Praise and support US government officials In a speech in 2008,
Robert Gates (US Defense Secretary) praised HTS, saying that although the program had experienced early "teething problems" the "net effect" of HTS efforts was often "less violence across the board, with fewer hardships and casualties among civilians as a result".
Military officials and HTS personnel In a 2007 article on HTS in the
New York Times,
David Rohde, an American journalist who has twice won the
Pulitzer Prize, reported that one of the first HTTs to be deployed in Afghanistan had received "lavish" praise from officers for "helping them see the situation from an Afghan perspective and allowing them to cut back on combat operations". His statement of praise for HTS was subsequently reported in the
New York Times and ''
Harper's Magazine'' as well as other press media. It was also cited by Robert Gates when he praised the program in 2010. Matsuda also described the disapproval of anthropologists as a "knee-jerk reaction" and stated "I came here to save lives, to make friends out of enemies". Audrey Roberts, an HTS social scientist who worked with a US Army Brigade at
Forward Operating Base Salerno near
Khost in Afghanistan, expressed her support of the HTS approach in an interview from 2009.
In the media In 2006,
George Packer, author of ''The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq
and New Yorker'' magazine staff writer, wrote an article about the increasing use of social science in US military operations and the early trials of the HTS program. He reflected: "At a moment when the Bush Administration has run out of ideas and lost control, it could turn away from its "war on terror" and follow a different path – one that is right under its nose." In a (mainly critical) book about HTS entitled ''David Petraeus's Favorite Mushroom: Inside the US Army's Human Terrain System'' (2009),
John Stanton stated that HTS had been successful in advising a US military unit in Iraq on proper mealtime etiquette, i.e., not only how to properly eat, but also the gestures during the meal, and especially how to observe the Ramadan feast. CEAUSSIC's 74-page report argued that the "goals" and "basic identity" of HTS were characterized by "confusion", and that the program was designed to simultaneously perform multiple tasks that were "potentially irreconcilable"; e.g., serving as research function whilst also operating as "a source of intelligence" and a "tactical function in counterinsurgency warfare". In April 2012, the AAA restated their disapproval of the HTS program after a cover story article in
C4ISR (a
Defense News publication) claimed that "the controversy ha[d] cooled" and that HTS would have a recruiter at the annual AAA meeting in November that year. The AAA denied both claims. In 2010, the Network wrote an "Anthropologists' Statement on the Human Terrain System Program" to the
United States House of Representatives, which was signed by over 700 anthropologists. The statement called for Congress to halt governmental support to HTS and cancel plans for its expansion, giving the following reasons: "There is no evidence that HTS is effective"; "HTS is dangerous and reckless"; "HTS wastes taxpayers money"; "HTS is unethical for anthropologists and other social scientists". In a paper from 2009,
Neil L. Whitehead, Professor of Anthropology at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison, questioned whether HTS can work in the way that it is promoted to do. Drawing on anthropological studies of warfare that demonstrate the socially transformative effects of warfare and military action, Whitehead argued that the practice of anthropology becomes "highly problematic" in a situation where anthropology is being deployed to report on "the very phenomenon it is a part of changing, whether consciously or not".
Military officials and former HTS personnel In 2009, Major Ben Connable (
Marine Corps) published an article in
Military Review which argued that HTS was "undermining" the US Army's "cultural competence". A number of former HTS personnel have also criticized the program. In 2007, social scientist Zenia Helbig was fired from HTS after raising concerns that the program was disorganized and provided insufficient region-specific training. In the same year, Matt Tompkins, an HTT Leader, remarked that defense contractors supporting HTS were not providing sufficient training or staffing, and that the social scientists on his team lacked region-specific expertise.
NDU Study In June 2013, a team of four researchers from the US
National Defense University in Washington, DC published an in-depth assessment of HTS and the HTTs in Afghanistan, entitled
Human Terrain Teams: An Organizational Innovation for Sociocultural Knowledge in Irregular Warfare. This was the first publicly released book with a history of the program as well as an assessment of the teams in the field. The study's conclusions were also published in
Joint Force Quarterly in July 2013. The study emerged from the
Project for National Security Reform and its flagship assessment of the US national security system,
Forging a New Shield. The study interviewed 87 individuals in a total of 105 interviews. The participants were principally team members, with commanders (primarily Brigade- and Task Force-level commanders) being the core variable able to define effectiveness of the team under their command. HTS program managers, knowledgeable defense-related persons, and some Iraq team members were interviewed. The NDU book ends by suggesting that HTS be turned over to the
U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). There were a number of reasons the team suggested USASOC would be a better fit for HTS: TRADOC had been a prime cause of multiple programmatic problems for HTS throughout its history; the US military has a history of intentionally forgetting and deinstitutionalizing cultural programs; and the future operating environment would be utilizing Special Operations forces to a greater degree than regular Army/Marines units.
In the media Ann Marlowe wrote a piece about HTS for the
Weekly Standard in November 2007, stating that "there are some things the Army needs in Afghanistan, but more academics are not at the top of the list."
Cultural references In 2010,
James Der Derian, David Udris, and Michael Udris released a documentary film about HTS entitled
Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic. The film has been described as having two main narrative components: the first is an inquiry into the HTS program and its history; the second is a narrative of the "tragic" story of
Michael Bhatia's involvement in HTS. The film features interviews with numerous individuals who have played an important role in the history of HTS and the public debate surrounding the program, including Michael Bhatia, Steve Fondacaro, Roberto Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, and Montgomery McFate. ==See also==