Socio-Cultural Research and Analysis: A Response to Sale’s Questions Regarding Ethnographic Intelligence
Adam L. Silverman, PhD[1][1]
Mr. Sale finished his excellent post on the current state of American intelligence endeavors with a very important question: “Does our current infatuation with contractors and technology provide us with sufficient ethnographic intelligence on Afghanistan, an area which seems to me very similar in its makeup to Caesar’s Gaul?” I would like to make this one question into two and deal with the portion that is near and dear to my experience over the past three years: does the US have sufficient ethnographic intelligence (on Afghanistan)? While I have some pretty set views on the question of contractors and technology, those are, perhaps, columns for another day.
Given the population centric focus of US endeavors in both Iraq and Afghanistan it is absolutely necessary for the US to have a sufficient awareness and understanding of the mores, norms, customs, traditions, and practices – across the socio-cultural spectrum – of the host country populations among whom we are operating. While Mr. Sale refers to this as ethnographic intelligence, I think a better term for it is socio-cultural research and analysis (SCRAM). There are two reasons for this distinction. The first is to clearly differentiate the information and data gathered from among and about the host country population, and its component elements, from what has come to be viewed as Intelligence. The reason behind this is not simply semantic legerdemain. It is to ensure, even if it is collected properly, and I’m not just talking about methodology and ethical protections protocols, that there is a greater chance that the data will be unclassified and therefore available for secondary analysis by a variety of subject matter experts.
This is not a trivial point. From my own experience as a human terrain team team leader and social scientist it was vital that we distinguished our work in this manner from what the Intel collectors where doing. By making the distinction we were able to keep 100% of our raw data and well over 98% of our analytic output[2][2] unclassified (though some was For Official Use Only). This allowed us to do hand offs to the ePRT attached to our BCT and for them to distribute some of our material as they tended to work mostly on the unclassified side. Equally as important it allowed me to email questions and queries, and sometimes actual pieces of data or developing analysis to a variety of subject matter experts and get their perspectives on what my team mates and I were looking at. Had what we done been delineated as Intelligence, even with ethnographic modifying it, this would have been much, much harder if not impossible. As a result of making this distinction, as well as being very, very careful regarding our data collection and analytic protocols vis-à-vis security classification my team mates and I were able to leverage a wealth of knowledge, training, and experience that would have been otherwise off limits.
The second reason to avoid using Intelligence in regard to socio-cultural research and analytical support follows from the first set of distinctions. By making a clear and fast distinction, thereby allowing socio-cultural data, if not also the analysis, to remain unclassified, it makes it much easier to get it out into the public domain for researchers and scholars, policy analysts and makers, as well as the agenda setters and meme framers in the media. Simply there is an important and valid strategic communications value to differentiating socio-cultural research and analysis for operational support from Intelligence. Being able to publish one’s findings, whether its shared on Sic Semper Tyrranis or other websites, issue reports for general distribution, or publish scholarly articles and books, gets the important information out into the public domain. This in turn helps to reduce the problem of low information decision[3][3] making by Americans and American officials.
With this conceptual housekeeping out of the way it is important to try to get a handle on exactly what is being done and what needs to be done. Currently, as MG Flynn, the Deputy Commanding General for Intelligence for ISAF, identified in his January 2010 report, collection of socio-cultural information is currently divided between actual maneuver elements, military intelligence, and a variety of the non-lethal enablers such as Provincial Reconstruction Teams (who are not intended to be data collectors, but who do wind up capturing some of the necessary information), Human Terrain Teams (specifically tasked to capture this data), and the Civil Affairs Teams (whose job includes collecting some of this information, as well as archiving it through their CIM Cell operations). To this list I would add the Operational Detachment Alphas, as well as a host of NGOs and IGOs. While MG Flynn also delineated a set of solutions to this problem, they really do not address all of the core issues[4][4]. These include, but may not be limited too, the following:
1) the need for a single, dedicated unit responsible for collecting or coordination of collecting, analysis, dissemination, and archiving socio-cultural research and analysis,
2) making sure that the completed analysis is packaged in an easily digestible format for decision makers and distributing it to them in a timely manner; this is, essentially, feeding the beast,
3) placing this element or unit at the joint level, specifically Operations (the J3), Civil Military Operations (the J9), or both and then scaling it all the way down to ground level. Given that this data and analysis is for operational support, quite often for CMO objectives, the element needs to be properly situated. As to scaling – each COCOM should have a COCOM level unit to support this function, each theater command, each division, each brigade, and I would argue at the very least each battalion, if not company. Moreover, I’d pair these socio-cultural research and analysis units with the ODAs, the CA Teams, and the PRTs in the field; essentially creating a unity of effort approach,
4) creating a common operating picture and conceptualization of what socio-cultural means for strategy, operations, and tactics, with enough room to be flexible COCOM to COCOM and Area or Responsibility to Area of Responsibility, and then work backwards to how this is taught into our military so that when it is necessary the educational foundation to support operations is there, and
5) making sure that the collection, analysis, and archiving are conducted in such a way as to allow the data to be available to researchers, scholars, and analysts (both inside and outside of government and the military) for secondary analysis.
Currently some of this is happening. Each COCOM has their own socio-cultural, or as the military currently refers to it, human terrain, initiatives. The PRTs and HTTs are out doing their thing, the CA and ODA folks are also doing theirs. What is needed now is not so much a pause, but rather a changing of perspective on what we need, why we need it, what it is good for, and how it would be used in regard to socio-cultural research and analysis to support ongoing and future operations. To my thinking this is a much more real and pressing debate than the shooting at straw men arguments of the COINtras and COINdinistas, both of which miss the point. The missed point is that as long as the US Military is the preferred operational tool for dealing with almost all of America’s foreign policy problems, from humanitarian assistance to national defense to interstate war to COIN and nation-building it needs to have a good grasp of socio-cultural issues and effects. Moreover, its personnel need to be educated on how to deal with socio-cultural issues. It doesn’t matter if it is having to deal with host country nationals in the middle of an interstate war or host country nationals while trying to clear, hold, and build in Afghanistan. If we can develop a common operating picture for how to conceive of this issue and educate our personnel - military and civilian - and properly structure an element to handle this important task in support of operations, then we will, to answer Mr. Sale’s question: have sufficient ethnographic intelligence on Afghanistan.
[1][1] Adam. L. Silverman is the Culture & Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College. The views expressed herein are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College, the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, and/or the US Army.
[2][2] The two pieces that we actually classified secret were less in relation to the content of the data or the analysis and more to do with the fact that they were produced to support named operations with a specific suspense date. Given that finished analytical products were routinely, per protocol, sent back to Army HTS for archiving I wanted to make sure that no one back on the rear deck inadvertently distributed the analytical product prior to the operations. The classification was done solely with operational security in mind.
[3][3] Kenneth Arrow did much of the original and seminal work on the problem of low information decision making, specifically focusing on health care decisions and their effects on the economy. In the case of our current operations, let alone likely future ones, American decision makers often have a similar problem with socio-cultural situational awareness. Arrow’s original publication is: “Uncertainty and the welfare economics of medical care.” The American Economic Review 1963;53:941-73.
[4][4] To see my specific response to MG Flynn’s report, please see: The Flynn Report (V): How to feed the beast.
