'Human terrain' Past, present and future applications

Between July 2005 and August 2006, the US Army put together an experimental counterinsurgency programme called' Human Terrain System' (HTS). The programme's building blocks are five-person teams ('Human Terrain Teams' or HTTs) assigned to brigade combat team headquarters in Iraq and Afghanistan, comprising regional studies experts and social scientists, some of whom are armed. This article looks at the roots of the human terrain concept, which appears to have originated in domestic counterinsurgency efforts connected with US government efforts to suppress political dissent in the 1960s. Of special concern were militant groups such as the Black Panthers. The article then explores the genesis and development of HTS, as it moved from concept to reality. As the programme was being implemented, some of those involved with its creation referred to it as a 'CORDS for the 21st Century', in reference to a Vietnam War-era initiative that gave birth to the infamous Phoenix Program. The latter was a 'neutralization' campaign that led to the assassination of some 26,000 Vietnamese. The article also reviews the potential future uses of the data collected by HTTs, which has been of great interest to several research groups involved in creating 'modelling and simulation' computer programmes designed to provide insight into the motivations of terrorists and their networks. The article concludes with a discussion of the ethical dilemmas surrounding human terrain for anthropologists and other social scientists. © RAI 2008.