- HTS was developed in response to identified gaps in commanders’ and staffs’ understanding of the local population and culture, and its impact on operational decisions; and poor transfer of specific socio-cultural knowledge to follow-on units.
- The HTS approach is to place the expertise and experience of social scientists and regional experts, coupled with reach-back, open-source research, directly in support of deployed units engaging in full-spectrum operations.
- HTS informs decision making at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.
- The HTS program is the first time that social science research and advising has been done systematically, on a large scale, and at the brigade level.
I have also dwelled on the American Anthropology Association's opposition to the program which makes it professionally risky for anthropologists to join up.
Another brave sole who decided to join up is Michael Bhatia "a 31-year-old scholar in international relations from Brown University."
Bhatia was joining the Human Terrain System, a Pentagon experiment to re-engineer battle against Afghan and Iraqi insurgents by teaming soldiers and scholars. Human Terrain set off a war of its own in academia: Critics, particularly anthropologists, argued that researchers risked betraying the people they studied by feeding information to the military.
Bhatia disagreed. But the only way to know, he told friends, was to see for himself.
And that he did. But through his work saved American and Afghani lives by allowing commanders to understand the dynamics of the cultural mileiu in which they found themselves while the intellectuals at home continued to criticize the work of the HTS
Critics were not letting up in their condemnation of the Human Terrain project. The team kept score, posting what they considered the most outrageously off-base characterizations of their work.
"Mercenary anthropologists," one critic called them. "The Army's new secret weapon," another said.
Ridenour, Bhatia and the others read them aloud with frustration and laughter.
"Our school of thought was 'come work with us for a week,' " Ridenour said. "If you really think I'm a mercenary, come see what we do."
Still, Bhatia bridled at the criticism. Before leaving, he¡¯d told his family and friends of his irritation with academics who claimed to know a country, without ever leaving the capital city.
In the end, Michael paid the ultimate price for his convictions.
Sabari District lies less than 10 miles from FOB Salerno. But by Humvee, the journey took Bhatia and Garcia four hours, rumbling over the rough tracks that pass for roads and into volatile territory.
Less than two months earlier, insurgents had detonated a vehicle packed with explosives in Sabari's district center, killing two U.S. soldiers. This was to be Bhatia and Garcia's first stop.
The other team members remained on base. By Tuesday night, May 6, Bhatia and Garcia had reached Zambar, a distant village built of mud bricks, and met with a group of about 20 tribal elders.
"Michael was very psyched," Cusick said. Bhatia and Garcia were unearthing details of a long dispute between tribes over which had rights to the timber covering a nearby mountainside.
The following morning, the last full day of the mission, they joined a patrol of 17 soldiers in four up-armored Humvees. Garcia had been traveling in the lead Humvee, together with the convoy commander. But the lieutenant called Garcia over. Could Bhatia ride up front today?
The convoy set out for a bazaar called Makhtab, less than two miles east.
The vehicles threaded down a hard, chalky river bed. Makhtab came into sight and the patrol swung out of the river bed to enter by a rear portal.
The day was hot, the Humvee¡¯s engine emitted a numbing drone, and Garcia was feeling drowsy.
A deafening thump jolted him wide awake. Air shot down the Humvee's turret.
Garcia squinted into a cloud of smoke.
Soldiers spilled from their vehicles. Garcia grabbed his M-4 and bolted into the smoke.
As he ran, the settling dust revealed Bhatia's Humvee, spun around 90 degrees by the bomb's force, its doors blown off.
The body of Spc. Jeremy Gullet, a 22-year-old father from Greenup, Ky., lay in the dirt, well clear of the wreckage. Staff Sgt. Kevin Roberts, 25, of Farmington, N.M. lay dead nearby.
"I've got to find my brother," Garcia said.
When he reached Bhatia, the academic's bearded face was frozen in a smile.
Garcia crouched beside his friend and colleague as rain began to fall.
He placed his palm over the dead man's still-open eyes and smoothed the lids closed, then brushed the dirt off Bhatia's uniform.
"It should've been me," the veteran soldier told the scholar. "I'm going to take you home."
If understanding is as important as warrior skills, then programs like the HTS and the anthropologists and sociologists they employ is the only way to thread that needle.
And we have to thank the men an women who have the intellectual integrity to put it all on the line to use their expertise to bring that level of awareness to an active battlefield for the benefit of our soldiers and the cilvilians who, without them, could get caught in the crossfire.
Michael Bhatia is as much an american hero as any of the soldiers whith which he embeds.
