Human Terrain System
The Human Terrain System was a United States Army, Training and Doctrine Command support program employing personnel from the social science disciplines – such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, political science, historians, regional studies, and linguistics – to provide military commanders and staff with an understanding of the local population in the regions in which they were deployed.
The concept of HTS was first developed in a paper by Montgomery McFate and Andrea Jackson in 2005, which proposed a pilot version of the project as a response to "identified gaps in commanders' and staffs' understanding of the local population and culture", such as became particularly visible during the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. HTS was subsequently launched as a proof-of-concept program, run by the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, in February 2007, with five HTS teams deployed between Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2007, HTS has grown from a program with five deployed teams and a $20 million two-year budget to one with 31 deployed teams and a $150 million annual budget. HTS became a permanent US Army program in 2010.
Ever since its launch, HTS has been surrounded by controversy. While the program initially received positive coverage in the US media, it quickly became the subject of heavy criticism – particularly from anthropologists, but also from journalists, military officials and HTS personnel and former personnel. Most notably, on 31 October 2007, the executive board of the American Anthropological Association published a statement opposing HTS as an "unacceptable application of anthropological expertise" that conflicted with the AAA's Code of Ethics. Following the publication of a report on HTS by the Commission on Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Services in 2009, the AAA released a further statement of disapproval, which they re-iterated in 2012 after rumours that the controversy had died down.
The program evolved into a mechanism for supporting security force assistance. The program ended operations on 30 September 2014.
Background
In the most immediate sense, HTS was developed as a response to concerns about mismanagement of US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, in particular, to the negative effects of recognized "deficiencies" in US military "cultural understanding" of these countries. In 2006 the Human Terrain System was launched by the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. However, military analysts and academics have also suggested earlier historical contexts for the program's development.CORDS: a US military precedent
A number of military officials have invoked Civil Operations and Rural Development Support – a counterinsurgency program developed by the US military during the Vietnam War – as a precedent for HTS. In a foundational article on HTS, a group of military analysts, Kipp et al, described the program as "a CORDS for the 21st Century". Their article appraised CORDS as a successful and effective program that was "premised on a belief that the war would ultimately be won or lost not on the battlefield, but in the struggle for the loyalty of the people". Kipp et al contended that the only major problems with the CORDS program were that it lacked adequate reachback facilities and that it "was started too late and ended too soon". As such, they argued that it provided "many important lessons" to "guide" the development of HTS as an "effective cultural intelligence program" that could "support tactical and operational-level commanders today". By contrast, critics of HTS have drawn attention to the fact that, in Vietnam, CORDS was run in conjunction with the Phoenix Program, which used information gathered through CORDS in its effort to "neutralize" supporters of the Viet Cong.History of the concept of "human terrain"
The concept of "human terrain" has been defined in military documents pertaining to HTS as "the human population in the operational environment... as defined and characterized by sociocultural, anthropologic and ethnographic data and other non-geographical information". According to Roberto J. Gonzalez, this concept can be traced back to a 1968 report by the House Un-American Activities Committee about "the perceived threat of the Black Panthers and other militant groups". He argues that the concept gradually gained in popularity and usage, in the military and elsewhere, through the writing of military officials, such as Ralph Peters, and pundits, such as Max Boot.History of anthropological engagement with the military
Commentators on HTS have also drawn attention to the long history of anthropological involvement in military operations in the US and Europe, though for different reasons. In a 2005 article, Montgomery McFate argued that anthropology was born as a "warfighting discipline", having served in its early history as "the handmaiden of colonialism". She suggested that anthropology had retreated "into the Ivory Tower" following the Vietnam War, and contended that anthropologists should become involved in developing "military applications of cultural knowledge". Neil L. Whitehead likewise argued that the "collaboration" between anthropological theory and colonial practice was "nothing new", but went on to suggest that this history – and particularly recent developments such as HTS and the Minerva Initiative – should prompt a critical re-assessment and transformation of anthropological methodology.The "cultural turn" in the US Army
A number of commentators on HTS have described the program as part of a "cultural turn" in US military policy, particularly pertaining to the war on terror. According to commentators, this "cultural turn" has been characterized by an increasing strategic emphasis on the use of "cultural knowledge"; the promotion and funding of a growing number of "cultural knowledge" projects in the US Army and National Security services, such as HTS, the Minerva Initiative, and the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program; and the preference of "gentler" approaches to counterinsurgency that prioritize efforts directed towards "winning hearts and minds" over "kinetic" actions.History and recent developments
Chronological history of developments in HTS
The beginnings of HTS can be traced to a pilot proposal for a "Pentagon Office of Operational Cultural Knowledge", published in 2005 by Montgomery McFate and Andrea Jackson. In July 2005, the Foreign Military Studies Office initiated an HTS pilot project, which was headed up by Captain Don Smith, and housed at the Training and Doctrine Command in Fort Leavenworth. The pilot lasted until August 2006. In July 2006, Colonel Steve Fondacaro was hired by TRADOC to transition the pilot into an active program. In October 2006, Jacob Kipp and colleagues outlined the Human Terrain System in an official FMSO public press release.HTS began recruiting in early 2007. In February 2007, the first team was deployed to Afghanistan. Further teams were deployed to Iraq in the summer of that year. Originally, HTS project leaders McFate and Fondacaro had planned for the program to run at a small scale for two years. However, in response to a Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statement from Central Command issued in April 2007, calling for an HTS Team in every Army Brigade and Marine Corps Regiment in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Defense Secretary, Robert M. Gates, authorized a $40 million expansion of the program in September 2007. The JUONS demanded a 420 per cent expansion of HTS, from the existing five teams to twenty-six teams divided between Iraq and Afghanistan. McFate and Fondacaro referred to this as a "catastrophic success", meaning that "while the boost from the DOD was gratifying, fulfilling the mandate would stretch a new organization to the limit".
Following the public statement of disapproval from the AAA, and significant media coverage of the controversy surrounding HTS, the United States Congress issued an order for an independent assessment of HTS to be undertaken by the Center for Naval Analyses in September 2009. In May 2010, the House Armed Services Committee temporarily limited the Army's funding obligation towards the program while this assessment was completed. The CNA report, which contained the results of interviews with 19 out of 71 commanders supported by HTS, was completed in October 2010. It was subsequently published on the Defense Technical Information Center website in February 2011, but withdrawn from the website shortly after.
In 2010, HTS was approved by the US Army and became a permanent Army program. In June 2010, Maxie McFarland, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence at TRADOC, terminated Fondacaro's temporary position as HTS Program Manager. Colonel Sharon Hamilton was appointed as his replacement. McFate also left HTS in 2010.
On 8 March 2011, the Center for Complex Operations at the National Defense University hosted a conference titled Inter-agency Human Terrain Program and Requirements. The Center stated that the aims of the conference were to "improve understanding of human terrain information and analysis and of how it is currently being used"; to discuss the "effectiveness" of HTS; and to discuss ethical and legal issues associated with the program. In June 2011, AFRICOM requested and launched a pilot HTS program. In December 2011, Colonel Hamilton reported that the US Central Command had issued a requirement for an increase of 9 HTS teams in Afghanistan by summer 2012, to bring the total number of teams in Afghanistan up to 31.
In 2012, HTS officials began prioritizing HTS involvement in "Phase Zero" or, in other words, the earliest, "prevention of conflict" stage of a military campaign. In April 2012, Defense News reported that the Director of HTS, Colonel Sharon Hamilton, had been "working on a plan" to expand the use of HTS into other regions such as Africa and Latin America, and was considering whether HTS personnel could be deployed in Mexico to support military counter-narcotic work. In August 2012, Hamilton retired from HTS and from the US Army, and was replaced as Director by Colonel Steve Bentley. In October 2013, Colonel Bentley was replaced by Colonel Thomas Georges.
As part of the ongoing drawdown from Afghanistan in 2013–2014, the Army programmed HTS funding to drop proportionately, eliminating human terrain teams as units were removed from theater. By September 2014, all HTS teams and personnel had been withdrawn from Afghanistan. Contract and personnel support to the program ceased at the end of the month, effectively ending the program's operations as of 1 October 2014. However, money was still allocated for the program in FY 2015.