Connection - کوننکتیو - صلة

'Liberty has never come from the government.  Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.  The history of liberty is a history of resistance' 

--Woodrow Wilson

'Break up the printing presses and you break up the rebellion'
-- Dudley Nichols


'The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Whether that censorship comes from corporations, dictators or acts of God is immaterial' 
--John Gilmore

Farsi reads, 'Zendaaneh Evin', literally, 'Evin Prison', the notorious detention facility 
in Tehran housing so many dissident journalists, student activists, 
intellectuals and lawyers that it has become known as 'Evin University'. 
Picture from the film, 'The Green Wave', 2010, dir. Ali Samadi

A themed set of posters with a retro look for an Iranian campaign against 
enforced hejab (head covering) in November 2009. 
Created by lissnup [http://lissnup.com], a human and civil rights 
campaigner specialising in activist artwork materials. copyright © lissnup.com
The right to freedom of sartorial expression has been most recently highlighted
in the nationwide ban on veils in France. See here for the initial enforcement of the ban.
The proposed Iranian hijab enforcement asserts the rule of religion over the state and is one
of myriad regulations designed to show this: firstly, one is a Muslim. Conversely, 
France's attempts to ban the veil are meant to show the secularisation of state 
and the homogenization or assimilation of religions to the national identity: firstly, one is French.

Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani when asked what puzzled him most about America's 'competition' with al-Qaeda is reported to have replied, 'how has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world's greatest communication society?'. Communication has been an essential facet of war, both in the propagation of ideology and the method of prosecution. It has also been the engine of revolution and tyranny. The printing press enabled the Reformation, as it subsequently enabled the Counter-Reformation. The most important element of blitzkrieg was the development of radio communications between vehicles and units. 


But the development of the Net has brought communication to a new era of almost ubiquitous, instantaneous, limitless and free methods of communication and visual propagation. Arguably, the most important global news service is not jazeera or bbc or cnn but youtube. Traditional news networks function from offices in cities and require staff on a payroll, a hierarchical structure, camera crews and mobility. Inside YouTube, every person with a mobile phone across the globe is a potential reporter. 


Politically, the Internet has comprehensively disconnected ideology from geography, as Fiesal Mohamed argues in his The Globe of Villages: 'If we were still shackled to print the cost of delivering al-Qaeda propaganda to East London would be prohibitive, the lack of broad demand would make it a hopeless venture.' The Internet age allows the dissemination of information at a rate orders of magnitude faster than anything previous generations have known. Simultaneously, the Net functions as a medium through which whole systems are run - 98% of Pentagon communications run through civilian Internet channels. The possibility of the medium being employed against any nation was behind the recent Senate committee approval of an 'Internet Kill Switch'. 


Thus, when one group in antagonism are denied access to the Net by the opposing group, the balance of power becomes irrevocably altered. January 25, 2011 was the date on which the Egyptian government, responding to mass protests in major cities across the country cut off internet and mobile phone access to all domestic traffic. Shervin Pishevar eloquently called it, 'one of the first salvos in a war of electronic munitions'. Chris Arkenberg wrote that, 'The course of recent events across the Middle East & North Africa have highlighted both the power in organizing & reporting protest movements using network technologies and the weakness inherent in their corporate & state-controlled architectures'. In response to the act, Pishevar, based in the United States, developed OpenMesh, software/firmware for ad hoc wireless networking. OpenMesh is a work in progress. It aims to provide a workable network through mobile routers that connect together creating a mobile network which ensures communication. The second aim is then to allow that network to communicate globally, possibly through access to intermittent satellite internet connections. The attraction of mesh networks is that they avoid path dependencies and vendor lock-in. 


The employment of mobile telecommunications networks to coordinate protest and the understanding of a ruling regime to react by prohibiting mobile or internet access played out in July 2009 in the region of Xinjiang, China where the Uighurs rose up against the Han rulers after a catalytic murder of two Uighurs captured on mobile phone footage. The riots left an estimated 200 Han dead and 1700 injured. Over 1400 Uighurs were arrested. The underlying cause was said to be ostensible prosperity among the Han and poverty among the Uighurs. The authorities gained insight from the coordination of this uprising. In February 2011 when a number of weekly pro-democracy protests were planned across major Chinese cities (termed a Jasmine Revolution, in association with the Tunisian uprising) the government responded with 'elegant censorship', blocking the word 'jasmine' from search queries on many internet networks and Sina Weibo, China's largest microblog. It was rumoured that the government started a number of new twitter accounts with the faces of pro-democracy leaders, and started tweeting comments hostile to the demonstrations.  

anti-censorship software

Freegate 

Freegate is an anti-censorship software for secure and fast Internet access. Freegate works by tapping into an anti-censorship backbone, DynaWeb, DIT's P2P-like proxy network system.

 

GTunnel

Soon to reject non-China client IPs because of economic dictates. A client software tool, the users will be able to encrypt their Internet traffic and protect themselves from being monitored and access the Internet content that is filtered by state.

 

GPass

GPass is an Internet anti-jamming product widely used to overcome Internet censorship. It effectively protects user privacy and online safety by providing a secure Internet access mechanism. 

UltraSurf

UltraSurf is a free software which enables users inside countries with heavy Internet censorship to visit any public web sites in the world safely and freely. Users in countries without internet censorship also use it to protect their internet privacy and security.

FirePhoenix  

FirePhoenix is a virtual private network (VPN) based anti-censorship tool. It is particularly useful to users on a public network or users visiting websites that track visitors. It is critical for users such as journalists and activists working in territories that censor internet use.

I2P Anonymous Network

The I2P anonymous network ('I2P') is a proxy network aiming at online anonymity. It implements garlic routing, which is an enhancement of Tor's onion routing. I2P is fully distributed and works by encrypting all communications in various layers and relaying them through a network of routers run by volunteers in various locations. By keeping the source of the information hidden, I2P offers censorship resistance. The goals of I2P are to protect users' personal freedom, privacy, and ability to conduct confidential business.  

Tor Project 

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis. Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

welcome to the cloud

BBC World Service (Shortwave Global Frequencies)

Wireless Grids

Wireless grids are wireless computer networks consisting of different types of electronic devices with the ability to share their resources with any other device in the network in an ad-hoc manner. A type of resource-sharing network, connect sensors, mobile phones, and other edge devices with each other and with wired grids. Ad hoc distributed resource sharing allows these devices to offer new resources and locations of use for grid computing. The following key characteristics further clarify this concept:

• No centralized control
• Small, low powered devices
• Heterogeneous applications and interfaces
• New types of resources like cameras, GPS trackers and sensors
• Dynamic and unstable users / resources

Incorporate middleware in order to allow disparate devices (GPS, Phone etc) to speak to one another from fixed positions. From wikipedia: Middleware is computer software that connects software components or some people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact. This technology evolved to provide for interoperability in support of the move to coherent distributed architectures, which are most often used to support and simplify complex distributed applications. It includes web servers, application servers, and similar tools that support application development and delivery. Middleware is especially integral to modern information technology based on XML, SOAP, Web services, and service-oriented architecture. Middleware sits "in the middle" between application software that may be working on different operating systems. For the leading application of crowd-sourced cluster computing see World Community Grid.

Cluster Computing

Localised network of systems working together as a single engine. Only one element within the group needs to be in range of external web for the entire system to thus become 'on-line'. The biggest challenge is to develop mobile-phone based cluster computing. As 'everyone' has a mobile phone, everyone has the potential to become a node in the cluster. Arkenberg is one such voice alive to the possibilities when he writes, 'mobiles can default to a lilly-pad model where voice & data move from phone to phone, hopping across the community through wireless overlaps. The phone becomes the hot-spot and a personal IP address. This allows information to pass from across the mobile meshnet until it reaches an internet uplink, such as a Meraki node. In this manner individuals can still coordinate resources & activities if, say, an earthquake or a dictator has taken mobile carriers & ISP’s offline, and can hop to a strong wireless uplink outside the range of blackout.' Comprehensive article on ad hoc wireless network meshes by Venessa Miemis.

White Space/Spectrum Scarcity

Digital television has opened up huge spare regions of bandwidth that can be employed for wi-fi and other communications.

BitWise Instant Messaging

128-bit encryption

anti-malware

Rootkits

A rootkit is a collection of tools (programs) that enable administrator-level access to a computer or computer network. Typically, installing a rootkit occurs on a computer after first obtaining user-level access, either by exploiting a known vulnerability or cracking a password. Once the rootkit is installed, it allows the attacker to mask intrusion and gain root or privileged access to the computer and, possibly, other machines on the network.

A rootkit may consist of spyware and other programs that: monitor traffic and keystrokes; create a "backdoor" into the system for the hacker's use; alter log files; attack other machines on the network; and alter existing system tools to escape detection.Recent concern has focused on rootkits embedding software that can be utilised in distributed denial of service (ddos) attacks - in effect, your personal computer can have already picked a side in a future cyberwar without you even knowing. DDoS attacks have been utilised by the Anonymous group, unknown sources against 'Anonymous-affliated' website and by unknown sources against the social networking/information site balatarin.com. Freeware for anti-rootkits are available here - they involve deep system scanning across a range of operating systems.

Deep Packet Inspection technology
A firewall is at base a system for that controls network access which have characteristically utilised packet filters, proxies and stateful inspection devices: they work by analysing data packets and achieve partial success. They work by closing the majority of ports to traffic flow. The problem then becomes how to limit the remaining ports to authorized traffic only.  Deep Packet Inspection technology is one method through which data packets can be successfully mined and collated. Since DPI enables internet data mining, eavesdropping, and censorship some advocates of net neutrality fear that the technology can be used anticompetitively or to reduce the openness of the Internet. The ability of DPI to collect information has led many governments (including the United States and the United Kingdom) to pursue classified surveillance and inspection programmes utilising the technology. Iran purchased a piece of DPI architeture from Siemens-Nokia in 2008. 

Cairo during the uprising against the Mubarak regime. Copyright Scott Nelson/New York Times

For more political comment on Iran, see also, www.enduringamerica.com

Bin Laden's a lot more funny now he's dead

The Daily Mail republished an article on lego depictions of key media images from bin Laden's death under the headline, Bricking It. 

Recreation of the still shot from the White House Situation Room 
as the Seal team raid unfolded in real time. 
Not sure they got Obama quite right. The Hillary Clinton resemblance
is uncanny, though.

Compare the tone of the article, light-hearted and amused, with the outrage from anti-extremist groups in 2008 when the company BrickArms produced a figure called "Mr White -bandit" that some said resembled an Islamic terrorist or even, Osama bin Laden.

Not sure the folks who interpreted this figurine as Osama
got it quite right, but he does look like one of the 
perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks. 
Quite why he seems to be holding a Mauser c96 is something 
of a mystery, too. Perhaps attempting to equate jihadism 
with the Third Reich. Bin Laden claimed he got his 
AK47 from a Russian soldier he killed in battle. Perhaps the 
lego figurine had despatched a German WWII soldier 
on the Eastern Front. It's lego, after all.

Bin Laden becomes much more iconic in the Western consciousness after his death. He becomes subsumed into popular culture and we accomodate him into our collective psyche. Consider, too, Osama bin Laden t-shirts: exactly the same scenario plays out. During his life, a t-shirt sporting his image enraged Nike since it incorporated the Swoosh logo. This was even before 9.11. Since his death, American manufacturers have cashed in on his demise, one seller boasting of having made 120, 000 dollars in two days.

Naomi Klein will testify - the West has an ability to market and capitalise on images and themes and then consume it in quantities that generate massive profits for the companies involved. Osama bin Laden was probably the financial backer that enabled 9.11. At KingsofWar they already observed that he could become an iconic image like the picture of Che that adorns t-shirts. He could become like Hitler, an object of fascination, and a historical relic about which hundreds of books are written. What the West does with him now will be fascinating. 

Review - "Operational Culture for the Warfighter", 2008

To drink tea with the enemy or kill them? Nobody is sure anymore.

Salmoni, B.A. and Holmes-Eber, P. (2008) Operational Culture for the Warfighter: Principles and Applications (Quantico, Virginia: Marine Corps University Press)

The difficulty of prosecuting post-conflict operations in Afghanistan and more prominently at that time, Iraq, led the United States Military to publish Field Manual 3-24 in 2006. The manual contained anthropological wisdom generated from the Cultural Awareness and the Military project (formed at the Watson Institute in 2004), and TRADOC, Ft Leavenworth, Kansas. This manual was written to fill a 'gap' in counterinsurgency theory [the manual superceded FMI 3.07-22 (2004) and MCWP 3-33.5 (1980)], and to update previous thinking.

Taliban in the winter. According to "Operational Culture for the Warfighter", insurgents in Afghanistan exhibit a "local cultural disinclination" to fight in the winter months. Or it could just be that the landscape is ill-suited to guerilla warfare, much as al-Zawahiri lamented the monotonous, arid landscape of the Egyptian countryside. 

'You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamists' goes the manual, 'the same way you would have fought the Viet Cong, Moros or Tupamoros'. 2006 was, with hindsight, a pivotol year in the US-led occupation of Iraq since the al-Qaeda affiliated Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (though I debate how strong that link ever was, even given the infamous 'correspondence' between he and al-Zawahiri) was deeping antipathy between Sunni and Shia amidst spiralling violence.

Looking back, we definine also during this period the so-called Sunni Awakening, in which the tribal leaders, plausibly with US funding, coagulated to resist the influx of foreign fighters that were conducting jihad against both civilian and military forces in the country without any apparent strategic goal apart from the aim of maximimising casualties, possibly to increase media attention. Even after Zarqawi's death in June of that year, violence in Iraq had reached unprecedented levels. The spectre of Vietnam was raised, of a quagmire and a never-ending stabilisation project. The convergence of a body of anthropological views on prosecuting Phase IV operations and the volatile, precarious situation in Iraq led to the the Petraeus troop-surge in the country in 2007.

The cultural turn had become an ascendent "thought model" within influential circles of the US DOD; believed to be the answer to the inability of US led forces to win the peace in the aftermath of major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a consequence, and in parallel with the Iraqi troop surge, the DOD outlayed $41 million for the development of the Cultural Operations Research - Human Terrain System (HTS) led by Montgomery McFate, Andrea Jackson (deleted wiki page here role in Lincoln Group here) and Steve Fondacaro, which sought to give anthropologists a combat role, actively implementing, from the front line, cultural expertise, embedded in military units. The use of academics in kinetic operations divided the community. The Network of Concerned Anthropologists formed in reaction and protest at academics prosecuting wars, believing it be ethically indefensible and effectively "weaponizing" anthropology.

In late 2007, the American Anthropological Association issued a statement on HTS, concerned about its ethical implications. The executive board statement concluded that it would 'place anthropologists in positions in which their work will be in violation of the AAA code of ethics'.. In early 2008 one of the anthropologists embedded in US operations in Afghanistan, Michael Bhathia, was killed by an IED, prompting greater media scrutiny of the HTS. Later that same year, another academic embed, Paula Lloyd was doused in flammable liquid and set alight in Afghanistan. She died two months later. The number of serving anthropologists in these Human Terrain Teams never reached numbers of much more than ten - either in Iraq or Afghanistan, In 2010, McFate and Fondacaro both left the programme. 

The fate of HTS and its relegation to the more theoretical and now less fashionable schools of  thought within the US military has created a vast uncertainty over the role of culture in understanding and prosecuting wars. Only recently, John Nagl in a department of War Studies podcast, suggested that there had become too much emphasis on drinking tea with the enemy - that kinetic means were still the most potent in coercing the enemy and winning over local populations by demonstrations of military strength. 

Thus the 2008 manual, Operational Culture for the Warfighter, published by the Marine Corp University, is important in that it reinforces the notion that culture is assumed to play a large role in combat, but what that role is can be very hard to ascertain. Highlighting the fashionable notion that fourth generation warfare, and particularly COIN will be the way in which the Marines deploy in the future, the manual suggests that, 'our wars will be "wars amongst' the people" - not wars against the people and not wars oblivious to the people.'

The "key terrain" argues General Mattis in the foreword, is the will of the host nation's population and that gaining the trust of skeptical populations will suffocate the ideology of the enemy. In battling for the hearts and minds of the local population then, it is assumed that the better you know these people, the more easily you can win them over. The manual reads like a local phrasebook, but instead of learning languages, you can read the signs of the human terrain, instead. Diverse case studies are given which reinforce cultural viewpoints. In seeking to move beyond HTS, the authors stress that culture is mutable and fluid. And yet they still view culture as 'a logical system which can be understood using theories and principles developed during more than 150 years of research and study by social scientists'. It is supposed here that the length of time of study automatically means a greater level of understanding, and this is dangerous. 

Published in the year that two anthropologists were mortally wounded in Afghanistan, the work seeks to move away from basic, simplified expressions of culture and inherent stereotypes but I feel that it never achieves this convincingly. Noting the Culture and Personality studies of WWII, that suggested some cultural reasons for national psychologies (p.18-19), the manual rejects a one-size-fits-all approach to the human terrain. Culture is messy or "fuzzy set" to quote the manual, and the marine should not fall into the trap of homogenizing the human terrain within his Area of Operations.

Emphasizing this risk, the manual defines Human Terrain as 'those cultural aspects of the battlespace that, due to their static nature, can be visually represented on a geographic map. Human terrain is static with respect to change over time; rigid with respect to fluid human relationships and limited to representing human behaviour in only two dimensions' (p.34). Citing a map of Algeria as a caveat, with its areas of Berber and Arabs delineated, the manual warns against such a simplification, suggesting that this is only a macroscopic interpretation and that intermarriage amongst other developments may have enforced tribal links and cross-cultural ties in the region. 

As the manual goes on to present myriad ways in which culture informs decisions within a marine's AO, it falls into two traps. Firstly, the manual overplays the way in which culture informs a population's response to a US marine's presence. Consider this section from the manual:

"U.S. personnel in Afghanistan frequently notice a drop in insurgent activity during the winter. Over time, they have come to understand that this is related less to diminished insurgent enthusiasm for anti-Afghan violence, and much more to the local cultural disinclination to fight during the winter months in high altitude. Conversely, the upsurge in violence over the summer and autumn is seasonally driven, and not necessarily a function of greater insurgent zeal."

A "Local cultural disinclination" is given as the reason for dropping activity in the winter. In fact, operational elements of insurgency are much more easily prosecuted in the spring and summer, not because the lazy native finds the winter far too cold to go out and prime IEDs, but instead because the eight foot high crops that grow in the spring and summer enable concealment. One must not give cultural considerations too much sway when life and death are on the line. As Porter has shown elegantly, cultural considerations tend to be swept beneath the carpet and material considerations predominate when the former can negatively influence the latter. This year, insurgent activity in the winter (2010/11) reached unpredented levels as rebels sought to destabilise the region and influence phased troop withdrawals - creating casualties and negatively impacting on domestic populations of NATO countries. This wasn't a cultural decision - it was strategic, material. 

Secondly, the manual at times still demarcates a very 'us' and 'them' approach to culture, which is to the detriment of the entire work. As much as it seeks to break away from the "culture and identity" mantra of the WWII anthropologists, it never really does so. Consider in the chapter on belief systems, the following passage (p.173):

In the U.S. for example, the Puritan notion that we can control our lives and experiences through hard work is repeatedly emphasized through such common sayings as:

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
“God helps those who help themselves.”

These sayings contrast significantly with popular expressions in the Middle East, which emphasize submission to God’s will and acceptance of a divine plan that one cannot control:

Insha’allah
“If God wills it.” (Arabic, Turkish, Persian)
Im yir-tzei HaShem
“If God wills it.” (Hebrew)
Agar reza-ye Khuda bashet
“If it finds the favor of God.” (Persian)
Keh deh khoday reza wi
“God-willing.” (Pashto)
Allah A‘lam
“God knows [the outcome—not I].” (Arabic)
Allah ma‘a al-sabirin
“God is with the patient.” (Arabic)

Significant for Marines, particularly those working in Information Operations, is the way that popular folktales, sayings, and imagined histories are used in propaganda to rouse popular sentiment.

Reading between the lines, the American is the do-it-yourself, can-do motivated warrior in charge of his/her own destiny. The Arab submits (a literal interpretation of 'Islam') to the will of God allowing fate to influence their activities and shape their trajectory. The Iranian too submits (Persian) as does the Jew (Hebrew). Only the Puritan is strong and single-minded. Such a reading elides many expressions in both languages and allows culture to inform activity to a much greater extent that is the reality. The Crusaders shouted Deus Vult (God Wills It) when charging into battle during the First Crusade - such a cry invoked their God as the true God and helped to define their own troops (Christian, righteous) against the enemy (Muslim, infidel). Americans are as likely to say "God only knows" as much as any Arab, but beyond that, religion invocations carry with them much greater weight than the simplicity of the expression itself.

Ann Marlowe was right in 2006 when she wrote that 'there are some things the Army needs  in Afghanistan, but more academics are not at the top of the list'. She is still right now. Ultimately, phase IV operations aren't about culture - they are about the ability of the soldier to move away from his perception of the space as an area to be conquered, to a view of the terrain as a place to be reconstructed. The same people, that the soldier has recently homogenized and degraded in his own mind, termed them the enemy, in order to rationalise a use of violence, must then be reconfigured in his psyche as a "host population" meriting the soldier's assistance and understanding. This is the big problem with COIN - how to deconstruct a rationale of violence to one of assistance, whilst still enmeshed within a language of war that dehumanizes and homogenizes the local population.   

Consider Iraq. For the soldiers, the country consisted of two colour-coded zones. The green zone was the safe area ensconced behind high walls in the centre of Baghdad. The other area was called the red zone. All of the local population, regardless of gender or age were termed hajis, a derogatory name, given because muslims must at one point in their lives go on the pilgrimmage to Mecca. One zone for the population - red, for danger - and one name for them. That's a great mindset for prosecuting a war; it's a terrible mindset for stabilising a peace. 

The kinetic operations in Afghanistan undertaken by NATO are being cloaked in a humanitarian discourse that disguises the military aspect of developing 'security on the ground'. The media war is seeking provide covering fire whilst the kinetic war is prosecuted. McChrystal may have attempted to develop relations between the foreign agents and the Afghans (he had good relations with Karzai, which was unusual for a high ranking U.S. official, civilian or military) but his successor Petraeus has escalated operations that seek to limit the exposure of NATO troops to danger. Airstrikes in Afghanistan and drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas have increased. Yesterday, after yet another airstrike that killed civilians, Karzai warned NATO against the continued use of these tactics.

Paula Holmes-Eber teaches the operational culture to marines at Quantico. She weds anthropology specifically to military effectiveness. This 2008 manual influenced the 2010 book she co-edited with Donald Gardner, Applications in Operational Culture: Perspectives from the Field. She can be contacted regarding her work at pholmeseber@gmail.com

Barak Salmoni moved from the Marine Corp Center for Advanced Operational Cultural Learning to RAND in 2008.

More:

See especially this informed FabiusMaximus piece that works as a bibliography.

 

Pilon, J. G. ed. (2009) Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace (Washington, D.C: The Institute of World Politics Press)

Porter, P. (2009) Military Orientalism (London: Hurst)

Shaffer ed. (2006) The Limits of Culture: Islam and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)

Stanton, J. (2009) General Petraeus' Favorite Mushroom: Inside the US Army's Human Terrain System

Standpoint.

A 2000-word article I wrote on Afghanistan has been kindly published by Standpoint. Online here. Whilst on the subject of Afghanistan, a friend took a number of photos from his last tour and has also kindly allowed me to reproduce two below. 

The first shows the operational difficulty of counter-insurgency in the green zone (fertile area on banks of Helmand river) during the Spring/Summer because of the added concealment afforded by the flora. 

The second is just a photo that appealed to me but perhaps also shows why anthropologists were mobilised into the counter-insurgency efforts as Human Terrain Teams (see also the Network of Concerned Anthropologists and also Human Terrain movie); visually it seems to show the difficulty of negating cultural differences and language barriers when prosecuting "post-conflict reconstruction".

Culture has become an overarching concern for COINistas. Consider the first photo and then this extract from Operational Culture for the Warfighter (2008):

"U.S. personnel in Afghanistan frequently notice a drop in insurgent activity during the winter. Over time, they have come to understand that this is related less to diminished insurgent enthusiasm for anti-Afghan violence, and much more to the local cultural disinclination to fight during the winter months in high altitude. Conversely, the upsurge in violence over the summer and autumn is seasonally driven, and not necessarily a function of greater insurgent zeal."

In fact, tactical considerations are mistaken here for "local cultural disinclination", which seems to hark back to ideas of the "lazy natives". Material interests are mistaken for cultural practices. The flora in the summer makes insurgent activity easier than in the barren winter months. We need culture in our calculations, but must not let it drive every aspect of our considerations. Culture is fluid and easily manipulated - stereotypes are a poor weapon in war. Material considerations - survival - trump cultural norms.

Copyright: Adam Collington

Copyright: Adam Collington