to assume these tasks is limited. The foreign power thus finds itself in a race against time to build up the indigenous state so that it can withdraw from direct conflict as rapidly as possible. The strategy of Vietnamization is testimony to the difficulties entailed. The difficulties are not so much military as political. As of the fall of 2006, whether Iraqification would succeed was an open question. Population control and coercion Many counterinsurgency thinkers have been unconvinced by the hearts and minds school of thought. They believe either that the key dynamic is a competition in terror and coercion, and that the population will support the government or the insurgents because they see them as the lesser of two evils, and/or that the way to defeat an insurgency is to separate the insurgents from their base in the population. Control and coercion thinkers have argued that what is important is the passive support of the population, not what they think. Whether the population positively accords legitimacy to the government is less important than whether they pay taxes, support the police, refuse to aid the insurgents, and whether enough informers are willing to come forward. Adherents of this school of thought argue that legitimacy might be accorded to government simply because it is “there” and its presence is taken for granted. There is much sociological merit to this view, but, like the hearts and minds approach, it turns out to be a cluster of distinct, and not always mutually compatible, ideas. Three main positions can be identified: balance of terror, population control, and the formation of “self-defense” forces. By punishing communities for harboring or assisting guerrillas, by indiscriminate use of artillery and aerial bombardment, or by widespread detentions and “disappearances,” a counterinsurgent military can induce such levels of terror into the general population that they will shun the insurgents and perhaps move to areas controlled by incumbent forces. This approach may succeed if the counterinsurgent is willing to countenance high and sustained levels of violence against the civilian population (e.g. Central America in the 1930s, Guatemala during the Cold War, and Argentina in the 1970s). However, in Iraq, where the intent is to create a democratic government, seeking to terrorize the population is counterproductive. The second variant, population control (e.g. the Spanish in Cuba; the British in the Boer War [1899–1902] and in Malaya between 1948 and 1960 [Nagl 2002; Stubbs 1989]; and in Vietnam), is simple: to help separate the guerrillas from the population and then to defeat them militarily. 36

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The notion that the task of a counterinsurgent is to separate the guerrillas from the population (or vice versa, as is generally the practice) is a largely unchallenged assumption in much counterinsurgency writing. A different view of counterinsurgency might be to envision it as a political struggle over the terms of incorporation of that section of the population that supports the insurgents. In this view, the key task is not to drive a wedge between the guerrillas and their popular base, but to find ways to address the grievances of that section of the population and develop institutional ways for them to participate fully in political activity. It was unclear whether such measures were appropriate to Iraq. The third variant consists of the creation of a variety of local “self-defense” forces by the government. These militias are intended to provide local defense against guerrilla attacks until regular military forces can arrive. This frees up the regular forces for offensive operations against the insurgents. Creating effective self-defense forces is difficult. First, many of the villagers may actively support the insurgents. Arming self-defense forces is thus simply channeling weapons to the insurgents. Even where there is no active support, the poorly equipped and trained self-defense forces may be afraid to engage insurgents. The reluctance of at least some recently formed Iraqi police and army units to engage in firefights with insurgents illustrates the difficulties inherent in attempting to create effective self-defense forces. The role of self-defense organizations in defeating an insurgency has, moreover, often been narrowly understood as a purely military matter. Counterinsurgents have come to appreciate that organizing the rural population to defend itself is efficient. Local selfdefense forces (together with some population reconcentration) enable villages to stave off insurgent attacks. But the political aspects of local self-defense organizations are perhaps equally, if not more, important. In places where self-defense forces were closely linked to the defense of fortified villages and where they were under the control of government agencies (often the military), a form of near-totalitarian political control over the adult male population was achieved. This may not have been intended, but it worked to crowd out any space for independent organization among the villagers, subjecting them all to surveillance by the military. The local self-defense forces in Guatemala, in Peru, in Vietnam, and in Kenya all seem to have monopolized political activity and suppressed dissent (Stern 1998; Stoll 1993; Dunkerley 1988; Sorley 1999). A prolonged and political struggle Because counterinsurgency is primarily a political operation, it is a slow, prolonged struggle over who has influence over the state. In theory, this is recognized in American counterinsurgency doctrine, but is often not accepted as a matter of practical policy. Counterinsurgency practitioners make the point that successful counterinsurgency requires patience. However, patience is often in short supply. Managing the tension between the need for protracted operations and the need to minimize the political costs of counterinsurgency is seldom adequately addressed in counterinsurgency manuals. Not only are national-level political conditions in the metropolis not conducive to prolonged counterinsurgency, but the mind-set of most modern military organizations finds the protracted and indecisive nature of counterinsurgency operations uncongenial. Soldiers are usually trained to act decisively, and to seek swift victory. For soldiers with this mind-set, the prolonged and indecisive nature of counterinsurgency operations can be frustrating. Again, aside from platitudes and bromides, counterinsurgency manuals 37

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seldom directly address the tensions arising from the fact that low-intensity military operations demand a quite different set of attitudes and skills, an entirely different habitus, from those required by conventional combat. Because insurgency and counterinsurgency are political struggles about the terms of incorporation of various groups in the polity and about the nature of the state, the “solution” to an insurgency is often ultimately a matter of politics. Where insurgencies are small and isolated from a large popular support base (e.g. some guerrilla focos in Latin America immediately following the Cuban revolution), it may be possible to end the insurgency by killing or capturing the guerrillas. But where the insurgents have a meaningful social base, pacification almost always involves some sort of negotiated political bargain between the insurgents and the government. From the point of view of the counterinsurgent state, the role of military force is twofold: on the one hand, the insurgents must not be allowed to overthrow the state; on the other hand, constant military pressure must be exerted on the insurgents to convince them that they cannot win militarily. From this perspective, time is on the side of the government: so long as the insurgents do not win, the government can wait until the conditions are ripe for a political settlement. Many states have learned to live with protracted insurgencies. These insurgencies often fizzle out and fade away in fits and starts as peace agreements succeed temporarily, collapse, and are renegotiated. Key to ending insurgencies is the establishment and consolidation of a meaningful democracy. As electoral politics increasingly come to be seen as a viable and legitimate road to power, political struggles can be demilitarized. Finding settlement terms acceptable to all conflicting parties is often exceedingly difficult. At times, the solution may involve the breakup of a state into smaller entities, as occurred in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. These major issues about the nature of the Iraqi state were, at the time of writing, still very much in the air: could the Sunnis be reconciled and integrated into a national polity? Would there be, indeed, a meaningful central state in Iraq, or would the country split into three or more entities? Controlling security forces, militias, and death squads The fifth major unresolved issue in counterinsurgency thinking concerns the need to reform the host nation’s armed forces so that they became an effective agent of the government. First, the counterinsurgent armed forces themselves need to be brought under tight control. This is by no means an easy task. A whole series of principal-agent issues bedevils the conduct of military and police operations. To be concrete, if the political leadership is concerned not to alienate large numbers of the indigenous population, how can they stop soldiers from killing or injuring non-combatant civilians or damaging their property? In Iraq, the concern has not primarily been the control of US and British forces (although many of their actions, official and unauthorized, have been counterproductive), but the control of various Iraqi security forces. Military forces in the Developing World in an insurgency or civil war are seldom accountable to, or under the effective control of, the political leadership. They act with considerable impunity, and lower-level leaders often effectively operate without restraint. Indeed, a central task of US counterinsurgency efforts is to attempt to create a “modern” bureaucratic military that is an obedient servant of the political leadership. Better training of officers and men, clear rules of engagement, close supervision, and punishment for offenders are all necessary, but extremely difficult to implement in 38

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practice. Building an effective and responsible military force is difficult and expensive; that is why military forces in the Developing World are often undisciplined. Poorly resourced, corrupt, and politicized, they often fall far short of the ideal type of a rational bureaucracy. In the Iraqi case, the US had to create a new Iraqi army from scratch. It took the Americans some time to appreciate the urgency of the need to re-establish Iraqi security forces; once understood, it then became a race against time. The creation of new Iraqi security forces became the central plank in an American exit strategy. Although necessary, it was unclear whether the creation of a new Iraqi army would be a sufficient condition for suppression of the insurgency. Even if an effective Iraqi army were created, what would this new army do, and what would be its strategy for counterinsurgency? What would ensure that it operated as an effective agent of a central state, rather than responding to the tug of particularistic interests? What would be the relationship between the national army, on the one hand, and the Kurdish Peshmerga and the vast number of local militias on the other? To what extent would it be a Shiite, rather than a national, army? Besides the question of the national army, there were unresolved questions about control of the militias and death squads and about how the numerous police and security forces outside the regular army would be controlled. This is partly a question of state capacity and partly a matter of political will. It remains unfinished business. The problem of the control of armed force is compounded in many Developing World conflicts by the emergence of a variety of “self-defense” militia forces and “warlord” armies formed by local groups opposed to the “insurgents.” They may be motivated by a desire to protect themselves and their property, to wreak vengeance on the insurgents, to dispossess the insurgents, or to establish the political domination of their class, ethnic group, or sect. Self-defense militias provide the government with a vast pool of manpower, which can be used to free up regular forces from static defense. Since they are familiar with local conditions, militias are often highly effective in certain kinds of military tasks. They are often better at generating intelligence, and they are often unconstrained by the rules of engagement and laws of war that, in principle at least, restrain the actions of regular forces. The organization of self-defense forces can exacerbate conflict and divide communities. Given their local knowledge and relative autonomy from the “official” forces of the counterinsurgent state, they are often able to impose a reign of terror and assassination outside government control. Although sometimes these militias and death squads can act as proxies for (and with the tacit approval of) the government, there is a tendency for them to get out of hand. When that happens, re-establishing government control is often difficult. It is striking that after half a century of serious thinking about counterinsurgency, so many of the key conceptual and theoretical issues remain unresolved. This may perhaps be a manifestation of a deeper conceptual blindness in American strategic culture: “Western democracies knew how to deal with war and knew how to deal with peace. They were confused, however, by conflicts overlapping and blending the two” (Metz 1995: 8). Debate tended to be artificially aligned between proponents of kinetic approaches to destroy insurgent armed forces, those who sought to win hearts and minds, and those who gave priority to various population-control measures. At times, a superficial consensus around a set of “best practices” or fundamental principles of counterinsurgency would emerge (Sepp 2005; Cohen et al. 2006), which usually stressed the 39

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counterproductive nature of the kinetic approach, emphasized the importance of creating a legitimate government, recognized that ultimately the conflict was about political rather than strictly military goals, that it would be long and drawn out, that good intelligence on the insurgents was crucial, and that insurgents should be isolated from their potential supporters. It was usually argued that respect on the part of the counterinsurgent forces for the human rights of the population and of the guerrillas was an important way to win hearts and minds. Minimal force was to be used, and local hostnation military forces were to be relied on wherever possible. Such lists of counterinsurgency principles represent a clear advance on the purely kinetic approaches that, I argue, are the reflex response of modern military organizations. But these lists of principles fail to address fundamental questions about how to gain legitimacy for the government, about how the population is to be controlled and for what purposes, and which kinds of reforms are required to undercut the insurgency. Before the invasion of Iraq there were profound organizational forces steering the US Army, Marine Corps, and Special Forces away from any serious intellectual engagement with the issues entailed in counterinsurgency operations. In none of these venues did counterinsurgency thinking find a congenial and welcoming home. As may be seen in their acquisition programs, each service remained wedded to a vision of itself that centered on fighting hi-tech wars. As far as any innovative thinking (indeed, any thinking at all) about counterinsurgency was concerned, the US military was a reluctant learner. This meant that when the US military was confronted once again (in Iraq) with an insurgency, it turned for intellectual guidance to works written in the 1960s. There was no intellectual continuity; the wheel of counterinsurgency doctrine had to be reinvented. But returning to the “classics” of counterinsurgency thinking was no solution. These works had failed to resolve central issues, were conceptually ambiguous, and relied on naive theories of grievances and legitimacy.

Will the US military now assimilate the lessons of counterinsurgency? This chapter argues that the US military does learn from its counterinsurgent experience, but in a cycle of learning and “forgetting,” which means in practice that there is no sustained organizational learning. As I argued earlier in this article, modern military organizations (and certainly the US military) are predisposed to define war in terms that they find familiar and intellectually comforting. World War II (WWII) is the master template. War is seen as a massive clash of conventional armored forces. All other forms of war are basically seen as deviations, complications, or lesser-included cases (labeled “unconventional” or “irregular”). These preferences were developed during WWII and consolidated during the Cold War. By comparison with the ghastly slaughter and stalemate of World War I, WWII was seen by the services as a shift from attrition to maneuver, from impasse to decisive action. Swift, decisive victory became the acme of military professionalism and the rod against which all operations (including counterinsurgency) were measured. Military officers intend to conduct “rapid, decisive operations” to produce “decisive victory.” Much emphasis is put on being “offensively minded.” Who, after all, would want to conduct “slow, indecisive operations” – unless, of course, they were conducting a counterinsurgency campaign? 40

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The military mind-set, if one can talk in such reified terms, emphasizes actions and qualities that are probably not appropriate in counterinsurgency operations. Counterinsurgency is almost always slow and indecisive. Military operations play a subordinate role in the complex political struggles that define the insurgency–counterinsurgency dialectic. So long as “regular” military forces (and even some “special” forces) prepare for “conventional” war as their primary mission, there will be little intellectual readiness to deal with the challenges of counterinsurgency. Proponents of counterinsurgency need an organizational niche, and this they have failed to find. American military officers are smart, professional, and highly motivated. We can be sure that, now that the initial phase of trying to do things using the regular playbook is over, there will be rapid learning. They will become more effective at counterinsurgency operations. The thought that Iraq might not be an isolated case, but merely one campaign among many in a protracted global counterinsurgency, might well serve to focus attention on counterinsurgency doctrine. Moreover, there is an important difference between the current security environment and that of the Cold War. With the possible exception of China, there is no other large modern military organization that the US military must confront. Perhaps this change in the security environment, and the concomitant notion that the global war on terror will be a “long war” with many campaigns, will mean that US ground forces embrace counterinsurgency as one of their central missions. There are certainly proponents of such a view scattered throughout the Army and Marine Corps (see Roxborough 2002, 2004, 2006). The key issue is the conditions under which deeply rooted organizational identities and cultures are subject to change. As Jeffrey Legro (1995) and numerous writers on military doctrine and innovation have suggested, although some processes of endogenous change in military culture clearly occur, often as a result of the intervention of civilian politicians (Avant 1994; Cohen 2002), external shocks such as defeat in war are by far the most common precipitants of change in organizational culture. Key works include Doughty (1985), Goldman and Eliason (2003), Harris (1995), Johnson (1998), Kier (1997), Kiesling (1996), Mahnken (2002), Murray and Millett (1996), Posen (1984), Rosen (1991), Roxborough (2000), Samuels (1995), Winton (1988), and Winton and Mets (2000). On the other hand, the US military is overstretched, and there are insistent calls from parts of the political spectrum for a more cautious approach to world politics. Not surprisingly, public support for the war in Iraq has declined. A scenario could easily be imagined in which the experiment in bringing democracy to that country collapsed in catastrophic failure. US forces might get bogged down in an unproductive quagmire which might well produce a decision on the part of the Armed Forces (as after Vietnam) not to get involved in that sort of messy conflict again. If American forces were to exit Iraq relatively quickly, and if there is not another “Iraq” in the pipeline, then perhaps institutional history will reassert itself and the American military will return to its somnolence as far as counterinsurgency doctrine is concerned. We will see.

Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Roxborough, I. (2006) “Learning and diffusing the lessons of counterinsurgency: the US Military from Vietnam to Iraq,” Sociological Focus 39(4): 319–46. 41

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References Avant, D. (1994) Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cohen, E. (2002) Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, New York: Simon and Schuster. Cohen, E., Crane, C., Horvath, J. and Nagl, J. (2006) “Principles, imperatives, and paradoxes of counterinsurgency,” Military Review, March-April: 49–53. Doughty, R. (1985) The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919–1939, Hamden, CT: Shoestring Press. Dunkerley, J. (1988) Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central America, London: Verso. Goldman, E. and Eliason, L. eds. (2003) The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Goodwin, J. (2001) No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hammes, T.X. (2004) The Sling and the Stone, St Paul, MN: Zenith Press. Harris, J.P. (1995) Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Johnson, D. (1998) Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the US Army, 1917–1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kalyvas, S. (2006) The Logic of Violence in Civil War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerkvliet, B. (1977) The Huk Rebellion, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kier, E. (1997) Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kiesling, E. (1996) Arming Against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Legro, J. (1995) Cooperation under Fire, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mahnken, T. (2002) Uncovering Ways of War: US Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918–1941, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Metz, S. (1995) Counterinsurgency: Strategy and the Phoenix of American Capability, Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute. Morris, M. (2005) “Al Qaeda as insurgency,” Joint Force Quarterly, 39: 40–50. Murray, W. and Millett, A. eds. (1996) Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagl, J.A. (2002) Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Westport, CT: Praeger. Posen, B. (1984) The Sources of Military Doctrine, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Race, J. (1972) War Comes to Long An, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rosen, S. (1991) Winning the Next War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Roxborough, I. (2000) “Organizational innovation: Lessons from military organizations,” Sociological Forum, 15: 367–72. ——(2002) “Globalization, unreason, and the dilemmas of US military strategy,” International Sociology, 17: 339–59. ——(2004) “Iraq, Afghanistan, the global war on terrorism, and the Owl of Minerva,” Political Power and Social Theory, 16: 185–211. ——(2006) “The new American warriors,” Theoria, 109: 49–78. Samuels, M. (1995) Command or Control? London: Cass. Sepp, K. (2005) “‘Best practices’ in counterinsurgency,” Military Review, (May-June): 8–12. Sorley, L. (1999) A Better War, New York: Harcourt Brace. Stern, S., ed. (1998) Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stoll, D. (1993) Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala, New York: Columbia University Press.

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Stubbs, R. (1989) Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: the Malayan Emergency 1948–1960, Oxford: Oxford University Press. US Army (1990) FM 100–20 “Military operations in low-intensity conflict,” Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army. ——(2004) FMI 3–07.22 “Counterinsurgency operations,” Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army. US Marine Corps (1980) FMFM 8–2 “Counterinsurgency operations,” Washington, DC: Headquarters, United States Marine Corps. Winton, H. (1988) To Change an Army, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Winton, H. and Mets, D. (eds) (2000) The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918–1941, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

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4 Twenty-first century narratives from Afghanistan Storytelling, morality, and war Ryan D. Pengelly and Anne Irwin

Introduction In the last few years, Canadian Forces have taken a leading role in suppressing insurgency activities in Afghanistan, capacity building of the Afghan National Army, and supporting infrastructure projects as part of the UN-sanctioned, NATO-led International Stabilization Assistance Force (Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces 2009). Since expanding into the southern provinces of Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers have been increasingly engaged in frequent and tense combat with members of the Taliban while patrolling “outside the wire” and the safety of Kandahar Airfield’s guarded walls (Irwin 2006). As Canada’s first combat operation since the Korean War, this military and political situation has generated nationwide attention as politicians, academics, activists, and citizens engage in a polarized debate regarding the nature and legitimacy of Canada’s new international military role in Afghanistan. Canadian infantry soldiers have also been significantly contributing to this debate through storytelling based on their first-hand experience of Afghanistan, international development, and war. Unprecedented in the history of war, these twenty-first century emails and blogs offer an alternative and challenging perspective to Canadian civilians and media. Anthropologists have long been interested in storytelling as a window into a particular culture (Rosaldo 1986) and most recently as an ethnographic technique in a globalized world (Rapport 2000). For military anthropologists, oral storytelling is a meaningful element in soldiers’ lives for its contribution to social cohesion, its role in crystalizing hazy experiences, in generating social identity, and in making possible the exchange of knowledge and experience (Ben-Ari 1998; Irwin 2002). In the age of the internet, electronic storytelling (or blogging) constitutes the commemoration of soldiers’ experience in civil society (Keren 2005). Although stories play an important functional role for a particular individual, group or culture, storytelling is fundamentally a socially situated activity constituting and reflecting experiential, social, and cultural characteristics (Brenneis 1996; Briggs 1996; Gubrium and Holstein 2008; Irwin 2002; Rosaldo 1986). Stories have also been shown to embody culturally shared narratives of morality 44

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(Tolvanen and Jylha 2005) and to provide a platform for the socialization of morality and the sanctioning of individuals and groups (Garrett and Baquedano-López 2002). Using a narrative ethnography approach (Gubrium and Holstein 2008), we analyze two combat stories, comparing the ways soldiers use language, create meaning, and communicate to civilian and military audiences. Specifically, we examine one soldier’s internet blog and another’s recorded account of the same combat engagement. Drawing on the textual evidence from these combat stories, we reveal the sociomoral nature of soldiers’ narratives, including examples of social sanctioning and praise of appropriate soldierly behaviour, the narrator’s actions, and the legitimacy of war and Canada’s role in Afghanistan.

Narrative analysis Narratives and stories Narrative refers to the use of any form of language that creates a sense of coherence and meaning of the human experience of time and space (Rapport and Overing 2000: 283– 84). This medium allows a narrator and audience to create meaning, share experience, and communicate in any form of language, including visual, oral, written, body language, and architecture. Storytelling is a more specific form of narrative that expresses the human tendency to recount tales of knowledge, experience, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and perspectives. So, whereas narrative refers to any language use that embodies events in time, story refers to a more specific use of language in which a narrator relates a purposeful and meaningful account to a particular audience. One specific form of storytelling, the personal experience narrative, implies that the narrator becomes so deeply engrossed in the story that the memory of the original experience may be relived (Rosaldo 1986: 115). Personal narratives are complex expressions that are embedded with a mixture of “realities”. For example, in personal narratives “the narrator casts himself or herself as a character or figure while playing the role of animator, the person who brings all of these personages and their words and actions to life” (Briggs 1996: 26, emphasis in original) as well as commentator, observer, and interpreter. Similarly, by using personal narrative we make sense of ourselves as individuals and as members of groups (Johnstone 2001: 640; Rapport 2000: 287). Rather than simply signifying a verbal representation of an event, stories are socially situated processes and embodiments that constitute and reflect experiential, social, and cultural characteristics (Brenneis 1996; Briggs 1996; Irwin 2002; Rosaldo 1986). Drawing on his research among the Ilongot of the Philippines, Rosaldo explains that stories of hunting experiences “both reflect what actually happened and define the kinds of experiences they seek out on future hunts” (1986: 134). In the Canadian military, Irwin similarly contends that “military exercises are experienced by soldiers as opportunities for producing stories, so that the tropes and conventions of storytelling govern what is noticed and attended to during the original experience” (2002: 120). Stories, in this sense, constitute not only linguistic representations, but also embody the narrator’s personal and shared beliefs, understandings, and expectations about future experience. The context of a narrative’s generation and the particular combination of narrator, audience, purposes, and expectations have a significant influence on the style, form, and content (Brenneis 1996; Briggs 1996; Irwin 2002; Linde 2001; Rapport and Overing 45

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2000; Rosaldo 1986). The act of storytelling is thus co-narration or co-performance, such that the narrator and the audience may overtly or covertly contribute to the narrative in dialog format (Brenneis 1996; Briggs 1996; Irwin 2002; Johnstone 2001; Rosaldo 1986). In this manner, the process of storytelling and its content are contextdependent, culturally defined, and social acts guided by multiple actors. Storytelling plays a crucial role in military operations and exercises, during which physically demanding conditions and alterations in time and sleep tend to blur soldiers’ memory (Irwin 2002). Consequently, through storytelling Canadian soldiers “collaboratively reconstruct the events” of a particular military exercise (Irwin 2002: 118). Furthermore, stories serve to bind individuals and groups through the process of narration (Brenneis 1996; Johnstone 2001), such that storytelling among a group of Canadian soldiers generates intimacy and sociality through a shared experience and story event (Irwin 2002: 120–21). Similarly, in the Israeli Defence Forces, in which social cohesion is vital to the performance of military units in combat, informal activities such as storytelling, anecdotes, and “tall” tales constitute a social glue (Ben-Ari 1998: 29). The process of storytelling for soldiers becomes an essential means of recollecting military exercises and reconstructing a meaningful intersubjective experience between fellow soldiers. Morality Morality and social conventions have been conceptualized as socially constructed and guided by cultural context (Witherell and Edwards 1991). Similarly, Tolvanen and Jylha (2005) use the concept of morality in their research of gendered stories of alcohol. Although not explicitly defined, morality is treated in a broad sense as the interviewees’ opinions of right or wrong. Instead of focusing on the factual alcohol histories or exact amounts of consumption, these researchers analyze the individuals’ narratives and the “culturally shared ways of understanding and describing the use of alcohol and its place in everyday life” (Tolvanen and Jylha 2005: 420). Taking moral narratives one step further Garrett and Baquedano-López argue that morals encoded in language are “the basis for the socialization of morality, that is, the social sanctioning or rejection of actions (one’s own as well as those of others)” (2002: 352), as an individual and as part of a collective. Essentially, the social sanctions and support for particular behaviours and beliefs that are found in language orient group members to an ideal, moral action. Drawing on these authors, we define morality as the social or cultural construction of right and wrong action and belief that is expressed through narrative language of opinions, moral messages, criticisms, and judgments. In some cases, the narrator explicitly articulates notions of morality by shaping the narrative around certain actions or events and providing opinions and criticisms of what is considered morally right or wrong. In other cases, however, morality implicitly appears as narrators subtly and skillfully disguise their feelings, thoughts, and moral evaluations within an engaging story. In the Canadian military, officers and non-commissioned officers share common assumptions about ideal, moral soldier performance, which they communicate during social interaction as good and bad characteristics of soldier behaviour (Irwin 2004). Irwin (2004) argues that, despite differences in opinion between officers and non-commissioned officers in applying the “good” soldier model to soldier behaviour, all soldiers share a tacit assumption of the personal qualities that make a “good” soldier. Specifically, a good soldier “accepts responsibility, demonstrates the ability to lead, is in good shape physically, works hard, is highly motivated, and works well with his peers” (Irwin 2004: 12). 46

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Conversely, a “bad” soldier is dependent, has a negative attitude, or worst of all, is incapable of accomplishing tasks and orders (Irwin 2004: 13).

Methods Narrative ethnography Narrative ethnography combines traditional forms of narrative analysis, that is, an examination of internal elements of stories, and expands the analytical purview to include the practice of storytelling and the “contexts, conditions, and resources of the storytelling process” (Gubrium and Holstein 2008: 262). Along these lines, we have combined ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and interviewing, with narrative analysis influenced by ethnomethodology (Francis and Hester 2004; Watson 1992). Ethnomethodologists remind the narrative researcher of the importance of empirical observations situated in the text. This methodological procedure complements ethnography by approaching the text both as a field site and ethnographic technique in a globalized world (Rapport 2000). Therefore, direct quotations from the narratives are frequently used throughout our analysis of narrative morality. The study This chapter examines and analyzes two personal narratives of a mutually experienced combat encounter with enemy forces on 9 July 2006 in southern Afghanistan known as the “Battle of Panjwai”.1 The first narrative, an oral story of a Canadian soldier’s experience of being wounded in combat, was told to one of the authors while she conducted ethnographic fieldwork with members of the Canadian Forces in southern Afghanistan in 2006.2 This storytelling episode occurred as an unstructured interview with Corporal Slam,3 an infantry soldier and the company commander’s signaller, several weeks after the engagement. The second narrative, a blog composed by Corporal Brian Sanders,4 was posted as part of a series of letters on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s website (Sanders 2006). Cpl Sanders wrote to a civilian audience and gave his first-hand experiences as an ambulance driver during the weeks-long operation and the climactic battle of 9 July. Through comparative narrative analysis, we explore three questions: (1) what evidence of morals is available in these two narratives of personal combat experiences; (2) what kinds of morals are embedded in these two narratives regarding combat experience, Canada’s role in Afghanistan, and war; and (3) how do these two narratives embody different social practices of storytelling, including context, voice, and audience? These research questions have been part of an emergent and simultaneous process of theory, methodology building, and narrative analysis rather than artificially forming themselves a priori (Luttrell 2005). With extensive ethnographic and personal experience with the Canadian Forces, Irwin provides a holistic and socially situated perspective of the narratives.5 After Irwin’s return from southern Afghanistan, Pengelly transcribed the recording of the unstructured interview and storytelling episode of Cpl Slam’s combat experience, attempting to retain Cpl Slam’s speech idiosyncrasies. Together we identified Cpl Sanders’ electronic stories as intriguing social artefacts of the same combat engagement.6 The two narratives were 47

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selected for analysis because of their inherent value as the one of the first sets of soldiers’ combat stories emerging from Afghanistan and because of differences in storytelling context, conditions, and narrator voice. We identified narrative passages with explicit or implicit statements of morality regarding soldier and military unit performance, Canada’s role in Afghanistan, and other events and activities. In this process, our attention turned toward gaps, inconsistencies, and associations within and between the stories instead of searching for a truth or questioning the legitimacy of the narratives (Luttrell 2005).

Canadian soldiers’ stories and morality By recounting their combat experience, the two narrators carefully address their own behaviour and that of other soldiers through the lens of the ideal, moral soldier (Irwin 2004). Whereas Cpl Sanders significantly emphasizes his own behaviour over the actions of other soldiers and lacks explicit moral opinions about his fellow soldiers, Cpl Slam often criticizes other soldiers and their actions during the encounter in Panjwai. Portrayal of others In his portrayal of other soldiers Cpl Sanders speaks positively of his crew members; he respects their characters and the vast amount of military experience they share. Specifically, Cpl Sanders says: we were greeted by our crew commander Cpl Creelman. He’s another outstanding soldier, a former combat engineer who re-enrolled as a medic five year ago … Combined, the three of us with over 30 years of combat trade experience make up the most experienced ambulance crew in Afghanistan. (Cpl Sanders) Experience is clearly a desirable moral trait for a soldier, although Cpl Sanders does not mention what Irwin (2002: 86) has termed “time in” experience, a certain quality of experience involving “physically gruelling experiences which demand the exercise of inner strength and learned skills in simulated war conditions.” Israeli soldiers equally perceive war as an ideal and moral experience and the ultimate test of a soldier (Ben-Ari 1998). Both soldiers’ narratives similarly present war as morally appropriate and the ideal experience for which a soldier trains. Compared with the other narrative, Cpl Sanders does not report the specific behaviour of other soldiers related to ideal, moral action except for the occasion cited above. Linde (2001) discusses the importance of questioning “silences” (stories that are not told) and “erasures” (institutional censoring of particular narratives). Although there are an infinite number of issues that are not raised in narratives, it is possible to define salient silences, especially through the process of narrative comparison (Linde 2001). The absence of moral statements and criticisms of other soldiers in Cpl Sanders’ blog may reveal a silent narrative, especially since “complaining is the norm, not the exception among soldiers” in the Canadian Forces (Irwin 2002: 121). Although Cpl Sanders may be the exception, the absence of complaints and social criticism of fellow soldiers is more likely an outcome of the genre and context of his narrative. Complaining is increasingly regulated in public, 48

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civilian environments, especially in an electronic blog. Often the soldier’s voice is institutionally regulated because of its subaltern, subversive, and controversial nature (Brown and Lutz 2007). Although the Canadian Forces does not formally censor soldiers’ blogs before they are published, there are regulations governing what can and cannot be made public. More subtle, however, are the institutional pressures that may silence criticism of the institution and of its members. Criticism and moral evaluations of soldiers’ behaviour and the Canadian military might be silent narratives that are institutionally regulated, explicitly or tacitly. Furthermore, complaints and moral comments about other soldiers could be absent since Cpl Sanders and his non-military audience do not share those fundamental military experiences. Irwin (2002: 121) remarks that “complaining is one of the ways that soldiers constitute their experiences as shared, and knowing what sorts of complaints are permissible demonstrates membership in the group.” Thus, a soldier would probably not complain to a civilian audience that has not shared similar military experience. In contrast, Cpl Slam frequently offers critical moral commentary of Canadian soldiers and tends to portray them as unaware, vulnerable, and incapable. For example, Captain Jones was there and he couldn’t get his mags7 goin’. And he was focusing on his mags. He’s trying that fuckin’8 mag on and there’s bullets fuckin’ every part there was a gap in his body. That’s where the rounds went … and I’m like “fuck! Someone get him the fuck out of there.” (Cpl Slam) In several instances, Cpl Slam portrays his superiors as unaware of the surrounding danger and military situation. In this paragraph, he points to Captain Jones’s inability to control his weapon, which we discuss below as a soldier’s principal responsibility. His heaviest criticism, however, is reserved for the immoral actions of the Forward Observation Officer,9 whom he considers highly incompetent and responsible for his shrapnel wound: “… he ended up firing in one five fives,10 which I thought the FOO [Forward Observation Officer] did a horrible job … I thought that Lieutenant Halo did a way better job” (Cpl Slam). This moral narrative is just the beginning of a significant amount of negative criticism aimed at the FOO’s performance, but the basic message is that the he was unskilled and incompetent, which is highly undesirable in the Canadian Forces (Irwin 2004). Nonetheless, Cpl Slam comments positively on the performance of certain soldiers: Private Smith fuckin’ hauled Brown out with one fuckin’ hand. And the funny thing is I read some of the things in the CP [Canadian Press] ‘bout guys nominated for medals for bravery and stuff like that. Well, I was there on some of those instances. Those guys shouldn’t be nominated. They did their fuckin’ job. That day, Smith went above and beyond. (Cpl Slam) With this remark, Cpl Slam endorses the moral actions of Private Smith, who he believes epitomizes soldierly strength and bravery because Smith went “above and beyond” a soldier’s duties. Cpl Slam then criticizes the morality of the Canadian Forces because they do not recognize Pte Smith’s bravery and strength: … he never got nominated for nothing because ah who he is and how he does his job, but he did. He’ll never be nominated either. That’s the thing, you know what 49

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it comes down to? Popularity contest. That’s all it fuckin’ is, it makes me, it makes me fuckin’ sick I swear to God. (Cpl Slam) According to Cpl Slam, the moral behaviour of soldiers is not recognized, but instead becomes lost in the political process of military awards. To summarize, each soldier comments directly or indirectly on appropriate soldierly behaviour by means of criticism and praise. In some cases, soldiers use moral narratives to sanction the behaviour of soldiers exhibiting incompetence, unawareness of their surroundings or fellow soldiers, or a negative attitude. In other cases, the narratives depict characteristics of an ideal, moral soldier, such as strength and bravery, experience and awareness, and self-control. Portrayal of self In both narratives, the storytellers also portray themselves as competent, aware, in control of the combat situation, and morally good. When their narrated actions do not reflect the ideal, moral soldier, the narrators mitigate negative self-portrayal by depicting themselves as naive, in the process of learning, or with humour, but rarely in a negative light. Although Cpl Sanders often lacks moral tone in his self-characterizations, he discusses his behaviour and its consequences. Specifically, Cpl Sanders uses slight errors or moral mistakes to inform his civilian audience of lessons that he has learned. For example, On my first night there I relaxed to British humor on the telly, and it was so refreshing to laugh out loud and forget some recent events. I should have known better then [sic] to let my guard down when I was outside the wire. (Cpl Sanders) In this context, Cpl Sanders points out to his civilian audience that a soldier should never let his guard down while “outside the wire” of operations bases, where soldiers are exposed to greater danger and potential for combat. In other cases, Cpl Sanders has no qualms about characterizing his behaviour as foolish and naive: “ … it sounded like a missile buzzed over our heads, followed by a large explosion a few hundred metres behind us. Baffled, I stupidly stood up to see what it was” (Cpl Sanders). Cpl Slam also uses humour to diffuse the responsibility for his blunders, which could draw criticism from other soldiers because of their consequences. Cpl Slam recounts: I started running towards ’im and there was a little slant on the hill onto the road. Well I don’t know what happ … I lost all coordination and tripped over [narrator and interviewer laugh]. Ah fuck I had so much weight on my back, right? (Cpl Slam) This combination of non-critical narration and laughter creates a more favourable impression of Cpl Slam’s behaviour than when he condemns other soldiers’ mistakes. Cpl Slam construes other soldiers’ actions as unjustified and morally inappropriate, whereas his own actions are justified and are not treated to moral evaluation. Cpl Slam often compares himself with his Company Commander: 50

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… we threw twelve grenades into that fuckin’ compound that day and me and the OC [Company Commander] were trying to cover our ah withdrawal. He threw his. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have his safety clip off that’s why the fuckin’ thing didn’t go off, but I fuckin’ grabbed my pin and winged it. Nothing. So, I’m like “how the fuck are we going to get out a here?” (Cpl Slam) In this situation, the Company Commander fails to operate his grenade effectively, yet when Cpl Slam’s attempt yields the same outcome, his story simply switches to how they plan to withdraw from the active zone. In a similar way, themes of professionalism and control of one’s actions and weapon are important to contemporary Canadian soldiers. In both narratives, the Canadian soldiers portray control over the combat situation and skill in battle. Unlike other military narratives, which depict absolute massacre, unpredictability, and chaos (Gowing 1886), Cpl Slam narrates combat experiences in which he and his unit are successful and competent. He often expresses mastery over his experience, whether summoning increasingly more powerful ammunition, hiding in the bullet-proof light armoured vehicles, or protecting fellow soldiers. These military narratives portray Canadian soldiers as professional, competent, and sometimes heroic individuals. Conversely, Cpl Slam comments on the behaviour of an Afghan National Army soldier who had an “ND,” or negligent discharge of his weapon. Cpl Slam uses the irresponsible action of this Afghan National Army soldier as an exemplar of lack of control and professionalism: … and that’s when one of the ANA [Afghan National Army] soldiers had an ND and he fired his weapon off by accident and I was like, “Something fucked’s goin’ happen here today” and he goes “these guys are fuckin’ right out of ’er”.11 (Cpl Slam) In the Canadian Forces, control over one’s weapon is extremely important, so when the Afghan National Army soldier fails to maintain this professional soldierly behaviour, he and his co-soldiers are described as “right out of ’er,” or unaware, uncontrolled, and undisciplined. Professionalism, performance accountability, and lawfulness are clearly a larger institutional narrative that the Canadian Forces seeks to promote in its soldiers (Canadian Defense Academy/Canadian Forces Leadership Institute 2003: 14). Themes of professionalism and self-control, however, are not inherent or universal in military narratives. In the case of the 2000 UN disarmament in Sierra Leone, Mende kamajor combatants perform narratives (domei) of power, ferocity, and “uncontrolled” behaviour based on an ideal combatant of “a ‘hard’ fighter, a common descriptor of combatants noted for their skill, ruthlessness, and bravery” (Hoffman 2005: 343). Like the Canadian Forces, however, the Israeli Defence Forces share the ideal soldier characteristics of professionalism and self-control, wherein Israeli soldiers must exhibit complete control over their weapons, environment, and emotions (Ben-Ari 1998). Cpl Sanders often describes his experience with self-control and the need to regulate feelings and bodily desires. For example, he explains that as “the adrenalin [sic] was wearing off and fatigue setting in … I shook it off, just in time to hear we had more casualties … ” (Cpl Sanders). Self-control is portrayed as particularly important in 51

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regulating feelings of fatigue. Although a soldier may feel exhausted, self-control (reinforced by fear) maintains some degree of alertness out of the necessity of war. In sum, different references to soldierly ideals and moral behaviour appear in the two narratives. Awareness, experience, strength, and bravery are each to some degree important soldierly characteristics. Whereas Cpl Slam restricts his moral evaluations to the performance of members of the military, his unit, and himself, Cpl Sanders’ moral evaluations go beyond self-portrayal and the evaluation of fellow soldiers’ behaviour to consider the legitimacy and moral nature of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. Whereas Cpl Slam’s audience was the anthropologist who was interviewing him, and whom he might have assumed by virtue of her mere presence was sympathetic to the role of the Canadian military in Afghanistan, Cpl Sanders’ blog was intended for a much wider audience. In the remaining discussion, we consider several wider moral messages that Cpl Sanders’ narrative articulates and intends for a Canadian civilian audience. Morality and the legitimacy of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan In his blog, Cpl Sanders adopts an educational and political narrative that purposefully seeks to illustrate a soldier’s experience to a Canadian, civilian audience as well as the “reality” of the war and the effectiveness of NATO’s and Canada’s presence in Afghanistan. This narrative style carries subtle yet significant moral weight in the political debate of Canada’s role in Afghanistan. The move back passed quickly, everyone had a lead foot as we pushed closer and closer to the base. Night had fallen by the time we reached Kandahar city, and it was nothing like I had remembered it. Shops and restaurants and hotels had opened. Fruits and vegetables were for sale. You would never have guessed that the city had just gone through a war. It was amazing. Because of our presence, people had their lives back. (Cpl Sanders) In this paragraph, Cpl Sanders makes a direct claim about the moral nature of the Canadian Forces’ presence in Afghanistan. Evidence of positive development, increased safety, and improved freedom in Afghanistan shows the moral justness of the Canadian Forces’ actions. Cpl Sanders immediately follows this evidence with a challenge and critique of people of Canada who ignorantly oppose the Canadian Forces’ presence in Afghanistan: A lot of people in Canada think that we should not be here in Afghanistan, but those people don’t see the remarkable changes happening here. One interpreter told me, “Because Canada is here, our people are happy again.” So to all those Canadians who continue to harp about what they don’t know – here’s your straw, suck it up. (Cpl Sanders) By making use of this straw metaphor various times, Cpl Sanders challenges the sector of Canadian society that is politically opposed to the war in Afghanistan by evoking the moral ideal of the strong, professional, competent, and aware soldier. Essentially, Cpl Sanders transposes the model of the ideal, moral soldier onto Canadian civilians who complain or criticize the war in Afghanistan as unjust. These Canadians need to wake up, get tough, and “suck it up.” 52

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Political criticism is a significant theme in Cpl Sanders’ narrative. The narrative reacts, in part, to the debate in Canada about the mission in Afghanistan; Cpl Sanders hopes to articulate a different and preferable moral reality. In other words, he attempts to show the moral justness of the war in Afghanistan based on the encouraging experiential evidence of development and positive political change. This message is delivered by focusing on the moral character of a helpful and caring Canada and describing the tangible positive effects that the Canadian presence is having in Afghanistan: … after four hours on a spine board for this injured 65-year-old man, we put him in the hands of capable doctors. Later we found that the man was an influential leader of the village nearby, and our assistance helped changed [sic] the views of some Afghans. (Cpl Sanders) In various instances, Cpl Sanders provides personal experience as evidence and justification of his narrative’s moral message and the Canadian military’s moral righteousness for being in Afghanistan and waging war against the Taliban. Thus, the moral commentary pervasively embedded in Cpl Sanders’ narrative actively responds to Canada’s political environment. He tells combat stories with the purpose of sharing his first-hand experiences while additively adopting moral and political positions within a broader civilian context.

Conclusion Storytelling is fundamentally a highly complex, cultural phenomenon that challenges academic analysis. Consequently, this chapter has not attempted an exhaustive analysis of stylistic, linguistic, and moral similarities and differences between the two personal combat narratives. We have, however, attempted to show some insightful and systematic observations regarding shared narrative themes, which constitute and reflect the “vital capacity of people to work together to create, share, affirm, and celebrate something that is held in common” (Jackson 2002: 40), as well as divergent narrative themes, which highlight the importance of the storytelling context and audience (Gubrium and Holstein 2008) and distinct and idiosyncratic storytelling voices. At times the stories of Cpl Slam and Cpl Sanders draw the narrator, his experience, and his audience into a unique intersubjective reality. At other times, the stories may bridge and create a novel experience between the narrator and audience. In both cases, however, social approval or disapproval plays an intriguing role in the negotiation of morals between individual soldiers or between the Canadian Forces and Canadian civil society. In these narratives, the narrators negotiate the “integration and balance between one’s personal world and the wider world of others, such that one’s voice carries and one’s action have repercussions in the State, nation or community with which one identifies” (Jackson 2002: 40). In this way, it is exciting to bear witness to the institutional, national, and international expression of personal combat stories and their ability to mediate moral, social, and political processes through channels of social sanctioning and praise. These contemporary storytellers are writing a new chapter in the history of war as they simultaneously carry their old and new weapons into battle. 53

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Notes 1 The “Battle of Panjwai” broadly refers to the collection of combat encounters with Taliban insurgents in the Panjwai District, Kandahar Province that began in the spring of 2006. For further reading on the combat encounter of 9 July 2006 refer to the remaining blog entries by Cpl Sanders (Sanders 2006) and various news columns by Blatchford (2006a, 2006b). For reading on the broader “Battle of Panjwai” refer to Day’s (2007) three-part series in Legion Magazine. 2 In 2006, Irwin conducted ethnographic fieldwork with 8 Platoon of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (1PPCLI) in southern Afghanistan. Irwin was present at the combat engagement of 9 July 2006, but several hundred meters away from the front lines of fire with the support echelon of light armored vehicles. 3 All names from Cpl Slam’s narrative, including Cpl Slam, are pseudonyms. 4 Cpl Sanders’s actual name is used because his narrative is publicly available on the CBC’s website. 5 Anne Irwin served as an officer for 15 years in the Canadian Forces Reserves. 6 It is important to note that, even though we argue that all storytelling is socially practiced and situated, the second narrative was created beyond our ability to observe the complex nature of its production. 7 “Mag” refers to the magazine of the weapon, which holds the rounds of ammunition. In this instance, the Captain is struggling to reinsert a new magazine of bullets into his weapon while the enemy is spraying fire around his body. 8 We have retained the word “fuck” for several reasons. The use of the word fuck in the military does not carry the same emotional quality that it does in civilian environments. Reflecting the normalization of swearing in the military, this word functions as a “substitute expression”, speech filler, and/or stammer similar to the word “um” (Elkin 1946). Omitting this word would give a false portrayal of soldiers’ diction. Furthermore, the use of the word fuck indicates an important distinction between written and oral storytelling. The reader should not assume that the use and inherent meaning of the word fuck show negative emotion and disrespect, but rather provide insight into important sociolinguistic differences between written and oral storytelling and military and civilian environments. 9 The FOO, an artillery officer attached to the company, also produced a narrative of the event, which was part of our original study; however, because of length constraints we have removed that portion of the analysis from this version. 10 One five fives are artillery rounds. 11 “Right out of ’er” is slang for out of control and refers to the ND.

References Ben-Ari, E. (1998) Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions, and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit, New York: Berghahn Books. Blatchford, C. (2006a) “Canadian dies in Afghan battle,” Globe and Mail, 10 July. ——(2006b) “Three days of fierce, bloody war,” Globe and Mail, 11 July. Brenneis, D. (1996) “Telling troubles: narrative, conflict, and experience,” in C. Briggs (ed.) Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press, 41–52. Briggs, C. (1996) “Introduction,” in C. Briggs (ed.) Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press, 3–40. Brown, K. and Lutz, C. (2007) “Grunt lit: The participant-observers of empire,” American Ethnologist, 34: 322–28. Canadian Defense Academy/Canadian Forces Leadership Institute (2003) Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada, Ottowa: Department of National Defense. Day, A. (2007). “Operation Medusa: the Battle for Panjwai, part 1: The charge of Charlie company,” Legion Magazine Online, Available http://www.legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2007/09/operati on-medusa-the-battle-for-panjwai (accessed 6 December 2009). Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces (2009) Operation Athena. Online. Available http://www.cefcom-comfec.forces.gc.ca/pa-ap/ops/athena/index-eng.asp (accessed 6 December 2009).

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Elkin, F. (1946) “The soldier’s language,” American Journal of Sociology, 51: 414–22. Francis, D., and Hester, S. (2004) An Invitation to Ethnomethodology: Language, Society, and Interaction, London: SAGE Publications. Garrett, P. and Baquedano-López, P. (2002) “Language socialization: Reproduction and continuity, transformation and change,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 31: 339–61. Gowing, T. (1886) A soldier’s experience or a voice from the ranks: showing the cost of war in blood and treasure: a personal narrative of the Crimean campaign from the standpoint of the ranks; the Indian mutiny, and some of its atrocities; the Afghan campaigns of 1863, Nottingham: Thos. Forman and Sons. Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. (2008) “Narrative ethnography,” in S.N. Hesse-Biber and P. Leavy (eds), Handbook of Emergent Methods, New York: Guilford Press: 241–64. Hoffman, D. (2005) “Violent events as narrative blocs: The disarmament at Bo, Sierra Leone,” Anthropological Quarterly, 78: 329–53. Irwin, A. (2002) “The social organization of soldiering: A Canadian infantry company in the field”, unpublishedPhDdissertation,. ——(2004) “Ranking the Rank and File,” Canadian Defense Academy Online. Available http://www. cda-acd.forces.gc.ca/CFLI/engraph/research/pdf/82.pdf (accessed 29 September 2007). ——(2006) “Outside the Wire: The Lived Experience of Combat Soldiers in Afghanistan,” paper presented for 8 Platoon of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry at the University of Calgary, November. Jackson, M. (2002) The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Johnstone, B. (2001) “Discourse analysis and narrative,” in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, and H. Hamilton (eds), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Malden: Blackwell Publishers: 635–49. Keren, M. (2005) “Narrative and image in the commemoration of war: The blog of L.T. Smash,” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 7: 1–25. Linde, C. (2001) “Narrative in institutions,” in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. Hamilton (eds), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Malden: Blackwell Publishers: 518–36. Luttrell, W. (2005) ‘“Good enough’ methods for life-story analysis,” in N. Quinn (ed.), Finding Culture in Talk: A Collection of Methods, New York: Palgrave Macmillan: Ch. 7. Rapport, N. (2000) “The narrative as fieldwork technique: Processual ethnography for a world in motion,” in V. Amit (ed.), Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World, London: Routledge: 71–95. Rapport, N. and Overing, J. (2000) Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts, New York: Routledge. Rosaldo, R. (1986) “Ilongot hunting as story and experience,” in V. Turner and E. Bruner (eds), The Anthropology of Experience, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois: 97–138. Sanders, B. (2006) An Afghan Odyssey, 7 September, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Online. Available http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_sanders/20060901.html (accessed 6 December 2009). Tolvanen, E. and Jylha, M. (2005) “Alcohol in life story interviews with Finnish people aged 90 or over: Stories of gendered morality,” Journal of Aging Studies, 19: 419–35. Watson, G. (1992) Twenty Nine Lines of Fieldnotes,Manchester:. Witherell, C. and Edwards, C.P. (1991) “Moral versus social-conventional reasoning: A narrative and cultural critique,” Journal of Moral Education, 20: 293–305.

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5 Two US combat units in Iraq Psychological contracts when expectations and realities diverge Wilbur J. Scott, David R. McCone and George R. Mastroianni

During World War II (WWII), social scientists interviewed soldiers in the field (Stouffer et al. 1949), conducted focus groups with soldiers recently returned from combat, and collected oral histories from them (Marshall et al. 1946; Marshall 1947). These classic studies sought not only to document what took place within the combat zone, but also to produce theoretical schemes to account for them. Recent research by Wong (2004, 2005) and Ender (2005a,b) extends this tradition to soldiers in Iraq. Wong’s analyses emphasize the complexity of what some term fourth-generation warfare (Lind et al. 1989; Lind 2004) (war in which at least one of the sides is a military force not organized and controlled by a nation-state) and the corresponding requirement for US military personnel to perform multiple roles and tasks, often ones for which they were neither socialized nor trained. In this paper, we address these complexities, focusing on the “psychological contracts” soldiers form with their units and the military.

Psychological contracts and military units In the fall of 2004, we collected oral histories from soldiers assigned to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR) (a highly mobile reconnaissance unit equipped with armored vehicles and aircraft) and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division (4th ID) (a mechanized infantry unit stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado). Both units expected to fight, as the soldiers say, “tank on tank.” What they encountered instead was a very different battlefield with varied missions. Further, the rationale provided by the US President and his associates for the invasion of Iraq centered around claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was in a position to use them. Although the preemptive strike by US forces did topple Saddam’s government, later resulting in his capture, to date no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Hence, a central theme in our inquiry is the apparent violation of soldiers’ expectations in terms of both the rationale for the war and the type of war they would be fighting in Iraq. 56

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In such circumstances, social exchange theory explains how soldiers might subsequently view their unit, the Army, or even the civilian government. Organizational support theory (OST) (Eisenberger et al. 1990, 2001; Rhoades and Eisenberger 2002; Aselage and Eisenberger 2003), and psychological contract theory (PCT) (Rousseau 1995, 2001) are two main variants of the social exchange paradigm. OST posits that members form “globalized beliefs” about the extent to which the organization “cares about them” and, when feeling valued, repay the organization with high levels of commitment and performance. PCT emphasizes members’ perceptions of things the organization expects them to do in return for the goods and benefits they receive, material and otherwise. Thompson and Bunderson’s (2003) ideological currency theory (ICT) adds a further refinement: organizational members often are motivated to serve selflessly because of commitment to a cause. All these theories describe what happens when, in the eyes of its members, the organization fails to deliver as expected. Generally, they predict that members’ commitment and efforts rise and fall in response to perceptions that the organization is reciprocating with desired material and non-material goods and benefits. Further, research findings make clear that organizational members with different types of psychological contracts react differently to violation. Indeed, in the case of military service in a war zone, the last three motivators may be dominant. However, we did not know specifically what these might consist of for soldiers at Ft Carson. Hence, our approach to studying their experiences was drawn from the grounded-theorizing perspective (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss 1987; Glaser 1992), allowing an interplay between theoretical thinking and data collection and analysis. Our approach therefore called for us to allow our respondents to articulate these experiences in their own words as a way of guiding us toward deriving meaningful generalizations.

Sample and methods We conducted the interviews for this study as part of a larger service project at Ft Carson, Project Enduring Memory (PEM). The end purpose of PEM is to create commemorative videos of Ft Carson-based soldiers who died in Iraq. PEM invited Ft Carson soldiers who had served in the immediate units of deceased soldiers to recount their memories in sessions to be videotaped during the fall of 2004. Soldiers who volunteered to contribute to these memorial videos were also invited to take part in oral-history interviews. Of course, our self-selected sample of soldiers is not statistically representative of those from Ft Carson, much less the totality of soldiers who served in Iraq. Nonetheless, there is an especially strong substantive reason for using this sample. These soldiers not only served in Iraq in combat units, but also lost close comrades to injury and death. Hence, the questions we raise pertinent to psychological contracts with their units and the US Army would seem especially relevant in studying these respondents. We developed an open-ended, semi-structured interview using as a guide the US Army Institute of Military History questionnaire for collecting oral histories from veterans. We modified some questions to make them relevant for respondents on active duty and also added items to tap expectations and perceptions of the battlefield in Iraq. As we began to detect themes in the course of the interview sessions, we expanded the interview to pursue these topics more fully. 57

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Findings In presenting the findings we enumerate “mentions”, i.e. opinions expressed about an issue. The number of mentions often exceeds the number of respondents because a soldier could express more than one opinion about an issue. We also present verbatim snippets from the interviews to illustrate and flesh out the empirical basis for each category of mentions. Our analysis focuses on the following issues: (1) why the soldiers joined the military, (2) the effect of 9/11 on soldiers’ decisions to join or remain in the service, (3) soldiers’ perceptions of why the US is involved militarily in Iraq, and (4) similarities and differences between what soldiers thought they would be doing in Iraq and what they actually experienced. “Why join the Military?” Rousseau (2001: 515–19) has argued that an accounting of psychological contracts should begin with pre-employment experiences and expectations. Hence, it is important to know something about why our respondents joined the Army in the first place. Reflections on this question should provide insight into the first set of expectations of what military service might consist of. The modal response category, irrespective of rank, is that of “utilitarian considerations.” Just under half of the officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) give such a reason (47 percent and 46 percent, respectively), whereas 60 percent of the enlisted (lower-ranking) soldiers cite such a consideration. Typical among the reasons given are the desire to pay for schooling, stabilize an otherwise bleak job outlook, or to acquire a different set of occupational skills. For example, the following is representative of the accounts given by a number of enlisted soldiers: “I was working construction and I had gotten [laid off]. I … went to go stay with my mom, [was] cleaning out my wallet and seen I still had my recruiter’s card in there. Gave him a call and pretty much just enlisted.” Similarly, an NCO who had decided to make the Army a career stated: At the time, I think I was more worried [about] providing for my family more than anything else, and, I mean, I was married for a little over a year and just had a daughter and mainly just wanted to make ends meet. The military is one of the most secure jobs that you can get, so to speak. Finally, an officer stated: [I] originally enlisted for the college benefits. At the time, I was coming out of high school. I wanted to go to college, but my family wouldn’t have been able to support me. I would have had to get a lot of loans. So I thought, go into the Army for a few years and earn some money. And then it just worked, worked out that I got accepted into the United States Military Academy. So my goal of me going to college was attained. Among the remaining response categories, adventure and the lure of the military lifestyle is cited most frequently by NCOs (27 percent, enlisted and officers 10 percent to 11 percent), whereas about equal percentages noted a family history of military service (about 20 percent). Finally, about 20 percent of the officers give “to serve our country” 58

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as the primary consideration; the corresponding percentages for NCOs and enlisted soldiers are 5 percent and 10 percent, respectively. This, of course, does not mean that the notion of service is unimportant among most of our respondents. The findings, however, do point to the crucial role played by occupational and monetary opportunities in coloring pre-employment expectations. Many commentators are concerned that these material incentives might hold up in peacetime but attenuate psychological contracts in time of war. For example, a person might have signed up for military service before 9/11 in anticipation of college benefits and then encountered unexpected deployments to a war zone. Conversely, others might have signed up or remained in the service precisely because of a desire to serve in time of war. In other words, ICT theory would seem tailor-made to address motivations for military service in time of war. Hence, we asked respondents to reflect upon whether 9/11 had any effect on their decision to join or to remain in the military. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of the soldiers said that 9/11 had either a profound or extenuating impact upon their thinking. For example, an enlisted soldier summarized his reaction: Well, [joining the military] was something I had been thinking about for awhile and then September 11th came along. That really kinda pushed me, like, my mindset more towards, hey, you know, maybe, I should go on and do my part. … An officer recounted it this way: Absolutely. I remember the morning it happened. [W]e watched everything happen right there [on a big screen TV]. And … all of us pretty much knew at that moment … there was no doubt we were probably going to go to war. So, yes, it did have a pretty profound effect on me. Among those who commented that 9/11 had no effect on their being in the military (officers 28 percent; NCOs 18 percent; enlisted 29 percent), the common theme was that they were already committed to the military and ready to serve whatever occurred. These accounts point to the role of monetary and ideological considerations in deciding to join or remain in the military. The financial inducements for enlisting are considerable. However, service in time of war also incurs a willingness to risk one’s life in service to the country, a dangerous proposition for which it is difficult to provide adequate monetary inducements, especially among potential service members strongly motivated by a cost-risk-benefit analysis. “Why is the US in Iraq?” As noted above, OST posits that members form globalized beliefs about the organization and their place and role within it. Aselage and Eisenberger (2003: 492–93), for instance, note the tendency of members to assign almost “humanlike” characteristics to the organization and their relationship to it. Included in these globalized beliefs are notions about whether the organization uses them properly, treats them fairly, values their contributions, cares about their well-being, etc. For soldiers in a war zone, this includes a range of issues from “Why are we here?” to “Are we properly trained and equipped?” to “Are our personal and family needs being taken care of?”. 59

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The most commonly expressed reason for US military action is “to remove Saddam from power,” closely followed by “to fight terrorism” and “to find weapons of mass destruction.” These opinions account for just over three-fourths of the stated reasons, but vary by rank. Among NCOs, there was a clear modal category (45 percent): to get Saddam. For officers (25 percent of mentions) and enlisted-rank soldiers (24 percent), a focus on Saddam Hussein predominated as a prime reason for military action. For example, one officer stated, “I believe that, you know, history has shown that Saddam Hussein and his regime were bad for the world and bad for the US, bad for stability. … It’s a good thing to have stopped him.” More officers (30 percent of mentions) and enlisted ranks (28 percent) than NCOs (13 percent) linked military involvement in Iraq to the search for weapons of mass destruction and to the larger war on terrorism. In the words of one officer: Well, you know, there was the weapons of mass destruction, but I always thought we were just, it was a larger part of the global war on terrorism, because I just figured, you go in there and clean up that and move on to somewhere else. We just haven’t left yet. Several soldiers tempered considerations leading to US intervention in Iraq with caution. One officer noted wryly, “Hindsight is 20/20. At that time, we believed they had weapons of mass destruction.” Finally, a small percentage of respondents (officers 6 percent of mentions; NCOs 16 percent; enlisted 16 percent) did not articulate a rationale for military involvement in Iraq. A soldier remarked, “Honestly, I have never really thought about it. To me, it was just, we got orders to go over and that was it.” In a similar vein, an NCO succinctly stated, “I was, well, I’m in the military. I do what I’m told, so I don’t really question it too much. I’m not a diplomat, you know.” “What happened once in Iraq?” The situation on the ground in Iraq changed dramatically by the time the 3rd ACR and 4th ID arrived in Iraq. The tank-on-tank battles they had expected had vanished. What do the soldiers themselves have to say about what took place next? Mission shift The realities differed from what they expected. About half of all mentions express the position that the mission and tactics were different from expected (46 percent). This percentage was slightly higher for NCOs (52 percent) and slightly lower for enlisted soldiers (36 percent). Several respondents noted specifically that the type of war they expected disappeared before the 3rd ACR and 4th ID got there. An officer in the 4th ID stated somewhat wistfully: [A]ctually when we were flying over, we stopped in Germany and saw on television that the 3rd [ID] was pushing into Baghdad. So we initially thought our mission was going to be, continue to fight, and probably just pick up where they left off. … But at that point we [found] the war was pretty much over. We were kinda disappointed actually. 60

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Soon, however, there was plenty to do. What ensued was a kind of urban, guerrilla warfare which, although not totally foreign to armored cavalry and mechanized infantry units, nevertheless called for considerable adjustment and adaptability. A 3rd ACR officer explained: The regiment normally is the eyes and ears of the Third Corps in a major highintensity conflict role. We tended at the time to focus on that versus dismounted operations in the city. We’re just not equipped for [the latter] and that wasn’t the intent behind our formation. But as all the units [quickly] figured out, you gotta be more flexible and have a broader range of base skills, so. But what did these operations consist of? Although there were some important variations by unit, area of operation, and periods during the deployment, there were many similar components of what are called “stability operations.” An NCO in the 3rd ACR summarized stability operations in this way: Basically, just keep the roads clear from IEDs [improvised explosive devices], land mines, and make sure that there was peace, um, confiscate weapons. Basically, do the same thing a police department does. You know, just make sure everything is in order and, of course, you know, to do some raids in houses and shake down what we could, confiscate [weapons], and try to eliminate the bad people and put the fear in them. We did a pretty good job of that. An important part of performing these and other tasks is setting foot on the ground. For tankers and for scouts in Bradley fighting vehicles, this meant dismounting, i.e. climbing down out of those well-protected armored vehicles during potentially hostile situations, something they are neither inclined nor trained to do. As an NCO in the 4th ID explained: [T]here was no real tank threat as far as like tank battles and stuff, … we had … dismounted [missions], … [Y]ou know, we’re not used to dismounting. … So that was a lot, that was different! Similarly, another 4th ID NCO stated: “We started to get into the dismounted infantry tactics. We’re tankers, you know, we don’t ever really get off our tanks. At least that’s the old mentality. That’s changed now.” Yet another 4th ID NCO, this one in a mechanized infantry outfit, cautioned: [I]t was kind of more like being a police officer. … infantry ain’t … too good as police officers. You know, [we’re] not trained for that. If mission shift and changing operations were a stretch for scouts and infantrymen, it could be even more challenging for artillerymen, engineers, and support personnel, who were at times converted into infantry or dismounts. A 3rd ACR artillery NCO described the conversion: … I was expecting to do a hell of a lot more of artillery work. … [W]hen we went out there we had to do … things we weren’t really trained for, but, of course, we adjusted to it. 61

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An enlisted soldier in the 4th ID described the role conflict this could produce: … Being in field artillery, you expected to shoot a lot of rounds and we shot some but not near as much as we thought. [W]e were kind of, like, I would say MPs (military police) after a while. Some of us dealt with it pretty well. Some of us didn’t, just because of the stress. … And, for some, including those in support roles, infantry duties supplemented their usual work, a common occurrence during combat operations. Adaptation to mission shift Although a significant shift in mission often called for soldiers to do many things they had neither expected nor been trained to do, the soldiers by-and-large felt they adjusted to these demands. The comments of this NCO are typical: What we ended up doing was totally different from what … we trained, [so] what we did … was on-the-job training … I think we did an excellent job. Other expectation–reality gaps Several other trends are worth noting. Officers, more so than NCOs and enlisted ranks (26 percent, 15 percent, and 11 percent of mentions, respectively), reported that the job situation was different from what they had expected (i.e. they were not assigned the jobs they expected). Among the enlisted ranks, the most frequent mentions other than mission/tactics address “other situations” (21 percent vs 3 percent and 9 percent for officers and NCOs), i.e. observations about day-to-day conditions, especially the climate. An officer said of the heat: “[Y]ou really can’t explain how hot that is. You, you just can’t. It’s [as] if someone were to open the oven and that blast of heat that you get, that’s what’s like all day long.” Intense heat and gritty sand created special problems for maintaining and repairing armored vehicles. A maintenance NCO recalled an instance working on a tank’s engine: I remember doing tank services … which is pulling the engine out and running [it] and setting [it] back in, and it was 140-something degrees! Well, you gotta alternate your people in and out, get H2O in ’em, keep ’em hydrated. [And] you had to wear gloves! Finally, officers and enlisted soldiers were more likely than NCOs to comment on the differences in the people and culture (13 percent and 11 percent vs 5 percent). We should also note that about one in five of the respondents (18 percent) found things to be pretty much as they expected. This position, however, usually was tempered by the observation that the respondent had expected things to be “different than expected.” As one soldier stated, “Flexibility is my MOS (military occupational specialty)!” Personal and family needs Mission considerations aside, few things can more directly challenge the soldiers’ globalized beliefs about the extent the organization cares than the failure to address personal 62

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and family considerations. Across the board, the soldiers report satisfaction with the efforts and results of both the 3rd ACR and the 4th ID in this area. For starters, these Ft Carson soldiers assumed that some sort of deployment to the Middle East was inevitable for them after 9/11. In anticipation of deployment to Iraq, both units had activated plans to get soldiers’ personal, financial, and family affairs “squared away,” known formally as the Soldier Readiness Program (SRP). One NCO commented: We had plenty of time from the time we were notified. They kept putting off [our deployment date], so. Um, plus we had to go through SRP, making sure we had powers of attorneys, and wills and all that stuff for our family. And we had a chance to sit down with a chaplain (and other counselors) and talk over problems and stuff. Nonetheless, there were important differences among the soldiers in direct experiences with deployment. The officers and NCOs who had been around for a while had deployed before, and some already had a routine for handling this eventuality. For others, it was their first deployment. If married, decisions had to be made if the spouse would remain in the Ft Carson area or return home to be closer to relatives. For those not married or without partners, household goods and automobiles had to be placed in storage. For single parents, childcare arrangements had to be finalized. Finally, in some cases, both wife and husband were in the Army and were deploying to Iraq, either with the 3rd ACR or 4th ID or with other units. For example, one officer in the latter group described his family situation: Well, my wife is also a Captain and she also deployed. … I worried a lot [in Iraq] ‘cause I knew [my wife] was out on the same roads that I was out on moving around. She was company commander at the same time [I was], so I knew she had to be out there, you know, checking on her soldiers and those things. In Iraq, the two units made special efforts to provide connections with loved ones at home. As operating bases became more formally established, it became possible for soldiers to call home by phone and to set up email connections. These opportunities were unevenly distributed (some could use them daily, others only weekly or once a month) and were widely available only toward the end of the 12-month deployment to Iraq. Also, both units were able to implement mid-tour leave programs, in which a certain number of soldiers were able to come home for a week around the sixth or seventh month of the tour. Priority was given to soldiers with families. Ft Carson also had a Family Readiness Group (FRG) in place, whose task it was to monitor problems families might be having while the two units were in Iraq. Year-long separations strain any family. So, despite units’ efforts, several soldiers recounted instances of family problems, divorce, or adjustment problems by their children. Further, instant communication from the war zone to the home front had some downsides. For example, in the event of a casualty, telephone or email could deliver the bad news instantly but informally; a spouse could learn of a casualty through the grapevine before any official word had arrived. Units, therefore, often shut down email operations immediately following a casualty to allow time for word to be delivered officially to the family at home. Consequently, email shut-downs as a result of technical or other reasons send shockwaves of concern through family communities back home. 63

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Finally, by most accounts, the homecoming to Ft Carson was efficiently and effectively handled. One NCO commented: “I think it was the neatest experience coming into the Special Events Center and, you know, everybody there screaming and hollering and you’re just standing there. So it was a pretty great feeling. … ” Of course, this euphoria quickly gave way to the realities of a readjustment period for soldiers and their loved ones. One officer described the situation this way: You don’t comprehend what people back here have been through and they don’t comprehend what you’ve been through when you’re over there. … And so you try to do this, like, instant download of everything and it, it just doesn’t work. It’s such a slow process. … As a result, Ft Carson provided classes and programs to ease the readjustment process. These included orientations in what issues and symptoms to expect during this time and specialized help in family dynamics, financial management, and grief counseling. Some of these were mandatory, whereas others were optional. Commenting upon the overall effort, one NCO concluded: At first you’re just, like, oh man, this is bunk, this is ridiculous, I don’t need this. But then after I sat there and listened to it, I actually talked to my wife about it and we attended other classes after that. So, I think it’s been great, it’s been awesome, I don’t think they have overlooked anything. No matter what the soldier needs, there is a program out there to help them, no matter what.

Discussion These findings suggest that soldiers in the 3rd ACR and 4th ID maintained a high level of commitment to their units and the Army as an institution during their deployment to Iraq and thereafter. This observation invites some analysis and explanation of the factors at work in maintaining such commitment under challenging conditions, and with frequent apparent disconnects between expectations and realities. A dynamic underlying the three social exchange theories cited here (OST, PCT, ICT) is the norm of reciprocity. This principle states that organizational members are motivated to pursue organizational goals when there is a match between members’ expectations and organizational rewards. OST and PCT differ in emphasis, but share a common focus on perceptions by members of the contributions they make to the organization compared with derived rewards and benefits (material and relational). The contribution of ICT lies in its specific emphasis on devotion to a cause as a specific motivator of performance within an organization. Although these theories have been tested in civilian employment settings, we can speculate on their application to military situations in combat. In the era of WWII, some researchers caused a stir with their claims that soldiers fight and die for each other rather than for their country (Stouffer et al. 1949; Marshall et al. 1946; Marshall 1947). Since then, other military sociologists have reinforced the salience of patriotic sentiments in combat units (Moskos 1970, 1976), whereas others have noted a convergence between civilian and military organizations in factors that motivate members since the advent of the all-volunteer force (Segal and Segal 1983). As our 64

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findings reveal, soldiers in our two combat units are motivated by a range of considerations: financial, ideological, and relational. All three would seem to figure simultaneously in psychological contracts formed by soldiers. The findings also show that these considerations vary consistently by rank, a pattern no doubt reflecting differences in career contingencies. For example, at the time of our interviews, re-enlistment bonuses for non-officers, depending on a soldier’s military specialty, could be as high as $40,000 for an additional commitment of 4 years. Officers, on the other hand, do not receive reenlistment bonuses but were extended other career inducements to remain in the service, such as the opportunity to obtain an advanced degree at the Army’s expense. Further, soldiers may look to different levels of their organizational hierarchy for different kinds of rewards in return for their service. For instance, unit leaders have little or no discretion in determining how much members are paid or what their general mission will be. We know from our oral histories that financial and larger ideological considerations provide important incentives for joining the military. Hence, the larger organization of the Army and civilian authorities that oversee the military may be seen as responsible for maintaining these rewards. The unit level therefore may be the prime source of socioemotional or relational rewards and certain ideological incentives, e.g. commitment to others in the same unit (internal cohesion) and carrying out the mandates of one’s chosen profession. Our findings also document that the mission, the tactical situation, job assignments, and other situations were at odds with what soldiers in these units had been led to expect. However, these observations frequently ended with phrases such as “but we learned to adapt,” “of course, we adjusted,” or “somehow we made it happen,” suggesting the presence of conditions that mediate the disconnect between expectation and reality and mitigate the effects. PCT, in particular, focuses on the consequences when an implicit contract is violated and offers a consideration that may mediate the likelihood of negative responses: the perception of why the breach has occurred. There are several possible perceptions: that the organization deliberately acted in bad faith (reneging); that there was a misunderstanding of the contract’s actual terms (incongruence); or, finally, that the breach occurred because of circumstances outside the control of the organization (disruption). If this is considered as a kind of continuum ranging from high to low “organizational fault”, we posit that a disconnect between expectation and reality leads to negative organizational outcomes only when there is also high organizational fault. However, in our data there is little evidence of perceived organizational fault, i.e. the opinion that the breach is attributable to factors within their unit’s or the Army’s control. The many changes in mission, tactical situations, and the like, mostly represent things that, in the words of one soldier, “could [not] have been briefed prior. … ” Hence, soldiers seemed to have no feelings that they had been deceived, used, or ignored by the institution. The perception of low organizational fault also is consonant with the general requirement for adaptability in military life, as reflected in maxims such as “SNAFU” (Situation Normal, All F#%$ed Up) or “adapt and overcome.” Nonetheless, military units are configured and trained to do certain things and fight certain kinds of wars. As we have seen, the 3rd ACR and 4th ID are most suitably configured and trained to fight a near-peer in conventional tank-on-tank battles. However, the realities of the war in Iraq are different and, indeed, have aroused a rethinking of warfare within the military. For example, Chiarelli and Michaelis (2005) stress the necessity for “full-spectrum” warfare, i.e. the simultaneous implementation of “lethal” combat operations and of “non-lethal” efforts. Full-spectrum warfare calls for the ordinary soldier to have a skill-set 65

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that extends far beyond combat operations. Chiarelli and Michaelis (2005: 15) acknowledge that the Army’s current “regulations, bureaucratic processes, staff relationships, and culture,” although well suited for lethal tasks, mitigate against carrying out the non-lethal dimensions of the equation effectively. As we have seen, soldiers and small-unit leaders have been forced to improvise in order to carry out any version of full-spectrum warfare in Iraq. To this point, they have done so largely without attributing fault to the organization for the dangers, stresses, and inconveniences this entails. However, as the war in Iraq grinds on and as units rotate to and from the war zone, the willingness by soldiers to accept the disconnect between expectation and reality stoically will decline unless it is addressed more systematically through adjustments in organization and training. Given the strong internal cohesion of most combat units in today’s Army, much of the potential negative organizational consequences may be directed against civilian authorities or the Army’s higher echelons.

Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Scott, W., McCone, D. and Mastroianni, G.R. (2006) “Psychological contracts in two US combat units in Iraq: what happens when expectations and realities diverge?” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 301–17.

References Aselage, J. and Eisenberger, R. (2003) “Perceived organizational support and psychological contracts: A theoretical integration,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24: 491–509. Chiarelli, P. and Michaelis, P. (2005) “Winning the peace: The requirement for full-spectrum operations,” Military Review, July/August: 4–17. Eisenberger, R., Fasoto, P., and Davis-LaMastro, V. (1990) “Perceived organizational support, and employee diligence, commitment, and innovation,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 75: 51–59. Eisenberger, R., Armeli, S., Rexwindel, B., Lynch, P. and Rhoades, L. (2001) “Reciprocation of perceived organizational support,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 86:42–51. Ender, M. (2005a) “Live from the front: Military families, embedded reporting, and war in Iraq,” paper presented at the International Biennial Meetings of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society in Chicago, October 2005. ——(2005b) “US soldiers, OIF, and attitudes toward social issues,” Paper presented at the International Biennial Meetings of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society in Chicago, October 2005. Glaser, B. (1992) Emergence vs. Forcing: Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis, Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press. Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago, IL: Aldine. Lind, W. (2004) “The four generations of modern war.” Online. Available http://www.lewrockwell. com/lind/lind26.html (accessed 14 September 2005). Lind, W., Nightengale, K., Schmitt, J., Sutton, J. and Wilson, G. (1989) “The changing face of war: Into the fourth generation,” Online. Available http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/4th_gen_war_gazette.htm (accessed 13 September 2005). Marshall, S.L.A. (1947) Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Marshall, S.L.A., Westover, J. and Webber, A.J. (1946) Bastogne: The First Eight Days, Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press.

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Moskos, C., Jr (1970) The American Enlisted Man, New York: Russell Sage. ——(1976) “The Military,” Annual Review of Sociology, 2: 55–77. Rhoades, L. and Eisenberger, R. (2002) “Perceived organizational support: A review of the literature,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 87: 698–714. Rousseau, D. (1995) Psychological Contracts in Organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ——(2001) “Schema, promise and mutuality: The building blocks of the psychological contract,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74: 511–41. Segal, D. and Segal, M.W. (1983) “Change in military organization,” Annual Review of Sociology, 9: 151–70. Stouffer, S., Suchman, E., DeVinney, L., Star, S. and Williams, R., Jr. (1949) The American Soldier, Volume 1: Adjustment During Military Life and Volume 2: Combat and Its Aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Strauss, A. (1987) Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, J. and Bunderson, J.S. (2003) “Violations of principle: Ideological currency in the psychological contract,” Academy of Management Review, 28: 571–86. Wong, L. (2004) Developing Adaptive Leaders: The Crucible Experience of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College. ——(2005) “Why professionals fight: Combat motivation in the Iraq war,” in D. Snider and L. Matthews (eds) The Future of the Army Profession, 2nd edn, Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing.

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6 Capture of Saddam Hussein Social network analysis and counterinsurgency operations Brian J. Reed and David R. Segal

America’s military doctrine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was based on wars against opponents whose military forces were organized bureaucratically and acted as agents of states involved in the conflicts. Current military campaigns, by contrast, involve combatants who are non-state actors, whose organization is embedded in more traditional social structures. Doctrine for the former conflicts was informed by an understanding of bureaucratic organization. Max Weber’s (1968) ideal-typical portrayal of bureaucracy was rooted in the Prussian military. More recent campaigns, however, are more informed by Simmel’s understanding of social networks. This conceptualization contributed to Operation Red Dawn: the capture of Saddam Hussein. This chapter uses the unclassified intelligence data gathered in Iraq that, by analyzing social networks, led to the capture of Saddam Hussein. The phrase “social network” refers to a set of actors and the ties among them. The network analyst models these relationships to depict the structure of a group (Wasserman and Faust 1994). We apply social network analysis to Saddam Hussein’s network, providing an evaluation of those concepts and methods when applied to an insurgency. We identify social network methods and measures that are useful in understanding the intricacies of an insurgent network.

Insurgent warfare Low-intensity conflict, or guerrilla warfare, has been more common throughout history than conflict between armies on the conventional battlefield (Nagl 2002). The essential features of guerrilla warfare (avoiding the enemy’s strengths, clever use of the terrain, and striking at outposts and logistical support centers from unexpected locations) have barely changed since the days of the Romans and the Persians. However, what has made guerrilla warfare a more potent form of conflict for accomplishing political objectives is the addition of revolutionary thinking (Nagl 2002). Current views of insurgency are based on our interpretation of the classic texts of insurgency warfare and our experiences dealing with wars of national liberation in the 68

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late twentieth century (McCallister 2005). The basic tenets of this form of warfare are found in the writings of past practitioners such as Mao Tse-tung. Mao saw revolutionary war as protracted and organized into three phases: a phase in which the insurgents build political strength; a second phase of progressive expansion; and the final decisive phase culminating in the destruction of the enemy (Hammes 2004; Nagl 2002: 23). Mao also called for clearly defined political goals and firmly established political responsibility. Mao understood that war is fundamentally a political undertaking and that political mobilization is the most fundamental ingredient for winning (Hammes 2004). Does this view of insurgency fit our expectations of twenty-first century insurgent warfare? As we look at operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the overall global war on terror (GWOT), does the classical understanding of revolutionary warfare square with these present-day dilemmas? We believe that the past and the present are not so different. Most notably, modern conceptions of insurgency concentrate on defeating the political will of one’s enemy, rather than defeating the enemy’s army on the battlefield. Like those who came before them, insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places where the war on terrorism is being waged are dedicated to a long-term conflict. What we are witnessing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other areas is a revision of what we have witnessed in previous insurgent warfare. Precipitated by state failure, we see non-state actors organized in non-state form, organized across territorial boundaries, operating along pre-existing structural linkages that are adapted to wage insurgent warfare. In addition, there is an external foreign power attempting to restore order and governance in a country that is not its former colony. In the GWOT, one of the greater challenges the US faces is opposition from a fully mobilized, traditionally networked tribalized enemy. The insurgency possesses an unassailable base, guarded against direct attack. This unassailable base is the social network itself, merging and diverging as the situation dictates (McCallister 2005). What motivates and sustains such an insurgency is not readily found in traditional insurgency literature. We can find much better answers by re-examining the dynamics of traditionally networked tribes and clans with social network analysis and the theory of Georg Simmel. In Simmel’s treatment of affiliations we find the core concepts of networks and linkages. By identifying non-linear patterns, we begin to understand the organization at hand. With respect to clan-like organizations, Simmel outlined a conceptual understanding of how such familial associations affect an individual: In primitive clan-organizations the individual would participate in several groups in such a way that he belonged to the kinship or totemic group of his mother, but also to the narrower, familial, or local association of his father. … With peculiar purposefulness these two kinds of association are therefore so differently arranged that they do not encroach upon each other. Relationships on the maternal side have a more ideal, spiritual nature, whereas on the paternal side they are real, material, and directly effective. (1908/1955: 142) The modern insurgency represents an evolved form of warfare which considers the fact that tribal societies have pre-existing social, economic, and military networks easily adapted to fighting wars, and these extend across traditional boundaries and borders. Such networking is a trend for the future. 69

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The social network perspective The study of networks, interactions, and relationships has a long and distinct history in sociology. Georg Simmel has made, perhaps, the greatest contributions to our understanding of the patterns, or forms, of social interaction (Ritzer 1996). One of his primary interests was interaction among conscious actors; he looked at a wide range of interactions that may seem trivial at some times but crucial at others. Simmel’s sociology was always concerned with relationships, especially interaction, and his work was shaped by the belief that everything interacts in some way with everything else (268). In his seminal work, The Web of Group Affiliations, Simmel (1908/1955) outlined his interest in the sociological components of interpersonal relationships. In developing such a relationship, an individual at first sees him- or herself in an environment that is relatively indifferent to individuality, but which has implicated the individual in a web of circumstances. These circumstances impose on the person a close coexistence with those whom the accident of birth has placed next to him or her. As the development of society progresses, each individual establishes contacts with persons who stand outside this original group affiliation, but who are related or connected to him/her by some similarity or interest. This association, based on external factors, is superseded over time by association (personal relationships) or by a genuine attachment between persons that is more powerful than the external factor(s) that brought them together in the first place. The number of different social groups in which the individual participates is one of the earmarks of culture. The groups with which the individual is affiliated constitute a “system of coordinates” such that each new group with which one becomes affiliated circumscribes the person more exactly and more unambiguously (140). As one becomes affiliated with a social group, one surrenders to the group. However, the individual retains some individuality because one’s pattern of participation is unique. Multiple group affiliations can strengthen the individual and reinforce the integration of one’s personality. The individual belongs to many groups and, therefore, one feels and acts with others, but also against others (155). Thus, individuals have to negotiate conflicting loyalties. The extent to which associations form a tightly knit group may be gauged by the extent to which groups have developed a collective code of “honor” (163). Such groups ensure their members’ appropriate conduct by establishing a specific form of honor, such as family honor, professional honor, reputation, etc. However some relationships escape control, thus allowing individuals to maintain their freedom. From Simmel’s point of view, the real world is composed of innumerable events, actions, and interactions (Ritzer 1996). To cope with this maze of reality, people create order by imposing patterns or forms. The sociologist’s task, Simmel argued, is to impose a limited number of forms on social reality, on interaction in particular, to facilitate analysis. This approach involves selecting some bounded, finite phenomenon examining the multiplicity of its elements; and ascertaining the cause of their coherence by disclosing its form. Forms are the patterns exhibited by people’s associations (272). In other words, they are social networks.

Applications of social network theory When considering the GWOT, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq, our analysis is guided by the dynamic that present-day warfare favors the rise of network forms of 70

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organization. It is a great challenge to fight a counterinsurgency in a traditionally networked society. Fighting a counterinsurgency implies defeating the insurgency’s main, regional, and local fighters. It requires finding and arresting its leaders and shadow government cadre. Finally, counterinsurgency forces must disrupt the recruitment and indoctrination processes that mobilize individuals and resources to overthrow a constituted government (McCallister 2005). Network analysis helps us understand how such network-based “enemy” systems behave and how that behavior is affected by their connectivity. The intelligence and information work ongoing in places such as Iraq is known as the “Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield” (IPB) and from it one can infer the relationship between this process and sociological research. The IPB is a vital command and staff function for successful counterinsurgency operations. Assisting the commander in identifying targets, objectives, and friendly tactics, the IPB allows commanders to direct operations against the enemy. Link diagraming of various enemy cells is a key component in the IPB process. Understanding the terrain and population at large helps the commander choose the time and location of future operations, as well as tactics. These analyses support offensive operations that keep the enemy on the defensive. Many who write about terrorists observe that these groups are organized as networks. However, assessment at this level should also include showing exactly what type of network design is being used, members’ potential to act autonomously, the distribution of leadership and the interaction of hierarchical dynamics with network dynamics. Social network analysts should precisely describe a network’s structure, especially for analyzing terrorist groups (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001). In attempting to explain the situation in Iraq, analysts must consider the idea that modern warfare represents an evolved form of insurgency. A tribal society already has social, economic, and military networks easily adapted to fighting wars. The ways insurgents exploit the tribal network represent an expression of inherent cultural and social customs. The social dynamic that sustains the insurgency in Iraq is best understood in terms of tribal relationships in a traditionally networked society that offers rebels and insurgents a ready-made insurrectionary infrastructure (McCallister 2005). The full functioning of a network depends on how well, and in what ways, the members are personally known and connected to each other. Strong personal ties, often ones that rest on friendship, ensure high degrees of trust and loyalty (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001). To function well, networks may require higher degrees of interpersonal trust than do other approaches to organization, like hierarchies. For example, news about Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network reveal his, and its, dependence on personal relationships formed over the years with “Afghan Arabs” from Egypt and elsewhere who were committed to anti-US terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001). Today’s battlefield requires an assessment of the political and social architecture of the operating environment, from the friendly and the enemy perspective. A network approach aids analysis of how the enemy is organized and how it fights. Resistance networks often do not behave like normal social networks. By asking what kind of social network a resistance network is, one gains an understanding of the network and how to destabilize it.

Identifying and specifying Saddam Hussein’s network Why have the members of the insurgency assumed a network form? Why do they remain in that form? Networks are held together by the narratives, or stories, that people 71

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tell (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001), which provide a grounded expression of experiences, interests, and values. They express a sense of identity and belonging: of who “we” are, why “we” have come together, and what makes “us” different from “them.” These narratives communicate a sense of cause, purpose, and mission. They express aims and methods as well as cultural dispositions: what “we” believe in, what “we” mean to do, and how. The right story can thus help keep people connected in a network whose looseness makes it difficult to prevent defection. The right story line also can help create bridges between networks and generate a perception that a movement has a winning momentum, that time is on its side (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001). The tribal ethos influences all aspects of life in modern Iraqi society. The fundamental aspect of tribal identity is extended kinship. The tribe is the largest unit whose associated clan claims a common lineage. But the tribe is more than just a number of descent-based groups. Often, much of tribal genealogy is based on fictive kinship ties. In claiming a particular ancestry, individuals may align themselves with a given political position and strategy. But, tribes exist in a perpetual state of flux. Associations and alliances shift. In this sense, tribal identity is flexible, since it incorporates an invented quality that provides a context for political and social action (McCallister 2005). The clan is the second level of organization in Iraq and derives its unity of purpose from its sheikh, his family lineage, and the territorial proximity of the various sub-clan affiliates of which it is composed. Sub-clans are a composite of patrilineal groups and extended families. These, in turn, are composed of kinship groups and divided into households. The tribe and clan perform a political and military function; sub-clans and households an economic one. Leadership is traditionally reserved to the outstanding patrilineal lineage of the strongest sub-clan, with the strongest clan providing the leadership of the tribe. In the case of a pan-tribal confederation, the strongest tribe holds the “Sheikh of Sheikh” position. In a world of perpetual conflict, weaker tribes will seek security through alliances with larger, stronger ones (McCallister 2005). As a process of group formation driven by an issue at hand, members of a tribe, or members of one of its segments, may join together for collective action. Which segments of the tribe unite depends on the subject and context of the conflict. Different issues require different political alignments, and, therefore, call for the coming together of different parts of the tribe. The operational group might be restricted to a clan within the tribe, or a lineage within the clan, whereas, at other times, it might involve several clans or lineages. All the clans that constitute a tribe usually unite in matters that concern the whole tribe. Some tribes might form tribal confederations for specific purposes, usually to enhance their ability to oppose a common enemy (Charrad 2001).

The capture of Saddam Hussein The death of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in 1971 marked the beginning of a new era in contemporary Arab politics, exemplified by men like Saddam Hussein in Iraq (Musallam 1996). Although he paid lip service to party slogans, he abandoned any serious pretence of an ideological crusade, assuming a realist position as he came to understand how much Iraq might gain by pursuing his own narrow political and national interests. Saddam Hussein had been at the center of politics in Iraq for a quarter of a century. His rise to power was remarkable, characterized by tenacious perseverance, skillful manipulation, and merciless elimination of rivals (Karsh and Rautsi 1991). He succeeded 72

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through patient hard work, unprincipled manipulation of allies and enemies alike, and, surprisingly, genuine support from colleagues and many ordinary people in Iraq who admired his abilities (Henderson 1991). The capture of Saddam Hussein was the result of hard work and excellent intelligence gathering. Each day led to more of the key players being identified and located. Analysts began to build graphic descriptions of his social network showing the structure of Saddam Hussein’s personal security apparatus and the relationships among the persons identified as: … related to Hussein by blood or tribe … [Maj. Gen. Raymond T.] Odierno, [Commander, 4th Infantry Division] said those family diagrams led his forces to lower-level, but nonetheless highly trusted, relatives and clan members harboring Hussein and helping him move around the countryside. … (Loeb 2003: A27) Building these diagrams included “assigning” roles and positions to certain people within the network. These were not necessarily positions they occupied before the fall of Hussein, but instead were based on an understanding of the function they were filling in support of the insurgency or Saddam’s “underground” operations. Analysts assigned these roles based on assessments of various personalities and recent intelligence and information reports, which helped determine those closest to Hussein and their importance. Over the course of their search, coalition forces continued to track how the enemy operated. Capturing two of Saddam Hussein’s key associates in November 2003 confirmed the accuracy of the template. After several weeks of little to no new information relevant to Saddam and his network, a series of events led to an abundance of information and new intelligence about the resistance and the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein. The result was a series of raids, all designed to capture key individuals who could eventually lead to Saddam’s capture. Each raid resulted in more information, which led to a subsequent raid. This cycle eventually led into the inner circle of those most trusted by Saddam.

Explaining the network We analyzed Saddam Hussein’s network using four general network measures: size, density, transitivity, and cliques. “Size” is the number of nodes, or actors, in the network; “density” is the number of relationships in the network as a proportion of the total number of possible relationships; “transitivity” refers to the way that two linked network members often draw others into a cluster of ties in which most members are linked with each other (Wellman 1983). A “clique” is a collection of actors all of whom “choose” each other, and there is no other actor in the larger population who also “chooses” and “is chosen” by all of the members of the clique. There are 214 nodes in the link diagram of Saddam’s network; however, only 23 actors had a direct tie to him. Thus, he was insulated from most members of the network by at least one intervening node. Since the objective was to locate Hussein, it follows that one of these 23 actors would be the most likely to know his location. Therefore, we plotted the sub-networks of the 23 with direct ties to Saddam Hussein. In total, we defined 388 relationships. We disaggregated the network by identifying the trust and task 73

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ties between the conspirators. The trust ties include those defined by immediate family, extended family, close friendships, and bodyguards. The task ties include money, resources, and insurgent operations. In general, the network is neither dense, nor transitive. Most actors in the network were unconnected to most other actors. The lack of density and transitivity in this network is not surprising, given that this is a covert network. Members will establish only necessary ties. Of the sub-networks, the insurgent operations category is the most fragmented (8 components) and the least dense (1.31 density). This category is most strongly defined by function, and least by traditional ties. There are eight sub-graphs in which there is a path between all pairs of nodes in the sub-graph, and there is no path between a node in the sub-graph and any node not in the sub-graph (Wasserman and Faust 1994). This result validates what we know about resistance networks. Namely, these networks are inherently dispersed, and do not provide obvious centers of gravity. Likewise, from an information-gathering standpoint, resistance networks are characterized by incompleteness. There is an inevitability of missing nodes and links. The network may be more dense and less fragmented, but, as a result of possible shortcomings in our data collection methodology, we may not know this. Of the trust relationships (discounting the bodyguard relationship because of the small number of cases), the immediate family relationship is the least connected, within the limitations of our data. It has the most components (6) and the lowest density (1.33 percent). The number of components is not surprising given the number of sub-categories along which membership can be linked. Likewise, the low density of the network reflects the exclusiveness of the categories. A tie between a father and a son can exist only if one is a father and the other is his son. On the other hand, the high density of the close-friend relationship highlights the broadness of the sub-categories in this network: former regime official; tribe or village association; school, military, or political association. These categories are more inclusive and allow for more ties to form, or for the interpretation of a tie during the information-gathering process. Two general network measures were useful. First is the concept of transitivity. Each of us typically belongs not to a single group of acquaintances but to many, within each of which everyone pretty much knows everyone else, but between which little interaction occurs (Watts 1999). Transitivity tells us, for example, that Saddam Hussein has ties to his personal secretary, who has ties to a Fedayeen weapon supplier. However, Saddam Hussein does not have a direct relationship with the weapon supplier. Therefore, in this case, when the objective is to capture Saddam Hussein, it is unlikely that the weapon supplier will be able to provide any specific information about his location. Useful, however, is the location of the personal secretary, which the weapons supplier may be able to provide, as a result of the direct relationship between the two. Equally helpful is the idea of cliques. Looking at the network as a whole, there are 11 cliques of three members each. Five of these cliques are purely the result of immediate family relationships and reflect the persisting importance of traditional ties. Others are also due to ties based on different combinations of money and resources, immediate family relationships, and insurgent operations. Another consideration is that the strict clique definition may be too strong for many purposes. Strictly defined every member of a sub-group has a direct tie with every other member. One alternative defines an actor as a member of a clique if the actor is connected to every other member of the group at a distance greater than one (i.e. being “a friend of a friend”). This approach to defining sub-structures is called N-clique, where N stands for the length of the path allowed to 74

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make a connection to all other members’ (Hanneman and Riddle 2005). Using this relaxed criterion, where N = 2, there are 49 2-cliques for the entire network. Of these 49, only seven contain Saddam Hussein, again reflecting Saddam’s relative insulation. When the objective is the capture of Saddam Hussein, such a measure is useful because it is more inclusive. However, the standard, more restrictive clique measure highlights those most closely tied to him. Analyzing the network using the general network measures, there are six major substantive findings. First, of the 214 actors in the total network, there are only 23 actors with direct ties to Saddam Hussein. Second, the overall network is not dense. Third, the transitivity of the total network is low. Fourth, there are a small number of cliques; and fifth, no clique is larger than three actors. Last, family relationships account for much of the identified clique structure. The distances among actors in a network may be important. Where distances are great, it may take a long time for information to diffuse across a population. Some actors are neither aware of nor influenced by others, even if they are technically reachable, the costs may be too high to conduct exchanges (Hanneman and Riddle 2005). Thus, many nodes in the network may be useless when the goal is to locate Saddam Hussein. In the case of Saddam Hussein’s network, less 17 nodes without ties to the main network (since they cannot lead to Hussein), the mean degree of separation is 5.365. This means that the average distance between any pair of nodes is about five paths. Thus, on average, any one actor in the total network is connected to Saddam Hussein by five other distinct connections. Equally revealing is the percentage of actors who can reach Hussein in one step, two steps, etc.: one step – 12 percent; two steps – 36 percent; three steps – 38 percent; four steps – 48 percent; five steps – 58 percent; six steps – 64 percent; seven steps – 72 percent; eight steps – 77 percent; nine or more steps – 80 percent. Thus, almost half of the other network members are within four degrees of separation of Saddam Hussein, and about two-thirds are within six.

Conclusion This article uses the intelligence data that coalition forces gathered in Iraq that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein. We subjected these data to a more rigorous analysis using the formal conceptualizations and methods of social network theory. However, as indicated in several places, such an approach lends itself to instrumentation effects. Information-gathering focused on a particular individual, or individuals, may result in findings skewed in favor of one’s importance, and the lack of importance of others, when in reality this may not be completely true. We believe a significant contribution of this research is a description of which of these concepts and methods might prove useful when applied to an insurgency, thereby resulting in a systematic network approach for analyzing an insurgent network. One of the more important findings in this analysis is how the network members coopted the family structure for other purposes, for example, waging insurgent warfare or hiding Saddam Hussein. A tribal society already has at its disposal affiliated social, economic, and military networks easily adapted to fighting wars. The ways in which insurgents exploit a tribal network does not represent an evolved form of insurgency but the expression of inherent cultural and social customs (McCallister 2005). The traditional tribal network proffers rebels and insurgents a ready-made insurrectionary infrastructure 75

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to draw on. Hussein’s state reflected a mixture of traditional and modernizing autocracy in which he and his extended family functioned as patrons, dispensing favors to social, economic, and military networks in return for their support. Tradition was not replaced by modernity, but complemented it. These traditional ties and relationships formed the core of the network that waged insurgent warfare and supported the ousted dictator’s evasion of coalition forces. To draw an accurate picture of a covert network, we need to identify task and trust ties between the conspirators. While the mapping networks that we chose were grounded in previous research, we altered the categories in light of our experiences and our belief that trust is an important component of this particular network. In general, we believe that these are good starting points for analyzing the relationships within an insurgent network. Clearly, there are those who plan and execute attacks and those who provide resources for operations. In this case, family relationships (immediate and extended) as well as close friendships were important in terms of understanding why and how ties formed. Future analysis ought to include ideology. The relationships we studied go beyond ideology, since ideology is subsumed within each. However, considering present insurgent networks, this may not always be the case. Although kin and family were important in the Hussein network, this may not be true in an insurgent network presently operating in Iraq. It may be only ideology that ties together certain members. The lessons from this research go beyond insurgent networks, but apply equally to all resistance-type networks, including Al Qaeda. As opposed to a more hierarchical analysis, the challenge is to look across linkages and at the relationships between people and groups. One needs to identify the significant patterns of motivation, interest, and need around which common action is organized. Once we have identified the system, we can begin to tell something about the way behavior is summoned and constrained. Objectives and motivations may be different, but the conceptual network concepts remain the same. The traditional paradigm of resistance organizations as hierarchical or pyramidal structures is not completely accurate (see Selznick 1960). Instead, these organizations are often fragmented and chaotic, with webs of affiliations linking people of various positions and power. These patterns of affiliation and influence are far more important than any formal structure.

Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Reed, B. J. and Segal, D. R. (2006) “Social network analysis and counterinsurgency operations: the capture of Saddam Hussein,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 251–64. This research was supported in part by the Army Research Institute under contract W74V8H-05-K-0007. All thoughts and expressions contained within this presentation are solely those of the authors and are not the official position of the Army Research Institute, the Department of Defense or the United States Army.

References Charrad, M.M. (2001) States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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Hammes, T.X. (2004) The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st century, St Paul, MN: Zenith Press. Hanneman, R.A. and Riddle, M. (2005) Introduction to Social Network Methods, Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside. Henderson, S. (1991) Instant Empire: Saddam Hussein’s Ambition for Iraq, San Francisco, CA: Mercury House. Karsh, E. and Rautsi, I. (1991) Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography, New York: Free Press. Loeb, V. (2003) “Clan, family ties called key to army’s capture of Hussein,” Washington Post, 16 December, p. A27. McCallister, W.S. (2005) “The Iraqi insurgency: Anatomy of a tribal rebellion,” First Monday, 10 (3). Online. Available http://firstmonday.org/issues/issuelO_3/mac/index.html (accessed 17 September 2006). Musallam, M.A. (1996) The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait: Saddam Hussein, His State, and International Power Politics, London: British Academic Press. Nagl, J.A. (2002) Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Westport, CT: Praeger. Ritzer, G. (1996) Classical Sociological Theory, New York: McGraw-Hill. Ronfeldt, D. and Arquilla, J. (2001) “Networks, netwars, and the fight for the future,” First Monday, 6 (10). Online. Available http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_10/ronfeldt/index.html (accessed 17 September 2006). Selznick, P. (1960) The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Simmel, G. (1908/1955) The Web of Group Affiliations, Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watts, D.J. (1999) Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Weber, M. (1968) Economy and Society, Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press. Wellman, B. (1983) “Network analysis: Some basic principles,” Sociological Theory, 1: 155–200.

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7 Apples, barrels, and Abu Ghraib George R. Mastroianni and George E. Reed

The notorious abuses that took place in the fall of 2003 at the Baghdad Central Confinement Facility, known to the world as Abu Ghraib, provoked a rapid response from social scientists eager to explain to the world how and why these abuses occurred (American Psychological Association [APA] 2004; Fiske et al. 2004; Staub 2004). In popular articles, commentary, and interviews, the consensus among social scientists who have addressed themselves to these matters seems to include at least the following: (1) the abuses at Abu Ghraib were partly rooted in the same psychological mechanisms underlying the obedient behavior of Stanley Milgram’s subjects in his classic experiments (Milgram 1963, 1974); (2) the events at Abu Ghraib are real-world examples of the behavior exhibited during the Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo 1973; Zimbardo et al. 2000); and (3) the events at Abu Ghraib underscore the power of the situation in determining human behavior. Speaking of the Stanford and Abu Ghraib prisons, Philip Zimbardo said, “It’s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything it touches” (APA 2004). These commentators have offered suggestions for steps that might be taken to prevent such abuses in the future, including improved supervision, greater transparency and accountability, increased staffing, better training, and, in one case, a suggestion that the Army seek advice from corrections experts in the Navy, Air Force, and civilian sectors (APA 2004). We argue that these analyses are too narrow and fail to confront the issue of detainee abuse as comprehensively and effectively as may be done, if the events are considered from a broader perspective, incorporating the individual, organizational, and societal domains.

Abu Ghraib: a convenient parable For many, the events at Abu Ghraib have come to represent larger issues about the war in Iraq. For those who oppose the Bush administration and/or the war itself, the abuses uncovered at Abu Ghraib may be seen to be the result of misguided policies emanating from the highest levels of government. In this view, the explanatory focus shifts away from the individuals who perpetrated the specific acts, and toward the conditions created by administration policy. For those who support the war and the administration, 78

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explanations that focus on the individuals involved in the specific abuses are more persuasive, as they displace blame away from policy-makers and onto culpable individuals. Thus the “bad barrel” and “bad apple” explanations can be seen to align with particular political perspectives: The situational, bad barrel view is likely to be endorsed by those who blame the power elites, whereas the dispositional, bad apple view is congenial to those who see bad behavior as largely a personal variable, resulting less from systemic pressures than from individual weakness. Furthermore, and aside from political considerations, social scientists generally favor bad barrel over bad apple explanations. Bad barrel explanations create an opportunity for social scientists to offer their expertise as social coopers, legitimizing and validating the practical value of social science. Bad apple explanations minimize the utility of social scientists as expert advisors on social policy. The bad barrel explanation of the Abu Ghraib abuses (at least as it has been articulated by psychologists) focuses on the putative similarity between the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the behaviors exhibited in the Milgram and Zimbardo studies. By choosing to analogize these events to these studies, we provisionally circumscribe an explanatory domain that emphasizes the factors operative in the studies. Insofar as the Abu Ghraib events appear to be instances of the general behavioral tendencies identified in the Milgram and Zimbardo studies, focusing on that explanatory domain is entirely appropriate. If, on the other hand, the conditions at Abu Ghraib appear to have departed significantly from those in the Milgram and Zimbardo studies, we will want to be careful to ensure that our consideration of the events at Abu Ghraib is broad enough to include other potentially relevant factors that might contribute to the goal of preventing such abuses in the future.

The Milgram obedience experiment Stanley Milgram’s classic study of obedience to authority (1963) has had tremendous influence within the academic community and in society. Milgram found that many of his research subjects would administer apparently dangerous levels of electric shock to other people when instructed to do so by an experimenter. The subjects acted as “teachers” in a simulated verbal learning experiment, and believed they were administering shocks to “learners” who were making errors (no shocks were actually delivered). Milgram thought his results relevant to the behavior of German soldiers who perpetrated atrocities during World War II, to the My Lai massacre, and to other well-known instances of violent and illegal acts. Bruner (2004) recently made the case for the relevance of the Milgram studies to the abuses at Abu Ghraib: Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority shocked us all when it appeared thirty years ago. How could people deliver increasingly devastating electric shocks to a fellow human being just because they had been requested to do so by a professor “in charge” of an experiment? Alas, the book’s clear warning about the ravages that mindless obedience can create echoes even more loudly today than it did then. Ordinary American soldiers, on orders from their officers, have been broadcast routinely brutalizing and humiliating jailed Iraqi prisoners. And brutalizing them routinely [sic], even taking snapshots of their acts, smiling with satisfaction for a job well done! They said they were obeying orders to “soften up” their captives for later interrogation – however ambiguous those “orders” were later found to be by 79

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official inquiries. Somehow, it didn’t even seem to matter (despite the Geneva Convention and US Army regulations) that most of the prisoners were held only on suspicion of wrongdoing, not yet even charged with specific criminal acts. The case for serious consideration of the Milgram obedience studies as analogous to the Abu Ghraib abuses seems to us tenuous. Careful consideration of the specifics of the study and of the Abu Ghraib incidents may shed some light on the comparison. Among the most striking aspects of the obedient behavior in the Milgram studies was the deep and wrenching conflict displayed by many of the subjects in the study. Nervousness and agitation, and repeated requests for reassurance from the experimenter were evident in many of the subjects. It does not seem from any of the written material or visual images concerning the study that the subjects truly enjoyed inflicting shocks on the learners. This contrasts dramatically with the grinning, leering, and clowning that are so disturbingly apparent in the Abu Ghraib images. In fact, one could view the two situations as mirror images of one another. Authority in the Abu Ghraib case was represented by the commanders and their policies and procedures, the ineffective enforcement of which contributed materially to the occurrence of the abuses. In the Milgram study, compliance was greater when proximity to the perceived legitimate authority was greatest, and diminished when the experimenter was more distant. At Abu Ghraib, it was the absence, not the presence of competent authority that most investigators blame for the abuses. Some have suggested that Military Intelligence personnel or others ordered the guards to commit the abuses, but it would seem that little more than planting the suggestion with a few guards in an ineffective leadership environment was all that was required. Many of these same issues have been raised in connection with comparisons of the behavior of Holocaust perpetrators with that of Milgram’s subjects (Mastroianni 2002). Furthermore, the moral and ethical dimensions of insurgency are genuinely complicated. What are our obligations to “detainees” who are not soldiers? What kinds of treatment are permissible if potentially life-saving intelligence might thereby be acquired? The moral calculus applied by those who abused and those who did not (insofar as abusers considered the moral implications of their actions) must have been different. The intense public controversy over the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo illustrates that there is still much disagreement about the status of detainees and the nature of our obligations to them. Some abusers, then, may have behaved as they did not because they felt compelled to do so against their better judgment, as most of Milgram’s subjects appeared to be doing, or because they were caught up in runaway role-playing, as Zimbardo’s subjects may have been, but because they genuinely believed that they were doing the right thing. After all, many of the prisoners were non-uniformed enemy combatants who violated the laws of land warfare by participation in indiscriminate killing and the destruction of civilian targets. That abusers may have been encouraged in these beliefs by intelligence personnel or others is indeed relevant, but does not necessarily place their actions in the realm of obedient behavior.

The Stanford Prison Study The Stanford Prison Study (Zimbardo 1973) is also widely known and very influential. A simulated prison environment was constructed in the basement of a building at Stanford 80

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University. Research volunteers were randomly assigned as guards or prisoners, and prisoners were picked up at their homes by uniformed officers in police cars and transported to the simulated prison. The guards were given wide latitude to run the prison as they saw fit, and within a few days, the growing prevalence of abusive and pathological behavior led the experimenter to terminate the study earlier than planned. The study has been interpreted and widely promoted as evidence of the “power of the situation” in transforming ordinary people into brutes and serves as the archetypal “bad barrel” paradigm. To be sure, the immediate similarities between guard behavior in the Stanford Prison Study and the abusive events at Abu Ghraib are striking. Zimbardo reported that he has pictures of guards sexually humiliating prisoners with bags over their heads in the Stanford Prison Study that exactly parallel the infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib (APA 2004). The breakdown in military discipline and leadership at Abu Ghraib arguably created a power vacuum not unlike the virtual carte blanche given the guards during the Stanford Prison Study. Isolation from authority and accountability occurred in both situations. In both situations, the most egregious abuses occurred on the night shift, when supervision was most lax. There were, however, some important differences between the two situations. The Stanford guards had no reason to fear the prisoners, as the situation contrived for them was one in which there were roughly equal numbers of prisoners and guards in a secure and safe location. At Abu Ghraib, on the other hand, guards were vulnerable, and were vastly outnumbered by detainees. The growing insurgency in Iraq placed the guards in constant danger of attack from without and within. Whereas neither guards nor prisoners in the Stanford study had any training in the design and operation of prisons, the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were trained in military police operations, including EPW (enemy prisoner of war) operations, and some received pre-deployment training in internment and resettlement operations. In conventional combat military police (MPs) are responsible for, among other things, the management of captured enemy soldiers. Captured enemy soldiers can usually be managed with relatively low guard-to-prisoner ratios. These lower ratios are made possible by several factors. Soldiers, even captured ones, are accustomed to military discipline, often enter captivity with an existing internal chain of authority, and have often recently undergone traumatic and frightening experiences that led to their capture. Moreover, soldier-guards can identify with EPWs as soldiers who clearly are entitled to humane treatment, just as they themselves would expect such treatment were the tables turned. Under such conditions, the vulnerability of guards to prisoner attack is comparatively low. At Abu Ghraib, however, most of the prisoners were not soldiers. Many were criminals; some were simply civilians caught up in a chaotic situation; and some were dangerous insurgents. The management of such prisoner populations requires special training and higher guard-to-prisoner ratios. MPs who staff military correctional facilities, such as the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, comprise a separate occupational specialty in the Army compared with soldiers who are trained in EPW management. The nature of the prison population at Abu Ghraib offers another relevant point of comparison with the Stanford study. Subjects in the Stanford study were mainly college students randomly assigned as prisoners or guards. Indeed, this makes the subsequent behavior of the guards especially disturbing, as it makes it difficult to dismiss them as bad apples: after all, the guards might easily have ended up as prisoners, and the prisoners as guards. As a consequence of the scientific need for randomized assignment to groups, the prisoners at Stanford University were not violent criminals, however: they were people 81

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just like the guards. Would the conditions in the basement at Stanford University, and the results of the study, have been the same had the guards been randomly chosen from a population of college students, and the prisoners from the inmates of a maximumsecurity prison? If the Stanford Prison Study functionally replicated actual prison conditions, why did the extreme reactions observed force the experimenters to terminate the study early? Would a successful replication not have resulted in a stable prison that was capable of long-term functioning, as are most real prisons? The apparent face validity of the Stanford Study masks real and potentially important departures from the emotional and social conditions existing in prisons such as Abu Ghraib. In real prisons, a complex social milieu enmeshes guards and prisoners. Real prisoners are not completely powerless, and are not (normally) subject to arbitrary, capricious, and tyrannical abuse. Moreover, prisoners and guards are not samples drawn from the same population. The random assignment of similar research subjects to one of two groups does not mirror the divergent life histories that lead guards and prisoners to the places they occupy in prisons, which probably create different emotional and psychological responses and adjustments in them. Possibly this contributed to the extreme prisoner responses observed in the Stanford Prisoner Study. A further complication (with no analog in the Stanford Prison Study) lies in the presence of intelligence agents at Abu Ghraib and their relationship to the guards. Military intelligence personnel, civilian contractors, and representatives of “OGAs” (other government agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]) may have encouraged the guards to soften up prisoners before interrogation to facilitate the production of actionable intelligence (intelligence that might help save American lives). The direct conflict between the goals and methods of intelligence authorities and sound corrections management principles was left for untrained soldiers to resolve, as apparently little guidance or supervision from the unit chain of command was forthcoming. While the Stanford guards were completely improvising, the Abu Ghraib guards were aware that rules governing the treatment of detainees existed, although they may have been confused about their application at Abu Ghraib. That confusion may have been exploited by others outside the unit but inside the prison. Whereas the behavior of the guards and prisoners in the Stanford Prison Study is interpreted as behavior thought by the participants to be role-appropriate, the Abu Ghraib abuses (including specifically those most visually similar to the photos from the Stanford study) were clearly recognized by at least some of the perpetrators as wrong. Private First Class (PFC) Lynndie England, prominent in the most infamous photos from Abu Ghraib (some of these photos are displayed on the Stanford Prison Experiment website), reports that she initially said, “No, no way” when asked to pose for the photos by the ringleaders of the abuse, but “They were being very persistent, bugging me, so I said, ‘OK, whatever.’” PFC England admitted that, “I could have said no” (Badger 2005). This sounds less like a virtuous and innocent person corrupted by the “power of the situation” and more like the kind of weakness in the face of peer pressure that parents all over the world have been teaching their children to resist since long before the Stanford Prison Study. The assertion that “the barrel corrupts anything it touches” implies that the corrosive interpersonal environment of a prison must inevitably affect all the guards (and prisoners) involved. But even in the Stanford Prison Study, Zimbardo reports that only about onethird of the guards (three or four people) became abusive. Another group (“several”) were considered by the prisoners to be “good guys,” and the remainder were “tough but 82

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fair” (Zimbardo 2005). The strong situationist interpretation of the Stanford Prison Study rests partly on the failure of the experimenters to predict which of the guards would end up in each of these three categories on the basis of personality tests administered before the study. That some personality tests did not predict the later behavior of a few individuals placed in a bizarre situation does not necessarily mean that the behavior displayed did not result, at least in part, from dispositional variables or behavioral tendencies that simply were not captured by the tests administered. Psychologists, for good ethical and practical reasons, shrink from labeling some of the subjects that volunteer to participate in their studies as “bad apples,” ascribing their behavior instead to social forces. But the Army does not have that luxury. Are the same psychological principles really adequate for both cases, when the moral tone is so different?

The Army’s understanding of Abu Ghraib The Army, like all organizations, gets a few bad apples from time to time, and has developed a leadership culture that is generally effective at ensuring that such individuals are recognized and controlled, and, if necessary, punished or ejected. The Taguba Report (2004a,b), stemming from an early Army investigation into the abuses, recommended punishment of several non-commissioned and commissioned officers precisely for their failure to establish and maintain an effective organizational environment. The Abu Ghraib abuses did not arise solely or even primarily from insidious psychological mechanisms of which the Army is unaware or needs reminding; they arose from a combination of misconduct and poor leadership of a sort familiar to the Army. Good apples were not turned into bad apples by powerful social forces: bad apples were allowed to act out because of failed leadership. Others, such as PFC England, apparently yielded to the familiar and pedestrian pressures encountered in such situations. The good apples were there all along, and were not inevitably corrupted by the bad barrel. It is through their courage and integrity that we learned of the abuses in the first place. The three categories of guards Zimbardo observed in the Stanford Prison Study were apparently also present at Abu Ghraib. Probably, they are also present in hundreds of other prisons and detention facilities, at which such abuses have not occurred. Precisely which aspects of the prison situation, then, inevitably lead to the occurrence of such abuses? Exactly what factors produce abuse in one prison, but not at another? Why does abuse occur at a prison in October, but not the preceding August? The Stanford Prison Study offers little beyond the unproven assertion that the situation is all-powerful, powerful enough to have affected even Zimbardo himself (Zimbardo 2005). If he could be so affected, guards and soldiers would seemingly have little chance of resisting such powerful social forces. Yet many did and do. Although the Abu Ghraib abuses took place in the context of a prison situation that bears a superficial resemblance to the Stanford Prison Study, it is sad and tragic that these abuses represent only a small and perhaps unique part of a much larger problem. As of late 2006, 410 investigations of alleged detainee abuse were under way or completed. Seventy-four soldiers have been charged at courts-martial, non-judicial punishment has been administered to 82 soldiers, and 68 adverse administrative actions have been taken against soldiers (Harvey and Schoomaker 2005). Many incidents of alleged abuse have occurred outside prisons and detention facilities, under circumstances bearing little or no resemblance to the Stanford Prison Study. Cases of detainee abuse have occurred among 83

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our allies, in Iraq, and elsewhere. Because a particular outcome (abuse) may lie at the end of many different causal chains, social scientists interested in assessing or asserting the role of obedience and conformity in abuse should be eager to compare the circumstances leading up to as many cases of abuse as may be found, to strengthen or refine their understanding of all the processes at work. These processes operate at the individual (micro), organizational and social (meso), and societal (macro) levels. At the individual level, it seems that there were important personal differences among key players at Abu Ghraib. Some were active abusers, some went along, some were bystanders, and some reported the abuse. It is clear that people are differentially susceptible to particular social pressures. Two-thirds of Milgram’s original subjects complied with the experimenter’s demands to shock the learners, while onethird refused. Zimbardo’s guards were far from homogeneous in their treatment of prisoners, and his prisoners were similarly diverse in their responses. Organizational and social factors also played a role in the abuses at Abu Ghraib, just as they did in the Stanford Prison Experiment. There was no effective formal system of organizational authority and control at the Stanford simulated prison; the system that should have been in place at Abu Ghraib was neutralized by ineffective leadership. The Taguba Report (2004a, 2004b) clearly placed blame on some members of the unit chain of command, citing lax supervision and a general failure of leadership and oversight. At least some of the perpetrators of the abuses were corrections officers in prisons in their civilian occupations, which may have complicated the maintenance of an effective leadership climate if the perceived occupational expertise and credibility of these individuals was greater than that of their superiors in the chain of command. The Stanford Prison Study and Abu Ghraib illustrate that leadership abhors a vacuum. When we fail to provide effective ethical leadership, we open the door to walk-ons who may rise to the occasion admirably, or who may take advantage of the situation for purposes of self-indulgence and self-gratification. The Stanford Prison Study and Abu Ghraib are examples of one kind of outcome in such situations. It is also likely that many less sensational and more favorable outcomes have occurred in similar situations in other places that have never made the news. Organizational climate, leadership, and training were dominant themes in the Taguba Report and other military analyses of Abu Ghraib. Because Abu Ghraib was operated by a Reserve unit, some have wondered whether the dysfunctional organizational climate could be attributed in part to weaknesses in training, preparation, and support in the Reserve, as opposed to the Active component. A more recent case of detainee abuse in Iraq involved a different Reserve unit, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment (Gold 2005). In this case, several soldiers faced courts-martial for abuses that occurred outside a prison environment. Other allegations of improprieties involving Iraqi civilians have also been leveled against members of the same unit, an infantry unit not primarily trained in military policing or detention operations. Another Army Reserve Military Policeman, serving with the 337th Military Police Company in Afghanistan, was recently convicted of abusing an Afghan detainee who died in custody (Caldwell 2005). Although there are differences among these instances, the issue of training (as the Taguba Report suggested) may be critical. In addition, that these instances of detainee abuse occurred in Army Reserve units at least suggests the possibility that the training and support of Reserve units compared with Active-component units may be an important factor. On the other hand, the allegations raised by Captain Ian Fishback, which involve scenarios quite similar to those that occurred at Abu Ghraib, concern an 84

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elite Active Army unit, the 82nd Airborne Division (Schmitt 2005). Whether as a result of the same, similar, or different causal factors, detainee abuse clearly has occurred in both Reserve and Active component units. At the societal level, issues beyond individual or unit training or leadership climate may also contribute to the potential for detainee abuse. The global war on terror (GWOT), as it is experienced by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, is an insurgency in which the enemy is not part of a uniformed formation. The reification of terrorism as the ultimate enemy in the GWOT has proven both difficult and imprecise. At least two attempts to rename the conflict have been made, the most recent as “The Long War,” which offers rhetorical (if not historical) resonance with “The Cold War.” Insurgents, demonized in the press, are often treated as people who have no constructive aims, and who do not legitimately represent their religion or any national or political group. The controversy over the detention and treatment of individuals at Guantanamo in the US press illustrates genuine confusion, even among the elites in the media and policy worlds, as to the nature of our obligations to detainees. Policy ambiguity results in tactical confusion. As we focus on the misconduct of some, it is worth remembering that more than 60,000 detainees have been processed since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, and while the instances of abuse that have been verified will forever stain our national honor, they represent only a small and unrepresentative set of instances. The military police company that preceded the 372nd MP Company served under comparable conditions at Abu Ghraib without having committed such abuses, as have many other units in Iraq and Afghanistan. The remedies suggested by social scientists (e.g. better training, staffing, accountability, direction, transparency) represent good common-sense approaches to effective management and leadership. All of these same suggestions may be found in the Taguba Report, prepared by the Army in the early aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Psychologists’ suggestion that the Army seek advice on corrections from the Navy and Air Force reflects confusion with respect to the roles of the services. The Army has the longest and most extensive experience dealing with these issues, and the Army is responsible for these facets of military operations in combat theaters. The other services operate only small, short-term confinement facilities primarily designed to hold service members. Correctional specialists from all branches of service are trained at the US Army Military Police Center and School at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

The power of the situation: insurgency in Iraq The situation we now face in Iraq is unique in our history. This “fourth generation war” (Hammes 2004) is a form of insurgency that incorporates familiar elements from earlier conflicts, refined and supplemented with techniques designed specifically to exploit our military weaknesses and avoid our strengths. Our military was largely designed to fight on a linear battlefield, and trained to confront a uniformed enemy in conventional formations. Instead, we face a battlefield without lines and an enemy difficult to distinguish from innocent civilians. The military is fighting this war alongside contractors, intelligence agencies, and others with vastly different organizational cultures. Our military has had to adapt its tactics to these realities, and most service members have had to adapt to jobs they never expected to perform. They have been asked to do this under the harshest of conditions, living under constant stress, in an unfamiliar land and culture, uncertain of 85

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the future demands that may be placed on them, all the while connected as never before to the news of the world and their homes even as they serve. Social science may indeed have much to say about the consequences of these conditions. The factors at work surely go far beyond obedience and conformity, however. Our contemporary military is unlike any other in our history. The force in Iraq is an allrecruited force, vastly different from the force that fought the Vietnam War. Nearly half are Reservists or Guard troops, many of whom were not acculturated to expect such deployments, and many of whom (like their Active-component counterparts) are serving multiple tours of duty in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. The effects of this operational tempo on Active and Reserve service members are only beginning to become apparent as recruiting and retention patterns across the services undergo dramatic change. Some psychologists suggest that the attitudes of American soldiers toward Iraqis have been affected by systemic tendencies to characterize the enemy in ways that enable violence (Staub 2004). Growing social cohesion within the force and a potentially widening civil– military gap may also play a role. Understanding the impact of these changed conditions will be an important and ongoing project for years to come.

Can social science help? Social scientists can play an important role in helping to understand the consequences of the demands now placed on our new military, and in developing effective strategies to cope with those demands and their consequences. This requires a rigorous and systematic analysis of conditions as they exist on the ground, and a willingness to confront the complicated and messy realities of modern warfare on their own terms. Yielding to the temptation to offer a simplistic explanation of a world media event such as the Abu Ghraib abuses, thereby drawing attention to a particular discipline, theory, or study, or as a means of attacking or defending policies or institutions with which we may or may not agree, does not sufficiently advance our understanding of these events. Zimbardo (2005) points out what he thinks are general similarities between prison life and military culture, such as the psychological consequences of stripping, delousing, and head-shaving, for example. Such comparisons (dated, inaccurate, and unrepresentative as they may be) between military service and criminal imprisonment seem especially inapt and even offensive in light of the sacrifices being made by the volunteers in our armed services today, but they also suggest that suspicion of the military as an institution may affect the analyses offered by some social scientists. Obedience and conformity to perceived role expectations may be a part of this story, but as the Abu Ghraib headlines fade, and as the scope and seriousness of detainee abuse in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom become clearer, more complex, subtle, and sophisticated explanations must be sought if we are to prevent such destructive behavior in the future. There is enough explanatory work to be done to permit plenty of room for both bad apple and bad barrel explanations to contribute meaningfully to our understanding of Abu Ghraib, and to leave plenty more room for careful analyses of organizational leadership and national policy as potential factors in these infamous abuses. The sooner we expand our focus to include those aspects and instances of abuse which may not superficially resemble famous studies, the sooner we will be able to bring the considerable resources of social science to bear on these matters of urgent national concern. 86

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Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Mastroianni, G. R. and Reed, G. (2006) “Apples, barrels, and Abu Ghraib,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 239–50.

References American Psychological Association (2004) “How psychology can help explain the Iraqi prisoner abuse,” Online. http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/prisonerabuse.html (accessed 6 September 2005). Badger, T.A. (2005) “England to face sentencing in abuse case,” Associated Press. Online. Available http://www.neilrogers.com/news/articles/2005050311.html (accessed 27 September 2006). Bruner, J.S. (2004) Foreword. In S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority. New York: Perennial Classics. Caldwell, A. (2005) “Cincinnati reservist found guilty of abuse,” Associated Press. Online. Available http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=APAB&p_action=keyword&p_theme= apabThe dark psychology of Abu Ghraib,” The Washington Dispatch, Online. Available http://www. washingtondispatch.com/article_9095.shtml (accessed 15 March 2005). Fiske, S.T., Harris, L.T. and Cuddy, A.J.C. (2004) “Why ordinary people torture enemy prisoners,” Science, 306: 1482–83. Gold, S. (2005) “5 California guardsmen face charges of abusing Iraqis,” Los Angeles Times. Online. Available http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/885482181.html?dids=885482181:885482181 &FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Aug+23%2C+2005&author=Scott+Gold&pu b=Los+Angeles+Times&edition=&startpage=A.1&desc=The+Nation (accessed 27 September 2006). Hammes, T.X. (2004) “Fourth generation warfare: Our enemies play to their strength,” Armed Forces Journal, November: 40–44. Harvey, F. and Schoomaker, P. (2005) “Detainee details,” National Review Online, 22 September. Online. Available http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/harvey_schoomaker200509220821.asp (accessed 27 September 2006). Mastroianni, G. (2002) “Milgram and the Holocaust: A re-examination,” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 22: 158–73. Milgram, S. (1963) “Behavioral study of obedience,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67: 371–78. ——(1974) Obedience to Authority, New York: Harper and Row. Schmitt, E. (2005) “Three in 82nd Airborne say beating Iraqi prisoners was routine,” New York Times. Online. Available http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70C12F83F540C778EDDA0089 4DD404482 (accessed 27 September 2006). Staub, E. (2004) “The route to prisoner abuse in Iraq,” APA Monitor 35: 9. Taguba Report (2004a) “Article 15–16 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade,” Online. Available http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/tagubarpt.html (accessed 6 September 2005). Taguba Report, Annex 1 (2004b) “AR 15–16 Investigation – Allegations of Detainee Abuse at Abu Ghraib Psychological Assessment.” Online. Available http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/t1. pdf (accessed 6 September 2005). Zimbardo, P. (1973) “The psychological power and pathology of imprisonment,” in E. Aronson and R. Helmreich (eds) Social Psychology, New York: Van Nostrand. ——(2005) The Stanford Prison Experiment: A simulation study of imprisonment, Online. Available http://www.prisonexp.org/slide-33.htm (accessed 1 September 2005). Zimbardo, P., Maslach, C. and Haney, C. (2000) “Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences,” in T. Blass (ed.) Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 193–238.

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8 The war on terror in the early twenty-first century Applying lessons from sociological classics and sites of abuse Ryan Ashley Caldwell and Stjepan G. Mestrovic

In this chapter, we analyze contemporary patterns of culture pertaining to the current war on terror through the lenses of the classic sociological perspective of Emile Durkheim, and his influence on two controversial classics, Samuel Stouffer’s The American Soldier and S.L.A. Marshall’s Men Against Fire. Our empirical data come from participantobservation research in courts-martial pertaining to three infamous sites of abuse in the current war: the abuse at Abu Ghraib that occurred in 2003 (Mestrovic 2007); the Operation Iron Triangle massacres of 9 May 2006 (Mestrovic 2009); and the Baghdad Canal Massacre of March 2007 (Zamost 2009).1 We conjoin these seemingly different sites of abuse because they all involve common, systemic issues that have been validated by other studies and by journalists. Suicide rates are currently at a 30-year high in the US Army. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rates among soldiers are the highest that they have been since the Vietnam War. Soldiers are forced to follow unlawful rules of engagement (ROE) (Iraqi Veterans Against the War 2008). The basic needs of soldiers pertaining to sleep, food, hygiene, and safety are not being met. The background of Iraqi-on-Iraqi ethnic cleansing and tribal warfare in Afghanistan and Pakistan has not yet been addressed, but contributes to the chaos and combat stress that US soldiers endure. These are some of the systemic, sociological issues that are at the center of all these events, but are treated as peripheral and without social theoretical scaffolding by media and scholars alike. Thus, these three sites of abuse are used here as a vehicle for a wider theoretical and empirical discussion of systemic issues pertaining to the war on terror. It is not immediately obvious how all of the aforementioned issues pertain to the common approach taken by Durkheim, Stouffer, and Marshall toward understanding social life in general and military societies in particular. Let us begin with Durkheim. We shall concentrate on Durkheim’s original understanding of “anomie” as “derangement” or the tendency for societies to “elevate to a rule the lack of rule from which they suffer” ([1897] 1951: 257). His original understanding has been misinterpreted by the ParsonianMertonian (Merton 1957) misunderstanding of anomie as “normlessness,” which is a term Durkheim never used or implied, and which implodes in meaning (all situations 88

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have some sort of norms, because societies abhor a vacuum). We instead argue for an interpretation of Durkheim’s anomie as having an emotive component that incorporates suffering and the literal experience of derangement, as we argue this is Durkheim’s intended connotation (Mestrovic & Caldwell 2010). Durkheim’s assumptions and findings concerning social integration influenced several generations of researchers, and found their way into Stouffer’s and Marshall’s studies of the American soldier.2 Consider for instance Samuel Stouffer’s The American Soldier (1949), which found that unit morale is directly dependent on social integration and close social bonds among soldiers. In common-sense terms, Stouffer showed convincingly that US soldiers in World War II (WWII) fought for each other, and not for national ideals, their leaders, or patriotism, and not out of hatred for the enemy (see Schwartz and Marsh 1999). This significant finding is but an echo of Durkheim’s (1897) overall finding that social integration is the most important factor in predicting adequate health and functioning in any and all social units, from families to armies to nations. Likewise, serious consideration should be given to S.L.A. Marshall’s Men Against Fire (1947), which found that it is against “human nature” for humans to kill each other. Like Durkheim and Stouffer, Marshall focuses instead on the “human touch” and “warmth” among soldiers, who regard each other as a family of sorts, to explain how soldiers withstand combat stress and the unnatural obligation to kill, which is the rule of “lack of rule” in warfare.

Interpreting Durkheim, Stouffer, and Marshall It is necessary to address briefly the controversies surrounding the three classical perspectives we use in this analysis. We begin with Marshall. Instead of focusing on Marshall’s sociological and basically Durkheimian insight that killing goes against human nature, researchers have tended to focus on his finding that fewer than 20 percent of the soldiers actually open fire against the enemy.3 From our Durkheimian perspective, we focus on passages such as the following from his classic: I hold it to be one of the simplest truths of war that the thing which enables an infantry soldier to keep going with his weapons is the near presence or the presumed presence of a comrade. The warmth which derives from human companionship is as essential to his employment of the arms with which he fights as is the finger with which he pulls a trigger. He is sustained by his fellows primarily and by his weapons secondarily. (1947: 42) Grossman (1996) and other interpreters focus primarily on the unnatural need for the soldier to pull the trigger at a higher ratio than “human nature” permits, whereas we focus for a Durkheimian analysis on the soldier’s sense of social solidarity with his comrades as a prophylactic against the combat stress caused by the horrors of war (Thomas 2007).4 Moreover, Stouffer, Marshall, and subsequent researchers have found that combat veterans are more vulnerable to combat stress than fresh troops: instead of the “skin” of the soldier becoming tougher through exposure to combat, it becomes thinner. Yet the US military continues to send soldiers on numerous redeployments in obvious contradiction of this important finding. We have personally witnessed numerous testimonies of 89

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soldiers in courts-martial who testified that they had brain injuries, suffered from diagnosed PTSD, and were unfit to go out on missions. Despite these documented facts, soldiers testified under oath that they were sent out on missions repeatedly, and we interpret this as an example of what Durkheim meant by deranged social policy. There are other connections here with Durkheim’s conceptualization of anomie as derangement, specifically with regard to changing ROE and one’s identity as a soldier. Soldiers have told us that they would ask each other, with a sense of gallows humor, “So, what is the ROE today?” We have witnessed soldiers testify that they invented their own ROE because they did not feel that the official ROE protected them from an unseen enemy who planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Soldiers expressed frustration that even after arresting enemies whom they recognized as responsible for planting IEDs or shooting at them, soldiers were forced to release enemies because of bureaucratic hassles. For example, soldiers were not issued cameras, but were required to photograph evidence of the enemy seeking to kill them. This is yet another instance of a “rule” that is really “a lack of rule.” Such chronic uncertainty is part of anomie as derangement, and has negative consequences for combat, morale, performance, and health. The military seems to have ignored what is fundamentally sociological in the findings by Stouffer, Marshall, and others whose research upholds Durkheim’s social theory. The controversies in interpreting Stouffer and Marshall strike us as academic, but not as pragmatic, or as lending themselves to empirical resolution.

Empirical connections to the Durkheimian trajectory of thought We link our empirical findings, and those made by others, directly to our Durkheimian interpretation of Stouffer and Marshall. The Durkheimian derangement that we uncover in all the cases mentioned above is that the Army expects its soldiers to perform adequately even though it subjects them to chronic sleep deprivation, does not adequately treat PTSD, continues stop-loss programs that wear out soldiers far beyond the 3-month limit discovered by Stouffer, and other systemic issues that we have found to be common to the events we use as illustration. We regard Durkheim as one of the first theorists of the stress concept, and argue that his ideas can be applied to combat stress, PTSD, and the anomic contributors to these conditions (see Mestrovic and Glassner 1983; Mestrovic and Brown 1985; Mestrovic 1985).5

Recognizing derangement in the empirical data Consider Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the violence, torture, and suffering experienced by prisoners and soldiers at Saddam Hussein’s former torture chamber. Facts regarding Abu Ghraib serve as a template for systemic problems found at Operation Iron Triangle and the Baghdad Canal Massacre. Under the occupation by American forces, the violence at Abu Ghraib, as well as these other sites, existed in many forms and degrees of suffering. A Durkheimian approach to understanding this abuse in terms of derangement and the presence of extreme social disorganization comes from factual evidence such as the US Government reports pertaining to Abu Ghraib, as well as testimony from the courts-martial, interviews with soldiers, participation with the defense, and eyewitness accounts of the trials (which are described meticulously by Caldwell and Mestrovic 2008). 90

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Another large area of systemic derangement lies in the policy, as we have witnessed it at the courts-martial, for the US military to punish rather than treat soldiers with PTSD. We found that all of the so-called “bad apples” and the accused in the massacres that we studied were suffering from PTSD. The causes were obvious and documented in court: Abu Ghraib was mortared almost daily by insurgents, and everyone in it lived in constant fear of sudden and unpredictable death. Soldiers involved in the massacres were exposed to unseen enemies bent upon killing them unexpectedly, and all had witnessed brutal deaths of their comrades as a result of IEDs. Intelligence officers testified at the Canal killings courts-martial that Iraqi-on-Iraqi ethnic cleansing was occurring throughout the pre-surge and surge periods. Approximately 100 to 150 Iraqi bodies per day were found by US soldiers. Some of the convicted soldiers told us that they were forced by their commanders to “clean up” the bodies, including decapitated heads. But instead of regarding these soldiers as psychiatric casualties of war, and treating their understandable PTSD as a mitigating factor in the crimes they committed, the US military justice system prosecuted them to the maximum extent permitted by military law. It is appropriate to label this rule of “lack of rule” as derangement on the part of the US military (see also Cooke 2009). What is more, many expert witnesses (including Ivy-League educated scholarly academics, psychiatrists, and psychologists), made the critique that a structural problem existed within the military, yet soldiers were blamed for this deviance; these arguments fell on the deaf ears of the panel in each of these courts-martial. We learned at the many different trials that at Abu Ghraib, there was a lack of a and/or confused filing system, with associated poor paperwork and poor reporting procedures. Similarly, at Iron Triangle and the Baghdad canal sites, there were no established, consistent, or lawful procedures for dealing with prisoners, who were referred to as detainees. It was unclear who was in charge of Abu Ghraib, who actually ran the prison and made all of the major decisions. This, in turn, made it difficult for those working at Abu Ghraib to identify a commanding officer or their chain of command. Similarly, at the other sites, unit affiliation changed every month, so that soldiers were not certain of their chain of command. The Abu Ghraib prison itself was overcrowded, with an illegal ratio of prisoners to guards, with a dysfunctional system for discharging prisoners, and a failed screening procedure for intake of prisoners when they were arrested and when they were processed into Abu Ghraib. What is more the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency as well as civilian contractors and government agencies, operated outside standard rules and procedures established by the Army Field Manual and the Geneva Conventions, including the failure to screen civilian contractors (Danner 2004; Strasser 2004). We discovered that in all the cases we studied the unit affiliations changed rapidly and frequently. For example, if a soldier was assigned to a particular company, that company would be reshuffled and assigned to different battalions or brigades. In the case of the Baghdad Canal Killings, brigade affiliation changed every month. Similarly, at Abu Ghraib, the soldiers testified that they did not know to which chain of command they belonged because of such reshuffling. Sometimes individual soldiers were shuffled and at other times entire companies were reassigned. Thus, even if the company remained intact, the chain of command changed frequently. This also meant that ROE, standard operating procedures (SOP), and other directives changed rapidly and unpredictably as well. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld introduced this corporate strategy of treating individuals and units as identical and replaceable (the term he used is “fungible assets”) into military planning. He is quoted as saying: “Oh, come on. People are 91

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fungible. You can have them here or there” (CNN 2004).6 Clearly, this modern, corporate model goes against the grain of Durkheim’s, Stouffer’s, and Marshall’s approaches. It is a truism in Durkheimian studies that any rapid and unpredictable change causes stress in a social group, which leads to predictably negative consequences. Predictably, testimony showed many examples of lack of standardized training or familiarity with ever-changing rules, including but not limited to the basic lack of familiarity with the Geneva Conventions. In fact, the ROE at Iron Triangle were transparently unlawful, to “kill all those sons-of-bitches,” but were not challenged by officers or soldiers (see Mestrovic 2008). In addition, the fact that the US military upheld the Geneva Conventions while various attorneys for the White House opined that the Geneva Conventions did not wholly apply to the treatment of prisoners made it confusing for many soldiers at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere with regard to the norms pertaining to prisoner handling, interrogation, etc. In addition, the US Army failed to sufficiently train Military Police (MP) and Military Intelligence (MI) in policing as well as allowable interrogation procedures, and blurred the roles of the MI and MP at Abu Ghraib. At the sites of the massacres, there was no MP involvement at all, so that soldiers were compelled to follow the deranged rule of detaining enemies who had just tried to kill them. Common sense dictates that passions, including the desire to avenge the deaths of comrades, would prevail versus the more reliable system of using MP who had not been exposed to combat to detain these enemies. There was a general lack of military discipline, along with a host of other facts that suggest extreme social chaos.7 The characterization of all these and other facts as anomic in the sense of being deranged is practically non-existent in literature, and it is this vacuum that we wish to fill.

The consequences of perceiving derangement versus “normlessness” In academia, the incorrect interpretation of anomie as “normlessness” prevails. The functionalist approach has been applied to the topic of crime and is used by criminologists, but has never been applied to war crimes. However, anomie as derangement is a descriptor for understanding war crimes that seems to be applicable to the sites we are describing. In other words, a war crime is different from an ordinary crime in that it involves a military command structure and chain of command, leadership issues, unit morale, and other phenomena that are peculiar to military societies. A civilian murder on the streets of Houston, Texas is not equivalent to the massacres at Iron Triangle and Baghdad Canal because the latter involved unlawful rules of engagement and issues pertaining to command and unit climate. Soldiers did not go to Abu Ghraib or these other sites with the intent to commit crimes, but with the intent to carry out military missions, albeit, in extremely deranged social contexts. The failure of the military to create Stouffer-like stability within the military units contributed to PTSD. To summarize, common sense dictates that one would empathize with the explanation offered by one of these convicted soldiers, interviewed at the US Disciplinary Barracks at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas: “It’s not like we went into a schoolroom in New Jersey and opened fire.” The soldier added: “Sir, every mission we went on was ‘pre-meditated.’ I am not a war criminal.” The functionalist perspective by Parsons (1937) assumes that social systems are selfcorrecting, and thus “normlessness” is truly about a simple miscalibration that will 92

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eventually correct itself back on course for the entire mechanistic system. However, the military environment at Abu Ghraib did not self-correct. This was most evident in court with the statement made by Captain Jonathan Crisp, defense counsel for Lynndie England, that the dysfunctional social system at Abu Ghraib not only failed to self-correct, but was itself self-perpetuating. Similarly, the unlawful ROE at Operation Iron Triangle to kill all military-aged males on sight, even if women and children were in the vicinity, and even if the males did not show hostile intent toward Americans, did not self-correct (Mestrovic 2008). Instead, we argue a version of this unlawful ROE continues to be used in strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Obama administration (for example see Schmitt 2009). The results have been predictable: the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan warn that their civilian populations are turning against the US, and the Taliban can more easily recruit insurgents. Durkheim (1897) assumes that anomie as derangement becomes chronic until self-conscious and deliberate remedies are sought from outside the dysfunctional system. The violence towards the prisoners at Abu Ghraib was extensive and ranged from verbal abuse, to misusing culture, religion, gender, and sexuality to exploit and torture (such as forced group masturbation, fellatio, etc.), and so on. There were forced naked human pyramids, panties on prisoners’ heads, and naked log roll “exercises,” which it was argued in court were approved techniques for controlling prisoners. Prisoners were murdered (but these murders were never prosecuted), and interrogation techniques and “enhanced interrogation techniques” were used on the prisoners at Abu Ghraib to attempt to extract information that nobody there even had. The Fay Report (in Strasser 2004) documents that 90 percent of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were ordinary Iraqis who were arrested during chaotic sweeps, while the prosecutor at the courts-martial revealed in open court that 100 percent of the abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib were not a threat to the US in any way. Similarly, the victims at the Iron Triangle and Baghdad Canal Massacres were never identified as terrorists, insurgents, or enemies of the US. In fact, the victims were never identified at all, and their bodies were never found; they were referred to as “unidentified males of Arab descent” in court documents. Regarding the derangement that Durkheim wrote about, we learned in the courtroom that Abu Ghraib was operating as a wartime prison within a war zone: a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Aside from being non-normative, this was dangerous, as the prison was without electricity, generators, food and water, and toilets, and lacked supplies such as clothing, all of which led to unnecessary suffering for prisoners and soldiers at Abu Ghraib. In addition, the prison was under constant mortar attack, making it life threatening for all inside. It was also porous to outside Iraqis, some selling goods such as disposable cameras on site. Similarly, at the other sites we are discussing, soldiers testified that they suspected Iraqi soldiers, with whom they engaged in joint military operations, to be terrorists, and did not trust them. These issues of ostensible allies mistrusting each other and being mortared even in “safe” areas do not even come up in studies by Stouffer and Marshall. One of the important findings of our research is that Durkheim’s original meaning of anomie as derangement can be used to describe and interpret the conditions and the social climate at Abu Ghraib within the courtroom. Soldiers testified under oath that Abu Ghraib was “not a normal prison,” “Bizarroworld,” and “hell on earth.” In addition, the supply officer at Abu Ghraib, Major David DiNenna, testified that he begged the Army for adequate water, food, toilets, light bulbs, and generators, and that his pleas fell on deaf ears. He testified in open court that he felt “abandoned” by the Army at Abu Ghraib (Mestrovic 2007: 107). All of these characterizations point to Durkheim’s 93

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unambiguous notion of anomie as derangement. Similarly, soldiers testified at the Operation Iron Triangle hearings that there were “kill contests,” “kill boards,” and “weird” ROE that they did not dare challenge. Soldiers at the Baghdad Canal trials complained about a “catch and release” program that was dysfunctional: the Army required soldiers to photograph evidence concerning suspects they captured, but did not issue cameras, and if the joint Iraqi soldiers did not find the evidence satisfactory, they released the prisoners that the Americans had captured. Soldiers testified that many of these same suspects would be laughing at and shooting at the Americans the following day. All of these frustrations, stresses, fears, and needless sufferings were preventable had the Army followed procedures in line with the findings by Durkheim, Stouffer, and Marshall.

Derangement in the misuse of social scientific findings One cannot escape the question of values in social scientific research because of the obvious fact that findings can be used to promote social solidarity, as Durkheim clearly intended, versus promoting “the dark side” (Mayer 2009) or negative emotions such as fear, rage, hatred, and chaos. Mayer focuses on how some social scientists implemented interrogation techniques to break down prisoners, despite it being well known that such techniques are ineffective for obtaining useful information. We wish to expand this idea to examine how ineffective and negative techniques were implemented against US soldiers as well. We leave open the question whether this resulted from deliberate intentions or was an unintended consequence of departing from Durkheim’s program of promoting social solidarity. What is now known with the release of some of the torture memos is that many of these techniques were ordered from the highest levels of the administration itself (American Civil Liberties Union 2009).8 Indeed, the Levin-McCain report, issued on 12 December 2008, documents that SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) techniques were supposed to be used against US troops to “teach our soldiers how to resist interrogation by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions and international law” (Levin and McCain 2008).9 However, these “dark side” techniques developed by the Communists to obtain propaganda from US prisoners (Biderman 1957) were used by the US government for interrogation purposes in the so-called war on terror (Levin and McCain 2008).10 The derangement in this state of affairs is the following: these SERE techniques were never intended to obtain reliable information. They were developed from North Korean Communist techniques designed to elicit propaganda from American prisoners. Yet they were used by US soldiers ostensibly to obtain truthful statements from captured insurgents at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan (Zagorin 2008). What is more, there was an established link between the training of soldiers in interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib by Major General Geoffery Miller, the head of interrogations for Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba, which was repeatedly overlooked in each courts-martial. Never mind that Miller was given immunity from each courts-martial of the “rotten apples” (White 2005),11 Miller’s job at Abu Ghraib was to “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib, so as to make it more like Guantanamo Bay in terms of their procedures (Karpinski 2005). Testimony, film documentaries, and government reports show conclusively that widespread patterns of abuse “migrated” from Guantanamo Bay and American-run prisons in Afghanistan as well as elsewhere in Iraq, and the migration begins from the White House itself. Moreover, Miller relied on teams of social scientists to develop these irrational and ineffective “dark side” techniques (Mayer 2009). 94

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Likewise, at the Iron Triangle and Baghdad Canal courts-martial, blame fell on lowranking soldiers instead of refocusing and redirecting accountability issues onto an examination of the military elite and government. Testimony showed that accused soldiers associated with Operation Iron Triangle were kept in solitary confinement for months at a time for no reason other than to keep them away from the news media, and were forced to sleep, shower, and remain in leg irons and shackles at all times. All this occurred during their pre-trial confinement, when they were presumed to be “innocent until proven guilty” according to the US Constitution. We also found that Criminal Investigative Division (CID) agents routinely use variations of the Reid Technique to lie to soldiers in order to elicit confessions, and do not read them their rights as required; we both witnessed this testimony from a CID agent in a courtroom in Vilseck, Germany. The deranged aspect of this situation is that soldiers are socialized by the Army to be honest, and their sense of honor and trust toward superiors is used against them via Machiavellian, dishonest techniques used by Army interrogators. In January 2009, it was reported that the Army reached its highest levels of rates for suicide since 1980, when the Army began collecting statistics for suicide, citing the stress of long redeployments to war zones as one possibility for this increase (Alvarez 2009).12 Some also charge that some of the suicides committed by women also involved rapes, which have, it has been argued, been subsequently covered up by the Army (Center for Constitutional Rights 2009).13 In addition, other signs of stress including obesity have doubled since the start of the Iraq war in 2003 (Zoroya 2009).14 It is not surprising that in this toxic social climate the social bonds and cohesion of soldiers break down, according to Durkheim’s very basic theory of anomie, and these kinds of behaviors can be seen empirically in Iraq and in our research, and are themselves predictable.

Conclusions We have found numerous instances when the US Army has ignored and is ignoring fundamental, classic findings by Stouffer, Marshall, and Durkheim regarding social integration and its effect on unit morale and effectiveness. Stouffer found that soldiers do not fight for ideology, democracy, their families, or even out of hatred for the enemy. He proved that soldiers come to regard each other as a “family” or a “band of brothers” and fight primarily for each other. Thus, unit morale depends on these kinds of relationships between soldiers. This unit morale is encouraged by minimizing rotation within and among units in brigades. Stouffer also found that soldiers judge events based on “relative deprivation” and “reference groups” and that infantry soldiers are “burned-out” after about three months of fighting. In total disregard for Stouffer’s widely accepted findings, the Rumsfeld Doctrine (a corporate paradigmatic perspective) holds that soldiers are interchangeable units or what he called “fungible assets,” whose allegiance to regiments and brigades changes frequently. This strategy is catastrophic for unit morale, and goes directly against Durkheim’s and Stouffer’s findings. The destruction of social bonds among soldiers by rotating individual soldiers as well as companies also promotes anomie as derangement, and the evils we have discussed above. Our major conclusions are, first, that a Stouffer-like study of the American soldier in the war on terror is needed urgently. This means that Stouffer’s Durkheimian assumptions as well as his methodology need to be replicated. Second, and without the empirical data that will most likely confirm Stouffer’s findings, we urge military planners to take Stouffer 95

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seriously and implement his existing findings from WWII. It is wiser to err on the side of caution than to go directly against findings that have come to be regarded as classic in this field. In line with Marshall, we found that in the atrocities examined above, soldiers were extremely reluctant to carry out an order given to kill all military-age Iraqi males on sight, and when they did carry it out, they did so in the role of psychiatric casualties of war. The confusion as to how the ROE should be interpreted, the frequent changes to the ROE, the different interpretations of the ROE depending on the unit, all contribute to what Durkheim called anomie as derangement. Marshall repeats often that soldiers are not machines and should not be treated as machines. Yet the unlawful ROE that were issued and continue to be issued turn soldiers into “killing machines”; the use of unmanned drones to carry out unlawful ROE should be addressed in future research. Again, we conclude that military planners ought to take Marshall’s findings seriously, including his admonition not to turn soldiers into killing machines. We touched on the fact that Iraqi-on-Iraqi ethnic cleansing was occurring in Iraq, where exposure to gruesome killing, alone, is sufficient to cause PTSD in US soldiers, impair their judgment, and make them ineffective in combat. We conclude that military planners need to prepare plans, policies, special ROE, and other phenomena to deal with ethnic cleansing; much like how the United Nations Protective Force (UNPROFOR) was prepared for ethnic cleansing in Bosnia (Cushman & Mestrovic 1996). Overall, our impression is that because of poor planning, US soldiers are thrust into a situation in which they are confused between their roles as peacekeepers (regarding ethnic cleansing) and warriors, and that the indigenous population hates them irrationally. We have seen that the military fails to provide the basic human needs of its soldiers, including sleep, water, food, toilets, and safety outside the combat zone, at least early in the war. We heard prosecutors excuse these mistakes with lame rationalizations that Iraq is “a difficult mission.” Our point is that a difficult mission becomes impossible when the soldier’s body, mind, and unit are deprived of fundamental needs. Along these lines, PTSD ought to be taken seriously and treated. Alternatives to the current policies of sending burned-out, chronically sleep-deprived, and emotionally devastated soldiers on multiple rotations ought to be found. Overall, we assert Durkheim’s relevance to issues pertaining to war, war crimes, and military preparedness in the early twenty-first century. Durkheim was the only major social theorist to address a healthy, functional, integrated society as well as a pathological, dysfunctional, anomic society. Durkheim is relevant to these issues, and he ought to be taken seriously. So far, American warfare in the twenty-first century has been informed by expedience and corporate practices, not solid, classical and accepted social theory and research. We believe that it is important to reverse this current disastrous path and rethink warfare, as well as the current war, in line with sociology’s most iconic classic, the theory of Emile Durkheim.

Notes 1 See the CNN documentary, “Killings at the Canal: The Army Tapes,” which was broadcast during the week of 16 November 2009. 2 Before and immediately following WWII, there was great interest by anthropologists in studying war, as evidenced by the works of Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson, among others. Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) became a best-seller because it explained Japanese versus American cultural attitudes toward issues pertaining to the meaning of victory,

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3

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defeat, shame, and prisoners. Nonetheless, contemporary anthropologists have been reluctant to follow up on these efforts with regard to the current war, even decrying a pro-American “bias” in the works of Benedict, Mead, and Bateson. Likewise, the current push toward using Human Terrain Teams in anthropology is controversial (Connable 2009; McFate 2005a,b; Serrato et al. 2009). Similarly, the APA has engaged in debates concerning the use of psychologists in developing or assisting with interrogation techniques. Durkheim’s immense influence on anthropology and psychology has been neglected with regard to his most basic claims: society needs genuine moral codes in order to function effectively; anomie as derangement is destructive and dysfunctional for societies; social integration and solidarity are necessary and functional, even for psychological processes involved in language and communication. It is for this reason that we turn to Durkheim’s social theory to fill these lacunae in social theory and military planning. Marshall emphasized that soldiers are reluctant to kill, but his contemporary interpreters such as Grossman (1996) seek to find ways to increase the fire ratio by using operant conditioning. For example, Khatchadourian (2009) has documented that Grossman’s book was issued to every soldier before Operation Iron Triangle, and that the brigade in question used kill boards, kill contests, and kill coins as methods of operant conditioning to desensitize soldiers toward killing and make them more likely to kill without questioning their ROE. Mestrovic (2009) confirmed Khatchadourian’s finding through interviews with the convicted soldiers. But Marshall emphasized that soldiers are not machines, and are a delicate balance of mind, body, and society. This precarious balance can be upset easily, such that Stouffer, Marshall, and others have found that after 3 months of combat, the infantry soldier is effectively useless for combat. Criticisms of Marshall contend that he either invented his quantitative data or used incorrect quantitative methodologies to interpret his data (see Chambers’s 2003 study, Men Against Fire). First, we note that positivists and others who use quantitative methodologies routinely criticize each other’s studies along these same lines. Second, and more importantly, we note that Marshall’s study is primarily qualitative in its methodology and primarily Durkheimian in its orientation. We choose to focus on his sociological interpretations of human nature, the need for social solidarity, and the “human touch” in understanding soldiers (also see Thomas 2007 for a discussion of the controversy surrounding S.L.A. Marshall’s study). Again, it is impossible to escape controversy in academia. For example, we are aware that Morten Ender (2009) has found high morale among US troops during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and has challenged public perception with media reports that morale was low. We do not quibble with his findings, but note that Operation Iraqi Freedom was the first phase of the war, so that high unit morale was to be expected. On the other hand, Ricks (2006, 2009) has found that 5 or more years after the invasion of Iraq, the suicide rates, alcoholism, rates of PTSD, gambling, promiscuity, and other symptoms have increased dramatically, suggesting severe social stress on the troops. The Army has admitted and addressed these and other problems only in the past 2 years. From a Durkheimian perspective, there is simply no way to explain recent, documented, and rapid increases in rates of suicide, obesity, accidents, alcoholism, gambling, and PTSD among soldiers as indicative of adequate social integration. Durkheim argued convincingly in Suicide that increased suicide and other rates of pathology caused by stress are always the effects of decreased social integration (morale) and increased anomie (derangement). His findings have been verified repeatedly by subsequent social epidemiologists. Our intent is to bypass strictly academic polemics in favor of relating the many, empirically verifiable, aforementioned social problems to the works of Durkheim, Stouffer and Marshall. See transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0404/15/lol.04.html See Danner (2004), Falk et al. (2006), Hersh (2004), Karpinski (2005), Mestrovic (2007), Strasser (2004), as well as three film documentaries, Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure (2008), and Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side (2008). See Bybee and Bradbury memos at www.aclu.org See levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id = 305735 See specifically within the Levin-McCain report this section: “The SERE techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in US custody. The Committee’s investigation found, however, that senior officials in the US government decided to use some of these harsh techniques against detainees based on deeply flawed interpretations of US and international law. The Committee concluded that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in US custody.” See levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id = 305735 for the complete Levin-McCain Report.

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11 12 13 14

See See See See

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302380.html www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/us/06suicide.html?_r=1& ref = us www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8564 www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009–02–09-obesity_N.htm

References Alvarez, L. (2009) “Army data shows rise in number of suicides.” New York Times, 5 February. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/us/06suicide.html?_r=1&ref=us (accessed 5 February 2009). American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (2009) “Bybee and Bradbury memos on interrogation techniques and torture.” Online. www.aclu.org (accessed 1 August 2009). Benedict, R. (1946) The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Biderman, A.D. (1957) “Communist attempts to elicit false confessions from air force prisoners of war,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 33: 616–25. Caldwell, R.A. and Mestrovic, S. (2008) “The role of gender in ‘expressive’ abuse at Abu Ghraib,” Cultural Sociology, 2: 275–99. ——(2010) “Durkheim’s concept of anomie as ‘derangement’ applied to the abuse at Abu Ghraib: an examination of post-emotional displacement, scapegoating, and responsibility,” in S. Romi Mukherjee (ed.) Durkheim and Violence, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Center for Constitutional Rights (2009) “Court rules Abu Ghraib torture victims can sue contractor CACI, according to legal team for former detainees.” Online. Available http://www.commondream s.org/newswire/2009/03/19–22 (accessed 19 March 2009). Chambers, J.W. (2003) “S. L. A. Marshall’s men against fire: New evidence regarding fire ratios,” Parameters, 33: 113–22. CNN. (2004) “Pentagon re-ups 20,000 troops for 90 more days in Iraq; Euro leaders reject Bin Laden truce offer.” Online. Available http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0404/15/lol.04.html (accessed 15 April 2004). Common Dreams (2008) “Is there an army cover-up of rape and murder of women soldiers?” Online. Available http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8564 (accessed 28 April 2008). Connable, B. (2009) “All our eggs in a broken basket: How the human terrain system is undermining sustainable military cultural competence,” Military Review, March/April: 57–64. Cooke, P. (2009) “Post-traumatic stress disorder and the military justice system,” Mississippi Law Journal, 79. Cushman, T. and Mestrovic, S. (1996) This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia, New York: New York University Press. Danner, M. (2004) Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, New York: New York Review of Books. Durkheim, E. (1897/1951) Suicide: A Study in Sociology, trans. J. A. Spaulding and G. Simpson, New York: Free Press. Ender, M. (2009) American Soldier in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? New York: Routledge. Falk, R., Gendzier, I. and Lifton, R.J. (eds) (2006) Crimes of War: Iraq, New York: Nation Books. Gibney, A. (Director) (2008) Taxi to the Dark Side [Motion Picture]. United States: Discovery Channel. Grossman, D. (1996) On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Boston, MA: Back Bay Books. Hersh, S. M. (2004) Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, New York: Harper Collins. Iraqi Veterans Against the War (2008) Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan Accounts of the Occupations, San Francisco, CA: Haymarket. Karpinski, J. (2005) One Woman’s Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story, New York: Hyperion. Kennedy, R. (Director) (2007) Ghosts of Abu Ghraib [Motion Picture]. United States. HBO Video (n.d.) Khatchadourian, R. (2009) “Kill company,” The New Yorker, 6 July: 40–59.

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Levin, C. and McCain, J. (2008) Report on Treatment of Detainees in US Custody. Online. Available http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=305735 (accessed 11 December 2008). Marshall, S.L.A. (1947) Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Mayer, J. (2009) The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, New York: Anchor. McFate, M. (2005a) “Anthropology and counterinsurgency: The strange story of their curious relationship,” Military Review, 85: 24–38. ——(2005b) “The military utility of understanding adversary culture,” Joint Force Quarterly July: 42–48. Merton, R. K. (1957) Social Theory and Social Structure, New York: Free Press. Mestrovic, S. (1985) “A sociological conceptualization of trauma,” Social Science and Medicine, 21: 835–48. ——(2007) The Trials of Abu Ghraib, Boulder, CO: Paradigm. ——(2008) Rules of Engagement? A Social Analysis of an American War Crime: Operation Iron Triangle, Iraq, New York: Algora. ——(2009) The Good Soldier on Trial: A Sociological Study of US Military Misconduct Pertaining to Operation Iron Triangle, Iraq, New York: Algora. Mestrovic, S. and Brown, H.M. (1985) “Durkheim’s concept of anomie as dereglement,” Social Problems, 33: 835–48. Mestrovic, S. and Caldwell, R. A. (2010) “Durkheim’s concept of anomie as ‘derangement’ applied to the abuse at Abu Ghraib: An examination of post-emotional displacement, scapegoating, and responsibility,” in S. Romi Mukherjee (ed.) Durkheim and Violence, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Mestrovic, S. and Glassner, B. (1983) “A Durkheimian hypothesis on stress,” Social Science and Medicine, 17: 1315–27. Morris, E. (Director) (2008) Standard Operating Procedure [Motion Picture]. United States: Sony Pictures. Parsons, T. (1937) The Structure of Social Action, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Ricks, T. (2006) Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, New York: Penguin. ——(2009) The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq 2006–2008, New York: Penguin. Schmitt, E. (2009) “Afghan villagers describe chaos of US strikes,” New York Times, 5 May. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15farah.html?pagewanted=2r=1& ref = global-home (accessed 5 May 2009). Schwartz, T.P. and Marsh, R.M. (1999) “The American soldier studies of WWII: A 50th anniversary commemorative,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 27: 21–37. Serrato, M., Laporte, C. and Dhanju, R. (2009) “When did ‘do no harm’ become ‘do nothing’: Graduate student perspectives on the human terrain system controversy,” Anthropology News, 50: 24. Stouffer, S. (1949) The American Soldier, Volumes 1–2, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Strasser, S. (2004) The Abu Ghraib Investigations: The Official Reports of the Independent Panel and the Pentagon on the Shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, New York: Public Affairs. Thomas, E. (2007) “Fire away: Exploding one of history’s more enduring myths,” Newsweek, 7 December. Online. Available http://www.newsweek.com/id/76997 (accessed 5 July 2009). White, J. (2005), “Abu Ghraib tactics were first used at Guantanamo.” Washington Post, 14 July. Online. Available http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR200507130238 0.html (accessed 13 July 2005). Zagorin, A. (2008) “Seeking answers on detainee abuse,” Time, 17 June. Online. Available http:// www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1815571,00.html (accessed 16 February 2010). Zamost, S. (Producer) (2009) Killings at the Canal: The Army Tapes [Television Broadcast]. 16 November 2009. Atlanta, GA: CNN. Zoroya, G. (2009) “Pentagon report shows US troop obesity doubles since 2003.” USA Today, 9 February. Online. Available http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009–02–09-obesity_N.htm (accessed 9 February 2009).

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Part II War on the ground: non-combat operations, non-combatants, and operators

9 Policing post-war Iraq Insurgency, civilian police, and the reconstruction of society Mathieu Deflem and Suzanne Sutphin

The military intervention in Iraq presents sociologists with a variety of pressing questions. Intriguing sociological work can be undertaken about more routine aspects of a society that is troubled by warfare and its enduringly violent aftermath. We address this concern by investigating the sociology of social control to unravel important dimensions of policing in the context of post-war Iraq. Our analysis of the police situation in Iraq focuses on developments since an end to major combat operations was announced in the spring of 2003. Importantly, we make no assertion that the police formally legitimated forces with the tasks of crime control and order maintenance in Iraq have acquired a degree of popular legitimacy comparable with that of law-enforcement agencies in other nations, especially those with a long history of democratization. Considering the rapid changes in the Iraqi situation, it is important to note that this article was completed in August 2006, at a time when discussions on the insurgency in Iraq were already implying a shift towards civil war. Focusing on the reformation of the civilian police system in Iraq since the collapse of the Ba’ath regime, we devote special attention to the continued violence that has plagued Iraqi society, particularly the manner in which the insurgency has focused its most deadly efforts against the newly formed Iraqi civilian police. The Iraqi police are among the favored targets of the insurgency (Chandrasekaran 2004; Housego 2004; Reuters 2006; Redmon 2006; Shadid 2005). Yet, no scholarly analysis has examined the role played by the reformed civilian police forces in the reconstruction of Iraq, and, particularly, the difficulties Iraqi police face regarding the ongoing insurgency. Our analyses rely on news articles retrieved via the Lexis-Nexis database, archival sources collected from government and private websites, and interviews with representatives of the US Department of State and the Department of Justice. Theoretically, our analysis is rooted in sociological perspectives of the evolution of the police function, especially the role of police in the democratization process. 103

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Policing the state, policing society Sociological work on the institution and function of policing is well grounded in sociological theory, especially Max Weber’s explicit linking of the state with the legitimate means of force, defining the state as the political community which within a certain territory “claims for itself [with success] a monopoly of legitimate physical coercion” (1919: 506). Further indicating the centrality of coercion in conceptualizing the state, Weber included “the protection of personal security and public order [police]” as one of the important functions of the state (1922: 516). The fact that the police in nation-states are formally charged with lawfully executing the state’s monopoly over the means of internal coercion (Manning 1977) should not lead us to view the relations between the police and the other state organs as necessarily intimate. On the contrary, a comparative-historical viewpoint reveals an important degree of variability in how the police are institutionally placed and function within the concrete sociohistorical circumstances of specific societies (Deflem 2002). Policing powers were traditionally very broadly conceived to include political (or high) policing duties as well as criminal (or low) police objectives (Brodeur 1983). Over the course of history, however, police systems have become more independent (Deflem 2002; Manning 1977), becoming functionally oriented to law enforcement and crime control. In autocratic regimes, conversely, police power remains closely tied to the quest of governments to maintain power and secure order, often through violent means and in close conjunction with military forces that are less differentiated from police powers than is the case in democratic societies. As police institutions tend to be closely associated with the military, civilian police duties (of crime control) are often subsumed under a broader security regime (of order). Turning to Iraq, the institution of police during the reign of Saddam Hussein was intimately tied to the autocratic Ba’ath regime. Consequently, the Iraqi police as a civilian force was not well developed relative to the military and secret intelligence and security agencies. Since the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, these conditions have drastically changed to usher in a democratization of the Iraqi polity and commence an effort of civilian police reform. This is a slow and ongoing process that may require much time and effort and that, at present, has produced mixed results. Although some variations in the forms of policing democracies exist, the police function in a democratic society must at a minimum (Bayley 2001, 2005) fulfill the following dual conditions: the police must have a position of independence relative to the center of the state and be responsible towards the needs of citizens and accountable to law; and police actions must abide by standards of human rights and be transparent. In contemporary Iraq, these conditions are tentatively beginning to emerge, but many problems persist. In view of the fall of the Ba’ath regime and Iraq’s transition towards democratic rule, the case of Iraq’s civilian police presents a striking real-life experiment by which the evolving dynamics of policing and the difficulties facing the democratization process can be investigated. In the following analysis, we investigate the reformation of Iraq’s police since the occupation by the international coalition forces; we highlight some of the difficulties Iraq’s new civilian police forces have faced since the spread of the insurgency that erupted after an end was declared to major combat operations. 104

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Policing Iraq During the Ba’ath regime, the Iraqi National Police were responsible for all law-enforcement duties. Although staffed by officers trained in police academies, the police were placed under military oversight. Law-enforcement functions involving more serious criminal violations were delegated to the security services, leaving the police to deal mostly with petty offenses and traffic regulation. Three decades of Saddam Hussein’s rule brought about poorly managed police forces, which had low standards of education and operation. Corruption among the police was high, as was distrust towards the police among most Iraqi citizens. Police officers rarely ventured outside their stations, and when they did, they randomly rounded up suspects, extorted confessions by force and torture, or took bribes from family members to release suspects.

Policing the occupation The Iraqi invasion and the absence of police The invasion of Iraq brought about a swift toppling of the Ba’athist regime. Yet, many problems ensued once major hostilities had ended. Initially most striking was the general lawlessness that erupted in Baghdad after the invasion of the city. Some of this violence damaged the police infrastructure, later contributing to impede the rebuilding of the civilian forces. Also, at the time lawlessness had erupted, most Iraqi police and military had simply gone home ( Jones et al. 2005; Moss and Rohde 2006; Perito 2005). Although US officials had been informed about the likely breakdown of law and order in post-war situations, military command did not count on continued unrest after the cessation of major combat operations (Borger 2003; PBS 2003b). The US military appealed to Iraqi police to return to work, and although they were not allowed to carry weapons, many Iraqi police soon reported back to their stations. On 14 April 2003, joint patrols of Iraqi police and US soldiers were first spotted in the streets of the Iraqi capital. But the initial police presence produced considerable outrage among Iraqi citizens, as many of them were thought to be leftovers from the Ba’athist regime. That there was some truth to this perception was most clearly shown in May 2003 when Zuhair al-Naimi, a Ba’athist loyalist and interior ministry official under Saddam Hussein, was appointed as the new police chief in Baghdad. Al-Naimi was forced to resign within a week because he refused to implement the new police procedures suggested by the US (Rai 2003). Besides formally reporting to work after the invasion, most returning Iraqi police officials rarely left their offices. A careful vetting process would have to be conducted to train new officers and weed out those who were corrupt loyalists of Saddam Hussein (PBS 2003a). Police training is vital, as police in a non-democratic society, such as Ba’athist Iraq, are simply not accustomed to routine police activities, such as arrest, criminal investigation, and patrol (PBS 2003b). Besides training in technical matters of effective police techniques, the new Iraqi police also had to be familiarized with the procedures of democratic policing (Swiss Foundation for World Affairs 2005). The establishment of the Iraqi Police Service Under the direction of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the Iraqi Police Service (IPS) was created and placed under the authority of the Ministry of Interior (Global 105

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Security website; Jones et al. 2005). The new police service has formal charge of lawenforcement duties related to crime control and order maintenance. The police can also assist the coalition forces, but the latter remain primarily responsible for investigations involving terrorism and military crimes. Ba’ath party members are now no longer allowed to serve in any public sector function. Ironically, hindering the development of a well-functioning police, the purging of Ba’ath Party members from the Iraqi police implied a loss of officers at the senior and mid-level ranks, leaving important leadership positions vacant. Many resources have been and are still being devoted to the professionalization of the new Iraqi police, including aid from the military and from foreign police experts (Perito 2004, 2005). In May 2003, a team from the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program in the US Department of Justice concluded that international assistance was needed for the Iraqi police to maintain order. This pessimistic outlook was confirmed by a US soldier stationed in the city of Falluja, where, based on his observations, there simply was no police “because the insurgents just kill them. Most of the police are corrupt and the good ones get killed” (private correspondence, 2005). To assist with Iraqi police reform, an International Police Training Center was set up by the CPA in Amman, Jordan, in December 2003 (Cha 2003; Perito 2005). By October 2005, some 67,500 Iraqi police had been trained in the Jordan training center as well as in the Baghdad Police College and similar regional academies (US Department of Defense 2005), by officials from military and justice departments of the US, UK, and other countries, as well as by a host of officials from private contractors (Cha 2003; Jones et al. 2005). The ongoing challenge of Iraqi police reform Soon after its creation, the IPS turned out to be severely underequipped and far from successful in fulfilling its mission. Police officers who had been reinstalled from the police forces during the Ba’athist regime often turned out to be unreliable ( Jones et al. 2005). Many of the new recruits, also, engaged in corruption or were poorly trained and ineffective in carrying out their duties. To resolve the situation, a Civilian Police Advisory Training Team was established in May 2004 under the control of the international coalition forces and assigned responsibility for training and equipping the IPS ( Jones et al. 2005; Perito 2005). In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 36 assigned principal responsibility for the training of the Iraqi security forces, including the civilian police, to the US Department of Defense (US Department of State 2005). The coalition military forces initially carried out many police and other civilian tasks. However, the military was not ideally placed to perform police tasks and assist in the reformation of the Iraqi civilian police. Arguably the most tragic case concerning the blurred edges of responsibility between military police, civilian authority, the Central Intelligence Agency, and contracted security companies was the scandal surrounding conditions in the Abu Ghraib prison (Hersh 2004). In the fall of 2004, the Iraqi Interim Government conducted a purge of the IPS and removed several officers from the police because of corruption, lack of qualifications, or for failing to report to work. By May 2004, the total number of officers formally “on duty” in the IPS was about 90,000, but the number of police actually serving may have been as low as 40,000. Since its establishment, the IPS has continually expanded, to approximately 90,000 personnel by December 2004 (Global Security website; Jones et al. 106

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2005; Perito 2005). The Department of Defense projected that 135,000 IPS officers were to be fully trained by February 2007 (US Department of Defense 2005). Of course, whether securing a sufficient number of officers in the Iraqi police will be enough to ensure a structural change towards an effectively functioning civilian police institution is an altogether different matter. In 2006, the US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, announced a “year of the police,” but right up to the fall of that year, repeated efforts had to be made to reform and control the Iraqi police forces (McKeeby 2006; Moore 2006). The intensifying Iraqi insurgency has placed a particularly troublesome and evergrowing burden on Iraq’s civilian security forces.

The Iraqi insurgency The insurgency in Iraq refers to the armed campaign by a wide variety of irregular forces, drawn from Iraq and other countries, that are operating against the international coalition forces and the new Iraqi government. Since the end of major hostilities in the spring of 2003, the insurgency has increased considerably in size and intensity. The total number of active insurgents is estimated to be between 12,000 and 20,000, representing some 40 groups and many more smaller cells. By the spring of 2006, debates in the popular media began to refer to the situation in terms of a civil war. And by the summer of 2006, even US military generals had openly stated the possibility of an escalation of violence in Iraq that would amount to an outright civil war. It is difficult to define the insurgency in precise terms without lapsing into a politically contentious debate, but it is clear that the insurgency does not refer to a unified collective engaged in a clearly defined objective. Among the insurgents are Ba’athist sympathizers of Saddam Hussein, Sunni extremists, foreign Islamist fighters, including members of Al Qaeda, and the group surrounding the now slain militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (who was killed in a US air strike on 7 June 2006), as well as criminal groups that lack political–ideological motivations. Irrespective of the difficult questions surrounding the causes and objectives of the insurgency, it has effectively managed to destabilize Iraqi society. Originally aimed at the coalition forces, the insurgency rapidly spread out across Iraqi society, targeting Iraqi civilians and institutions, including police and security forces. Attacks have also taken place against mosques, political parties, hotels, the UN headquarters, foreign embassies, the International Red Cross, and international diplomats. Polls conducted among the Iraqi population show that anti-occupation sentiments occasionally go hand in hand with sympathy for the insurgents (Bender 2005).

Target: Iraqi police Available evidence suggests that the Iraqi police have been especially targeted by the insurgency. The Iraq Body Count (IBC) website provides a database with numerical information, based on a variety of news sources, about the incidents and casualties involving insurgent and other attacks since March 2003 (IBC 2005). Because of selective reporting, findings of the IBC website have to be treated with care. In order to avoid even the remotest possibility of overcounting, we rely on the minimum numbers in the database. We report the monthly number of incidents and casualties involving Iraqi police. 107

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Of the more than 40,000 deaths included in the IBC database by 17 August 2006 (end-date of last recorded casualty: 25 July 2006), 3,640 were police officers. Even although many deaths are reported for which occupational category is not known, police officers are represented more often in the database than any other occupation, including politicians, religious leaders, and legal professionals. A report published by the Iraq Body Count website confirms that police account for the single largest occupational category (IBC 2006). Of the 2,210 victims on which occupational information was available for the period from March 2003 to March 2005, no fewer than 977 police officers were counted among the 1,182 deaths recorded among security professionals. The IBC numbers are largely much lower than the actual death toll. According to a report by Robert Perito (2006) of the US Institute of Peace, several thousand Iraqi police officers have died in the line of duty since the invasion. There has been a general trend toward an increase in the number of attacks involving police and the number of casualties involved, peaking between May 2005 and January 2006. The increase is not steady from month to month, with some of the most lethal months following months that produced relatively fewer deaths. The evolution of the casualty rate (the number of casualties per incident) is more erratic, because some months had relatively few incidents with a relatively large number of casualties and because the lethality of each incident can vary considerably. Not all casualties reported in the IBC database are due to insurgent attacks, but evidence suggests that insurgent attacks are primarily responsible for the killings of Iraqi police. Based on information from one of the collaborators of the IBC website (personal communication, 28 October 2005), in the period from March 2005 until October 2005, 514 police were killed, of whom 384 were victims of attacks by anti-coalition agents. Despite the enormous casualty rate among the Iraqi police, new police recruits are readily found. Economic urgency rather than patriotism is a major motivation for many young Iraqis to join the police (Chandrasekaran 2004). One of the new recruits explained the situation well when he argued that joining the Iraqi police (or the army) is among the few options available for employment, although he fully realized that Iraqi police officers are “walking dead men” (Fainaru 2004).

Police and the pacification of society Following the 2003 invasion, the regime of Saddam Hussein collapsed quickly, much as the US government and the other coalition powers had hoped for, but the old Iraqi regime did not collapse in the manner that was expected. Among the greatest difficulties in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq have been the resurgence of ethnic and religious rivalries, the eruption and intensification of the insurgency, difficulties in mobilizing medical supplies and other necessary goods, and the restoration of Iraq’s primary social institutions. Clearly, the coalition forces were prepared to wage war, but were much less prepared to establish peace (Roxborough 2003). The process of pacification and reconstruction in Iraq must also include adequate attention to the civilian police situation. The Bush administration and its allies did not adequately anticipate what had to be done to establish a new Iraqi police force. A welldeveloped civilian police in Ba’athist Iraq was extremely unlikely, because states with a strong military and dictatorial past have inherent difficulties in separating internal security tasks from national defense functions. International support and political will are the 108

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minimum conditions for the successful creation of a well-functioning civilian police in countries where a radical regime change has taken place (Stanley 1996). A careful adaptation to local cultural and political circumstances and a clear separation of military and police functions are also needed (Bayley 2001). Robert Perito, a former official in the US Department of State who has extensive experience in implementing civilian police programs abroad, takes a pragmatic view and argues that “[l]arge-scale breakdowns in public order should he anticipated in the aftermath of international interventions, particularly in societies emerging from brutal oppression” (Perito 2005). Under those circumstances, Perito argues, police reform is always difficult, because even when police officials are given new equipment and better training, they have great difficulties performing in an effective and accountable manner. The problems associated with civilian police reform in Iraq have further been compounded because the US, as the dominant participant in the international coalition, does not have a national police force in the style of the semi-military gendarmerie forces that exist in many European countries. Therefore, the US military had to perform police functions in the immediate days following the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and had to rely on newly created Special Forces in the army and the US Military Police for an extended period thereafter (Perito 2003). The capabilities of such units are limited, primarily because they are made up of military personnel who are neither trained nor equipped to act as law-enforcement officers. It is also highly unlikely that military units will be recognized and accepted as police forces among the civilians they are meant to serve. Run by the State Department, the US Civilian Police Program in Iraq is administered through the company DynCorp International, which hires law-enforcement personnel from state and local agencies to fill civilian police posts abroad. Many DynCorp officers have little if any foreign experience. During the UN peace-keeping mission in Bosnia, DynCorp-deployed police were involved in arms trading and the sexual exploitation of women and children (Perito 2004: 283–88). Since the spring of 2006, DynCorp has been under investigation by US officials following reports of criminal fraud by DynCorp employees in Iraq, including the illegal selling of fuel and ammunition designated for the Iraqi police. It has also raised concerns that DynCorp delivers military troops and equipment to assist in foreign missions, thus effectively blurring the boundaries between military and civilian-police powers (Singer 2003). In Iraq, some 1,000 US police sub-contracted from DynCorp act as “International Police Liaison Officers” to aid the reorganization of Iraq’s police systems on the basis of a $750 million contract (Merle 2004; Moss and Rohde 2006). There are currently at least 36 such private security companies with some 25,000 employees, mostly from the US and the UK, as well as 16 Iraqi firms registered for security functions in Iraq, besides as many as 50 more companies thought to be operating illegally (Finer 2005). Employees from these private security companies, which perform various police functions because of the void left by the absence of Iraqi police, have reportedly been involved in several dozen shootings against Iraqi civilians. Private company employees are immune from prosecution under a new law adopted by Iraq’s interim government. The worst form of punishment they can receive is dismissal from their jobs. The Iraqi civilian police forces remain at an extreme disadvantage against the insurgency. Poorly equipped and undertrained, Iraq’s police forces simply cannot engage in law-enforcement duties when the minimal conditions of a basically safe and secure society are not met. These conditions of insecurity additionally create an environment in which other criminal ventures, such as organized crime, human smuggling, and drug 109

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trafficking, may take root (Tosti 2004). In these circumstances, also, many police matters take on a war-like character and remain primarily within the province of military forces.

Conclusion Formally, the Iraq war ended on 1 May 2003. Yet, President Bush’s declaration of the end of major combat operations did not usher in a period of peace for Iraqi society, as insurgent violence bordering on the brink of, and possibly anticipating, civil war has continued to ravage the country. The strength and effectiveness of the ongoing insurgency also drastically hindered the further development and effectiveness of the Iraqi police. A society that has not attained a degree of pacification cannot afford a civilian police. As Max Weber (1922) observed, it is only in the context of a pacified society that the forces of internal coercion can develop and the police can take on the position as “the ‘representative of God on earth’” (516). “Pacification” is hereby conceived to imply, as a minimal condition, an absence of warfare and a continuation of a state of durable peace that allows for a stabilization of the political order and a normalization of social life. Conditions of peace and the functioning of social institutions mutually influence one another. For as much as pacification is a condition of civilian police development, so too would the development of a well-functioning police force in Iraq signal the beginnings, however small, of the normalization of Iraqi society. A well-established and regularly functioning police force in Iraq would represent an important and highly visible indicator of a pacified society. Attacks against the police, therefore, are meant to thwart the reconstruction and pacification of Iraqi society. Although the insurgent attacks are also oriented against coalition forces, Iraqi civilians and security forces account for 80 percent of all casualties (US Department of Defense 2005). As the analysis in this paper has revealed, Iraqi police are particularly targeted by the insurgency. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought about a toppling of the Ba’athist regime and ushered in a new era for Iraq’s police system as well as other social institutions. As the coalition forces were caught by surprise over the enormity of the task of civilian police reform, the newly created Iraqi police forces were clearly in need of training in technical respects of adequate law enforcement and also in view of accountability and the use of democratic police methods. As is often the case with foreign police assistance, the need to assist police reform hovers between the dangers of providing insufficient support to build a well-functioning police, on the one hand, and creating a powerful tool of repression, on the other (Bayley 2005). Efforts to accomplish Iraqi police reform, at first clearly underestimated by the US-led occupation forces, have been increasingly recognized. Inasmuch as the Iraqi police is no longer the political tool of an autocratic regime, the police institution in Iraq is thus undergoing a process of societalization, however modest its current accomplishments. Therefore, we argue, the insurgency is aimed at attacking the Iraqi police in order to prevent the normalization of Iraqi society. Our thesis that the civilian police forces of Iraq are primary targets of the insurgent attacks because of the normalizing role a functioning police plays in society does not imply that there are no other factors contributing to the police being targeted. Indeed, another reason the police are a preferred target is that the Iraqi police forces are the primary Iraqi instrument in the counterinsurgency, thus positing the police as direct 110

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combatants against the insurgents. Also, because the Iraqi police forces are poorly trained and ill-equipped, they are relatively soft targets, especially compared with the US military troops. We do not mean to suggest that the Iraqi police, in being targeted because of their normalizing role, have already attained the status of a professional and democratic civilian force. Clearly, residues of the Ba’athist regime remain in place in the Iraqi social order. An additional and important complicating factor is the infiltration of militia groups in the police and the sectarian violence they engage in with Iraqi civilians. The relevance of the past is most tragically revealed in the continued reliance among the Iraqi police on methods of extortion and torture. In the summer of 2005, human rights activists stated that torture tactics, including such brutal methods as the hanging of detainees from wires and the drilling of holes into parts of their bodies, remain common among Iraq’s police (Galpin 2005). As recently as March of 2006, US military leaders and Iraqi authorities cooperated to investigate continued reports of police misconduct, leading to dismissals of corrupt officers and, in at least one case, the firing of an entire police unit (McKeeby 2006). By then, reports also indicated that the Iraqi police had more and more been infiltrated by sectarian militia groups and continued to show an extreme lack of professionalism (Allbritton 2006; Moss 2006). The Sunni community, especially, has complained about police brutality from a civilian force that is now dominated by a Shi’a majority. Recent reports have even indicated that the Iraqi Interior Ministry is connected to sectarian militias and has supplied militiamen with police uniforms and vehicles (Zavis 2006). Because of the inability of police to protect the population, Iraqis have continued to resort to neighborhood militias (Baker 2005). The Iraqi police are even more victimized by insurgent attacks than they are distrusted by the civilian Iraqi population, which indicates the significance of the development of a civilian police. Inasmuch as the Iraqi police forces aspire no longer to function as an arm of an autocratic state but to become an independent and professional law-enforcement service, ironically, they are more prone to the violent attacks from insurgent groups that continue to be committed to destabilize Iraqi society.

Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Deflem, M. and Sutphin, S. (2006) “Policing post-war Iraq: insurgency, civilian police, and the reconstruction of society,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 265–83.

References Allbritton, C. (2006) “Why Iraq’s police are a menace,” Time, Online. Available http://www.time. com/time/world/article/0,8599,1175055,00.html (accessed 20 April 2006). Baker, L. (2005) “Frustrated Iraqis ready to take law into own hands,” Common Dreams News Center. Online. Available http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0718–02.htm (accessed 17 August, 2006). Bayley, D. (2001) Democratizing the Police Abroad: What To Do and How To Do It, Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. ——(2005) Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Police Abroad, New York: Oxford University Press. Bender, B. (2005) “Insurgency seen forcing change in Iraq strategy: New aim to bring Sunnis into fold,” The Boston Globe, 10 June, p. A1.

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Borger, J. (2003) “Pentagon was warned over policing Iraq,” The Guardian, Online. Available http:// www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,965096,00.html (accessed 4 November 2005). Brodeur, J.-P. (1983) “High policing and low policing: Remarks about the policing of political activities,” Social Problems 30: 507–20. Cha, A.E. (2003) “Crash course in law enforcement lifts hopes for stability in Iraq: Academy set to train a new generation of the country’s police,” The Washington Post, 9 December, p. A22. Chandrasekaran, R. (2004) “Police recruits targeted in Iraq: Bomb kills scores near headquarters,” The Washington Post, 15 September, p. A1. Deflem, M. (2002) Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation, New York: Oxford University Press. Fainaru, S. (2004) “For police recruits, risk is constant companion.” The Washington Post, 27 September, p. A1. Finer, J. (2005) “Security contractors in Iraq under scrutiny after shootings,” The Washington Post, 10 September, p. A1. Galpin, R. (2005) “Iraq police accused of torture,” BBC News. Online. Available http://news.bbc.co. uk/2/hi/middle_east/4718999.stm (accessed 4 November 2005). Global Security (n.d.) “Iraqi police service (IPS).” Online. Available http://www.globalsecurity.org/ intell/world/iraq/ips.htm (accessed 20 April 2006). Hersh, S.M. (2004) Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, New York: Harper Collins. Housego, K. (2004) “Insurgents target Iraqi police with car bomb, gun ambush, killing at least 59,” Free New Mexican, Online. Online. http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/4294.html (accessed 4 November 2005). Iraq Body Count (2005) “A dossier of civilian casualties in Iraq 2003–5,” Online. Available http:// www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php (accessed 4 November 2005). ——(2006) Online. Available http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ (accessed 20 April 2006). Jones, S.G., Wilson, J.M., Rathmell, A. and Riley, K.J. (2005) Establishing Law and Order after Conflict, Santa Monica, VA: RAND Corporation. Online. Available http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs /2005/RAND_MG374.pdf (accessed 17 August 2006). McKeeby, D.I. (2006) “In Iraq, 2006 is the ‘year of the police,’ says US General.” The Washington File, Online. Available http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2006/03/iraq-060324usia01.htm (accessed 20 April 2006). Manning, P.K. (1977) Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Merle, R. (2004) “DynCorp took part in Chalabi raid,” The Washington Post, 4 June, p. A17. Moore, S. (2006) “US offers plan to curb rogue Iraqi police forces,” The Los Angeles Times, 15 August, p. A5. Moss, M. (2006) “How Iraq police reform became casualty of war,” The New York Times, 22 May, p. 1. Moss, M. and Rohde, D. (2006) “Misjudgments marred US plans for Iraqi police,” The New York Times, 21 May, p. 1. PBS (2003a) “The new Iraq,” Transcript of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, April 21. Online. Available http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june03/recon_4–21.html (accessed 4 November 2005). ——(2003b) “Truth, war, and consequences: interview with Robert M. Perito,” Frontline, Online. Available http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/perito.html (accessed 4 November 2005). Perito, R.M. (2003) “Establishing the rule of law in Iraq,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 104. Online. Available http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr104.html (accessed 17 August 2006). ——(2004) Where Is the Lone Ranger When We Need Him? America’s Search for a Postconflict Stability Force. Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace. ——(2005) “The coalition provisional authority’s experience with public security in Iraq,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 137. Online. http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/ sr137.html (accessed 4 November 2005). ——(2006) “Policing Iraq: protecting Iraqis from criminal violence,” United States Institute of Peace, USI Peace Briefing. Online. Available http://www.usip.org/pubs/usipeace_briefings/2006/0629_po licing_iraq.html (accessed 17 August 2006).

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Rai, M. (2003) Regime Unchanged: Why the War on Iraq Changed Nothing, London: Pluto Press. Redmon, J. (2006) “Iraqi police fear dangers in ranks,” Cox News Service, Online. Available http:// www.ajc.com/search/content/shared/news/stories/IRAQ_POLICE_0223_COX.html (accessed 20 April 2006). Reuters (2006) “Iraq police find 32 bodies of security forces,” Reuters News Service, Online. Available http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006–04–24T181409Z_01 _GEO464503_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-RECRUITS.xml (accessed 25 April 2006). Roxborough, I. (2003) “Iraq, Afghanistan, the Global War on Terrorism, and the owl of Minerva,” Political Power and Social Theory, 16: 185–211. Shadid, A. (2005) “Iraqi police bear brunt of suicide bombings,” The Star Tribune. Online. http://www. startribune.com/stories/484/5228151.html (accessed 4 November 2005). Singer, P.W. (2003) Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Stanley, W. (1996) “International tutelage and domestic political will: Building a new civilian police force in El Salvador,” in O. Marenin (ed.) Policing Change, Changing Police: International Perspectives, New York: Garland Publishing. Swiss Foundation for World Affairs (2005) “Security in a world of conflict: needs and strategies in international policing,” For the Record: Conference Report. Online. Available http://www.swissfou ndation.org/events/040605_FTR_HiRes.pdf (accessed 4 November 2006). Tosti, P. (2004) “Forecasting crime and narcobusiness: Iraq after the war,” Conflict, Security & Development 4: 91–95. US Department of Defense (2005) “Report: Measuring stability and security in Iraq,” Report to Congress, Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/20051013_publication_OSSRF.pdf (accessed 4 November 2005). US Department of State (2005) “United States participation in international police (CIVPOL) missions,” Factsheet, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Online. Available http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/fs/47759.htm (accessed 4 November 2005). Weber, M. (1919/1988) “Politik als beruf,” in Gesammelte Politische Schriften, Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). ——(1922/1980) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Zavis, A. (2006) “US hopes to build Iraqi police force,” The Guardian, Online. http://www.guardian. co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,-5774878,00.html (accessed 25 April 2006).

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10 Policing Afghanistan Civilian police reform and the resurgence of the Taliban Mathieu Deflem

Introduction Modern police institutions have historically developed from government agencies involved with the suppression of political dissent (against the state) towards the development of independent expert institutions involved with the control of crime (in society) (Deflem 2002, 2009). This historical development towards an increasing bureaucratic autonomy of policing also has an important comparative dimension, for police institutions only reach a high degree of autonomy when a society is relatively peaceful and the polity is democratized. In autocratic regimes, conversely, police power remains closely tied to a government’s quest to maintain power and secure order. This typically occurs through violent means and in close conjunction with military forces that are not so sharply differentiated from police as is the case in democratic societies. As police institutions under autocratic polities tend to be closely associated with the military, civilian police duties (of crime control) are typically subsumed under a broader security regime (or order). In democratic regimes, by contrast, police and military are not closely intertwined except in exceptional circumstances, such as a period of warfare. These theoretical insights are used to analyze the evolving police condition in Afghanistan since the invasion of the country in 2001. Accompanying the analysis of policing in contemporary Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006; chapter 9 in this volume), it will be shown that the establishment of civilian police forces in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, is not only difficult and slow, but has also been hampered by violent attacks against the police by the Taliban’s deliberate efforts to impede democratization. From 1996 until the invasion of 2001, Afghanistan was politically controlled by the autocratic Taliban. Based on the theory of policing that argues for the gradual development of professional police systems (Deflem 2002), it can be postulated that the police function under the Taliban was intimately tied to the political objectives of the state. As a result, civilian police functions will not have been well developed compared with those of the military, secret intelligence, and security agencies. However, since the invasion of Afghanistan and the introduction of a democratic system of government, these conditions will have led to a 114

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democratization of the country’s polity and to a development of accompanying civilian police systems. This process of police professionalization, however, has been substantially hindered by Taliban fighters, who seek to disrupt Afghanistan’s path to democracy. The Taliban uses violent strategies against the newly instituted police forces in order to destabilize Afghan society. Like the insurgent activities that have plagued the development of policing in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the militant activities of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, I argue, are purposely aimed at hindering the development of the newly established Afghan police institutions. Thus, the military intervention in Afghanistan has not only responded to the terrorism of 9/11, it has also brought about an entirely new set of conditions of terrorist violence. Given the connections between the development of civilian police and the democratization of society, I argue, the terrorist activities of Taliban forces in Afghanistan are aimed at the police institutions that are being established because a regularly functioning police would represent an important and highly visible indicator of the pacification and normalization of society. Civilian police forces are ironically a preferred target of terrorist activities, precisely at times when these institutions are needed, even more urgently than under peacetime conditions, to fight terrorist activities. This analysis is based on a variety of government and agency reports and international news sources.

Policing autocracy: Afghanistan under Taliban rule Given the variable connections between police and politics, it is useful to situate the development of the organization and function of policing in Afghanistan within the country’s political evolution (Ewans 2002; Rogers 2004; Runion 2007). Although Afghan civilization dates back several thousands of years, a modern state of Afghanistan was not founded until the middle of the eighteenth century, when Persian rulers took control of a region that now covers Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as parts of Iran and India. In the early nineteenth century, the UK extended its colonial empire to the Afghan region, until Amanullah Khan was installed as Shah in 1919. Afghanistan’s monarchial dynasty was stable, with Mohammed Zahir Shah ruling from 1933 until 1973, when he was ousted by a relative, Mohammed Daoud Khan, who became the first President of a newly formed Republic of Afghanistan. In 1978, Daoud Khan was killed following an uprising led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, at which time the country was officially renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Backed by the Soviet Union, the new regime was secular and introduced various modernization reforms, leading to opposition from religious conservatives and other factions, including the Islamic warriors of the so-called Mujahideen. On 24 December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Faced with international opposition and an increasingly better organized Mujahideen, which could also count on the backing from the US government, Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in the late 1980s. During the 1990s, secular and Islamic forces in Afghanistan continued fighting for control of the country. In 1996, the Islamic political forces of the Taliban seized the city of Kabul and gradually took control over almost all of Afghanistan. During the Taliban era, many police functions were subsumed under broader military powers and formulated in terms of principles derived from Islam (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001; Mohammad and Conway 2003; PBS 2006). Besides a constant involvement in battling rivaling militias, the Taliban also maintained an elaborate internal 115

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enforcement regime to impose its strict version of Islamic law (sharia). Partly based on a similar police force in Saudi Arabia, this “religious police” was formally overseen by a Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Amro bil mahroof ) and was expected to enforce various Taliban edicts oriented at making Afghan society Islamic in all respects. Such edicts were promulgated to ban all non-religious music, all books not published in Afghanistan, television sets, videocassettes and recorders, satellite dishes, and movies, all of which were judged to be offensive to Islam and, consequently, subject to police action. Behavior forbidden under Taliban law included laughing in public, dancing, keeping pigeons, and smoking. Neckties, fashion catalogues, musical instruments, computer discs, and flying kites were also banned, and police were ordered to seize all such items. Afghan women were particularly targeted by Taliban laws, which forbad women to work or go to school, to wear white shoes or heels that clicked or clothing other than the all-covering burqa, to use lipstick, or to walk outdoors unaccompanied by a close male relative. In August 2001, a Taliban edict banned all organizations in Afghanistan, except the Taliban militia headquarters in Kandahar, from using the internet (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001). The Taliban police would beat or imprison anyone who broke the rules of sharia law. Men could be beaten by the religious police for having beards shorter than the length of a fist. Taliban policemen would sometimes stop vehicles on the street and search for music or video tapes, telling people to spend more time praying and going to the mosque. Barbers were arrested for giving men haircuts, known as the “Titanic,” that mimicked the style of actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie about the famous ship. Thieves could have their arms or legs amputated, anyone caught drinking liquor could be whipped, adulterers could be stoned to death, and women were generally not granted any independent rights (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001).

Post-invasion police reform As has been the case since Iraq was invaded (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the invasion of Afghanistan brought about many immediate and long-term changes. Although the military interventions were motivated differently in terms of their purported connections to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, they each envisioned a political regime change and the installation of a new, democratically elected government. The democratization of primary social institutions, including Afghan police and security forces, would have to be part of this process. Because the Al Qaeda movement was linked to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where terrorist training camps were organized and Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding, the US government, in direct response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, launched Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 October 2001 with the support of coalition forces of some 50 countries. After the invasion, local Afghan warlords sided with coalition forces in fighting the Taliban and joined the so-called Northern Alliance, a collection of anti-Taliban Afghan political and religious groups. Once the Taliban forces had been largely defeated, the Alliance helped install an Afghan Transitional Administration in 2002. This paved the way for a new permanent government allowing the 2004 Presidential elections, when Hamid Karzai became President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Congressional elections were held in September 2005 to establish a National Assembly. 116

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In April 2002, an international conference on Afghanistan was held in Geneva to formulate a plan for Afghan security in the post-Taliban era (Combined Security Transition Command 2008; Del Vecchio 2008; Library of Congress 2006; Murray 2007; Powell 2005; Sedra 2003; US Department of State 2006; Wardick 2004; Wilder 2007). The initial goal was to install a new Afghan national police that would consist of some 44,300 uniformed police, 12,000 border police, 3,400 highway police, and 2,300 counternarcotics police. In 2003, a new Afghan National Police (ANP) was established along with an Afghan National Army. The newly formed national police resembles a gendarmerie in having a military character, but it is responsible for regular law-enforcement duties, including criminal investigations, drugs enforcement, and border security. The ANP is supervised by the Afghan Ministry of Interior, which developed a document, the Tashkil, that specifies the structure and functions of the new police. By 2009, the number of police officially part of the ANP had risen to about 79,000. Yet no accurate information is available of the number of officers actually serving, as police commanders are known to accept salaries of nonexistent “ghost officers” (Saunders 2008). The Afghan National Police consists of several specialized branches. The Uniformed Police (at 34,000 the largest unit in the ANP) is responsible for general law enforcement, public safety, and internal security. A Civil Order Police is responsible for security involving civil disturbances in large urban areas. In addition, specialized law-enforcement functions are maintained by the Border Police, the Counter Narcotics Police, the Criminal Investigation Division Police, as well as a Counter Terrorism Police. On the basis of the 2002 Geneva conference, German authorities in 2003 took on the lead role in Afghan police reform through the German Police Project Office, which aimed to help the Afghan government create a national police that is both effective and respectful of the rule of law (Auswärtiges Amt n.d.). Since June of 2007, the German initiative has been expanded into a European effort through the European Union Police Mission to Afghanistan, called “EUPOL Afghanistan” (Council of the European Union n.d.). Largely made up of German as well as other foreign police, EUPOL Afghanistan provides training, advice, and equipment to the Afghan National Police. Consisting of some 200 officers, EUPOL Afghanistan decided, in May 2008, to bring the size of the mission to a total of 400 personnel on the basis of a budget of more than 35 million euros (nearly 52 million US dollars). Besides Germany and the European Union, other coalition forces, especially Canada and the US, have also assisted in the reorganization of the Afghan police. Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have been deployed to Afghanistan since 2005 to monitor and train the Afghan National Police (RCMP n.d.). The United States policing efforts in Afghanistan are not primarily involved with Afghan police reform but at eradication of poppy crops, especially by intervention of the US Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (and the Drug Enforcement Administration) (see Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs n.d.; Risen 2007). Since 2005, the US Department of Defense has assisted the Afghan National Police, using US marines and other military units to train police recruits (Rohde 2007b). As in Iraq, US efforts to train Afghan police are also handled by DynCorp. By June 2006, the private company had 245 police trainers in Afghanistan. Police training is conducted at the Afghan National Police Academy (Central Training Center) in the capital city of Kabul as well as in several regional training centers across the country. By 2006, more than 60,000 Afghan police officers had received training. Because the government of 117

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Afghanistan does not have the necessary funds, the reorganization of the country’s police is funded by members of the international community. Although some former Afghan militia members have been recruited into the army and the national police, several thousands of militia organizations have continued to exist under the command of local warlords. Additional problems exist because the Afghan criminal justice system has developed slowly and there are not enough attorneys, judges, and other necessary personnel to carry out law-enforcement activities. Also, some areas of the country remain unprotected by army or police and are under the control of drugs traffickers and local militia groups. By 2009, there were still plans to increase the size of Afghanistan’s national police. Yet, because Afghan police forces have not been able to provide adequate security with respect to civil order, drugs enforcement, and border security, Afghan National Army troops have been deployed in areas that are lacking in law enforcement. As in Iraq, police in Afghanistan have also been accused of being ineffective as well as unprofessional, using torture to extort confessions and being involved in corruption (Berglund 2008). As a result, the need for international assistance in Afghan police training remained high as late as the fall of 2008 (Canwest News Service 2008; Deutsche Welle 2008).

Target: Afghan police Again paralleling the development in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the invasion of Afghanistan has brought about continued problems of violence and civil unrest despite the efforts that have been made to introduce democratic rule and establish new social institutions. Democratic rule has been formally instituted in Afghanistan, but ongoing outbursts of violence by Taliban forces have prevented a normalization of Afghan society. As in Iraq, the newly formed Afghan civilian police forces have been especially targeted by the renewed violent unrest. Despite the fact that a democratic government has been installed in Afghanistan, Taliban forces have been able to regain control over several areas in the country (and in neighboring Pakistan). As early as 2005, coalition forces had to mount a new offensive against Taliban positions. A year later, Taliban resistance continued to increase, especially by means of attacks involving improvised explosives and suicide bombings. As a result, Afghan society has been destabilized by what has been described, since as early as the summer of 2006, as a fully fledged Taliban resurgence (de Borchgrave 2006). The Afghan National Police, moreover, has been judged to be ineffective in dealing with the upsurge in Taliban violence, as the police have remained understaffed, undertrained, and underequipped (Chivers 2008; CTV 2008). By July 2008, the violence perpetrated by Taliban forces had reached such proportions that the US government decided to extend the tour of duty of some its troops, and asked other NATO nations involved to increase their respective troop levels (Dillow 2008). In February 2009, US President Barack Obama announced that an additional 17,000 troops would be deployed to Afghanistan (Alberts 2009). There is no systematic information available on the fatalities of the Taliban resurgence that is comparable with that provided by the Iraq Body Count website on the situation in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006). In more ways than one, the military intervention in Afghanistan is a “forgotten war.” However, based on information provided in published media reports, there are clear indications that the Taliban resurgence has increased since at least 2005 and that its violent tactics have been specifically and increasingly aimed at 118

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Afghanistan’s new civilian police forces (Rohde 2007a; Motlagh 2007). Although Afghan police were already targeted by Taliban forces soon after the new National Police was installed (McCarthy 2003), attacks against the police particularly increased during the spring of 2007, when Taliban tactics moved from attacking the military troops of the (foreign) coalition forces to hitting the (domestic) police forces. By early September 2007, at least 379 Afghan police were reported to have already been killed in that year, compared with a total of 257 police fatalities for all of 2006. Other sources put the numbers even higher, estimating some 1,200 police killed in 2007 (CNN 2008). Data provided by Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry indicate that more than 900 Afghan police officers were killed as a result of Taliban violence in 2007 (Shah and Gall 2008). Other sources put the numbers even higher, with as many as 1,700 Afghan police fatalities in the first 4 months of 2007 (Chivers 2009). Throughout 2008 and the first half of 2009, media sources continued to report on Taliban attacks purposely aimed at killing Afghan police officials (e.g. Farmer 2009; Gul 2008; Khan 2009; Shah 2009). By the spring of 2009, US military command estimated that 1,500 Afghan police were killed in 2008 (Garamone 2009). In June of 2008, the first-ever killing of a woman Afghan police officer was reported (GEO TV 2008). A few months later, the highest ranked woman police officer in the city of Kandahar was also murdered in an attack the Taliban claimed as part of the increasing wave of attacks purposely aimed at Afghan women (Burns 2008). A surge of Taliban attacks took place in the weeks and days leading up to the Afghan presidential and provincial council elections that were held on 20 August 2009. Afghan police forces were thereby particularly targeted (Weissenstein 2009). The total number of fatalities among the Afghan police as a result of Taliban violence appears to be lower than the number of insurgency killings of police in Iraq. In the years 2008 and 2009, when violence against Afghan police was on the rise, similar incidents against Iraqi police were on the decline but were still at levels comparable with that in Afghanistan at the time. Extending from the analysis by Deflem and Sutphin (2006), numbers reported in the Iraq Body Count database show that by 27 February 2009 a total of 9,490 Iraqi police officers had been killed in 3,291 incidents since May 2003 (Deflem 2010). The total number of Iraqi police fatalities rose from 962 in 2004 to 1,454 in 2005, 2,413 in 2006, and 3,107 in 2007. After the total number of US troops in Iraq was increased to 152,000 in March of 2007, the number of police fatalities decreased, but the level of insurgent violence involving police fatalities remained higher than it had been before the summer of 2006. In the 8-month period from November 2005 to June 2006, 1,009 police were killed, whereas 1,225 police died in the 8-month period from August 2007 to March 2008. In 2008, the total number of police killed was 1,241, considerably less than the year before, but still more than in 2004. The violent attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq indicate a similar pattern: militants avoid targeting military troops and resort to roadside bombs and suicide attacks directed at police forces. Afghan police officers are additionally vulnerable because many are based in small police stations in regional districts and are attacked at night. More fundamentally, the Taliban attack Afghan’s new system of policing to bring about a destabilization of society. The attacks against the police are not merely tactically motivated to fight antiTaliban forces. Rather, they broadly target Afghan police institutions throughout the country, irrespective of the role of police in counterterrorism or other civilian tasks. Taliban forces have also sought to destabilize a democratic Afghanistan by targeting other important social institutions such as schools and mosques. 119

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Police, democracy, and the normalization of society Soon after US Special Operations and other coalition forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban was quickly ousted and a nascent democratic regime was soon installed. The quick overthrow of the Taliban took place much as the US government and the other coalition powers had hoped for. However, even more than is the case with the insurgency in Iraq, the Taliban forces were able to regroup and regain control, at least in some areas of Afghanistan. As in Iraq, the greatest difficulties in the reconstruction of Afghanistan since a democratic government was put in place have come from the resurgence of ethnic and religious factions, the eruption and intensification of militant violence, and the slow and incomplete restoration of primary social institutions. A durable peace and normalization of Afghanistan have not yet been firmly established. Continued violence from Taliban militants in Afghanistan (like the violent operations from insurgents in Iraq) have hindered the normalization of social life, including the development of civilian police systems. Societies that have not reached a degree of pacification are unlikely to develop a new civilian police force. As argued elsewhere (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), pacification can thereby not be understood to imply merely an absence of warfare and extreme levels of violence, but should also entail a durable peace that allows for a normalization of social life. Importantly, conditions of peace and the functioning of primary social institutions such as the police can be observed to mutually influence one another. A well-functioning Afghan police system is thus an important element in the transition to a democratic Afghanistan. Precisely because of the role a civilian police plays in the democratization of Afghan society, the newly established Afghan police forces (much like the Iraqi police in the post-Saddam era) have been among the favored targets of terrorist violence. Affirming the importance of the police as a primary institution, it can be noted that terrorist attacks against police, often specifically targeted at new recruits, have also taken place in other nations that, for various reasons, have gone through periods of instability. Since the summer and fall of 2008, attacks against police and police stations, claimed to have been organized by a variety of terrorist groups, have been reported in countries as diverse as Yemen, Algeria, China, Turkey, Zimbabwe, and the Russian republic of Ingushetia (Deflem 2010). Although more systematic research is needed, it is not unthinkable that at least some of these actions have been undertaken because of the successful implementation of similar attacks against police in other nations, thus indicating a spread of terrorist tactics across national borders. In Pakistan, moreover, the attacks against police in 2008 and 2009 have been attributed to the same Taliban forces that operate in neighboring Afghanistan (Deflem 2010). Confirming the analysis of police reform in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the case of the post-invasion Afghan police suggests that a pragmatic perspective is needed that acknowledges that military intervention in autocratic political regimes inevitably brings about breakdowns of the social order at multiple institutional levels (Perito 2005). Rather than merely assuming and hoping that invading powers will be “greeted as liberators,” as then US Vice President Dick Cheney claimed before the invasion of Iraq, a more sobering and realistic estimate about restoration efforts following military interventions is in order (Milbank 2003). Even under the best of circumstances, police reform in post-autocratic regimes should be expected to take several years. The development of a civilian police in post-Taliban Afghanistan (as in post-Ba’athist Iraq) is especially difficult because states with a strongly militaristic and dictatorial past cannot easily separate internal security tasks 120

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from national defense functions. As the case of Iraq also shows, a rigid separation of military and police functions and an adaptation to local circumstances are needed to enable the successful creation of a civilian police in post-autocratic regimes (Bayley 2001). In the current global era, it is unthinkable that the democratization of any society can occur in isolation from the rest of the world. In the case of civilian police reform in Afghanistan (and Iraq), international assistance has therefore proven to be instrumental. However, these international programs have faced inherent difficulties because they depend not only on support from police in the assistance-providing nations, but also have to rely on military units and private companies whose police-reform capabilities are by definition limited. Private security groups, such as DynCorp, can often rely on officers recruited from professional law-enforcement agencies, but they lack the accountability that characterizes public police institutions. Military personnel are neither trained nor equipped to deal with matters of law enforcement unless they have been recruited from law enforcement. The assigning of police tasks to the military is also counterproductive and highly ironic in view of the fact that a primary goal of police reform in post-autocratic regimes is precisely to demarcate the civilian police more clearly from the military.

Conclusion Besides the inherent difficulties in forming a democratic polity in post-war societies, the development of democratic police institutions poses many additional concerns. Although some variation exists in how democracies are and can be policed, the police function in a democratic society must at a minimum fulfill the following dual conditions: (1) police agencies must have a position of independence relative to the center of the state and be responsible towards the needs of citizens and accountable to law; and (2) police must abide by standards of law and human rights (Bayley 2001, 2005). In contemporary Afghanistan (as in Iraq), these conditions are tentatively beginning to emerge, but many problems persist. Most distinctly, civilian police forces are expressly pursued as the preferred targets of violent operations by factions expressly oriented at destabilizing society. At the time of this writing (August 2009), indications suggest that Afghanistan, even more so than is the case in Iraq, does not (yet) have a stable democratic polity and also that the country cannot (yet) count on a civilian police that can truly lay claim to a legitimate and effective monopoly of force. Yet, inasmuch as the newly instituted and developing police institutions of Afghanistan are no longer the mere political tools of autocratic regimes, Afghan society is undergoing a slow and difficult process of normalization and democratization. It is for this reason that terrorist attacks against the civilian police are meant to thwart the pacification of society. Yet, to the extent that Afghan police forces succeed in attaining a position of bureaucratic independence as professional law-enforcement institutions, they will remain among the preferred targets of violent attacks from Taliban militants.

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Rogers, P. (2004) A War on Terror: Afghanistan and After, London: Pluto Press. Rohde, D. (2007a) “Afghan police suffer setbacks as Taliban adapt,” The New York Times, 2 September. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/world/asia/02taliban.html (accessed 18 August 2009). ——(2007b) “Overhaul of Afghan police is expensive new priority,” The New York Times, 18 October. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/asia/18afghan.html (accessed 18 August 2009). Royal Canadian Mounted Police (n.d.) “Canadian civilian policing efforts in Afghanistan,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police, International Peace Operations Branch. Online. Available http://www. rcmp-grc.gc.ca/peace_operations/afghanistan_e.htm (accessed 18 August 2009). Runion, M.L. (2007) The History of Afghanistan, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Saunders, D. (2008) “Corruption eats away at Afghan government,” The Globe and Mail, 3 May. Online. Available http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080502.afghan03/ BNStory/International/home (accessed 18 August 2009). Sedra, M. (2003) “Police reform in Afghanistan: an overview,” Online. Available http://www.ssronlin e.org/document_result.cfm?id=137 (accessed 18 January 2010). Shah, T. (2009) “Taliban kill 20 Afghan police,” The New York Times, 1 January. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/world/asia/02afghan.html?ref=todayspaper (accessed 18 August 2009). Shah, T. and Gall, C. (2008) “Taliban attack kills 11 officers at a police post in Afghanistan,” The New York Times, 15 April. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/world/asia/15afghan. html (accessed 18 August 2009). US Department of State (2006) “Interagency assessment of Afghanistan police training and readiness,” November. Online. Available http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/76103.pdf (accessed 18 August 2009). Wardick, A. (2004) “Building a post-war justice system in Afghanistan,” Crime, Law, and Social Change, 41: 319–41. Weissenstein, M. (2009) “Attack on police rocks busy Afghan street, 11 dead,” Examiner.com, 3 August. Online. Available http://www.examiner.com/a-2150135~Attack_on_police_rocks_busy_Afghan_str eet–11_dead.html (accessed 20 August 2009). Wilder, A. (2007) “Cops or robbers? The struggle to reform the Afghan National Police,” Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. Online. Available http://www.areu.org.af/index.php?option=com_d ocman&task=doc_details& gid = 523& Itemid = 26 (accessed 18 August 2009).

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Managing humanitarian information in Iraq

Aldo Benini, Charles Conley, Joseph M. Donahue and Shawn Messick

Iraq and humanitarian information management Recent humanitarian crises in conflict areas such as Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq have been locations for assessing information resources and practices. Post-conflict environments are complex, fast moving, and highly uncertain. This turbulence and its consequences have been analyzed for research conducted during and after war (Barakat et al. 2002) and for information processing within the humanitarian community during protracted war (Benini 1997). The turbulence continues into the post-conflict period. Notably, armed conflicts tend to destroy the kinds of foundational data and baseline information on which research and program monitoring in peaceful environments can depend. Moreover, the post-war humanitarian community itself creates a turbulent organizational field. Its numerous actors construct a “negotiated information order” (Heimer 1985), although this construct usually lacks coherence and timeliness. These basic conditions prevailed in Iraq after April 2003, with the added challenge that growing insecurity has since made them worse. This chapter sketches the information landscape in Iraq before and after the spring 2003 war. We analyze the challenges of information management through the lens of two major rapid assessments. This analysis leads to some applicable lessons for humanitarian information management in future post-war situations.

Information needs in post-conflict situations Humanitarian practitioners discuss the turbulence of post-conflict environments in different terms. They recognize that creating a “common operating picture” for and about many stakeholders in this sort of environment is a constant challenge. As King and Dilley (2001) observed: Amidst the chaotic and rapidly changing situation, no single organization or entity has all of the necessary information. Making this core information available to the wider humanitarian community not only reduces duplication of effort, but also enhances 125

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coordination and provides a common knowledge base so that this critical information can be pooled, analyzed, compared, contrasted, validated, reconciled and mapped. Practitioners often think in terms of the programs and projects they implement, which are organized by broad themes such as relief, reconstruction, rehabilitation, governance, development, and civil/military coordination. These are then subdivided into “sectors” such as health, education, food, security, and infrastructure. Originally considered sequential activities, these thematic areas increasingly intermingle in post-conflict environments. Defined by the terms of their funding and the mandates of their agencies, projects and programs tend to run their course in relative isolation from other organizations, projects, and programs. Informational activities and their results are similarly isolated. Multiple surveys are often conducted concurrently, all assessing the same topics or locations and generating survey fatigue. As a result, information is fragmented by the number of organizations and the many projects they implement while competing for donor and media attention. No relief or development strategy seeks to provide information “oversight” or consolidation. In fact, no strategy or practice looks at recovering critical government data as a foundation for stability and restored governance. Later in this chapter, we briefly describe the Humanitarian Information Center (HIC) concept, pioneered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as a progressive new organizational form meant to reduce information chaos by actively seeking out new data sources and making them available to relief providers. In addition, we provide a detailed depiction of how one initiative of the HIC for Iraq, the Rapid Assessment Process (RAP), was affected by organizational turbulence.

An announced war and humanitarian preparations Why is Iraq an attractive case for the study of humanitarian information management? The period before the 2003 war is the story of an announced war. The humanitarian community took advantage of that time for extensive preparations that included resources and systems for humanitarian information management and, within this sector, for the subset of rapid assessments. MacGinty (2003) stresses the point that the US and the UN had extensively reviewed the experience of recent post-war environments and were ready to plan for post-war Iraq. US civilian and military leadership, extrapolating from Afghanistan, were convinced that humanitarian relief could be initiated while fighting continued. The UN prepared for all components of humanitarian assistance (relief, reintegration of displaced persons, and reconstruction), anticipating that rapid assessments should contribute information in a multisectoral format with little time to debate and test such formats. As MacGinty saw, needs were “presumed rather than assessed” (2003: 601). Humanitarian planners were allowed to concentrate upon the practical demands of pre-positioning staff and equipment and of recruiting subcontractors.

The humanitarian information landscape During the pre-war period, available public information regarding Iraq was sparse. This was surprising for a modern state with a high degree of urbanization and a substantial 126

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technical infrastructure. Most ministries were using computerized data management including technically advanced engineering software in the 1980s. So what happened to such data? As with most authoritarian regimes, control of information was integral to state power and internal security. Ministries had access to records and were able to manage data, but non-official citizens did not. Beginning with the Iran–Iraq war, even tourist maps were banned from publication and sale in Iraq: “During Saddam Hussein’s reign, only highlevel loyalists had access to maps that showed where roads, hospitals, and sewers were located. And those maps were 10 years out of date” (Kharif 2003). When the aid community arrived in Iraq in 2003, they found that most government entities were relying on hand-drawn sketch maps to visualize spatial information. The culture of secrecy transferred to international relief efforts for Iraq, which had continued since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. In early 2003, it was known that significant information was recorded in various databases regarding health, education, population, and many other critical elements of Iraqi services and infrastructure. However, these data were never released. For example, the Public Distribution System dating from the Iran–Iraq war held data concerning registered recipients of food aid, down to each local distribution agent and neighborhood. The UN’s World Food Program prevented other agencies, including OCHA, from accessing the raw data. After the war, the Coalition Provisional Authority showed intense interest in these data, but could never organize sufficiently to identify, acquire, and release it to stakeholders. Reflections of the challenges mentioned above are manifest in two rapid assessments in which we were directly involved. Because of innate time pressures and consensus needs, rapid assessments offer a rich view of organizational and cognitive elements. We explore their interplay in detailed accounts of the RAP, a multisectoral exercise, and of the Emergency Mine Action Survey (EMAS), a data-collection effort focused on one sector.

The un-rapid RAP The common or interagency assessment process is a frequently applied tool for building consensus, a common understanding of needs, and an interagency coordination process. The RAP was the term adopted for this effort in Iraq. The RAP was based in the HIC. Before the current Iraq emergency, HICs had been selectively used in several countries. Only in Iraq was the HIC faced with a data-collection task as challenging as the RAP. In concept, the RAP was to serve as a summary baseline data tool, providing a format for recording a subset of information that organizations would already be collecting. The RAP, it was hoped, would provide a triage tool to quickly record waraffected communities with needs in various functional areas and keep track of what had been assessed in order to reduce duplication of effort. In fact, the RAP was intended to discipline data collection by a host of actors under UN leadership, avoiding duplication and ensuring focus on essentials as well as comparability across agencies and locations. The next section focuses upon the internal politics of designing the RAP and, to a lesser degree, upon actual data collection, which was prematurely concluded by the devastating 19 August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. 127

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Negotiated information order: the politics of designing a form The development of the RAP instrument was requested by OCHA and the UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (UNOHCI) in January 2003. Responsibility for this effort was delegated to the then coalescing HIC. In practice, the HIC served as secretariat to multiple stakeholders drawn from United Nations (UN) agencies and elements of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, DC, and Kuwait, as well as some non-governmetnal organization (NGO) stakeholders. USAID also shared the document and comments with coalition military Civil Affairs units, which at that time sought the development of a standard assessment form. The initial design resulted from a canvassing of UN agencies and NGOs for elements of information they preferred in the “common assessment” and included plans for two twopage forms. Throughout the design process there were competing demands for inclusion of more data, exclusion of other data, and a simultaneous requirement to reduce form size and complexity. These demands resulted in one three-page form to serve rural and urban areas. USAID demanded that the form be condensed to one page, but participating organizations were unwilling to volunteer questions for elimination. The struggle continued well beyond the allotted design timeframe, with the number of pages becoming a significant issue. HIC staff struggled to avoid simplifying questions to the point where the data would have no utility. Finally, UNOHCI and NGO representatives in Amman endorsed a final form. During April, the HIC developed and presented numerous training courses to NGOs, UN agencies, coalition forces liaison personnel, and donor teams in Jordan, Kuwait, and Cyprus. It quickly became apparent that despite support and assurances from a broad range of partners, organizations operating in the field would make little use of the form. A primary reason was the failure to use the form as intended and the lack of formats that met other assessment methodologies. As designed, the form was intended to provide an information overview of a community, primarily in terms of current service levels. A smaller section was devoted to protection-relevant public order questions. However, the USAID Office of US Disaster Assistance, Disaster Assistance Response Team, coalition forces, and others began using the form to assess unique locations such as hospitals, warehouses, or port facilities. Understandably, the form was found lacking.

Goal displacement and design modifications In early June 2003, as governing authority status in Iraq became clearer and reconstruction became the focus of international efforts, the HIC was tasked by UNOHCI and the UN Development Group (UNDG) to compile all available information in support of a development conference held in New York in the second half of June. Even although UN agencies were directed to comply by providing all data to the HIC, the resulting data were disappointing. UN agencies’ previous insistence that they had all the data they needed to design and monitor their programs was proven incorrect and their credibility with the UNDG and other stakeholders tarnished. Taking advantage of this situation, the HIC offered the RAP as a potential tool to meet multiple requirements from UN reconstruction planners with a single quick survey. 128

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Earlier objections by several UN agencies were muted after their failure to produce the required data. The RAP could potentially provide a straightforward and easy-to-use data set regarding current conditions at settlement, district, and governorate levels for the entire country. At the end of June 2003, the HIC formulated a plan to implement a modified RAP. It proposed that the RAP be contracted by the HIC rather than using the earlier approach of inviting voluntary data collection from organizations already operating in Iraq. In addition, the RAP was to validate the accuracy and completeness of the settlement database; a data section for this use was already part of the form. Minor modifications were made to several RAP questions based on early field-testing in northern Iraq. Major urban areas were to be omitted because of insufficient resources. Not wanting to upset the fragile interagency consensus, major changes were avoided. The overarching goal was that the results of the modified RAP would provide information for donor reconstruction and planning conferences.

A galaxy of places and data Using a variety of arrangements across regions that defy brief summary, RAP data were collected beginning in June 2003, with a dramatic acceleration in July. In July and the first half of August, RAP interview teams covered an average of 80 populated settlements per day. After the attack on UN headquarters, the data collection slowed significantly. Data collection was suspended entirely by mid-September, with data entry complete by the end of that month. In examining RAP results, we are limited to northern Iraq because relatively complete coverage makes analysis feasible. Here the RAP collected information on more than 200 substantive variables from 5,694 populated places. Excluding missing values, more than 852,000 data points were entered into the database. Only part of this huge collection of information has been analyzed (Benini and Ross 2003). In retrospect, the analysis revealed numerous limitations in design and data collection. Coverage was uneven, geographically and in filling the substantive variables. Gaps in geographical coverage were due to the distribution of rapid assessment personnel on the two sides of the Green Line. The Kurdish-controlled region readily marshaled a trained survey force. South of the Green Line, data collection was in part contracted out to unproven local agencies and was affected by the deteriorating security situation. The “politics of designing a form” meant that many of the agencies whose consensus was sought contributed “wish lists” for things to collect, without a central figure charged with this responsibility, or an organizational analysis plan. Little care was given to separate structure, performance, and outcomes in specifying the variables, and their relation to needs and capacity measures were vague. As a result, the analysis produced little of interest, even for regions with relatively dense coverage. At best, the effort validated the relevance of several “proximity-to-services” measures. Correlated with some outcome measures, they suggested that improving access to, and the effectiveness of, various kinds of services was a key variable for revitalizing local communities. This held particularly for those in the ethnic friction zone that runs alongside the Green Line. The analytic gains, therefore, were modest, and because of design defects they probably would have remained so, even if the data collection had not been terminated. 129

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EMAS Significant landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination from two previous wars was known to exist in parts of Iraq. In Iraqi Kurdistan the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and several NGOs had been engaged in landmine/UXO survey, clearance, mine risk education, and victim assistance. The scale of these activities before the 2003 war was considerable, and included the creation of local humanitarian mine action NGOs. That this war would create newly contaminated areas was an accepted fact. During winter 2002–03, UNOPS relied on the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining to create an adapted data management tool for an emergency survey to be initiated as soon as security conditions would permit. Its design incorporated a concern for abandoned and hazardous ordnance sites. Such sites are dangerous, even when they do not block access to resources, as they may provide armed opposition movements or other unauthorized groups and individuals with ready access to weapons and munitions, and may draw scrap and explosives scavengers seeking to supplement incomes. At the same time, the traditional objective of ascertaining the impact of landmine/UXO contamination on the livelihoods of local communities was also maintained.

An expectation of speed In terms of process, EMAS was expected to advance faster than standard landmine impact surveys do in settled post-war conditions. Data were to be handed over from survey organizations to UNOPS at short intervals, as opposed to being evaluated in total at the end of data-collection activities. This process would split responsibilities for collection and analysis between different organizations. This division of responsibility was expressed even in the database structure, with UNOPS equipping data-collecting NGOs with a “mobile module” and reserving a “head office module” for its regional mine action offices in northern and southern Iraq. UNOPS ended NGO input to the design in February 2003 and later resisted the majority of substantive requests to adapt the database structure in accordance with field pre-test findings. Changes that implementing NGOs and UNOPS field personnel unanimously voted in at a national review meeting in July were summarily rejected by the New York headquarters. For the rest of the data-collection period, field managers had to reconcile the tension between a rigid data entry structure and the working definitions that data collectors followed in administering the questionnaire. We are particularly familiar with the conduct of the EMAS in the northern region. Here, UNOPS tasked the UK-based charity Mines Advisory Group (MAG) with data collection. MAG, in turn, asked Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) to coordinate technical execution of the survey. Program establishment and fieldwork occurred between June 2003 and March 2004. The survey team counted six expatriate members and a national staff ranging between 32 and 86 at different periods of operations. Notably, MAG filled four Field Team Leader positions with Lebanese personnel experienced as supervisors in the earlier MAG/VVAF landmine impact survey in their native country. These Arabic-speaking expatriates were crucial to the accelerated training of national staff and to translating feedback to survey management. 130

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Survey areas were assigned sequentially and with varying precision. In Iraqi Kurdistan, UNOPS intended MAG to visit all communities within 5 kilometers of the Green Line that had not already been surveyed before the war. However, major survey ambitions were aimed at recently contaminated areas south of the Green Line in districts and governorates that, before the war, the Iraqi government had controlled. From this region, the UNOPS Mine Action Coordination Centre in Erbil possessed little information specific to the community level and did not direct MAG to address or avoid specific communities. EMAS implementation was punctuated by prolonged halts of survey activity caused by dramatic deterioration in the security environment, with the attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August, and the murder of a MAG expatriate advisor in September.

The landscape changes The institutional landscape also changed during the life of the EMAS project. Shortly after the August attack, the UN withdrew most expatriate personnel from Iraq, including those who worked in the UNOPS Mine Action Program (MAP) in Erbil. The MAP Mine Action Coordination Center was finally shuttered in November, concurrent with the end of the Oil-for-Food Program (OFFP) regime. Beginning in August, MAG handed over fortnightly data sets to a working group composed of the transitional government’s Regional Mine Action Center (RMAC), coalition force representatives, local UNOPS planners (until November), five local mine clearance NGOs, and MAG itself. In total, EMAS surveyed 1,760 communities in 11 districts of the six northern governorates. It located 290 contaminated communities (16.5 percent), with an estimated 263,780 residents. This population was living close to 574 distinct dangerous areas with a total surface, according to the claims made by local informants, of 627 square kilometers. These dangerous areas primarily affected access to grazing land (in 154 or 53 percent of the affected communities), cropland (121; 42 percent), repatriation (68; 23 percent), and water resources (62 communities; 21 percent) (Shaikh 2004: 7). Among the 290 affected communities, 58 (20 percent) reported 122 recent victims (43 killed and 79 injured) from contamination-related accidents. These victims came to harm between the end of March and their respective dates of survey by EMAS (Shaikh 2004: 27). In contrast to the RAP, EMAS data were put to practical use during the survey process. MAG transferred data twice per month, at first to UNOPS, and then to the RMAC when it replaced the UNOPS MAP. By 1 March 2004, partly as a result of this survey clearance and disposal work was either complete or ongoing in 122 (22 percent) of the identified dangerous areas. The cleared surfaces totaled 13.6 square kilometers (Shaikh 2004: 35) or roughly 2 percent of the area that local informants claimed were contaminated. Assuming that in northern Iraq the ratio of claimed dangerous area to areas actually contaminated is somewhere between five and ten, between 10 and 20 percent of the area was cleared.

Critical issues Based on the number of communities surveyed, both of the rapid assessments described above were large exercises. The detailed information available allows the formulation of 131

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tentative insights regarding humanitarian information management in Iraq. These insights may be organized around four topics: the value of the information collected and processed for decision support; rural bias and a corresponding weakness of urban assessment tools; the importance of short learning cycles; and the need for broad top-down information management support.

Value of information In the field, political, institutional, and security factors (rather than information needs and research designs) are the major influences in humanitarian information management, and Iraq was no exception. Nevertheless, donors who pay for this information want to see it produced and used effectively, and applied to humanitarian needs. Thus, donors are a willing audience for “value-of-information” arguments. This school of thought attempts a rigorous approach to the collection and use of information when decisions must be made in highly uncertain conditions. More information helps reduce uncertainty, but also costs more. If the consequences of different decisions can be assigned monetary value, the value of the information can be calculated. Although Dakins’ (1999: 281) programmatic statement below is an oversell if applied to humanitarian information management, there is merit in thinking through the costs and benefits of rapid assessments in more serious “what will this do for decision-making?” terms: Value of Information (VOI) analysis is useful because it makes the losses associated with decision errors explicit, balances competing probabilities and costs, helps identify the decision alternative that minimizes the expected loss, prioritizes spending on research, quantifies the value of the research to the decision maker, and provides an upper bound on what should be spent on getting information. Obvious first targets for evaluation are sample sizes and production times. In Iraq, the 5,700 populated places surveyed by the RAP will be remembered as a figure of stark magnitude. Some will use this figure as a deterrent because of the lack of practical application; others will take it as a demonstration that rapid large-scale data-collection exercises can be successful under difficult conditions. Both will agree that assessment protocols are necessary, with stopping rules that kick in at the appropriate points to say: “Enough!”. This team conducted a detailed VOI analysis on the EMAS (Benini et al. 2005). Only 3.3 percent of all EMAS-surveyed communities accounted for 80 percent of the total contaminated area claimed by local informants. To reach this threshold for the cumulative population, the largest 29 percent of the surveyed communities sufficed. However, in retrospect, these measures are inappropriate to evaluate the extent of under- or oversurveying. The prior information on which samples could possibly be stratified (e.g. prewar population statistics) was scant. Using a regression model of which communities EMAS interviewers visited this team was able to show that if the choice of communities to visit had been stratified on distance to the nearest dangerous area (which the coalition forces had made available before the start of the survey), substantial savings might have been achieved. After all, contaminated communities tend to cluster in space. Such considerations put the debate of sampling versus full-census approaches back on the research agenda of humanitarian information management. Barakat et al. (2002) 132

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emphasize the limitations of sample surveys and advocate a multimethod approach. They describe an experience from Somalia in which previous qualitative research was used to draw samples of communities and, within these, households. Time pressure and availability of human resources, however, often preclude either adequate qualitative research or the design and administration of explicit samples. In addition, where sample surveys do occur, data collectors and field supervisors exercise considerable autonomy in situations of insecurity and sparse baseline information. They use it to adapt samples in response to guidance from local experts, employment concerns, and the need to replace unavailable sample members with convenient substitutes. Such adaptive sampling, contrary to formalized adaptive sampling (Thompson 1991), often remains undocumented, resulting in unknown bias. For the operation of HICs, this poses a question as to whether sample survey design can be incorporated in a meaningful way at all.

Rural bias and urban assessment tools Both assessments (RAP and EMAS) went to large numbers of small rural places, thereby overacquiring information. This behavior is in line with the kind of small-community rural bias that Kent (2004: 12) accuses many in the humanitarian arena of practicing. At first glance, this alleged rural bias is surprising. Much of the development critique in recent decades concerned urban bias, privileges in terms of subsidized services, and other non-market benefits that politics and aid bestowed upon some urban groups. A reversal of this concept in the evaluation of humanitarian practice will, therefore, rouse astonishment. However, Kent’s criticism is based on the anticipation of strong urban growth in countries prone to humanitarian disasters during coming decades. The willful destruction of cities and their inhabitants (e.g. Grozny and Kabul) together with instances of massive destruction of cities in natural disasters such as earthquakes may warrant some typified scenario-building by humanitarian information managers. Short of such extremes, responders and policy-makers in urban emergencies may still benefit from rapid assessments; this is one of the things that, under different names, civil defense and emergency services do in many countries. The published literature does not suggest that there are well-developed toolboxes that are ready to be applied in countries with weak administrative systems, including those in a post-war phase. Exceptions are few. The mental maps, questionnaire templates, and training syllabi for national data collectors seem to require the clarity of villages and small towns that are physically separate, and to which institutional traits can be attributed unambiguously. There have been successful distinctions made of urban subdivisions in assessments: in southern Iraq, a rapid inventory of health facilities in Basrah was mapped using special health districts, creating a common operating picture of health care in this major city within 45 days of humanitarian re-entry (Benini et al. 2005). The RAP data analyzed for northern Iraq illustrate the difficulties in grappling with urban communities. Only 103 communities were subdivided into several assessment areas; 5,367 were not. The city of Zakho (population 113,000) attracted 26 neighborhood surveys; Kirkuk, with an estimated 750,000 residents, received only one global assessment. Clearly, we need to develop rapid assessment methods for large settlements. There have been sporadic advances, such as in the use of remote sensing for estimating populations in otherwise inaccessible cities (Alspach and Kariuki 2002). Where cities are 133

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accessible, sampling approaches based on small areas (houses, street, blocks, and neighborhoods) need to be developed further. A deeper assessment of humanitarian information management remains highly desirable.

Building in shorter learning cycles Meanwhile, economies of information in rural areas may be feasible. In the early stages of post-war humanitarian intelligence, quick accounts of essential-service provision levels in the towns that form the district administrative centers may prove sufficient to characterize the relative levels of hardship suffered by the district populations. This can be combined with creative elicitation and analysis of expert opinion, as carried out by ElGuindi et al. (2003) on district poverty estimates in central and southern Iraq. After this first cut is analyzed, disseminated, and transformed into a new assessment plan, extensions in scope and in geography may be undertaken. Perhaps assessment might be extended to all communities assumed to have populations greater than 1,000 residents, or, alternatively, to all market towns (see Benini and Ross [2003] for some perspective from Iraq). If resources permit, a concurrent validation exercise might lead assessment teams in two or three experimental districts to administer the instrument to all communities with 100 residents or more. Alternatively, facility surveys in high priority sectors such as health care or farm supply businesses might touch every community known for a pre-war facility. These data would be integrated by an information organization with the requisite technical skills and mission. The essential point here is not to prescribe a particular sequence of survey types and assessment organizations. Rather, our experience suggests keeping the initial assessments small, manageable, and, above all, rapid. Speed is valued because earlier results will be appreciated during an emergency and because more learning cycles can be built in. Except for cross-culturally validated instruments pre-tests are necessary. Assessments strung out into several phases, with renewed testing and retraining during interim periods, are certain to produce better results than mammoth data-collection exercises.

The politics of information coordination Once the war outcome and the occupation, with its attendant insurgency and insecurity, are factored in the impact of politics on the ways humanitarian information has been managed in Iraq is surprisingly mild. This is in marked contrast to the multitudes of lower-order institutional conflicts and contradictions that interfered with good practice of survey research and data management. Certainly, one must not be naive about the definitions that the conflict at large foisted upon humanitarian information management. Many readers who may never before have heard of HICs, the RAP, or EMAS will be at least superficially conversant with a rapid assessment that estimated 100,000 excess deaths since the end of the war, most of them a result of actions of the occupying coalition (Roberts et al. 2004). This bombshell article filled a niche in the humanitarian information landscape left vacant by the Pentagon’s refusal even to attempt a tally of civilian casualties. Conversely, the refusal of UN agencies working under OFFP to share detailed location and population data can be stylized as passive civil disobedience by relief bureaucrats who fundamentally disagreed with the 134

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war and the subsequent elimination of their program. Politically ineffectual, it nevertheless condemned the HIC in Iraq to designing the RAP on a weaker basis. In the lower arena of institutional contention, efforts to build bodies of humanitarian information capable of supporting relief and later reconstruction policies were assailed by two opposing tendencies. On one side, there was a tendency to undertake detailed planning and to engineer fixed solutions far removed from reality on the ground; the early EMAS experience is but one example. On the other side, aid agencies were ready to invest in informational activities chiefly to the extent that they served their own fundraising and reporting needs. The need for a class of information expediters to visit points and sources of humanitarian interest and to acquire, clean, compile, process, and package the data for broader use was difficult to advocate unless there were some tangible benefits to the collecting organizations. The noted strengths and weaknesses are not unique to the emergency in Iraq. Despite its peculiar traits, which include the extended lead-time, the destruction of the UN country headquarters, and the virulent insecurity dampening reconstruction, we believe that the Iraq experience confirms important regularities observed in major humanitarian information endeavors in recent times. The fact that HICs have since been established in Liberia and Darfur (Sudan) and for the Asian tsunami relief suggests recognition of the need for an overarching information approach and the continued search for a workable solution.

Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Benini, A., Conley, C., Donahue, J. and Messick, S. (2006) “Challenges of humanitarian information management in Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 285–300.

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Kent, R. (2004) “Humanitarian futures: practical policy perspectives,” London: Overseas Development Institute. Humanitarian Practice Network (HPN), April: 46. Kharif, O. (2003) “Plotting the war on terror and disease,” BusinessWeek Online. Online. Available http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2003/tc20030819_8703_tc126.htm (accessed 24 August 2003). King, D. and Dilley, M. (2001) “Structured humanitarian assistance reporting (SHARE)”, Paper for the Symposium on Best Practices in Humanitarian Information Exchange Agenda, Geneva, Switzerland, 7–8 February 2002. Online. Available http://www.reliefweb.int/symposium/SHAREarticle.htm (accessed 30 September 2004). MacGinty, R. (2003) “The pre-war reconstruction of post-war Iraq,” Third World Quarterly, 24: 601–17. Roberts, L., Lafta, R., Garfield, R., Khudhairi, J. and Burnham, G. (2004) “Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: Cluster sample survey,” The Lancet, 364: 1857–64. Shaikh, I. (2004) UNOPS/MAG/VVAF Emergency Mine Action Survey (EMAS). Project GLO/02/R72 Contract PS 130171. Final Technical Report, Manchester and Washington, DC: Mines Advisory Group (MAG). Thompson, S.K. (1991) “Adaptive cluster sampling: designs with primary and secondary units,” Biometrics, 47: 1103–15.

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12 Role of contractors and other non-military personnel in today’s wars O. Shawn Cupp and William C. Latham, Jr.

Introduction Post-Cold War battlefields have become filled with individuals who are not in uniform. Particularly in conflicts involving the US and its NATO allies, combat forces now share their once-isolated battlefields with a growing number of civilian agencies and individuals, whose priorities and procedures often differ dramatically from those of military commanders. These civilians fall into at least three discrete categories: contractors, federal employees, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), each of which carries its own challenges. Contractors now provide an ever-increasing array of services and support to military forces, but their priorities focus on profit motives rather than on support of military objectives, and these individuals may choose to abandon the mission if the level of risk becomes intolerable. Some theorists, including Phil Williams, have described the conflicts of the twentyfirst century as continuing to be a “growing number of increasingly disorderly spaces” (Williams 2006). These conflicts will be defined by some “concrete factor such as ethnicity, religion, or language or increasingly by self-defined and self-selected criteria” (Moodie 2009: 20). These future conflicts will be less politically motivated by ideology, as most were in the twentieth century. The next series of conflicts in the world will instead center on territory, resources, and social power. Based on this emerging nature of conflict, they will be inherently difficult to counter with only military forces. The modern battlefield has become exponentially more complex, as soldiers compete with a growing number of civilian individuals and agencies for information and influence. Contractors, government agencies, and NGOs now clutter and complicate modern military operations, and the trend will probably continue. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly called for more civilians, ranging from agronomists to economists, to support America’s ongoing counterinsurgency in Afghanistan (Maurer 2009). He asked for those who “might serve as a bridge” (Maurer 2009: 1). This chapter examines the role of non-military agents on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and addresses several trends that will characterize future conflicts. Although these trends are of particular concern for the democracies of the West, we recognize that 137

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many non-Western military organizations face similar challenges and opportunities. Companies from the People’s Republic of China, for example, currently employ several thousand civilian engineers, technicians, and private security personnel on construction, mining, and drilling projects throughout Africa, with the majority of projects in oilexporting nations (Levitt 2006). The Chinese presence boosts local economies, but critics view these projects as a foot in the door for Chinese paramilitary intervention (Hammes 2007). Likewise, the benefits and challenges of other non-military agents on the battlefield are becoming a global phenomenon, as various government and humanitarian agencies respond to the natural and man-made crises of the post-Cold War era. This chapter focuses on the relationships between these agencies and the American military, whose annual expenditures and strategic commitments dwarf those of its allies and rivals (Shah 2009). Contractors Aside from refugees and inhabitants, most civilians on the modern battlefield are contractors, usually paid employees of private companies that provide goods and services to one or more of the combatant forces. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the availability of contract support made feasible the prospect of conducting two major military campaigns at the same time. Particularly during the build-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), ready access to contract support enabled military planners to construct airfields, barracks, and training areas in Kuwait, and then to rapidly deploy the invasion force several thousand miles from bases in Europe and America (Wright & Reese 2008: 496–97). Once coalition forces captured Baghdad, the Pentagon sent a second wave of contractors to support its massive security and reconstruction efforts, and to build and operate the forward operating bases that housed coalition forces (Kidwell 2005: 29–32). Contractors have supported similar efforts in Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom, albeit on a smaller scale (Singer 2008: 245–48). Continuing support of these two campaigns has created enormous strain on the American military, particularly within its Army and Marine Corps units. Nevertheless, the availability of contract support has enabled this ambitious strategy in at least three ways. Political benefits First, military planners aggressively employed contractors as substitutes for military manpower, enabling the Pentagon to radically increase the scope of operations without engaging in a public or Congressional debate regarding the size of the military. Between 2003 and 2008, the Pentagon spent 106 billion dollars on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, and although the scope of this commitment has drawn occasional public and Congressional criticism, America now employs approximately the same number of contractors as uniformed personnel in those two combat zones (Schwartz 2009). According to Peter W. Singer, the Pentagon’s willingness to use contractors on an unprecedented scale also relieved the Bush Administration from having to make diplomatic concessions to gain greater troop support from European allies (Singer 2008: 244– 45). As retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian argues persuasively, “contractors are an integral and permanent part of US force structure” (Cancian 2008). 138

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Rapid deployment Second, contractor support significantly enhanced the speed and sophistication of these military campaigns, enabling the Pentagon to move, house, feed, equip, and train US and coalition forces at an unprecedented pace (Wright & Reese 2008: 19). Again, the preliminary stages of OIF illustrate this influence. In less than 4 months, the Pentagon assembled a formidable invasion force, deploying over 200,000 troops and nearly 1,100 major weapons systems (including main battle tanks and combat helicopters) from Europe and North America to staging areas in Kuwait (Fontenot et al. 2004: 80). To accomplish this feat, military planners hired private corporations to provide everything from cargo trucks and chemical toilets to military training exercises for newly arrived units. Once the war began, contractors supplied, maintained, and in some cases helped operate high-tech weapons systems (such as Patriot missiles and the unmanned aerial vehicles [UAV]) that enabled coalition forces to overwhelm their Iraqi adversaries (Singer 2008). Outsourcing reconstruction Contractors have played a dominant role, albeit with mixed results, in American efforts to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq. This reliance has proven particularly expensive in Iraq, where Congress allocated approximately 50 billion dollars to rebuild the nation’s economy and infrastructure (Bowen 2009). Although reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan have been more modest, availability of contract support enabled the US government to undertake exceptionally ambitious projects in both nations without significantly expanding the all-volunteer military. Transparency and accountability Contract support enables governmental agencies to do more with less, but the transfer of functions from public agencies to private industry sacrifices transparency in the process. When the Pentagon employs its own manpower to accomplish a mission, the policies, procedures, and costs of that operation are usually subject to public scrutiny, legislative review, and media criticism. Citing the proprietary nature of their business practices, however, contractors rarely share such information with the public. In a particularly memorable 2005 television documentary, officials with Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), the Army’s primary logistics contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, politely dodged questions regarding the cost of meals in KBR’s dining facilities (Gavira 2005). Corporate policies often prohibit employees from sharing such information. The common practice of sub-contracting further complicates the efforts of government officials and media watchdogs to accurately determine responsibility for the success or failure of specific projects. This confusion can become particularly embarrassing when things go wrong, as in the case of a private American security team that was ambushed in Fallujah on 31 March 2004. The case prompted a wrongful death lawsuit against the security company, Blackwater USA, along with several public hearings in Congress (Lardner 2007). In the face of numerous inquiries, meanwhile, the Pentagon scrambled to determine exactly which contract the Blackwater team was supporting on the day of the ambush. In February of 2007, the Secretary of the Army reversed previous Pentagon statements by announcing that Blackwater’s team in Fallujah had been working as a subcontractor for KBR (Margasak 2007). 139

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The inevitable lack of transparency has contributed to other accountability issues in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly regarding the number of contractors employed, their qualifications, and the legal jurisdiction for misconduct. Although the Pentagon has significantly improved its ability to track the number of contractors in the combat zone, such improvements are long overdue. The Pentagon’s first estimate of contractors, in December of 2006, was “approximately 100,000” (Singer 2008). As with the confusion regarding Blackwater’s relationship with KBR, the Pentagon’s difficulty in providing Congress with an accurate headcount of contractors provided a glaring reminder of the military’s inability to effectively manage its multibillion dollar contracts. The legal jurisdiction issue has proven even more problematic, as Iraqis and Afghans, along with many critics in Congress and the media, perceived that widespread misconduct by contractors has gone unpunished. Blackwater USA, which provides security for State Department facilities and personnel in Iraq, attracted the most scrutiny. In addition to the incident in Fallujah, Blackwater employees had been involved in a series of high-profile incidents, most notably the 2007 Nisoor Square shooting, in which Blackwater guards allegedly killed 17 Iraqi civilians during a firefight in downtown Baghdad. Company officials insist the convoy was ambushed, but a Congressional memorandum characterized the company’s use of force as “frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage” (Elsea et al. 2008: 11–12). Congress has also extended the US military’s legal authority to include Pentagon contractors participating in contingency operations. To date, these new provisions have produced only a small number of prosecutions, and the continuing perception of contractor impunity undermines the legitimacy of the Iraqi and Afghan governments. Credibility and cohesion The heavy reliance on contractors to support military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq has undermined the Pentagon’s credibility, at home and abroad. Many individuals and corporations providing support to these two operations have performed magnificently, but every new scandal undermines perceptions of the military’s competence and integrity. Before the war in Iraq, both Congress and the Pentagon had long ignored the need to maintain a competent staff of contract administrators (Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations 2007: 14). The unanticipated demand for contract support in Iraq exposed this shortcoming, in the process wasting billions of dollars because of waste, fraud, abuse, and administrative shortcomings (Singer 2008: 252–53). The ensuing scandals undermined public and legislative confidence in the management of the war. Whereas contracting scandals damage the Pentagon’s credibility at home, perceptions of contractor misconduct have undermined American strategic goals in Iraq and Afghanistan, where local residents make little or no distinction between Western soldiers and civilians. After the shootings in Nisoor Square, for example, the senior American commander in Baghdad described the tragedy as a setback: “In the aftermath of these, everybody looks and says, ‘It’s the Americans.’ And that’s us. It’s horrible timing” (Raghavan and White 2007: 2). Iraq’s prime minister, meanwhile, described the incident as “a challenge to Iraqi sovereignty” (Rubin and Kramer 2007). The increasing reliance on contractors to achieve military objectives thus creates a significant additional barrier between the formulation and execution of foreign policy. 140

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The privatization of war may also have a psychological impact on the uniformed military. Initial studies suggest that the presence of contractors may undermine the cohesion of the military units they are hired to support. Sociologist Ryan Kelty has conducted several preliminary studies indicating that when soldiers serve alongside contractors in a combat zone, the perceived differences in pay, benefits, working conditions, and job satisfaction have a direct impact on morale, and at least an indirect impact on soldiers’ intentions to re-enlist. Although limited to small population samples, Kelty’s initial findings indicate that “soldiers’ social comparisons with contractors negatively influence perceptions of unit cohesion” (Kelty 2009: 19). Tentative steps towards reform The federal government, and particularly the Pentagon, proved slow in acknowledging these challenges, but continuing pressure from Congress and the media, along with results on the battlefield, have recently inspired long-overdue reforms. The Army, in particular, has taken dramatic steps to improve its management of contracts. In 2007, Secretary of the Army Peter Geren commissioned a study to identify solutions to the Army’s contracting problems. The result, the so-called Gansler Report, identified four major areas that needed improvement: the stature and career development of contract managers; the organization and responsibilities of contracting agencies; training on contract management for deploying personnel; and policy and regulatory guidance for deployed contract administrators (Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations 2007: 5–8). The Army has since embraced the report’s recommendations and is continuing to implement them as policy (Association of the United States Army 2009). Other federal agencies have also instituted reforms. The most significant of these is the State Department’s 2007 agreement with the Pentagon to work together in coordinating contract support in Iraq. The agreement required the two agencies to develop and implement policies applicable to the approximately 11,000 private security employees working for US government agencies in Iraq (Memorandum of Agreement, Department of Defense 2007). In July of 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the two agencies had made significant progress in meeting these goals, particularly in terms of better coordination and increased oversight. There was still room for improvement, however, especially in pre-deployment training for military units and resourcing contract management positions in Iraq (US Government Accountability Office 2008). The Pentagon, meanwhile, seems to have learned from earlier failures, and has implemented a series of new policies and procedures to improve oversight of military contracting. In April of 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates directed all Pentagon agencies to review and justify any new functions that require contractors instead of government personnel (Deputy Secretary of Defense Memorandum 2009). Like other recent reforms, the Pentagon’s in-sourcing policy is too new to evaluate. There is a high probability, however, that at least some of its well-intentioned measures will do more good than harm. The US Congress has also taken a more active role in governing the military’s contracting procedures, and has passed a series of legislative requirements and restrictions concerning military contracting. In addition, the US Senate has established a watchdog group, the “ad hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight,” to investigate and review 141

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federal acquisition policies and management (US Senate Committee 2009). The myriad of new policies, procedures, restrictions and guidelines may improve the efficiency and responsiveness of contract support for American military operations. As long as military commitments exceed uniformed force structure, however, contractor support (and its inherent risks) will remain an integral feature of modern welfare.

Governmental agencies in full spectrum environment US government officials represent the second category: serving with the military but not in the military. This group includes subject matter experts from different agencies and various departments, including State, Commerce, Labor, Transportation, and Agriculture, and their expertise plays a critical role in the pursuit of modern counterinsurgency operations. Unfortunately, the federal workforce has been slow to embrace this new requirement. A recent article on Afghanistan’s civilian surge summarized this point, “All civilian branches of the US government aren’t designed to deploy people the way the Pentagon can” (Lubold 2009: 1). These civilians provide certain skill sets and knowledge that is not resident in military service members. Thus, they are crucial to engage the complex battle space and provide the best answers to problems that are not necessarily within the military field of view. The deployment of large numbers of civilians first took place in Iraq during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The CPA was developed and implemented shortly after the cessation of major combat operations in Iraq. The CPA was “assigned the mission and given the authority to run Phase IV operations in Iraq – with military in direct support” (Sanchez 2008: 179). Several problems resulted from this mission assignment, among them an ambiguous command relationship between the CPA and the American military that further complicated an already Byzantine chain of command. In addition, the short tenure of CPA members conflicted with that of their military counterparts. Many of the CPA civilians were on dramatically different rotation plans. Then Colonel David Perkins stated, “We go by position. They don’t. I would learn to work with Ms. X and then she would rotate out. Someone else came in and you had to develop this personal relationship again. It is all based on personal relationships” (Wright & Reese 2008: 304). These personal relationships affected not only the military–civilian interactions but the Iraqi–civilian/military interactions. People would leave and the Iraqis would still seek to speak with someone who was no longer in country and had rotated back to the US. Another perceived negative impact was that the CPA exhibited arrogance in a combat zone. During one of his first meetings with the military, Ambassador Paul Bremer announced to Lieutenant General Wallace, the V Corps commander, “I’m the CPA administrator and I’m in charge. I want you to co-locate your command and control center with the CPA in the Green Zone, immediately” (Sanchez 2008: 178). This edict was not the best way to start a relationship with the senior military commander in a turbulent combat zone. One of the first things that Ambassador Bremer did was to meet with the Senior Leadership Council (Sanchez 2008). This entity was developed by Lieutenant General (retired) Jay Garner and the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq. After meeting with the group, Ambassador Bremer stated “You are not the government, the CPA is in charge” (Sanchez 2008: 178). The advisory group never met again. 142

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A major challenge of OIF was with civilians and military members working together during the end of major combat operations. The sheer numbers of civilians required to do the work was and continues to be an issue. Several years ago, the State Department began recruiting a pool of volunteers willing to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. In 2004, at the urging of the Pentagon, President Bush created a new State Department office for “civilian stabilization and reconstruction missions” (Feith 2009: 1). This organization directed the implementation of the Civilian Response Corps (CRC). This would provide civilians with expertise in water systems, police training, and judicial administration to assist military forces. This organization was developed so that the president could mobilize trained civilian volunteers the way he could already mobilize military reserves (Feith 2009). At this writing, the Obama administration supports this initiative with over $300 million should the Congress approve the new budget (Feith 2009). Even with the dollars funding this initiative, the State Department is still hard pressed to fill necessary postings in Afghanistan and Iraq due to the constant operational tempo of the past 7 years. If one compares the Department of Defense budget of $534 billion with the State Department budget of $53 billion, it is ten times more (Lubold 2009). Not only must a culture of change take place but also a change in funding if federal civilians are to be available for deployment and integration to support a military operation. Other federal agencies face similar obstacles, with career civil servants reluctant to accept either the inconvenience of extended deployment or the considerable risk of such duty in any combat zone. The US government’s outdated personnel system creates further roadblocks. Some deployed civilian employees, for example, receive significantly less pay and benefits than military personnel or even less than some of their fellow civilian federal employees. Some of these policies are still in place today. A recent report by the House Armed Services Committee states that “locality pay is one area of disparity and contention among Department of State employees. Department of State employees, both Foreign Service Officers (FSO) and civil service (CS) employees receive locality pay if they are on temporary duty status (TDY)” (Fenner 2008). However, their colleagues do not received TDY funds if Afghanistan or Iraq is their official duty station: “If their official duty station is Washington, DC those on TDY status receive nearly 20 per cent above base for locality pay” (Fenner 2008). This single example illustrates the obstacles within the civilian personnel management system that create perceived inequality. Capabilities to provide federal government assistance have dwindled from previous conflicts. For example, the United States Agency for International Development was required to reduce its force structure from 12,000 during the Vietnam War to the current 2,000 (Binnendijk & Cronin 2008). This reduction shows the increase and decrease of civilian capacity based on budget considerations not sustaining capacity. It takes resources, primarily time and money, to begin to replace some of this lost capacity. This lost capacity is not usually available at the beginning of a conflict and sometimes does not even exist when it is needed. For example, General Tommy Franks, the Central Combatant Commander in 2003, made it quite clear that he had planned for the invasion. The mission for post-conflict activities was left up to the civilians: “Their number was small, their time to plan limited, and their resources negligible” (Binnendijk and Cronin 2008: vi). Civilians bring many capabilities to the battlefield that are not inherent in military formations but are required to support military operations. However, some issues of personnel qualifications have come under scrutiny. Although the US military has experienced and continues to experience multiple deployments and stretching of personnel resources, some US civilian agencies are not faring much better. For example, a recent Government 143

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Accountability Office report stated that the US State Department has employees who do not meet the proficiency skills for foreign language capacity. Specifically the report states that, “in Iraq 57 per cent and in Afghanistan 73 per cent of the officers were unable to meet the requirement” (Parker 2009: 1). Even bringing civilians who possess unique skill-sets to the battlefield can be problematic. The ebb and flow of force structure for civilian capacity brings into question just how much and what design of civilian capacity is necessary. One point of agreement is that a single overarching scenario will not fulfill all the requirements for a civilian response force. One design that was proposed was a “1–1–4 sizing construct” (Binnendijk and Cronin 2008: 2). This design would be enough for civilians to support one large, one medium, and four small complex operations. This design may or may not be right, but at least it is a start in defining requirements for a civilian response force.

Post-Cold War humanitarian space? NGOs constitute a third category of civilians on the modern battlefield; NGOs include groups, such as Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), Catholic Charities, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Red Crescent, usually seek to provide basic health and social services to refugees and displaced civilians within a specific region. Despite their good intentions, these organizations rarely share the same agenda as the US military and often prove either suspicious or openly hostile to US military initiatives. One issue is the “militarization of humanitarianism – or the tensions between mandates as well as operational difficulties” (Van Baarda 2001: 103). The largest number of NGOs are humanitarian based or are primarily focused on humanitarian goals. These organizations occupy the same battle space as military forces but rarely share the same priorities: “NGOs have strengths and limitations. Most NGOs approach their work with a wisdom acquired from experience” (Jordan et al. 2009: 540). For the sake of the military, this is often a good and welcomed approach to solving primarily post-conflict situations. Most humanitarian organizations, however, complain that the military “does not understand the humanitarian organizations and vice versa” (Van Baarda 2001: 103). According to these critics, military commanders want to get the mission accomplished, but not necessarily in a methodical manner. Military planners have to remember that NGOs in most cases try to develop capacity for local communities to become closer to sustaining that development. It is often the case that the military and NGOs “are mostly disparate, and they have joined together owing to circumstance and necessity rather than a shared ideology” (Smith 2007: 304). Some critics maintain that cooperation between humanitarian organizations and the military is by itself “undesirable” (Van Baarda 2001: 103). Nevertheless, NGOs have become “partners in armed conflict management, violence prevention, and post-war reconstruction” (Waisova 2008: 66). As with other civilian agencies in the battle space, NGOs have important limitations. “NGOs can make mistakes, but they are not generally held accountable for their actions. NGOs may also have conflicting constituencies that they have to satisfy, which may include private and state donors” (Jordan et al. 2009: 540). It is also important to note that most NGOs are present at the request of the host government. Anytime an NGO becomes too involved in political affairs, rightly or wrongly, it may be asked to leave prematurely. 144

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On the other hand, these agencies provide unique capabilities in areas where military commanders cannot operate, because of either lack of resources or local distrust. “Some governments believe that NGOs have better logistic capabilities at the local level than governments and international institutions do and that they are more trusted among the local population” (Waisova 2008: 66). This reality can sometimes put NGOs at odds with military personnel. International donors and NGOs have contributed to the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, including “a 76 per cent expansion of healthcare since 2004” (Crane 2009: 98). This increased access to health care has reduced the mortality rate for all Afghan children under the age of five by 26 percent (Crane 2009). NGOs often do good work, but military leaders must understand what they do and how they do it. In future conflicts, commanders must establish mutual trust without compromising the neutrality of these agencies. In a recent article the author encapsulates the essence of emergencies and what emergencies mean to organizations trying to respond, “The management of emergencies and conflict is very big business and a very big part of what multilateral agencies and NGOs do” (Calhoun 2004: 375). Specifically in Afghanistan, three factors have contributed to less than friendly relationships between the Afghan government and NGOs. These include questioning the neutrality of NGOs who participate on Provincial Reconstruction Teams, NGO criticism of the government, and the fact that some NGOs have capacities that the state authorities lack (Waisova 2008). Military personnel must understand some of these perceptions and be able to advise government and NGO officials that there is a common goal among many competing agendas.

Summary Efforts by American commanders to exclude an array of civilians from the battlefield have proven universally futile, and future battlefields will probably include even more civilians. Current enemies relying on terrorist tactics, and most likely our future ones, will not bother to comply with those categories within the Geneva Conventions that distinguish armed combatants from innocent civilians. Retired General and military historian Robert Scales argues that future enemies of the US will use primitive means to defeat us, and that “the enemy understands that our most vulnerable center of gravity is dead Americans” (Scales 2007: 23). If Scales is correct, future opponents will engage in asymmetric warfare that attacks soft targets. In such a conflict, civilian individuals and organizations will present the softest of the soft targets. To prevail, American commanders must face the difficult task of establishing security in an environment that is, by definition, unsafe. American forces now feature a terrifying array of firepower, but this advantage no longer guarantees a monopoly on the use of violence. Mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught much about the need for security and the path to achieving it. These lessons include the need to deploy with enough soldiers to establish security until local authorities can resume this obligation, the benefits of minimizing damage to a society’s structural and governmental infrastructure, and the value of establishing mutual trust and respect with local authorities. While civilian agencies and actors impose an added security burden on military forces, they also present a variety of avenues in which to restore the societal functions that will inhibit violence and expose insurgents. They provide core competencies no longer found within the US military force structure. 145

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To successfully accomplish future missions, commanders will have to establish and maintain professional relationships with all of the civilian agencies on the next battlefield. While this requirement may seem implicit within a commander’s responsibilities, the task is complicated because each category of civilian has a different set of priorities, and thus has a separate and unique relationship with the military. Contractors, for example, may seek to establish a profitable business relationship with the military, whereas some NGOs may seek access to groups for their own purposes. Future military leaders will be required to continue to train planners and commanders to respect the boundaries of other agencies without comprising their mission or the safety of their personnel. The American military has made great strides in recognizing the need for this training, and war games and field exercises now incorporate a host of civilian actors within their training scenarios. It remains to be seen, however, whether this training produces a safer environment and a better relationship with the civilians who now share the battlefield. Despite the many challenges they create, these agencies and individuals offer significant force multipliers for the commander who anticipates their involvement and establishes the appropriate relationships with them. Future research on the relationships between the military and the civilians on the battlefield should assist in each understanding their specific roles in peace and combat.

Disclaimer The views and conclusions expressed in the context of this document are those of the authors developed in the freedom of expression, academic environment of the US Army Command and General Staff College. They do not reflect the official position of the US Government, Department of Defense, Department of the Army, or the US Army Command and General Staff College.

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US Government Accountability Office (2008) Rebuilding in Iraq: DOD and State Department Have Improved Oversight and Coordination of Private Security Contractors in Iraq, but Further Actions Are Needed to Sustain Improvements. Online. Available http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08966.pdf (accessed 17 September 2009). United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (2009) Online. Available http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=AboutCommittee.Jurisdiction (accessed 25 November 2009). Van Baarda, T. A. (2001) “A legal perspective of cooperation between military and humanitarian organizations in peace support operations,” International Peacekeeping, 8: 34–45. Waisova, S. (2008) “Post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan and the changing NGO-government relationship,” China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 6: 65–85. Williams, P. (2006) “Who controls the night? Disorderly spaces and global security,” Online. Available http://globalcrim.blogspot.com/2009/06/having-endured-tensions-of-long-cold.html (accessed 17 October 2009). Wright, D. P. and Reese, T.R. with the Contemporary Operations Study Team (2008) On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign: The United States Army in Operations IRAQI FREEDOM May 2003– January 2005. Fort Leavenworth, TX: Combat Studies Institute.

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13 Evaluating psychological operations in Operation Enduring Freedom James Griffith

Shortly after 9/11 (11 September 2001), the US began efforts to depose the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Even before hostilities, some of the Afghan people, especially the Pashtuns, had a negative view of the US and were less than supportive of US involvement in their country. The Taliban and Al Qaeda attempted to convince the people of Afghanistan that America was attacking their religious faith (Friedman 2002). In October 2001, the US military’s 4th Psychological Operations Group (POG) was called on to develop a strategy to engender among the Afghan people more favorable attitudes toward US involvement in Afghanistan. The battle for people’s “hearts and minds” was set. The topic of this chapter is US psychological operations, in particular, those performed in the early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).1 I describe the purpose of psychological operations in this context and how content for media was developed, disseminated, and evaluated. I respond to important questions about evaluating psychological operations: What are psychological operations? How has the US military used psychological operations in past conflicts? More specifically, what psychological operations were conducted during the early stages of OEF, and to what extent were operations effective? Responses to these questions inform and improve future evaluation studies.

Defining psychological operations Psychological operations are defined by the Department of Defense as a set of “planned operations to convey information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and, ultimately, the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals” (Department of Defense Dictionary 2001: 441). Common methods of psychological operations have included aerial leaflet drops, newspaper circulation, radio broadcasts, and more recently, television and internet websites and messages. At present, the 4th POG, based at Ft Bragg, North Carolina, is the only active duty Army psychological operations unit. Its primary mission is to develop, 149

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design, and conduct psychological operations throughout the world. About 2,300 personnel, soldiers, and government civilians comprise the unit. The civilian staff includes approximately 36 specialists in the regional politics, cultures, and religions of the potential target audiences. Uniformed military in the 4th POG are often experts in media design and presentation, for example, in radio broadcast and printed journalism.

Past uses of psychological operations As far back as the Revolutionary War, the US military has used psychological operations to influence the enemy (Jowett & O’Donnell 1999). Leaflets were distributed to British soldiers at the battle of Bunker Hill. Those leaflets promised free land to British soldiers who came over to the American side. In the Civil War, the North and the South used methods to influence their own people and others to support their cause, although most efforts were not deliberate and not well organized (Propaganda in the Civil War 2009). The North made announcements and speeches, such as the Emancipation of Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address, at critical junctures of the war to rally support. In the media, the South embellished the vastness of the South’s cotton, attempting to appeal to European nations’ dependence on cotton for their textile industries. During World War I (WWI), many of the warring countries used persuasive media messages to influence others to support their cause (Wartime Propaganda 2009). US President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information to promote the war domestically and American war aims abroad. Posters, films, and canned slogans were the primary means for disseminating messages, which often played on negative stereotypes. These messages served to justify to each nation’s people involvement in the war and the need for personnel and resources to sustain its military forces. Psychological operations became more organized during World War II (WWII), being directed primarily at enemy soldiers. The US military made extensive use of leaflets, the most successful being “the safe passage” leaflet, which guaranteed surrender without bodily harm to enemy soldiers (for a review, see Herz 1949). In modern conflicts, the target population has broadened, largely because of the changed nature of warfare (Shanker 2009), which has made gaining the support of the indigenous population a key goal. As coined by Liddell-Hart (1954), the major battle in modern warfare was “winning hearts and minds” of the local people. During the Korean War, the US Army Far East Command conducted radio broadcasts, leaflet drops, and ground loudspeaker broadcasts. Messages directed to enemy soldiers centered on several themes: that they were good soldiers but being led very poorly; that they could surrender and be treated well; that they were being crushed by opposing forces; and that they could rejoin friends and family at home. Messages directed to the civilian population emphasized the commitment of the US and its allies to South Korea and shared commonalities among the Korean people (Andrews et al. 1954; Friedman 2009). During the Vietnam War, the US government made concerted efforts, organized in the program Chieu Hoi, to win over the Vietnamese people. The program was carried out by the US Information Service (see Jowett & O’Donnell 1999). Media messages were developed around five themes; the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers’ fear of death; extreme hardships; worries about their families; disillusionment with the war; and the remoteness of Communist victory. US forces would often have North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, who had surrendered, make loudspeaker announcements 150

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to the front line of their forces. Loudspeaker broadcasts were made from the air by helicopters and from the ground (Whittaker 1997). During the war, about 50 billion leaflets were dropped throughout South Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trial, and in North Vietnam. One study estimated that from 1963 to 1972, more than 200,000 people, mostly lower-ranking and less ideologically committed communists, aligned themselves with South Vietnam (see Jowett and O’Donnell 1999). More recently, the US military has used psychological operations in Haiti, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the first Gulf War. Activities included air-dropping leaflets, broadcasting messages and music from airborne radio stations, distributing newsletters, and making announcements by vehicle-mounted loudspeakers. During the first Gulf War, the 4th POG dropped 29 million leaflets on Iraqi forces. The US also sponsored the radio program “Voice of the Gulf,” which featured satisfied Iraqi prisoners of war, prayers from the Koran, and notifications of future bombing targets so as to avoid civilian injury. Experience suggests that nearly three-quarters of Iraqi soldiers who surrendered were influenced by the leaflets and radio broadcasts (see Jowett and O’Donnell 1999). However, their effectiveness was largely based on anecdotal and observational accounts, with a few limited scientific evaluations.

OEF psychological operations Under the Taliban in Afghanistan, there was only one radio station, Radio Shariat, which was operated by Radio Television Afghanistan, the national television and radio authority. No other national media existed in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2002. Given this void, the US military saw the opportunity to present messages via staterun media that would unify Afghans and encourage their support for and confidence and trust in their new government. One strategy was broadcasting Radio Malumat from its platform in the sky (called Commando Solo) and later from ground-based platforms. Radio Malumat broadcasts were hour-long formats, similar to commercial radio stations. News and information were interspersed with music: traditional Afghan, contemporary, and folk. Content included information about the interim government, the reopening of Kabul University, Afghans training for the 2004 Olympics, information about obtaining identification cards and polio vaccinations, and cautions about unexploded ordnance. In addition, radio broadcasts stressed that the conflict was a war against terrorism and not against the people of Afghanistan, explaining that the US had been the target of terrorist attacks, leaving no choice but to seek out suspected perpetrators. Broadcasts argued that the Afghan people were not being targeted, but Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who themselves were oppressors of the Afghan people, and the combined efforts of the international community and the Afghan people were needed to remove them from Afghanistan. Messages also attempted to separate the Taliban from the Afghan people: “The Taliban have … destroyed your national monuments, and cultural artifacts. They rule by force, violence, and fear. … That which has brought you together as a nation over the past thousands of years is being slowly torn apart” (Friedman 2002). Other messages informed Afghans of impending humanitarian aid through air drops and of cautions to be taken when approaching air-dropped materials. Another strategy for Army organizations was to print and circulate a biweekly newspaper, called Sulh, or “peace.” The newspaper typically published an article on the new Afghan National Army, “good news” stories about building schools and other 151

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development projects, and an article or two that exposed Taliban misrule. After the Afghan National Police (ANP) was organized, articles and hero comics that celebrated the ANP began appearing. The paper was trilingual, with articles repeated in English, Pashto, and Dari. The length of the newspaper varied, increasing to 12 multicolor pages.

Determining the effectiveness of psychological operations Militaries have used psychological operations extensively (Jowett and O’Donnell 1999), although often without clear empirical evidence of their effectiveness. Psychological operations are important because they challenge justifications that individuals and groups use to gain support for participation in war; such challenges may reduce support and perhaps participation. Content of psychological operations can also bolster one’s own forces’ reasons for fighting. Thus, psychological operations seemingly have widespread effects at limited costs, monetarily and in terms of battle casualties. Yet, there are very few documented, peer-reviewed studies of the effectiveness of psychological operations, e.g. in WWI (Bird 1928), WWII (Gurfein and Janowitz 1946; Herz 1949; Shils and Janowitz 1948), the Korean War (Andrews et al. 1954), and the Vietnam War (Whittaker 1997). These few studies offer important considerations in evaluating designs, such as who might be study respondents, what might be appropriate comparison groups, and what data might be gathered as outcome measures. At the same time, methodological shortcomings are evident, largely because of the nature of the wartime environment. Past studies lack external validity or confidence that research results represent those to whom results are to be generalized. In conventional wars, the target population has been the enemy soldiers. Past studies have gathered data from soldiers who had surrendered (Andrews et al. 1954; Herz 1949). For example, estimating exposure to the target audience by observing what prisoners of war possessed (leaflet or not), reported seeing or hearing themselves, or reported what they heard other soldiers had seen or heard (Gurfein and Janowitz 1946). To estimate exposure effects across time, Gurfein and Janowitz plotted responses of captured enemy soldiers at specific intervals. Such studies, however, do not consider enemy soldiers who have been exposed to media and have not surrendered, thus limiting generalizability of study findings. In addition, given the changed nature of modern conflicts, the target population has become expanded, including people who coexist with enemy soldiers. Past studies lack internal validity or confidence that associations among concepts represent causal relationships. Past studies can be described as consisting of a treatment group without a comparison group or a control group (Campbell and Stanley 1963). Nearly all evaluations of psychological operations performed during WWII made use of focused information gleaned from captured soldiers, such as counts of leaflets found on German prisoners, recall of leaflets, and favorable mention and detailed discussion of leaflets among enemy soldiers who surrendered (Herz 1949). Such designs ignore an appropriate comparison group or those who had not surrendered, especially the target population of greatest interest: enemy soldiers with “wavering commitment” (Gurfein and Janowitz 1946). Attempts were made to obtain such data: prisoners were asked whether soldiers who had not surrendered possessed leaflets and talked about their content (Herz 1949). To discern whether psychological operations have affected individual attitudes, commitment, or desire to surrender, a control group of enemy soldiers who were not exposed to messages is needed. Their commitment would be expected to be 152

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higher and desire to surrender lower than soldiers exposed to the messages. Given the changed nature of modern conflicts, people who coexist with enemy soldiers also need to be included in treatment, comparison, and control groups.

A design to evaluate OEF psychological operations In 2002–03, the 4th POG was tasked to devise an information campaign to develop among the Afghan people favorable and supportive attitudes toward the US and their newly formed government. One aspect of the campaign was to evaluate the effectiveness of various media. There were two major challenges. The first challenge was determining a data-collection methodology that would result in a representative sample of the target population, namely, the Afghan people. The 4th POG team sought a sampling methodology that took into account the difficulties of identifying potential respondents when their geographic dispersion and safety of data collectors were issues. An approach previously used in Liberia was chosen (Palmer 2003). Sampling was not probabilistic, but attempted to obtain respondents from different regions and of varied backgrounds and occupations. Geographic regions throughout Afghanistan were identified, and within regions; locales were chosen, such as bazaars, cafes, schools, and government offices. “Passers-by” were asked to participate in the survey. Hired and trained indigenous teachers were instructed to interview people from a variety of occupational categories, such as government workers, shopkeepers, and taxi drivers. Since women in Afghanistan practice “purdah” or “hejab” (i.e. seclusion and veiling), women interviewers were hired and trained. Early on, the team found the sampling method yielded respondents who were likely not representative of all Afghans, in particular, the rural population. At the outset, data collection was limited to seven cities and towns, primarily because of security threats and the extent to which coalition soldiers could provide some protection. The seven circled cities and surrounding regions in Figure 13.1 are where respondents were selected from. To remedy the likelihood of non-representative respondents, we weighted respondent data to match the census data for the population. Weighting the sample for ethnicity and gender brought the percentages of respondents within each ethnic group and gender to those of the Afghan population. This method has shortcomings. In underdeveloped countries, census data are limited and often quite dated. Only population counts by ethnicity and gender were available, not for specific regions. In addition, the weighting procedure assumed that respondents and those of similar backgrounds who did not participate would have responded similarly. The second challenge was to develop a study design that would test the presumed effects of psychological operations. In research that attempts to show causal effects, experimental designs are superior, but such designs are not feasible in conflict-ridden areas. Instead, we used an emerging analytic method, structural equation modeling (SEM) (see Schumaker and Lomax 1996). If the process of persuasive communication can be articulated and supported by past research, concepts, and variables and their interrelationships can be represented in a conceptual-analytical model (see Stephenson et al. 2006). The model in turn can be applied to gathered data and tested for “fit.” This method is similar to path analysis, except that SEM examines all paths simultaneously, not serially as does path analysis. Thus, SEM provides an overall evaluation of the proposed model, which leads to more valid conclusions at the concept level (Werner and Schermelleh-Engel 2009). 153

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Figure 13.1 Afghanistan and seven geographic regions from which respondents were selected

Drawing on the social-psychological literature, a framework of content and process and their interrelationships was developed for assessing various aspects of the psychological operations and its potential effects. A sequence of stages in the communication process, which could be associated with attitude change, had been previously developed by Hovland and his associates (1953). Characteristics of the media or aspects manipulated by psychological operations (independent variables) include the source (who says), content (what is said), medium (how it is said), and audience (said to whom). Thus, specific aspects of the communication process could be judged as effective or ineffective. This framework dictated what data to collect, and after their analysis, could answer what (content and medium) works best for whom (audience) (see Figure 13.2). Attitude change within the individual typically involves a sequence of stages (McGuire 1968). First, the person must pay attention to what is being communicated. Second, the person must comprehend what is being communicated. To be successful, in the third stage, the person must ascribe to the position advocated by the message or yield to the message appeal, and then be able to remember or retain the message content, and finally, changed behavior. The questionnaire was then developed to represent stages of persuasive communication and their effects. We could then use SEM to examine specific aspects of the 154

Figure 13.2 Stages of persuasive message communication and its effects Sources: Adapted from Osilamp (1977).

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media (e.g. content or medium) obtained from sample data in relation to a specified model of attitude change and to estimate regression coefficients showing how aspects of the media content are associated with self-reported attitudinal and behavioral change.

Evaluation results of OEF psychological operations Between June and August 2003, questionnaire data were obtained from 2,905 adult Afghans. Data were then analyzed to determine the extent of exposure to Radio Malumat and the newspaper Sulh, and which of their attributes were associated with the persuasive communication process. Table 13.1 reports basic descriptive information concerning the attributes of the radio and the newspaper. Surprisingly, exposure was slightly greater for Sulh than for Radio Malumat. In addition, the newspaper appeared to appeal to its target audience, the literate person, more than did the radio to its wider audience of readers and non-readers. About two-thirds of the respondents rated the quality of the newspaper favorably compared with about onethird who rated radio content favorably. One-third or more of the respondents liked the trilingual format of the newspaper and found it interesting and informative. Top themes desired by respondents included safety and peace, with nearly one-half of the respondents desiring such content. Other desired themes included national unity, human rights, law and order, Islam, and democracy, with about one-third of the respondents expressing such desires. The newspaper was also better understood than the radio (2 percent compared with 11 percent who did not understand). The message content of the newspaper and radio was equally believed, with about two-thirds in agreement. Two-thirds of the radio audience indicated that messages were useful to them. Proportionately more respondents reported that they acted on messages from the newspaper than the radio (81 percent versus 24 percent). All the variables were then arranged in an SEM in the hypothesized sequence of persuasive communication processes: attention, comprehension, belief, utility, and action. SEM (conducted in AMOS 7) tests whether the model can reasonably reproduce the data, usually in terms of the variance–covariance matrix. Fit indices indicate the extent to which covariances implied by the model correspond to the observed covariances in the data. Concepts represented by multiple items were retained based on significant and positive relationships with comprehension and belief variables. After initial analyses, models were trimmed based on the overall fit measures and the strength of the standardized path coefficients. Figures 13.3 and 13.4 display the trimmed models. Dotted lines indicate paths and variables that were trimmed from the final models. χ2 values for the trimmed models for the radio and newspaper suggested adequate fit to the data. For Radio Malumat, the χ2 value was 2.17 (not significant). (A non-significant χ2 value means that the variance–covariance matrix implied by the model and that of the data do not differ.) Although the χ2 value for Sulh (χ2 (8) = 32.62, p < .001) was statistically significant, large sample sizes (generally greater than 200) are known to produce statistically significant χ2 values when there is a model-data fit (type II error). In these instances, other indices are recommended to determine model-data fit. Other indices include the ratio of the χ2 value to degrees of freedom (CMIN/df < 5), CFI (.90 or higher) and the RMSEA (.10 or lower) (Hu & Bentler 1999; Schumaker & Lomax 1996). Using these indices, both models were supported by the data. Coefficients without parentheses are based on SEM which does not considered weighted data; and 156

Table 13.1 Exposure to Radio Malumat and Newspaper Sulh and self-reported evaluation of communication characteristics

Weighted % (of total unweighted valid N in parentheses) Communication attribute

Radio Malumat Newspaper Radio-newspaper (N = 924) Sulh (N = 995) comparison (t-test probability)

Exposure (listened, read): Q15 Radio Malumat Q24.1 Newspaper Sulh (read newspaper) Communication characteristics Content for attention: Radio: Quality of content/favorableness (“nearly all music played” for Q22) Newspaper: Quality of content (includes “excellent” and “good,” Q29) Interesting and informative (“yes,” Q28.1) Trilingual format (“yes,” Q28.2) Photographs (“yes,” Q28.4) Layout and appearance (“yes,” Q28.3) Newspaper content on: Safety (“yes,” Q35.1) Peace themes (“yes,” Q35.4) National unity (“yes,” Q35.3) Human rights (“yes,” Q35.6) Law and order (“yes,” Q35.5) Islam (“yes,” Q35.8) Democracy (“yes,” Q35.7) Health education (“yes,” Q35.2)

35 (2,676)

37 (2,660)

35 (820)

Not asked

p < .05

Not asked

61 (925)

Not asked

43 (955)

Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not

asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked

31 (955) 8 (955) 4 (955)

Comprehension: Messages not well understood (includes “not so well,” 21/Q33)

11 (820)

2 (888)

p < .05

Belief: Messages are believed (includes “always” and “usually,” 20/Q34)

61 (791)

64 (830)

ns

Message utility: Content is useful to me (includes “quite useful,” Q17)

63 (829)

Not asked

Action: Content discussed with / shown to others (includes “once or more” for Q18; “yes” for Q26)

24 (785)

81 (926)

49 48 39 37 34 31 29 27

(955) (955) (995) (955) (955) (995) (955) (955)

p < .05

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coefficients in parenthesare based on weighted data. Coefficients are statistically significant at p