Social science goes to war: the human terrain system in Iraq and Afghanistan

The Human Terrain System (HTS) was catapulted into existence in 2006 by the US military's urgent need for knowledge of the human dimension of the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its centrepiece was embedded groups of mixed military and civilian personnel, known as Human Terrain Teams (HTTs), whose mission was to conduct social science research and analysis and to advise military commanders about the local population. Bringing social science - and actual social scientists - to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was bold and challenging. Despite the controversy over HTS among scholars, there is little good, reliable source material written by those with experience of HTS or about the actual work carried out by teams in theatre. This volume goes beyond the anecdotes, snippets and blogs to provide a comprehensive, objective and detailed view of HTS

The Human Terrain System (HTS) was catapulted into existence in 2006 by the US military's urgent need for knowledge of the human dimension of the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its centrepiece was embedded groups of mixed military and civilian personnel, known as Human Terrain Teams (HTTs), whose mission was to conduct social science research and analysis and to advise military commanders about the local population. Bringing social science - and actual social scientists - to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was bold and challenging. Despite the controversy over HTS among scholars, there is little good, reliable source material written by those with experience of HTS or about the actual work carried out by teams in theatre. This volume goes beyond the anecdotes, snippets and blogs to provide a comprehensive, objective and detailed view of HTS. The contributors put the program in historical context, discuss the obstacles it faced, analyse its successes, and detail the work of the teams downrange. Most importantly, they capture some of the diverse lived experience of HTS scholars and practitioners drawn from an eclectic array of the social sciences

1 Introduction - Unveiling the Human Terrain System / Montgomery McFate & Janice H. Laurence 1. - 2 Mind the Gap: Bridging the Military/Academic Divide / Montgomery McFate 45. - 3 An Anthropologist at War in Afghanistan / Ted Callahan 91. - 4 What Do You Bring to the Fight? A Year in Iraq as an Embedded Social Scientist / Katherine Blue Carroll 119. - 5 Playing Spades in Al Anbar: A Female Social Scientist among Marines and Special Forces / Jennifer A. Clark 141. - 6 The Four Pillars of Integration: How to Make Social Science Work in a War Zone / Kathleen Reedy 167. - 7 Realizing the Promise of Applied Social Science for Military Operations / James Dorough-Lewis, Jr. 187. - 8 Allied Civilian Enablers and the Helmand Surge / Leslie Adrienne Payne 213. - 9 Assessing the Human Terrain Teams: No White Hats or Black Hats Please / Carolyn Fluehr-Lobhan & George R. Lucas, Jr. 237. - 10 Tangi Valley and the Limitations of Applied Anthropology in Afghanistan / Brian G. Brereton 265. - 11 The Human Terrain System: Some Lessons Learned and the Way Forward / Janice H. Laurence 291