The Routledge Handbook of War and Society
This new handbook provides an introduction to current sociological and behavioral research on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan represent two of the most interesting and potentially troubling events of recent decades. These two wars—so similar in their beginnings— generated different responses from various publics and the mass media; they have had profound effects on the members of the armed services, on their families and relatives, and on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Analyzing the effect of the two wars on military personnel and civilians, this volume is divided into four main parts: Part I: War on the Ground: Combat and Its Aftermath Part II: War on the Ground: Non-Combat Operations, Non-Combatants, and Operators Part III: The War Back Home: The Social Construction of War, Its Heroes, and Its Enemies Part IV: The War Back Home: Families and Young People on the Home Front With contributions from leading academic sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, military researchers, and researchers affiliated with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), this Handbook will be of interest to students of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, military sociology and psychology, war studies, anthropology, US politics, and of youth. Steven Carlton-Ford is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. He recently served for 5 years as the editor of Sociological Focus. Morten G. Ender is Professor of Sociology and Sociology Program Director at West Point, the United States Military Academy. He is the author of American Soldiers in Iraq (Routledge 2009).
The Routledge Handbook of War and Society Iraq and Afghanistan
Edited by Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender
First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors, their contributions
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Routledge handbook of war and society : Iraq and Afghanistan / edited by Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender. p. cm. 1. Afghan War, 2001- 2. Afghan War, 2001—Social aspects. 3. United States–Armed Forces– Afghanistan. 4. Americans–Afghanistan. 5. Sociology, Military–Afghanistan. 6. Iraq War, 2003- 7. Iraq War, 2003—Social aspects. 8. United States–Armed Forces–Iraq. 9. Americans–Iraq. 10. Sociology, Military–Iraq. I. Carlton-Ford, Steven. II. Ender, Morten G., 1960DS371.412.R68 2010 956.7044’31–dc22 2010008365
ISBN 0-203-84433-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-56732-7 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-84433-5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-56732-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-84433-5 (ebk)
To our students—both civilian and military
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Editors Contributors Acknowledgments Foreword Christopher Dandeker Introduction Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender Part I War on the ground: combat and its aftermath 1
2
x xii xiii xvii xx
1
7
Fighting Two Protracted Wars: Recruiting and Retention with an All-Volunteer Force Susan M. Ross
9
Fighting the Irregular War in Afghanistan: Success in Combat; Struggles in Stabilization Brigid Myers Pavilonis
20
3
Learning the Lessons of Counterinsurgency Ian Roxborough
4
Twenty-First Century Narratives from Afghanistan: Storytelling, Morality, and War Ryan D. Pengelly and Anne Irwin
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5
6
Two US Combat Units in Iraq: Psychological Contracts When Expectations and Realities Diverge Wilbur J. Scott, David R. McCone and George R. Mastroianni
56
Capture of Saddam Hussein: Social Network Analysis and Counterinsurgency Operations Brian J. Reed and David R. Segal
68
7
Apples, Barrels, and Abu Ghraib George R. Mastroianni and George E. Reed
8
The War on Terror in the Early Twenty-First Century: Applying Lessons from Sociological Classics and Sites of Abuse Ryan Ashley Caldwell and Stjepan G. Mestrovic
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Part II War on the ground: non-combat operations, non-combatants, and operators 101 9
Policing Post-War Iraq: Insurgency, Civilian Police, and the Reconstruction of Society Mathieu Deflem and Suzanne Sutphin
103
10 Policing Afghanistan: Civilian Police Reform and the Resurgence of the Taliban 114 Mathieu Deflem 11 Managing Humanitarian Information in Iraq Aldo Benini, Charles Conley, Joseph M. Donahue and Shawn Messick
125
12 Role of Contractors and Other Non-Military Personnel in Today’s Wars O. Shawn Cupp and William C. Latham, Jr.
137
13 Evaluating Psychological Operations in Operation Enduring Freedom James E. Griffith
149
14 Armed Conflict and Health: Cholera in Iraq Daniel Poole
163
15 Iraqi Adolescents: Self-Regard, Self-Derogation, and Perceived Threat in War 174 Steve Carlton-Ford, Morten G. Ender and Ahoo Tabatabai Part III The war back home: the social construction of war, its heroes, and its enemies 16 Globalization and the Invasion of Iraq: State Power and the Enforcement of Neoliberalism Daniel Egan viii
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17 The Pakistan and Afghan Crisis Riaz Ahmed Shaikh
200
18 Mass Media as Risk-Management in the “War on Terror” Christopher M. Pieper
211
19 Talking War: How Elite US Newspaper Editorials and Opinion Pieces Debated the Attack on Iraq Alexander G. Nikolaev and Douglas V. Porpora
222
20 Debating Anti-War Protests: The Microlevel Discourse of Social Movement Framing on a University Listserv Mark Hedley and Sara A. Clark
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21 Making Heroes: An Attributional Perspective Gregory C. Gibson, Richard Hogan, John Stahura and Eugene Jackson 22 Making the Muslim Enemy: The Social Construction of the Enemy in the War on Terror Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills Part IV The war back home: families and young people on the home front 23 Greedy Media: Army Families, Embedded Reporting, and War in Iraq Morten G. Ender, Kathleen M. Campbell, Toya J. Davis and Patrick R. Michaelis 24 Military Child Well-Being in the Face of Multiple Deployments Rachel Lipari, Anna Winters, Kenneth Matos, Jason Smith and Lindsay Rock 25 American Undergraduate Attitudes Toward the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Trends and Variations Morten G. Ender, David E. Rohall and Michael D. Matthews Index
245
257
269
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283
294
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List of Illustrations
Figures 13.1 Afghanistan and seven geographic regions from which respondents were selected 13.2 Stages of persuasive message communication and its effects 13.3 Radio Malumat: linkages among message characteristics, communication, and action 13.4 Newspaper Sulh: linkages among message characteristics, communication, and action 18.1 Model of risk manufacture and management 20.1 Framing schema of microlevel discourse 24.1 Number of deployments by problem behavior scale scores 25.1 Percentage of Americans supporting Iraq War, 2003–09 25.2 Percentage of American undergraduates supporting Afghanistan and Iraq Wars by race, ideology, and military affiliation
154 155 159 159 214 241 290 296 301
Tables 13.1 Exposure to Radio Malumat and Newspaper Sulh and self-reported evaluation of communication characteristics 15.1 Correlations of threat and self-esteem with social statuses, faith importance, national issues, and personal concerns 15.2 Multiple regression of self-regard on threat to nation, demographic background, importance of faith, personal issues, and national issues 19.1A A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: All op-eds 19.1B A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: Editorials only x
157 180 182 227 228
L IS T OF ILL U ST R A T IO NS
19.1C A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: All op-eds with neutral removed 19.2 Distribution of arguments by periodical 19.3 Distribution of arguments by periodical: editorials 21.1 Hypothesized conditions in vignettes 21.2 Means, standard deviations, and valid cases (N) for variables used in hero vignettes 21.3 Unstandardized regression coefficients (and standard error) from attribution conditions and indices, regressed on hero status 24.1 Weighted means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables 24.2 Problem behavior regressed on deployments and other variables 25.1 American undergraduate support for war in Iraq, 2002–07 25.2 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by race, 2002–07 25.3 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by political ideology, 2002–07 25.4 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by military affiliation, 2002–07 25.5 Logistic regression results for American undergraduate support for Iraq War by status and time
228 229 231 248 250 252 288 289 300 301 302 302 303
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The Editors
Steven Carlton-Ford is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. He studies the well-being of children and adolescents. His most recent research, published in International Sociology and Armed Forces & Society has focused primarily on the impact of war and militarization on children’s mortality rates. Other recent research has examined the effect of the threat of armed conflict on the self-image of adolescents. Morten G. Ender is Professor of Sociology at West Point, the US Military Academy interested in military matters. His books include Military Brats and Other Global Nomads: Growing Up in Organization Families (Praeger, 2002) and American Soldiers in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? (Routledge, 2009).
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Contributors
Aldo Benini is an independent researcher with over 20 years’ experience in assisting the victims of war. Until recently he served as a socioeconomic analyst with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and has worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Ryan Ashley Caldwell is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Soka University of America, USA. Kathleen M. Campbell is Associate Professor of Leadership and Management Studies in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Military Academy. Steven Carlton-Ford is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Sara A. Clark has taught sociology at colleges and universities in the St Louis (USA) area. She is now a Reference Librarian at Heartland Community College. She currently researches the relationship between access to information and social inequality. Charles Conley is the Chief Information Officer for the Information Management and Mine Action Programs, USA. O. Shawn Cupp is Associate Professor at the Combined Arms Center, Department of Logistics and Resource Operations at the US Army Command and General Staff College. Christopher Dandeker is Professor of Military Sociology in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, UK.
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Toya J. Davis is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Adjutant General’s Corps. She is currently serving in Baghdad, Iraq as the Multi-National Forces – Iraq Deputy Director for Personnel. Mathieu Deflem is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina, USA. Joseph M. Donahue is the Chief Executive Officer of the Information Management and Mine Action Programs, USA. Daniel Egan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA. Morten G. Ender is Professor of Sociology and Sociology Program Director, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Military Academy. Gregory C. Gibson received his PhD in Sociology from Purdue University, USA. Currently he is the Research Director for the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians. James E. Griffith is a senior research psychologist currently working as a Program Area Director for the National Center for Education Statistics, USA. He is the Past President of Division 19, Military Psychology, American Psychological Association. Mark Hedley is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville, USA. Richard Hogan is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University, USA. Anne Irwin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Calgary, Canada. Eugene Jackson is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University, USA. William C. Latham Jr. (LTC, US Army [Retired]) is Assistant Professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College. Rachel Lipari is the Senior Scientist with the Human Relations Surveys Program Evaluation Branch, Human Resources Strategic Assessment Program at the Defense Manpower Data Center, USA. George R. Mastroianni is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Air Force Academy. Kenneth Matos is a Psychologist on the Human Relations Survey team for the Defense Manpower Data Center, USA. He is the lead analyst on DMDC’s congressionally mandated surveys of racial/ethnic harassment and discrimination in the military. xiv
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David R. McCone is Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Air Force Academy. Michael D. Matthews is Professor of Engineering Psychology at the US Military Academy. Shawn Messick was the Technical Director of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation’s Information Management and Mine Action Programs; he was seconded as the Technical Manager of the UN Humanitarian Information Center Iraq. He has over 20 years’ experience working with complex emergencies. Stjepan G. Mestrovic is Professor of Sociology at Texas A& M University, USA. He has written widely about the sociology of war crimes. Patrick R. Michaelis (LTC, US Army) serves as a Special Assistant to the Vice Chief of Staff of the US Army. Alexander G. Nikolaev is Associate Professor of Communication in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University, USA. Brigid Myers Pavilonis (CDR) is Associate Professor of International Relations at the US Coast Guard Academy, USA. Ryan D. Pengelly is an MNRM Candidate in the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Christopher M. Pieper recently earned his doctorate in Sociology from the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He specializes in Political Sociology. Daniel Poole is currently pursuing his doctorate in Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Utah, USA. Douglas V. Porpora is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University, USA. Brian J. Reed (LTC) has served most recently as the commander of 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry (Stryker). LTC Reed is a graduate of the US Military Academy and has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Maryland, USA. George E. Reed is Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership Studies, School of Leadership and Education Sciences, at the University of San Diego, USA. Lindsay Rock is a Social Science Analyst on the Human Relations Survey team for the Defense Manpower Data Center, USA. She is the lead analyst for the congressionally mandated surveys of sexual harassment and sexual assault among active duty and Reserve component members. xv
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David E. Rohall is Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Western Survey Research Center at Western Illinois University, USA. Susan M. Ross is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of Criminal Justice at Lycoming College, USA. Ian Roxborough is Professor of Sociology and History at Stony Brook University, USA. Wilbur J. Scott is a resident Sociologist in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, USA. David R. Segal is Professor of Sociology, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and Director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, USA. Riaz Ahmed Shaikh is Associate Professor at the Institute of Business and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan. Jason Smith is a Consortium Research Fellow on the Human Relations Survey team at the Defense Manpower Data Center. He is pursuing his PhD in Sociology at George Mason University, USA. John Stahura is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University, USA. Erin Steuter is Professor of Sociology in the Sociology Department at Mount Allison University, Canada. Suzanne Sutphin is a Research Associate at The Center for Child and Family Studies at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA. Ahoo Tabatabai recently received her doctorate in Sociology from the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Deborah Wills is Associate Professor in the English Department at Mount Allison University, Canada. Anna Winters is a Social Science Analyst on the Human Relations Survey team for the Defense Manpower Data Center, USA. She is the lead analyst for military spouse surveys.
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Acknowledgments
Many people and organizations helped make this edited volume possible. First and foremost, the Department of Sociology and the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, all at the University of Cincinnati, provided financial and institutional support in housing Sociological Focus, which published the original versions of most of the papers on Iraq. Louis Hicks was instrumental, as guest editor, in shepherding those papers through to publication as two special issues. The first of those issues was published at the University of Cincinnati; Dean Birkenkamp and Paradigm Publishers produced the second. The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center helped support my research on adolescents in Baghdad. Morten Ender and Ahoo Tabatabai were superb collaborators in that research. Cindy Carlton-Ford provided continuous support and encouragement in developing the Handbook project. Paula Dubeck and Frank Cullen provided encouragement and read early drafts of the book proposal, suggesting substantial improvements. Debbi Felker and Teisha Murray proved invaluable in the process of editing the previously published manuscripts to a length suitable for the handbook and in preparing the newly authored chapters for publication. They were assisted by Donielle Boop and Kelli Chapman in the process of formatting all of the manuscripts for the volume. Andrew Humphrys and Rebecca Brennan at Routledge have been unfailingly helpful and patient. Also, I need to extend many thanks to my sons Hal, Ware, and Hollis. They have, with their general good cheer, borne the brunt of my bouts of anxiety and ill temper; they always help me keep life in proper proportion. Finally, both my mother and father, Lewis and Elaine Ford, nurtured my sociological imagination; for that I will be ever grateful. Steven Carlton-Ford A number of colleagues contributed in vital ways either as co-authors or behind the research scene supporters making the chapters in this volume possible. These folks include, in no particular order, Lené Baxter, Kathy Campbell, Toya Davis, Pat Michaelis, Tom Kolditz, Mike Matthews, Dave Rohall, Ahoo Tabatabai, Pat Buckley, E. Spain, Brad Booth, and Jim Gallup. A huge shout out goes to Louis Hicks for his guest editing xvii
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and stewarding of the two special issues of the journal Sociological Focus in which many of these chapters (including “Greedy Media” [Ender et al.])—initially appeared. Grants from the US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and the Faculty Research Committee at the US Military Academy provided financial support on my research projects, resulting in the chapters published here; I gratefully acknowledge them for their assistance. Finally, all thanks and praises to my wife Corina and son Axel. I am far less complete without both of you in my life. Thanks for all your support, knowing just when to get me out of the house, especially during the New York winters, and for keeping me laughing during almost a decade of war. My portion of this work is, however, in the end, an individual undertaking. Thus, the views of this author are his own and do not purport to reflect the position of the US Military Academy, the US Army Research Institute, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense. Morten G. Ender The material in Chapter 3 was adapted from: Roxborough, I. (2006) “Learning and diffusing the lessons of counterinsurgency: the US Military from Vietnam to Iraq,” Sociological Focus 39(4): 319–46. The material in Chapter 5 was adapted from: Scott, W., McCone, D. and Mastroianni, G.R. (2006) “Psychological contracts in two US combat units in Iraq: what happens when expectations and realities diverge?” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 301–17. The material in Chapter 6 was adapted from: Reed, B. J. and Segal, D. R. (2006) “Social network analysis and counterinsurgency operations: the capture of Saddam Hussein,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 251–64. The material in Chapter 7 was adapted from: Mastroianni, G. R. and Reed, G. (2006) “Apples, barrels, and Abu Ghraib,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 239–50. The material in Chapter 9 was adapted from: Deflem, M. and Sutphin, S. (2006) “Policing post-war Iraq: insurgency, civilian police, and the reconstruction of society,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 265–83. The material in Chapter 11 was adapted from: Benini, A., Conley, C., Donahue, J. and Messick, S. (2006) “Challenges of humanitarian information management in Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 285–300. Chapter 15 was adapted from: Carlton-Ford, S., Ender, M.G., Tabatabai, A. (2008) “Iraqi adolescents: self-regard, self-derogation, perceived threat in war,” Journal of Adolescence, 31: 53–75. Chapter 16 was adapted from: Egan, D. (2007) ”Globalization and the Invasion of Iraq: State Power and the Enforcement of Neoliberalism,“ Sociological Focus, 40(1): 98–111. The material in Chapter 19 was adapted from: Nikolaev, A.G. and D.V. Porpora. (2007) “Talking war: how elite US newspaper editorials and opinions pieces debated the attack on Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 40(1):6–25. The material in Chapter 20 was adapted from: Hedley, M. and Clark, S.A. (2007) “The microlevel discourse of social movement framing: debating antiwar protests on a university listserv,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 26–47. The material in Chapter 21 was adapted from: Gibson, G.C., Hogan, R., Stahura, J., and Jackson, E. (2007) “The making of heroes: an attributional perspective,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 72–97 xviii
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The material in Chapter 23 was adapted from: Ender, M.G., Campbell, K.M., Davis, T. J. and Michaelis, P.R. (2007) “Greedy media: Army families, embedded reporting, and war in Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 48–71.
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Foreword Christopher Dandeker
Notwithstanding deep-rooted hopes expressed from within the main traditions of sociological enquiry that warfare is a temporary feature of the human condition, wars (if not states and specialized armed forces) have occurred as long as human societies have existed. They remain a key feature of the international scene. We should also note that “[o]n a more personal scale, wars provide some of the most intense as well as brutal of human experiences, bringing out the best as well as the worst in people – heroism, comradeship and self-sacrifice as well as cruelty and viciousness” (Freedman 1994: 3). However regrettable wars may be, sometimes they are in pursuit of a just cause, command popular support (being perceived as legitimate, not just legal, acts), and also are fought according to the principles of just war. Other wars are less so. In addition, ethical issues arise for all participants in war; this has applied, for example, to the scientific community ever since it became an integral feature of the conduct of war as a result of the process of industrialization. There is a line in history connecting operational research, military psychology, and human factors research through to the application of the social sciences to, for example, using social network analysis to hunt for military targets, and human terrain analysis in contemporary war. This can occasion controversy within the academic community, as it has done recently in the fields of anthropology and psychology (Glenn 2007; Shachtman 2008). Von Clausewitz (1832) reminds us that political leaders who are set on launching wars should be mindful of the need to think about the objectives that are to be achieved by such an extreme act and the methods by which those objectives are to be carried out. Of course, no one can know in advance the exact consequences of such an act because of the fog and friction of warfare; yet contingency planning for a range of plausible outcomes and a provision of adequate resources for dealing with them is a reasonable expectation (indeed a duty) of political and military leaders. Some pass this test; others do not: this has been a source of controversy with regard to the preparation for and conduct of operations in Iraq since 2003, especially the process of occupation and reconstruction. This controversy is not just a matter of the science of planning; it is also a moral issue: if a state removes a xx
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regime, it has to think about the moral question of “what condition should it seek to leave behind it when it leaves the scene?” (see Mahnken and Kearney 2007). This book deals with two wars: the ongoing conflicts in Iraq (from 2003) and Afghanistan (from 2001). It is marked by representing not just a historical reflection on the past but also a systematic reflection on unfolding events. It adopts, for the most part, the perspective of the state that has played such a central role in initiating and fighting these two wars: the United States. The US will also play the key role in concluding them. Yet the effects and the meaning of these conflicts are global: few remain unaffected by them, by how these conflicts are conducted and how they will end. This includes small states that have played their part in ongoing coalition operations; to mention just one example, Estonia’s role in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan: its contribution and losses may be small in absolute terms and compared with the US, but its sacrifice is, for Estonia (and relative to its population size), very substantial indeed. As far as sociologists are concerned, it is my hope that this volume will help to shift the curriculum of their discipline, by helping to make war and military affairs more central to students’ inquiries, whether at upper-level undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate levels. War is too important a subject to be left to the other disciplines of international relations: military history and political science. Indeed, this book shows that to understand war properly a “war and society” approach, drawing on a multiplicity of disciplines (not just sociology), can be invaluable. The book follows in the footsteps of others who have sought to understand war in its historical, political, and wider social context, including the founder of the department from which this foreword is being written (Professor Sir Michael Howard) and those who subsequently developed that vision (see Freedman 1994; Howard 1976; Holden Reid 2009). Although wars share certain fundamental characteristics (including the experiential dimension mentioned earlier) their character changes. The two conflicts with which this book is concerned have provided the occasion for a further reevaluation of the distinctive features of contemporary warfare, a process that has engaged policy and academic communities for the two decades that have elapsed since the end of the Cold War. For example, political and military elites find it more troublesome now to talk of the conclusion of these conflicts in terms of “winning” and “victory” than in terms of success (see Dandeker 2010). And success involves defining a complex set of objectives and milestones in terms of how it might be measured. These lengthy missions (together both conflicts have now involved the US for nearly a decade) may well conclude without a sharply defined “victory” but rather a satisfactory “security condition” (see Smith 2005, 2010 for the development of these terms). In Iraq, for example, a political settlement amongst Sunni and Shia constituencies that avoids a breakdown of the polity into civil war would be a precondition for US withdrawal of its 96,000 troops. Yet continued internecine conflict and weak security would encourage the US Administration, with reluctance, to continue its military commitment even while affairs in Afghanistan press upon its attention. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the idea of being able to withdraw once the Afghan military and police forces can provide their state with adequate security may well falter in face of continued infrastructural weaknesses and political corruption. Clearcut victory, as opposed to satisfactory conditions for withdrawal, looks a chimera. The operational space of these two conflicts also has some novel features. Notwithstanding the centrality of the US, these operations have involved complex forms of coalition building. This is not just because of a need for burden sharing but also in terms of building legitimacy for military intervention; indeed the elder Bush’s efforts in this xxi
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regard in 1990–91 were far more effective than those of the younger Bush in 2003, although, to be fair, the circumstances of 2003 in terms of what the UK’s ex-Prime Minister Blair has referred to recently as the “calculus of risk” were different. With coalitions of the kind operating in Afghanistan, a trade-off will arise between the benefits of political legitimacy and the costs of uneven military capacity, which is most graphically highlighted by the presence of the “national caveats” that states place on how, where, and when their forces might be deployed. This is a well-known source of frustration amongst the political and military leaders at the core of the coalition. A good deal of effort has to be expended to make these intermilitary relationships work, and this is only one aspect of a complex of interorganizational relationships that need to be managed, extending from military (including regular and, increasingly, part-time reservist elements) as well as non-military organizations from a host of participating states (police and others, such as Foreign Office and Development components of government), nongovernmental organizations, contractors, and journalists. The operational space is a very crowded landscape indeed. This space is also one that might be summarized in numbers: 360–24–7: operations increasingly take place in spaces that are not bounded with front lines and rear safe areas: one can be shot or blown up by an improvised explosive device potentially anywhere in 360-degree warfare. This has interesting implications for the employment of women. For example, in the US and the UK, rules restricting women in combat roles are increasingly anomalous and breached in practice. Of course, the essentials of infantry fighting are in some ways eternal (digging out and eliminating the enemy), but the context in which these skills are applied is different from the conventional battlefield of interstate war. Meanwhile, the space is monitored 24–7 by media that link it to the virtual space of the global community, a point to which I shall return later. Further, in this operational space are the people amongst whom war is increasingly fought; contemporary wars are increasingly “wars amongst the people” (see Smith 2005). Wars are less a matter of violent contests between uniformed armed forces of contending states and more conflicts in which intervening armed states seek to balance the need to defeat armed insurgents (who are often supported and resourced by other states) with that of protecting the people and attracting them to engage in political institutions whose strength and functionality will provide the conditions under which those intervening states will make a judgment that allows them to withdraw. Ensuring that there are subtle balances of kinetic (violent) and persuasive (hearts and minds) strategies is the key challenge for contemporary armed forces. Although a continuity with wars from the past is the importance of the “home front”, today this is part of a broader process whereby the operational space is integrated into the information networks of a global “theatre of war,” in which events on the ground are monitored and given meaning by a variety of audiences using what Shaw (2005: 47–70) has insightfully referred to as the resources of “global surveillance.” These audiences reflect a paradox of war for Western democratic states: with the spread of the allvolunteer force, populations may be virtually connected to war, and their opinion matters in terms of providing the support needed for governments to continue long-term military campaigns. But their involvement in the realities of war is routinely distanced by being mediated; the real practice of war is confined to a minority: the volunteer military. Yet this situation cannot be guaranteed: the wider public’s distant involvement can be interrupted suddenly and without warning by visceral and violent attack as those who oppose interventions in conflicts abroad express their opposition through terror attacks, some mounted from within the homeland itself. xxii
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The audiences in the theatre of war include the local population in a conflict, regional audiences, and wider global opinion, including of course the publics of intervening states and the families of military personnel who have been deployed. Political and military leaders know that they are actors in the theatre of war, which means that success on the ground means little if it is not translated into narratives that persuade watching audiences that the objectives of a campaign are understood, that progress is being made, and that the sacrifices are worth the success achieved. A key problem for those constructing narratives is that, with complex political objectives focused on delivering a “security condition”, how are narratives and their plot lines to be given grip and traction amongst the public? In this regard, we know that governments are less able than before to rely on censorship and have to be inventive in ensuring that the narratives of war that they wish the media (and public) to follow are indeed taken up and that misfortunes (such as noncombatant deaths) are explained in ways that do not set back the central message. Some leaders realize that public opinion is not so much casualty shy or averse (something of a myth in recent years) but increasingly shy of futile casualties: deaths and injury that (so it is felt) could have been avoided. It is interesting to ask if such aversion to futile death and injury is a sentiment increasingly present in military populations, including their families, not just in wider public opinion. For military personnel themselves, we have moved to a world less of Krulak’s (1999) “strategic corporal” and more to one of the strategic private soldier: actions at the very lowest levels of command can (for good or for ill) have potentially strategic consequences in terms of the reputation of a country’s armed force or indeed perceptions of the success and value of a mission. The need for politically aware soldiers able to calibrate kinetic and non-kinetic activities by using their judgment as appropriate in a given context is a key feature of the contemporary military landscape. The implications of this point for the political and ethical education of soldiers deploying to missions have become serious matters for the military profession. For the military involved in these missions, the wear and tear on equipment and personnel can be costly. It is important that the health and well-being of regular and reservist personnel are kept under review; that families are given the support they need (including monitoring the effects of deployments on the children in military families); and that personnel’s obligations to deploy on multiple occasions are balanced with their need for personal and family time. As readers think about the contents of this book, let me encourage them to attend to two issues concerning the future of the military. For the all-volunteer force, it would be foolish indeed to think that any short-term features of the business cycle will remove the challenge of recruiting and retaining the quality personnel who are needed for the challenging missions that continue and the new ones that lie ahead. There is also a need to ensure that ex-service members return to civilian society not only to decent employment but also to the honor and respect they deserve for their sacrifice. When these conflicts end, will society honor, remember, and memorialize them? What will this entail if the conclusion is not victory but a satisfactory “security condition”? The second issue (and this is not confined to the US) is whether the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are constitutive of the conflicts that the US needs to be prepared to engage in or just one kind of conflict, with a need to be ready for the interstate wars that the US military has for so long been prepared for and has preferred to fight. Is the recent recovery of the memory of counterinsurgency, and its refinement as a doctrine that is a genuine advance on what has gone before, an example of a much-needed adjustment of xxiii
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the war-fighting mindset of the US military? Or is it an example of the pendulum swinging too far and causing a distraction from other more serious troubles that lie ahead? One persuasive answer to this question is that it poses a false choice: the future will bring a complex blend of elements from different kinds of conflicts, interstate and other: in short, what has been termed “hybrid war” (Hoffman 2007). Christopher Dandeker Department of War Studies King’s College, London March 2010
References Dandeker, C. (2010) “From victory to success: The changing mission of western armed forces,” in Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duvesteyn (eds) Modern Warfare and the Utility of Force, London: Routledge. Freedman, L. (ed.) (1994) War, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Glenn, D. (2007) “A policy on torture roils psychologists’ annual meeting,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 7). Online. Available http://chronicle.com/article/A-Policy-on-TortureRoils/27548 (accessed 11 March 2010). Hoffman, G.F. (2007) “Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars,” Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Arlington, VA. Online. Available http://www.potomacinstitute.org/images/stories/ publications/potomac_hybridwar_0108.pdf (accessed 11 March 2010). London: Routledge. Holden Reid, B. (2009) “Michael Howard and the evolution of modern war studies,” Journal of Military History, 73: 869–904. Howard, M. (1976) War and European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krulak, General C.C. (1999) “The strategic corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War,” Marines Magazine, 28: 26–32. Mahnken, T.G. and Kearney, T.A. (eds) (2007) War in Iraq: Planning and Execution, London: Routledge. Shachtman, N. (2008) “Army anthropologist’s controversial culture clash,” Wired.com (23 September). Online. Available http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/09/controversial-a/ (accessed 11 March 2010). Shaw, M. (2005) The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq, Cambridge: Polity Press. Smith, General Sir R. (2005) The Utility of Force, The Art of War in the Modern World, New York: Penguin, Allen Lane. ——(2010) Foreword to J. Angstrom and I. Duvesteyn (eds) Modern War and the Utility of Force, London: Routledge. Von Clausewitz, C. (1832/1968) On War, New York: Penguin.
Introduction
Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender
In 2005 about 35 wars and conflicts were being waged throughout the world (GlobalSe curity.org 2010). The Routledge Handbook of War and Society provides readers with a set of unique perspectives on two major wars: the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most handbooks are written in retrospect, summarizing long-term trends in research. In contrast, the chapters in the Handbook have all been written while the wars were being fought; each chapter provides a distinct angle on the wars and society as they continue to evolve. These perspectives purposefully eschew the omniscient view of many handbooks, instead providing theoretically informed research perspectives on the war-associated phenomena they examine. The chapters provide some of the first empirical social and behavioral science research on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More research will certainly follow. As of the middle of January 2010, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the US government alone over $950 billion dollars (National Priorities Project 2010), expenditures that have contributed to an increase in the national debt – a debt that will have to be paid off by the coming generation. Roughly three-quarters of the cost has been incurred in Iraq, with the rest resulting from the war in Afghanistan. The wars have resulted in nearly 4,700 deaths of coalition soldiers in Iraq and nearly 1,600 more deaths in Afghanistan. In addition, 31,616 US troops have been injured in Iraq and another 9,496 US troops injured in Afghanistan (iCasualties.org 2010). Estimates of civilian deaths vary widely (see Schwartz 2008) and the psychological and cognitive costs are only beginning to be understood (Talielian and Jaycox 2008). Because these wars are not over the casualty toll will continue to mount. These well-known facts serve as the backdrop to the chapters in this handbook, which explore the national and international lead-up to these wars, as well as the broader human costs of these wars; costs that range from how militaries fight and are funded to the effects these wars have on civilians far from combat. Since World War II (WWII) few countries have fought conventional international wars: wars fought by uniformed national armies along relatively clearly defined fronts. Instead, armies have been called upon to fight non-conventional wars: wars fought primarily against insurgent groups, who for strategic reasons avoid battles along conventional fronts. Civilians increasingly are the target rather than soldiers. Although most of these wars have been internal (aka civil) wars (Harbom and Wallensteen 2009), some have involved internal conflict as well as the armed forces of other countries, as in Iraq 1
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and Afghanistan. Not only has the face of war changed, so too has the organization and recruitment of national armies. Since the end (in the 1970s) of the post-WWII boom in economic growth, the national militaries, particularly the US military, that have been called upon to fight these wars have also changed dramatically, from conscription-based armies to all-volunteer forces (Moskos et al. 1999), supplied by an increasingly professionalized and diverse body of service members (Ender 2009) as well as a contingent of civilian contractors (Miller 2007). The present volume covers two major and traditional regions of war: the war front and the home front, and the blurring of lines within and between these two geographical spaces. We begin with part I, which examines the war front, combat, and the aftermath. In particular, dramatic changes in the type of war being fought in conjunction with the sea-change in how national militaries are recruited and funded reveal severe gaps between what the military is called upon to accomplish and what it can sustain (see Ross). The lack of clearly defined fronts in fighting complex insurgencies required militaries to apply a variety of non-conventional models in solving strategic problems. These changes have affected the way in which war is fought more generally (see Roxborough, as well as Pavilonis). For soldiers, war in Afghanistan has dramatically affected how they see themselves, their relationship to stated military missions, and their descriptions in public forums (see Pengelly and Irwin). In a parallel development, there are severe gaps between the types of war soldiers are trained to fight and the wars they are called upon to fight. This gap, between the ways in which soldiers have been trained and how they have to fight, has created psychological dilemmas for these soldiers (see Scott, McCone and Mastroianni) but also innovative strategies in understanding enemies such as Saddam Hussein (see Reed and Segal). Similarly, these new wars, in which captives do not fall neatly or obviously into the standard categories of “civilian” or “combatant,” have exposed severe problems with the way in which armies treat captives. This issue is most clearly illustrated by the treatment of detainees at the US prison at Abu Ghraib (see Mastroianni and Reed, as well as Caldwell and Mestrovic). The next part of the volume features chapters highlighting non-combat operations, which involve non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and military contractors, as well as non-combatants. Thus, changes in the way militaries are organized, in conjunction with the rise of international NGOs and civilian contractors, have dramatically complicated the non-combat landscape in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the 20 years preceding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, international NGOs grew dramatically, fueled in part by increasing activism at the grass-roots level, but also by dramatically increased funding that pumped billions of dollars into that sector (Reimann 2006). In addition, the dramatic changes in military organization alluded to above meant that many of the functions previously performed by the military had to be contracted to civilian companies. As a result, the organizational landscape in Iraq and Afghanistan is exceptionally complicated, requiring careful coordination between the military, NGOs, and civilian contractors; coordination that would be difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances. Such chaotic conditions stem in large part from the insurgents’ attempts to destabilize the civilian police institutions traditionally tasked with maintaining day-to-day order (see Deflem and Sutphin, as well as Deflem). As analyzed from the point of view of the NGOs themselves (see Benini, Conley, Donahue, and Messick) as well as the military (see Cupp and Latham) such coordination is attempted in the absence of mutual trust and under the chaotic conditions engendered by conflict. Faced with such chaotic conflict, the military has attempted to combat these conditions through information campaigns 2
INTRODUCTION
designed to build support among the civilians – attempts that meet with varying success (see Griffith). Finally, these wars affect civilians in indirect and often unanticipated ways. Wars destroy public health infrastructures, diminishing a country’s ability to generate electricity, treat sewage, or pump clean water (Carlton-Ford 2004). The result often is increased mortality and morbidity among civilian populations, an outcome seen as a result of the Iraq war (see Poole). In addition, wars affect the psychological well-being of those involved. Typically children are adversely affected, experiencing higher levels of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-like symptoms (Attanayake, McKay, Joffres, Singh, Burkle, and Mills 2009). The impact on adolescents is, in contrast, extremely underresearched; research (see Carlton-Ford, Ender, and Tabatabai) suggests that Iraqi adolescents react to conflict very differently compared with children. Iraqi adolescents, whose identities are most threatened by conflict, seem to rally their self-image. Next we turn to the home front during war and social reactions to the war fighters – both heroes and enemies. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted from complex global processes that have continuing international implications, all of which are debated in and shaped by the media. The long-term lead-up to the Iraq war is framed and influenced by the national political and economic interests of the US and its allies (see Egan). The course of the war in Afghanistan, although triggered by the attacks on the Twin Trade Towers in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington, is influenced by complex international relationships among Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US; these relationships were formed during the Reagan era, as the US attempted to thwart the Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Matters are further complicated by the relationships that were formed between Pakistan’s military and the groups that became the Taliban and Al Qaeda, as well as by fears concerning the potential involvement of India and China (see Shaikh). The mass media are not simply independent reporters of events leading up to or during these wars. The way the media gather and report their information plays a significant role in a country’s ability to manage risk (see Pieper). Further, the coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq war in major national newspapers, rather than promoting a liberal anti-war bias, presented a truncated discussion of the political, diplomatic, and legal implications of pursuing unilateral preemptive military action (see Nikolaev and Porpora). There were similar discussions carried on in other, and more novel public venues, of much more limited scope (see Hedley and Clark). Ultimately, as one might expect given Coser’s (1956) prescient discussion of the ways in which war generates internal solidarity, national discussions have nominated some individuals as heroes, which must be understood as a result of a complex process that involves the characteristics of the individuals, the situations in which putative heroes found themselves, and the characteristics of the individuals who attribute heroism (see Gibson, Hogan, Stahura, and Jackson). A mirror process involves the construction of the enemy. This type of process has been described in detail for Japan and the US during WWII (e.g. Dower 1986), and we see today (Steuter and Wills) how the process has played out during what has become known as the global war on terror. In the last part of the volume we turn to the American home front, specifically army families, military children, and college students. In many respects the war has not directly affected the lives of most US citizens. There have been no calls for general war-related sacrifices; there have been no bond drives to pay for the wars; with much smaller, all-volunteer militaries, civilians are less likely to know individuals in the military, and as a result much less likely to know someone killed or injured in the wars. For US Army 3
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families the situation is different; the impact of the wars has been magnified by the ease of communication provided by cell phones, the internet, and live television concomitantly placing the war electronically in the home and the home front in the war front (see Ender, Campbell, Davis, and Michaelis); the multiple deployments required by small militaries to fight wars that have now lasted longer than WWII have also taken a toll on the children in military families, although these children also show surprising resilience (see Lipari, Winters, Matos, Smith, and Rock). Attitudes of young people toward the wars (see Ender, Rohall, and Matthews) have changed over the course of these conflicts, and have been importantly shaped by political affiliation, with significant differences between students at military academies and those in other universities. As we close this introduction in early 2010, the outcome of these wars is uncertain. The US military is withdrawing troops (i.e. Marines) after an apparently successful new strategy for involving Sunni Muslims (the so-called Anbar Awakening) coupled with a troop surge that took place between January 2007 and the middle of 2008. The newly elected Iraqi government is not fully institutionalized and serious disagreements over political representation and the disposition of national resources continue among representatives of the Sunni Muslims, Shi’a Muslims, and ethnic Kurds. In Afghanistan, the Taliban appears resurgent and the US military is preparing to increase its presence there by 30,000 additional troops. Many members of Al Qaeda appear to have moved to areas of Pakistan that border Afghanistan. The US has used drones to strike Al Qaeda in Pakistani territory and the Pakistani military, apparently under significant pressure from the US as well as its own people, has begun operations designed to undermine insurgents in the border areas. Military strikes by the Pakistani Army appear to be increasingly motivated by bombings that have struck very close to key military centers in Pakistan. The outcome of the two conflicts is not clear; our chapters provide important perspectives on these wars – perspectives we expect will be modified and extended in the future.
References Attanayake, V., McKay, R., Joffres, M., Singh, S., Burkle Jr., F. and Mills, E. (2009) “Prevalence of mental disorders among children exposed to war: A systematic review of 7,920 children.” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 25: 4–19. Carlton-Ford, S. (2004) “Armed conflict and children’s life chances.” Peace Review 16: 185–91. Coser, L.A. (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Free Press. Dower, J.W. (1986) War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Random House. Ender, M.G. (2009) American Soldiers in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? New York and London: Routledge. GlobalSecurity.org (2010) The World at War. Online. Available http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ world/war/index.html (accessed 27 January 2010). Harbom, L. and Wallensteen, P. (2009) “Armed conflicts, 1946–2008.” Journal of Peace Research 46: 577–87. iCasualties.org (2010) “Iraq coalition casualty count.” Online. Available http://icasualities.org (accessed 18 January 2010). Miller, C.T. (2007) “Contractors outnumber troops in Iraq,” Los Angeles Times, 4 July, Online. Available http://www.articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/04/nation/na-private4 (accessed 27 January 2010). Moskos, C.C., Williams, J.A. and Segal, D.R. (eds) (1999) The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces After the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press.
4
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National Priorities Project (2010) “Total cost wars since 2001.” Online. Available http://costofwar. com/ (accessed 18 January 2010). Reimann, K. (2006) “A view from the top: International politics, norms, and the worldwide growth of NGOs.” International Studies Quarterly 50: 45–67. Schwartz, M. (2008) War Without End: The Iraq War in Context. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Talielian, T. and Jaycox, L.H. (eds) (2008) Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
5
Part I War on the ground: combat and its aftermath
1 Fighting two protracted wars Recruiting and retention with an all-volunteer force Susan M. Ross
Following nearly a decade of continual troop involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates summarized the conundrum involved in fighting two protracted wars with an all-volunteer force (AVF). On the one hand, Gates (Department of Defense [DoD] 2008) noted optimistically: Overall, our service men and women and their families have shown extraordinary resilience. Morale is high, as is recruiting and retention – particularly among units either in or just returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldier for soldier, unit for unit, the Army is the best trained, best led, and best equipped it has ever been. On the other hand, he continued: This is the second longest war in American history since our Revolution, and the first to be fought with an AVF since independence. To be sure the stress is real. There are metrics that need to be watched – such as the number of waivers granted to new recruits, suicides, as well as incidents of divorce and other signs of wear on military families. Striking an even blunter appraisal of the situation while testifying before the Senate Armed Service Committee, US Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard A. Cody (2008) stated, “Today’s Army is out of balance. The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen echoed the same message during a similarly timed press conference, noting, “It is a very fragile situation. … There is this incredibly delicate balance between continuing in two wars [and] making sure we don’t break those same forces” (Bender 2008: A1). By the middle of 2009, more than 1.8 million American soldiers had served in Afghanistan and Iraq since the outset of these wars in October 2001 and March 2003 (DoD 2009). Although 1.8 million soldiers represent less than one percent of the entire 9
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US population, they represent nearly three-quarters of the approximately 2.5–2.7 million personnel who comprise the active duty and reserve components of the AVF (US Census 2003, 2009). While there is little doubt that the AVF has created a stronger fighting force compared with that which can be developed and maintained under a system of conscription (Bacevich 2008; O’Hanlon 2004), fighting the global war on terror (GWOT) has created tremendous strains on the AVF, leaving many (including top military leaders) to question the viability of the AVF. This chapter examines challenges faced by the American AVF as it has undertaken heavy troop engagement for nearly a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly recruitment and retention within the US Army. Given that neither war has drawn to a close, this analysis is necessarily incomplete. With the Taliban’s movement into Pakistan and the uncertain political stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Obama announced in late 2009 the plan to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing the troop levels in the region to nearly 100,000 personnel (Obama 2009). Meanwhile, in Iraq, combat troop drawdown has been slower than anticipated, as President Obama had to backslide on his campaign pledge to bring combat troops home within 16 months of his taking office (DeYoung 2009). Military leaders serving in Iraq suggest that American soldiers could be engaged in combat until at least 2015 (Ricks 2009). Before turning to the issues of recruitment and retention for an AVF, it is important to provide a brief historical context to the emergence of the AVF as an alternative military manpower strategy to conscription.
From conscription to an AVF The current structure of an AVF developed on the heels of the widely unpopular draft of the Vietnam War era. Having campaigned on a promise to end the draft, President Nixon authorized what became popularly known as the Gates Commission to study the viability of ending conscription and moving to an all-volunteer military structure (Rostker 2006). Although the Commission members were divided on the feasibility of such a structure, they ultimately recommended that the US end the draft and build its national forces through the recruitment of volunteers who would serve as professional soldiers. Having accepted the recommendation, Congress eliminated the draft in 1973 (Rostker 2006). The transition to an AVF has generated ongoing debate between proponents of national service, conscription, or volunteerism as a military manpower strategy (Moskos 1988). Segal (1989) identified five social trends that affected the choice of the AVF over national service or conscription: the increase in complexity of military technology; the increased American involvement in peace-keeping missions and other forms of “lower-intensity” warfare; the expansion of the welfare state, which reversed the citizen–state relationship from citizens having an obligation to the state to a system of “entitlements” of citizenship; the “citizenship revolution” that broke the barrier to women’s and minority participation in the military, allowing for larger recruiting pools; and declining fertility rates following the baby boom, which produce fewer males for a draft pool between the ages of 18 and 21. 10
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As a consequence of ending conscription, the military was transformed from an institution built on the obligation of a citizenry to serve their country to an institution required to compete with the civilian employment sector for suitable “employees” (Moskos 1977; Moskos and Wood 1988). In addition, the movement to an AVF seriously reduced the ability of the country to depend upon traditional citizen soldiers for wartime troop expansion (see e.g. Abrams and Bacevich 2001; Burk 2001; Cohen 2001; Moskos 2002). Although there is general scholarly consensus regarding these first major consequences of the military manpower policy shift, much debate exists as to the extent to which the emergence of the AVF resulted in a “gap” between the military and civilian sectors of society (see Rohall et al. 2006 for a review). In addition to the demise of the draft, there was a second, “quieter,” post-Vietnam policy that has greatly increased reliance upon the Reserve and National Guard during the GWOT, the likes of which has not been seen since the Korean War (Binkin and Kaufmann 1989). Frustrated by President Johnson’s refusal to mobilize the Reserve as part of the troop escalation, Army Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams returned from Vietnam swearing to ensure that America would never again go to war without pulling reservists from all walks of life. Abrams crafted the total force policy, which placed combat support heavily in the hands of the Reserve and ensured the need for the National Guard to round out combat brigades (Sorley 1991). Much of this policy and the expansion in the number of reserve troops available to the president went largely unnoticed by the public (Binkin and Kaufmann 1989) and, for that matter, the reservists themselves (Booth et al. 2007; Musheno and Ross 2008). In drawing this all-too-brief history lesson to a close, note that while the US has been functioning with an all-volunteer military force since the early 1970s, Presidents Carter and Reagan did bring about the reinstitution of the military draft registration system in the early 1980s (Chambers 1987; Segal 1989); young men are still required to register with the Selective Service within 30 days of their eighteenth birthday. Despite this ongoing system of registration, there seems little chance of the US moving to conscription from the Selective Service rosters. Gallup poll data gathered in October 2004 indicated that only 14.3 percent of Americans support a military draft (Gallup Organization 2004). Likewise, a 2004 House of Representatives vote on a bill to reinstate the draft suffered a decisive loss with a 402:2 vote (Crabtree 2009). The attacks of 9/11 brought about neither a national call for additional volunteers for the armed services nor public or political support for conscription, ensuring that the people fighting the GWOT would be the men and women of the AVF. Although it is not uncommon for American military peacetime participation rates to comprise less than 1 percent of the population, typically, there are spikes in the participation rate during extended wars, with three percent in World War I, nine percent in World War II, and about two percent during the Korean and Vietnam Wars (Segal and Segal 2004). The proportion of Americans bearing the military cost of the GWOT has remained below one percent of the total population.
Recruiting new troops to an AVF under the GWOT Recognizing the strain on the forces and problems regarding military recruitment, thenpresidential-candidate Barack Obama stated on his campaign Web site, “A nation of 300 million strong should not be struggling to find enough qualified citizens to serve” 11
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(Obama 2008). Although intended to lend an inspirational voice to military recruitment, President Obama’s campaign statement was oversimplistic. Although there are more than 300 million Americans, the primary military recruiting target group is young people between the ages of 17 and 24 years, who represent slightly less than 10 percent of the nation’s total population (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). After factoring in all of the disqualifiers to military service such as lack of educational achievement, poor physical health and fitness, over- and underweight, and criminal background, the Pentagon estimates that only 25 percent of America’s young people between the ages of 17 and 24 years are qualified for service in the armed forces (Miles 2009). In addition to being qualified to serve, new youth recruits must also have an interest to serve. As tracked by the DoD, youth propensity to serve dropped in recent years to about 10 percent following over a decade of relative stability at near 15 percent (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). Faced with the wartime decline in recruitment of qualified and interested youth enlistees (particularly before the 2008 economic recession) the Army responded by opening recruitment to some previously unqualified individuals. Much media attention was given to the Army’s shortfall in meeting its educational attainment goal among new recruits (Bender 2009; Scott Tyson 2009) and the increased number of “conduct waivers” for criminal offenses (e.g. misdemeanor drug offenses and some felony convictions) among recruits (Scott Tyson 2008a). Additional controversial programs included the Army’s temporary increase in the maximum enlistment age for the reserve from 35 to 42 years (Miles 2006) and the decision to open recruitment to skilled immigrants in possession of temporary visas, a program that has not been available since the Vietnam War (Preston 2009). By the beginning of 2009, the Army had also introduced a waiver program to allow overweight recruits to be given provisional enlistments (Lubold 2009a). The cost of recruiting, particularly given the Army’s goal of an additional 65,000 troops, has not come cheap. While the DoD has been increasing its advertising budget for recruiting since 1994, it accelerated these efforts since the outset of the GWOT and has also drastically increased enlistment bonus expenditures (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). The heavy emphasis on financial recruiting incentives, coupled with a long-standing correlation between the youth unemployment rate and the military’s ability to attract high-quality youth enlistees (see Bicksler and Nolan 2006), has prompted the term “economic draft” to describe the unequal distribution of social classes in the AVF (Zweig 2008). The research concerning social class participation rates in an AVF is somewhat consistent, finding that neither the highest nor the lowest socioeconomic groups have strong rates of military service. Rather, this burden continues to be borne disproportionately by the lower, although not the lowest, classes (see Kilburn and Asch 2003; Kleykamp 2006; Segal and Segal 2004); however, military fatalities in Iraq show no social class patterning (Ender 2009). Some scholars argue that the social class inequality of service as well as the overrepresentation of African-Americans (discussed later) within the AVF are actually strengths of the institution as they provide a reasonable avenue for social class mobility; better compensation and health care benefits than individuals of similar age, experience, and background can obtain in the private sector; and one of the most racially progressive atmospheres of any of society’s social institutions (Moskos 1991; O’Hanlon 2004). Although enlistees may find the military to be a more financially lucrative option than the civilian employment sector, on exit from the military the young veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have higher unemployment rates than their similarly aged civilian counterparts who chose not to serve (Zoroya 2009). 12
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Even in the absence of the GWOT, the military faces demographic shifts within the youth population that pose challenges to recruitment. Although the youth population is expected to increase from about 32.6 million in 2005 to 34.7 million by 2025, much of this growth will take place among Hispanics, who, despite being more interested in serving than their White and African-American peers, have traditionally been less able to meet the educational requirements (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). With proactive programs to help Hispanics complete high school, Maxfield (2008) noted that the Army’s efforts increased its percentage of enlisted Hispanic soldiers from 3.9 to 11.9 percent between 1985 and 2008. Conversely, while African-Americans currently remain the most overrepresented racial group in the AVF (Kleykamp 2006), between 1985 and 2008 their representation within the Army dropped from 27 percent to 20 percent, with the highest decline within the enlisted ranks (Maxfield 2008). Two factors reducing youth propensity to serve are the adult influencers in youth lives and increased college participation rates among high-school graduates (Bachman et al. 2001; Bicksler and Nolan 2006). Propensity tends to be inversely related to the increase in youth college enrollment (Bachman et al. 2001). Second, with the passing of the WWII and Korean War generations, there are simply fewer veterans who serve as role models to young people. With the concentration of Army and Marine bases in the southern region, propensity to serve is even lower among young people outside the South (Kleykamp 2006; Segal and Segal 2004). Similarly, parents, who themselves are less likely to be veterans than in previous generations, are typically unsupportive of military enlistment of their children during times of active warfare (Bicksler and Nolan 2006). On a more positive demographic note, the changes to the DoD’s Direct Ground Combat Assignment Rule in 1994 widen the career specialties available to woman soldiers (Maxfield 2008). With more desirable military career options available, recruitment of young women, particularly as officers, has increased.
Straining the troops: retention issues Retention of experienced personnel in order to fight the GWOT was an immediate concern of the Pentagon. Shortly after the attacks on 9/11, the highly controversial “stop-loss” policy (often referred to as a backdoor draft) was instituted to retain soldiers beyond their contracted discharge date (Wooten 2005). Stop-loss affected more than 140,000 soldiers between January 2002 and October 2008, with non-commissioned officers (NCOs) disproportionately targeted by the policy (Vanden Brook 2008). Secretary of Defense Gates did announce a plan in March 2009 to phase out the stop-loss policy by 2011 and retroactive compensation was extended to troops affected by stoploss (Dao 2009); however, earlier efforts to minimize the use of stop-loss have been hampered by troop level pressures (Shanker 2009). Between the planned troop increase of 65,000 (which demands a greater number of captains and majors) and the higher departure rate by the Army’s West Point graduates than in the years before the wars (Bowman 2009), the Army is struggling to maintain experienced junior officers (Scott Tyson 2008b). Retention bonuses of up to $35,000 for captains have helped to stem the tide of departures, but family pressures and attractive civilian employment options push and pull young officers from service (Dempsey 2008). The result has been faster promotion of captains to the rank of major than typically desired, with military police, military intelligence officers, and transportation among 13
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those branches experiencing the greatest junior officer shortages (Scott Tyson 2008b). Shortfalls among enlisted ranks have been countered, in part, through emphasis on re-enlistment bonuses of up to $19,000 depending on career field (Miles 2006). Another point of considerable strain has been the pace and length of deployments for the Army and Marines. Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen have expressed the desire to create more adequate “dwell time” at home between deployments (Garamone 2009; Graham 2009). Although the Army has shortened deployments from 15 to 12 months, increased dwell time beyond 12 months is not anticipated until late 2010 or mid-2011 (Graham 2009; Quigley 2009). The stress of the pace of deployments has probably been amplified by what Ender (2009) calls “hyperutilization” of soldiers on the ground. Whereas traditionally war-zone soldiering has been associated with periods of boredom that reduce combat stress, Ender (2009) found that many soldiers in Iraq experience hyperutilization of missions, allowing for less time away from military action. The reserve makes up 45 percent of the Army’s AVF and has supplied as much as 40 percent of the troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the reservists and Guardsmen activated in 2001 and 2002, more than 60 percent had two weeks or less advanced notice of the activation (Booth et al. 2007). The heavy reliance on the reserve has come at retention costs. Reporting on survey data with National Guardsmen and reservists who had recently returned from deployments, Griffith (2005) found that only 71 percent of the soldiers planned to re-enlist, a figure well below the National Guard Bureau standard of 85 percent. In terms of the mental health toll the GWOT is taking on the troops, Tanielian and Jaycox (2008) found that approximately one-third of a random sample of recently returned service members reported symptoms of mental health problems or cognitive conditions, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injury. Not surprisingly, the US Army Surgeon General’s Mental Health Advisory Team found that as the number of deployments increased for NCOs, so did the likelihood of exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress (Shanker 2008). Similarly, investigations of suicides in the Army between 2004 and 2008 show the stress of long deployments as a contributing factor (Alvarez 2009). Although soldiers serve in the actual deployments, their families can also feel the strain of two protracted wars. While many soldiers and their families show remarkable resiliency under these wartime conditions (Booth et al. 2007; Hosek et al. 2006; Musheno and Ross 2008), we would be wise to heed the words of the Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard A. Cody, who stated, “Lengthy and repeated deployments with insufficient recovery time have placed incredible stress on our soldiers and our families, testing the resolve of our AVF like never before” (Shanker 2008). One of several demographic transformations of the movement to the AVF that has increased the overall pool of individuals whose lives are disrupted by military locations and deployments is the increase in the number of married military personnel (Binkin 1993; Segal and Segal 2004). Even in peacetime, working military spouses face frequent relocations across state lines that create a host of problems, including transferring of college credits, finding suitable daycare, state-anchoring of professional licenses (e.g. teachers and lawyers), and civilian counterpart wage gaps (Dempsey 2008). The wartime deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq exacerbate the stress military families experience by more frequent and less predictable separations than before (Booth et al. 2007). The strain of the separations and the subsequent “work–family balance issues” are reasons frequently invoked by soldiers and their families for wanting to leave the military (Booth et al. 14
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2007). Junior enlisted personnel and their spouses are most likely to express the greatest difficulties in their personal lives and mental health; however, Booth et al. also noted the stress produced by extended and rapid deployments is typically resolved within several months of family reunification. Among children and adolescents, Booth et al. (2007) reported that only about half of Army children show positive adjustment to parental deployments, with younger children and children whose mother’s adjustment to the deployment is not strong at most risk for experiencing deployment difficulty. Because the mass mobilization of reserve soldiers came as such a surprise to soldiers and family members alike, reserve families report having been less psychologically and administratively prepared to deal with mobilizations during the initial phases of the GWOT (Booth et al. 2007). Ironically, while the “Post-9/11 GI Bill” was designed to recognize the burden the servicemen and women have borne in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon expressed concern that an unintended consequence of this well-meaning social policy may actually hamper re-enlistment efforts within the US Army and Marine Corps (Lubold 2009b). To resist the potential flight of marines and soldiers who would otherwise be drawn into the civilian sector in search of education benefits, both the Marines Corps and Army’s annual retention budgets were significantly expanded, raising concerns about whether this generation of soldiers and marines can be weaned from lucrative re-enlistment bonuses (Lubold 2009b).
Conclusion The US currently has servicemen and women stationed in over 120 countries, including the protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Carden 2009). The feasibility of the all-volunteer military to react to another threat is questionable. The Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter W. Chiarelli told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on Readiness and Management in April 2009 that the Army would be unlikely to meet the needs of resting and retraining troops under the current pace of deployments: What has to change for us is the demand for forces. And right now, the demand for forces is as high as it’s ever been with our continued commitment to Iraq and the increase in Afghanistan. … To ensure our deployed and next-to-deploy forces maintain this high state of readiness, we have taxed our non-deployed forces and strategic programs for equipment and personnel. As a result, the majority of our non-deployed forces are reporting degraded readiness levels. (Carden 2009) Assistant Commandant General James Amos told the same Senate panel that the stretched situation also applies to the Marine Corps ground forces. It is unlikely, even while fighting two protracted wars at the outset of the twenty-first century, that the military manpower strategy will be drastically transformed. Although the military brass was initially skeptical of the movement from conscription to the AVF, they have now grown wedded to such a system, one that enables them to select from among the most qualified recruits (Bacevich 2008). For those who push for a draft on the moral grounds of more equitable distribution of service, it is worth noting that since three-quarters of the youth population currently fall outside the qualifications for military 15
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service, the draft would probably only create a more equitable distribution of service among those who actually meet the educational, health and wellness, and non-criminal activity standards. In addition, movement to national service or conscription would also likely bring more criticism about the military’s discriminatory practices regarding sexual orientation and the ban on women’s participation in combat roles. In his recently published polemic, historian and international relations expert Andrew Bacevich (2008) enumerated three major problems associated with operating an allvolunteer military, the first of which is embedded in General Chiarelli’s comments and illustrated in this chapter. Bacevich noted that an all-volunteer military “places a de facto cap on the army’s overall size” (2008: 138). There are only so many young citizens who are actually willing to serve in the military, and protracted wars deplete the pool of willing volunteers rather than enhance it. Second, an all-volunteer military is no longer an army of citizen soldiers, but a professional military that “has become an extension of the imperial presidency. The troops fight when and where the commander in chief determines” (p. 138). Last, the movement to an AVF essentially allows the vast majority of the American population to opt out of the responsibility of war. In essence, our nation has institutionalized sending other people’s children, husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters to fight on our behalf through either military service or civilian contracting. Although civilian contractors have been a part of American war since the Revolutionary War, the second half of the twentieth century involved increasing the privatization of several aspects of war (see chapter 12 in this volume; Lindemann 2007). Although increased privatization in Afghanistan and Iraq has brought with it a host of controversies and legal ambiguities surrounding the governance of civilian contractors (see Lindemann 2007), without these contractors, the military manpower policy of an AVF would be stretched even further to cover the work of the nearly 100,000 civilian contractors operating in Iraq (Merle 2006). Perhaps the answer to the strain placed on the AVF by two protracted wars is not increased privatization, conscription of additional troops, or national service of all young people. Instead, might the answer lie in rethinking an American foreign policy that so readily commits the AVF as a means to “solve” international conflicts? As Bacevich (2008) eloquently and unapologetically advocates: America doesn’t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller—that is, more modest— foreign policy, one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities. Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise. It also means reining in the imperial presidents who expect the army to make good on those illusions. When it comes to supporting the troops, here lies the essence of a citizen’s obligation. (p. 169) The viability of the AVF depends on the ability of our political leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflicts and to responsibly deploy troops for national security.
References Abrams, E. and Bacevich, A.J. (2001) “A symposium on citizenship and military service,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 31: 18–22.
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Alvarez, L. (2009) “Army data show rise in number of suicides,” The New York Times, 6 February, p. A12. Bacevich, A.J. (2008) The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, New York: Metropolitan Books. Bachman, J.G., Freedman-Doan, P., and O’Malley, P.M. (2001) “Should US military recruiters write off the college-bound?,” Armed Forces and Society, 27: 461–76. Bender, B. (2008) “Military scrambles to retain troops, interviews officers about incentives,” The Boston Globe, 7 March, p. A2. ——(2009) “Down economy boost military, enlistment figures spike,” The Boston Globe, 1 March, p. A1. Bicksler, B.A., and Nolan, L.G. (2006) “Recruiting an all-volunteer force: The need for sustained investment in recruiting resources,” Policy Perspectives, 1: 1–26. Binkin, M. (1993) Who Will Fight the Next War? The Changing Face of the American Military, Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Binkin, M., and Kaufmann, W.W. (1989) US Army Guard and Reserve: Rhetoric, Realities, Risks, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Booth, B., Segal, M.W., and Bell, D.B. (2007) What We Know about Army Families: 2007 Update, Fairfax, VA: Caliber. Online. Available http://www.army.mil/fmwrc/documents/research/whatwek now2007.pdf (accessed 18 September 2009). Bowman, T. (2009) “West Point revamps curriculum as threats change,” National Public Radio, 13 January. Online. Available http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99303154 (accessed 14 January 2009). Burk, J. (2001) “The military obligation of citizens since Vietnam,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 31: 48–60. Carden, M.J. (2009) “Army, marine corps juggle high demands for ground forces,” American Forces Press Service, 23 April. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54052 (accessed 2 May 2009). Chambers, J.W. (1987) To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America, New York: The Free Press. Cody, R.A. (2008) “On the readiness of the United States Army. Statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee,” 13 March. Online. Available http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2008/ April/Cody%2004–01–08.pdf (accessed 30 October 2008). Cohen, E.A. (2001) “Twilight of the citizen-soldier,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 31: 23–28. Crabtree, S. (2009) “Rangel to reintroduce military draft measure,” The Hill. 14 January. Online. Available http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/rangel-to-reintroduce-military-draft-measure-200901–14.html (accessed 14 May 2009). Dao, J. (2009) “US to give extra pay to troops held over.” The New York Times, 22, p. 26. Dempsey, L. (2008) “The military vs. wives,” The Washington Post, 19 February, p. A15. Department of Defense. (2008) “Remarks to the Heritage Foundation as delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates,” 13 May. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/ speech.aspx?speechid=1240 (accessed 30 October 2008). ——(2009) “DoD news briefing with Geoff Morell,” March 5, 2009. Online. Available http://www. defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4365 (accessed 1 May 2009). DeYoung, K. (2009) “Obama sets timetable for Iraq; Withdrawal is part of broader regional strategy, President says,” The Washington Post, 28 February, p. A1. Ender, M.G. (2009) American Soldiers in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? New York: Routledge. Gallup Organization. (2004). “Gallup poll social series – crime,” Survey conducted online. Available http://brain.gallup.com/ (accessed 2 July 2009). Garamone, J. (2009) “Gates hopes to increase ‘dwell time’ for troops,” American Forces Press Service, 10 February. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53037 (accessed 2 April 2009). Graham, H. (2009) “Chairman emphasizes need to ‘get it right’ for soldiers, families,” American Forces Press Service, 27 April. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx? id=53977 (accessed 2 May 2009).
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Griffith, J. (2005) “Will citizens be soldiers? Examining retention of reserve component soldiers,” Armed Forces and Society, 31: 353–83. Hosek, J., Kavanagh, J., and Miller, L. (2006) How Deployments Affect Service Members, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Kilburn, M.R. and Asch, B.J. (2003) Recruiting Youth in the College Market: Current Practices and Future Policy Options, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Kleykamp, M.A. (2006) “College, jobs, or the military? Enlistment during a time of war,” Social Science Quarterly, 87: 272–90. Lindemann, M. (2007) “Civilian contractors under military law,” Parameters: U.S. Army War College Quarterly, 37: 83–94. Lubold, G. (2009a) “To boost recruits, US Army relaxes weight rules. The waiver program allows overweight enlistees to get in shape after they sign up”, The Christian Science Monitor, 5 January. Online. Available http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2009/0105/p03s07-usmi.html (accessed 2 July 2009). ——(2009b) “Will improved military enlistment last? Retention rates may be hurt by the GI Bill’s expanded school benefits as well as potential budget cuts”, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 February. Online. Available http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2009/0209/p02s01-usmi.html (accessed 2 July 2009). Maxfield, B. D. (2008) The Changing Profile of the Army, FY 08, Washington, DC: Office of Army Demographics. Online. Available http://www.armyg1.army.mil/HR/docs/demographics/Changing %20Profile%20report%20December%202008.pdf (accessed 12 December 2009). Merle, R. (2006) “Census counts 100,000 contractors in Iraq,” The Washington Post, 5 December, p. D1. Miles, D. (2006) “Innovative programs help army maintain recruiting comeback,” American Forces Press Service, 10 January. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=14641 (accessed 17 August 2009). ——(2009) “Officials urge congress to protect recruiting, retention incentives,” American Forces Press Service, 3 March. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53310 (accessed 23 April 2009). Moskos, C.C. (1977) “From institution to occupation,” Armed Forces and Society, 4: 41–50. ——(1988) A Call to Civic Service: National Service for Country and Community, New York: The Free Press. ——(1991) “How do they do it? Why the military is the only truly integrated institution in America,” The New Republic, 5 August p.16–20. ——(2002) “Reviving the citizen-soldier,” The Public Interest, 147: 76–85. Moskos, C.C., and Wood, F.R. (eds) (1988) The Military: More than Just a Job?, Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s International Defense Publishers. Musheno, M. and Ross, S.M. (2008) Deployed: How Reservists Bear the Burden of Iraq, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Obama, B. (2008) Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plan for universal voluntary citizen service. Online. Available http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/NationalServicePlanFactSheet.pdf (accessed 23 October 2008). ——(2009) Remarks by the President in address to the nation on the way forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Washington, DC: The White House. Online. Available http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ remarks-by-the-president-on-a-new-strategy-for-afghanistan-and-pakistan/ (accessed 2 December 2009). O’Hanlon, M. (2004) “The need to increase the size of the deployable army,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 34: 4–17. Preston, J. (2009) “US Military will offer path to citizenship,” The New York Times, 15 February, p. A1. Quigley, S.L. (2009) “Chairman cites need for more ‘dwell time’ between deployments,” American Forces Press Service, 20 February. Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle. aspx?id=53164 (accessed 2 May 2009). Ricks, T.E. (2009) The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006– 2008, New York: Penguin Press. Rohall, D. E., Ender, M.G., and Matthews, M.D. (2006). “The effects of military affiliation, gender, and political ideology on attitudes toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Armed Forces & Society, 33: 59–77.
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Rostker, B. (2006) I Want You! The Evolution of the AVF, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Scott Tyson A. (2008a) “Military waivers for ex-convicts increase,” The Washington Post, 22 April p.A1. ——(2008b) “Deployments are a factor in army’s deficit of Majors: Service’s plan for growth also contributes to a gap that could take five years to close,” The Washington Post, 17 August, p. A4. ——(2009) “Army more selective as economy lags,” The Washington Post, 19 April, p. A6. Segal, D. R. (1989) Recruiting for Uncle Sam: Citizenship and Military Manpower Policy, Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. Segal, D.R., and Segal, M.W. (2004) “America’s military population,” Population Bulletin, 59: 3–42. Shanker, T. (2008) “Army is worried by rising stress of return tours to Iraq,” The New York Times, 6 April, p. A1. ——(2009) “‘Stop-loss’ will all but end by 2011, Gates says,” The New York Times, 18 March, p. A20. Sorley, L. (1991) “Creighton Abrams and active-reserve integration in wartime,” Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, 21: 35–50. Tanielian, T., and Jaycox, L.H. (eds) (2008) Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. United States Census Bureau. (2003) Special edition: US Armed Forces and Veterans. Online. Available http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/00 1630.html (accessed 30 April 2009). ——(2009) National Security and Veterans Affairs: Military Personnel and Expenditures. Online. Available http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/national_security_veterans_affairs/military_personnel _and_expenditures.html (accessed 14 September 2009). Vanden Brook, T. (2008) “Extended war tours likely to continue: Army plans to rely on policy through 2009,” USA Today, 27 October, p. A1. Wooten, E.M. (2005) “Banging on the backdraft door: The constitutional validity of stop-loss in the military,” William and Mary Law Review, 47: 1063–1107. Zoroya, G. (2009). “Jobless rate hits 11.2% for veterans: Poor market brings re-enlistment boost,” USA Today, 20–22 March, p. A1. Zweig, M. (2008) “The war and the working class,” The Nation, 286: 20–26.
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2 Fighting the irregular war in Afghanistan Success in combat; struggles in stabilization Brigid Myers Pavilonis
Nine days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in an address to the American Congress, US President George Bush demanded that Afghanistan’s Taliban government close all terrorist-based training camps and turn over all Al Qaeda leaders within its borders. President Bush also called for US access to all existing Al Qaeda bases. On that same day, President Bush declared a “war on terror.” Convinced of the direct link between Mullah Omar’s Taliban government and the 11 September attacks, President Bush waged the first “battle” of the American war against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban. Since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 until 11 September 2001, the US had suffered no direct attack on its homeland. But, unlike the attacks by Japanese warships in World War II (WWII), the enemy behind the 9/11 attacks was amorphous, hard to pinpoint, and, indeed, difficult to understand. The US military, well-practiced and comfortable at drafting war plans to face conventional forces, confronted an indistinct Afghan foe on an ill-defined battlefield. Arguably, plans for this unconventional war should have presented no challenge in the US for two main reasons. First, the US has a long history in asymmetric conflict, dating from the Philippine conflict in 1898, through Vietnam, to as recently as Somalia and Bosnia. Second, the US military is unrivaled in terms of technological capability and the size and quality of its fighting force. This chapter assesses US effectiveness in the “irregular war”1 in Afghanistan from October 2001 to 2009,2 and explores the difficulties encountered by the US military in fighting (and winning) the ongoing war.
Fighting the right enemy in the right way The US has the most powerful military in the world. Its technology is unparalleled and its military, in size and training, is unequaled. Despite these monumental advantages, the US has historically struggled to succeed in irregular war. The apparent disconnect between capability and performance seems to result from a traditional indifference toward irregular war. This underlying indifference, a pervasive attitude in war planning 20
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rooms and on the battlefield, may influence US effectiveness in preparing to fight irregular war. This chapter addresses two questions: first, did indifference toward irregular war, and the related preference for major combat, influence troop performance in Afghanistan? Second, how should the US reconstitute its doctrinal guidance on irregular war to effectively confront this problem in Afghanistan, and in future conflicts?
The US battle in Afghanistan: who fights and how? Even before President Bush took office in January 2001, he clearly stated his position: America’s military should be used to fight America’s wars. This conception of a narrowly defined role for the US military flows from the immortal words of General Douglas McArthur: “your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars” (McArthur, 1962). In 1973 American military historian and strategist Russell Weigley developed this idea in his famous work The American Way of War. He described the American military as being most adept and best-suited for major combat. Weigley argued primarily that America focuses and should focus on winning total wars; that limited wars, like Vietnam, which aim toward social and ideological outcomes, wrongly blur the ultimate purpose of war: military victory (Weigley 1973: ix–xv). In the early days of his presidency, President Bush echoed this idea in his statements indicating that US military force should be deployed only when absolutely necessary. In addition, when forces entered hostilities, the President was committed to limiting the soldier’s role to war-fighting. In an address on 7 October 2002, President Bush explained his rationale for war in Afghanistan and outlined his wartime objectives to the American people: the Taliban had not met his 20 September demands; therefore use of force was the only viable option. Consistent with a Weigley-style plan, the operation, titled “Enduring Freedom,” defined three limited and clear military objectives: to topple the Taliban, to destroy Al Qaeda, and to capture Osama bin Laden. The fundamental purpose of the war was to punish those who had made America suffer, and prevent a second Al Qaeda attack on the US (O’Hanlon 2004: 270). As the war dragged on, it became increasingly apparent that, in order to deny Al Qaeda’s resurgence, the US had to transform its solidly military approach to ensure that its second major goal (the denial of Al Qaeda’s resurgence) could be achieved. Throughout 2002–03, the US increasingly recognized the need for an effective stabilization effort, because its success was essential to creating an environment within which Al Qaeda would find it difficult to rebuild. Therefore, the critical issue for this chapter is to outline how US forces should deal with the stabilization effort. What was, or should have been, America’s role in Afghanistan after the Taliban fell? In addition, I consider whether the overthrow of the Taliban, in and of itself, creates a sufficient condition to bar the re-emergence of Al Qaeda. If it is necessary to rebuild in order to achieve the stability the US sought, why then did the US struggle in the post-combat phase? Were troops averse to stability missions? And, perhaps most importantly, how can the US ultimately “win the peace?” Operation Enduring Freedom: a successful combat operation Immediately following the 7 October address in which President Bush stated his wartime objectives, the US launched Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Within 3 weeks of 21
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the operation’s start, US forces destroyed nearly all Taliban air defenses, which led to the fall of the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif. By mid-December, special operations forces, alongside Afghan opposition fighters, quelled the residual insurgencies in the Tora Bora Mountains. On 22 December 2002, Hamid Karzai was installed as leader of the interim Government of Afghanistan (GOA) (US Army Center of Military History 2003). In 2 short months, the US swiftly achieved its military objectives and laid the groundwork for the nascent Afghan state. Despite immediate success in combat operations, nearly a decade later, the US still cannot claim a solid victory. Quite the contrary, extensive work remains, and that work focuses on the constitution of a successful stabilization mission. Simply put, to stave off the rebirth of Al Qaeda (thereby achieving its own stated pre-war goals) the US must assist in the creation of a legitimate political authority in Afghanistan (Crane 2005: 27). This chapter now turns to an exploration of the post-combat phase to determine its effectiveness in achieving US national security objectives. The uneasy transition to phase IV In stating the initial goals of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued that in addition to toppling the Taliban and routing Al Qaeda, US military forces would assist in alleviating the internal Afghan humanitarian crisis. Despite this comment, however, the war plans offered scanty direction for the reconstruction phase of the operation (Carothers 2003: 84). Discussions of reconstruction were excluded for two main reasons: the Bush administration’s focus centered on attaining combat victory; and stability operations were considered of secondary importance and treated as if they were not integral to the war itself. In the weeks between the 9/11 attacks and the US’s retaliatory attack against Al Qaeda, planning for the war operation centered on the combat mission. At the outset, the US made no definitive plans for stabilizing Afghanistan. In part, this lack of planning was due to failures in process. The Department of Defense was almost wholly responsible for drafting OEF, with little input from other governmental agencies. OEF was primarily an aerial campaign, with scant focus on the stabilization mission. Because of the few number of “boots on the ground,” American presence was insufficient in jumpstarting the complex rebuilding process. As a result, America relied heavily on its Northern Alliance partners to rebuild Afghanistan. This Afghan force was mainly composed of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek fighters, who were physically present in large numbers when Kabul collapsed. These prominent Northern Alliance fighters emerged in positions of leadership in the newly recreated Afghan state (Vaishnav 2004: 249). Unsurprisingly, some of the early troubles associated with the legitimacy of President Karzai’s government had to do with perceptions of political imbalance in Kabul, with many Pashtus questioning fair representation in the new state. Finally, policy-makers misunderstood the stabilization phase as occurring after the combat phase had ended. To be effective, combat and stabilization phases must happen concurrently. At the outset of the war, immediate goals had to center on winning battles, but some attention should have been paid to stabilization – even while bullets were still flying. As was the case in WWII when President Roosevelt met other allied leaders before the end of the war to discuss the peace, American policy-makers should have entertained more vigorous discussions in the fall of 2001 about the stabilization of Afghanistan. 22
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Stabilization is often viewed as “phase IV” and occurring after “phase III combat,” in part because stabilization operations are often referred to as “post-conflict operations.” This term contradicts the idea that stabilization and combat must occur concurrently, not sequentially. As military strategist and former US Army Colonel Joseph Collins observes, “in [Afghanistan], conventional war A was followed immediately by unconventional war B. In turn, war B, was complicated by the need to conduct simultaneous stabilization and reconstruction activities” (Collins 2006: 47). In other words, the US was challenged not only by a shift from combat to stabilization, but also by a shift from regular conventional combat to irregular combat. The transition proved difficult, but it should have been quite predictable – if pre-war planning were done properly. In sum, stability operations must always be understood against the backdrop of the ultimate purpose of the war, which is generally stabilization. If stabilization is necessary, then policy-makers must plan for it and understand two basic factors: first, the need for early planning is crucial, particularly if the combat operation is expected to end quickly; second, policy-makers must accept that combat and stabilization must move forward together; the success of one is directly related to the success of the other. Although America’s planning for stabilization was limited, eventually the US recognized the need for a stabilization plan and, with the help of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reinvested in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
The reconstruction mission: America as a reluctant leader In the early days of OEF, NATO offered military assistance to the US. The US rejected these NATO offers, preferring to act with complete autonomy in Afghanistan. Simply put, US policy-makers demanded that Washington not Brussels lead in combat. As the war progressed and combat operations drew to a close, Washington policy-makers gradually became more willing to accept the NATO offer (Perito 2005: 3). Partially due to the mounting pressures caused by the Iraq operation, Washington policy-makers ultimately agreed to incorporate NATO into the formerly US-led operation. In August 2003, the US agreed to a United Nations-established and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) “to support the Government of Afghanistan in providing and maintaining a secure environment in order to facilitate the rebuilding of Afghanistan.”3 The shift in the American position grew largely from a desire to expand resources committed to the operation, and as the US military resources were increasingly being drawn to Iraq, NATO was clearly viewed as a way of enlarging a Western footprint in Afghanistan. Despite US recognition of NATO as a force multiplier, the US had reservations about how extensively NATO should assume a leadership role. US policy-makers began searching for an alternate method to secure the Afghan countryside (Valasek 2001: 19). The answer came in the form of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).4 This new approach to traditional peacekeeping was a “cross between military-led stability operations and civilian led-reconstruction activities,” in that PRTs took responsibility for security, public safety issues, and infrastructure rebuilding. PRTs have emerged as an important tool in the stabilization mission, as they assist ISAF and the GOA as well as provide the backbone of the reconstruction effort. PRTs, however, face three major issues that hamper their ability to function effectively: first, as an operational unit, they lack a clear mandate and unified chain of 23
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command; second, the interagency nature of the team creates an uneasy relationship between civilian and military members; finally, PRTs are underfunded and underresourced, particularly by civilian agencies (McNerney 2005: 37). Undergirding these critical problems is that the military, although they are assigned leadership for the PRTs, generally prefers major combat to non-traditional missions like those assigned to these hybrid teams. The next section of this chapter analyzes the challenges experienced by PRTs and offers some guidance on how to overcome these hurdles. First, PRTs are often ineffective because they lack a unified command concept. Although all PRTs are charged with “extend[ing] the authority of the [Afghan] central government into the provinces” (Jones and Pickering 2008: 22) methods, strategies, and focus vary widely depending on the location and leadership of the team. At the outset, the tremendous flexibility for PRT commanders to individually determine their team’s focus was the strength of the concept. It allowed for a PRT in Kandahar, which had significant Taliban activity to fortify its counterinsurgency efforts, whereas the German PRT in Kunduz could direct its efforts toward economic recovery. Armed with this flexibility, individual PRT commanders displayed boundless innovation in addressing the needs and problems in their operational areas (Maloney 2005: 240). This type of malleable approach, however, presents some significant drawbacks, because an individual PRT commander might not fully grasp local struggles or overlook national policy goals. For instance, a PRT building a new school might miscalculate the tribal government’s ability to staff the school. Even more problematic, the PRT might inadvertently design an approach to education that controverts the national standards developed by the GOA Ministry of Education (USAID 2006: 9). These types of problems, however, are representative of a deeper, endemic issue with the PRT concept: effective civil–military relations. Second, PRT commanders face a constant challenge in establishing positive relationships between the military and civilian team components. A major problem in the civil– military relationship flows largely from a belief on the part of many in the humanitarian community that the military should not engage in development and relief work. Nongovernmental humanitarian agencies (NGHA) cite several reasons for their objection to the military’s involvement in such efforts. First, military professionals acting in a relief capacity can create confusion among local populations, who perceive all relief workers as subordinate to military authority and thus responsible for problems in both development and security (Sedra 2006: 101). In addition, the humanitarian community is skeptical of the military’s motivation for acting in “humanitarian space.” Principally, this is an issue of ideology, as NGHAs perceive themselves as altruistic, whereas the military is fundamentally driven by a desire to achieve national security objectives. Aid, according to the humanitarian community, is best provided with “no strings attached” (Borders 2004: 5). The humanitarian community’s deeply embedded concerns about the military acting in a relief capacity present a significant challenge to the effectiveness of PRTs, as these unnatural partners joined by fiat have distinctly different views of their own roles and their perceptions of the other’s. Third, civilian agencies assigned to PRTs are severely underfunded and underresourced, which hampers their ability to serve as part of the team. Often the civilian members of the PRT, designated as State, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) representatives, arrive in-country with little training and limited familiarity with military procedures, structure, or protocol. Worse, civilian positions frequently go vacant because the 24
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host agency lacks sufficient personnel for proper staffing (Hernandorena 2006: 147). In addition, the unfilled civilian positions create a more military-centric team that risks misunderstanding issues that development and relief experts would more easily solve. Clearly budgetary issues are a national challenge, but without proper resources, the PRTs are limited in their ability to successfully carry out their mission. One of the major limiting factors in PRT effectiveness is that the US military is performing a non-combat function, and many American soldiers and civilians simply reject a humanitarian role for the military (Shannon 2009: 16). This perception is problematic, short-sighted, and naive. Although the US military may not be the best agency for humanitarian work, their presence in post-combat states remains absolutely necessary. The military must be part of any stabilization mission because of its two-pronged objective: to guarantee security and deliver humanitarian support. The bottom line is that without security, humanitarian work is impossible. In short, the US military must be present in post-combat regions as guarantors of security. Capt. (Sel.) Jason Burke, Commanding Officer of the PRT in Ghazni from 2007 to 2008, makes the prescient observation that the “security and stabilization missions are intertwined … and the biggest risk [of failure for the operation] is complacency among our security forces” (Burke 2007). In other words, the humanitarian mission cannot succeed without requisite security; therefore the military must accept and be accepted as playing a critical role in the stabilization and reconstruction operation. Overall mission success depends on it. Fortunately, American policy-makers, and a growing number of military professionals, are taking note of the strategic value of PRTs and have stepped up efforts to improve training and provide the proper resourcing that they deserve. In a 2007 meeting with PRT leaders, President Bush declared their work as vital, explaining that “the job at hand is to help these folks recover, help the Afghans realize there’s a better future for them. And it’s hard work, but it’s necessary work for the security of our country” (Bush 2008). Although US policy-makers appear to gradually recognize and respond to issues related to the stabilization of Afghanistan, another major external factor confounds operational success: Pakistan.
Pakistan’s influence on Afghan security The US military performed spectacularly in its combat operation in Afghanistan. It toppled the Taliban, disrupted Al Qaeda, and installed an interim leader. All of this was accomplished in 2 short months. Despite these early gains, the US has experienced significant setbacks with the reconstruction effort. One of the US’s major problems in achieving success is Afghanistan’s neighbor to the east. The Afghanistan–Pakistan border is porous, which means that the achievement of an American combat victory did not translate into the disbandment of the Taliban. The Taliban did not collapse. They relocated. Taliban members found sanctuary with sympathizers living in the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) in Pakistan. These primarily ethnic Pashtu people along the 1500-mile Afghan border support resistance movements against the US-backed Karzai government. In 2006, General James Jones, then-Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that it was “generally accepted” that the Taliban was headquartered in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province (Bergen 2007). 25
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According to Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, Head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism research in Singapore, “FATA has become a sanctuary for research and development in explosives, training and directing global operations … As long as FATA is a sanctuary the incessant attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan will not stop” (Gunaratna and Bukhari 2008). Human Rights Watch reports that as many as 30 trucks cross from Pakistan each day carrying ammunition, fuel, rocket-propelled grenades, and artillery shells (Human Rights Watch 2001). Although it is unclear whether Pakistan does not (or simply cannot) control Pakistan’s northwest regions, it is clear that support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda is largely financed and supported by Pakistan. In addition to supplies moving into Afghanistan, the porous border also allows easy movement out of Afghanistan. During OEF, US troops found that Afghan resistance fighters could easily escape after battle by melting into the mountainsides or by slipping across the border into Pakistan. Some skeptics of the American war even argue that the fighting in Tora Bora was orchestrated by the Afghan resistance as a way to distract the Americans and give their brothers-in-arms a chance to regroup, rearm, and get away (Anonymous 2004: 65). In short, the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan causes a critical problem for the reconstruction effort, as the northwestern region of Pakistan has become a sanctuary for those supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan. To stabilize Afghanistan and jumpstart a meaningful rebuilding of the state, the US must look first at controlling movement along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border.
The way forward: stability, security, and success OEF was a resounding success on the battlefield. The US achieved its combat goals quickly and thoroughly, but the stabilization mission is yet incomplete. Insurgent activity persists in Afghanistan, and the Karzai government remains fragile. For the US to achieve its national security objectives in Afghanistan and ultimately “win the peace,” it must focus on three factors: first, the US military must fully accept responsibility for the Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR)5 mission and embrace the notion of an interagency approach; second, PRTs, as an integral part of security, must be properly funded and resourced; and, finally, the US must develop an effective approach for dealing with Pakistan in pursuit of its national security goals. The final section of this paper will address each of these issues as the impetus for the way forward in Afghanistan. The first step to achieving American national security objectives in Afghanistan is for US forces to accept responsibility for SSTR, and learn how to effectively perform these operations. The good news is that the US military is keenly aware of the need to accommodate these emergent mission requirements, and has redirected its efforts toward SSTR. Thus, military journals abound with discussions of counterinsurgency operations. The US Army has established a special training division in Fort Bragg, NC to prepare forces for stabilization work. The newly released Counterinsurgency Manual details how the US Army should prepare for this important mission. Despite these important first steps, writing or training alone will not accomplish the job. Indeed, the change in focus toward counterinsurgency requires a “seismic culture shift” by US forces. This change is possible, but will undoubtedly be slow as soldiers gradually relinquish their traditional preferences (Donnelley 2008: 252). Those concerned, however, about the American military’s willingness to depart from an American 26
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Way of War should be heartened by the US experience in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. Commanding Officer of Combined Forces Afghanistan (CFC-A), General David Barno is often heralded as a visionary in the realm of stability operations. When asked why he thought CFC-A experienced such great success in the early days of OEF, he cited the command’s forward-thinking approach, wherein his soldiers took responsibility for security maintenance, the presidential election, economic initiatives, and humanitarian assistance (Barno 2008). General Barno also gives significant credit for the success of CFC-A to the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, with whom he worked to draft Afghanistan’s constitution, run free and fair elections, and organize the first meeting of Afghanistan’s parliament, the Loya Jirga. It is precisely this relationship, which General Barno nurtured and developed, that inspired trust among the locals and encouraged a solid working partnership among the various agencies of the US government. In short, this solid partnership served as one of the key factors in creating a stable Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. Unfortunately, however, the Department of Defense–Department of State (DoD–DoS) partnership faded, as leaders changed out, ISAF stood up, and the situation on the ground shifted. Ultimately, strong relationships among military and civilian leaders are not guaranteed; rather they are largely based on the personalities of the individuals involved. Because a favorable mix of personalities is not always guaranteed and natural partnerships do not always emerge, policy-makers must institutionalize relationships between communities. One way to begin is at the highest levels of the government. The construction of a “Goldwater-Nichols-style,” interagency policy, which mandates a civil– military partnership and incorporates the two communities, provides one answer. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is engaged in a multiyear study to examine this issue and presciently observes that “achieving greater unity of effort across [the US government] requires institutionalizing standard ways of doing business, particularly in planning and conducting interagency operations” (Murdock et al. 2005: 44). In other words, the establishment of an institutionalized interagency approach will mandate partnerships between communities. Although volitional partnerships would obviously be most fruitful, instituted relationship will ensure consultation, which may even develop into mutual respect. The CSIS report’s recommendations are encouraging, but most promising is that the CSIS study has generated Congressional-level interest, which has the potential to deliver results in the form of funding. The second major factor influencing a successful outcome in Afghanistan is the need to capitalize on the structure and success wrought by the PRTs. Although it has been difficult to quantify their exact contribution, PRT representatives often measure their success by “the number of smiling Afghan children” (McNerney 2005: 42). While US policy clearly cannot be substantiated by the apparent happiness of Afghanistan’s young people, it is an important indicator of the intangible benefit that PRTs bring. After nearly a decade-long military presence in Afghanistan, many locals perceive US forces as an occupying force; the US must use PRTs to debunk that perception. For PRTs to fully succeed, US policy-makers must undertake several major reforms. First, Congress must properly resource these projects so that all agencies can effectively participate. In addition, US policy-makers must designate the PRTs’ purpose as a mechanism for bridging the gap between a clear-cut military operation and a humanitarian, development mission. Designed as a device to win the “hearts and minds” in a 27
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marginally secure environment, PRTs are uniquely positioned to achieve that stated purpose. As the CSIS report “Beyond Goldwater-Nichols” found, US policy-makers must confront the cultural divide between civilian and military communities and encourage the surrender of age-old stereotypes: the civilian community as undependable and the military as unconcerned for the locals and motivated by selfish desires. In sum, strong partnerships within the US government and increased focus on PRTs are fundamental keys to success. PRTs are a vital part of Afghan stabilization in part because they focus on the “humanitarian” piece of the stabilization mission. Yet, while feeding the hungry and rebuilding broken infrastructure is critical, those tasks cannot occur without security. In the last 3 years, security in Afghanistan has been tenuous, delegitimizing the accomplishments of PRTs and in some cases reversing the good that has been done. In early 2009, President Obama announced the deployment of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan; later that fall, he committed an additional 30,000 troops to the region. President Obama justified his decision by arguing that Afghanistan warrants strategic attention and the additional troops will “meet urgent security needs.” This troop deployment, or “Afghan surge,” was an important first step, as Afghanistan’s stability depends on having sufficient “boots on the ground” to partner effectively with regional allies and work with multinational forces. The final recommendation related to America’s progress in Afghanistan focuses on revamping its strategic partnership with Pakistan. It is no secret that America’s tricky relationship with Pakistan complicates the stabilization effort in Afghanistan. To be sure, America has dramatically altered its relationship with Pakistan since 9/11. In 2009, Pakistan is included on State Department lists as a “major non-NATO ally,” and according to a 2004 Congressional Research Service Report, Pakistan received over $3.9 billion dollars in foreign aid in recognition of its role as a “key front-line state in the war against terror.”6 Arguably, the funding is intended to improve Islamabad’s ability to control FATA and deny Taliban sanctuary through a strengthening of its internal forces. The title of “ally” and increased aid is offered as assurance that the US values the partnership. Despite American overtures, Pakistan remains skeptical of US interest. Pakistan perceives the “Afghan troop surge” as an American attempt to establish a long-term presence in Central Asia, where America can partner with India and strangle Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear power (Markey 2007). In short, Pakistan does not fully trust the US. The lack of trust is reciprocal as the US remains concerned about Pakistan’s candor and devotion to management of its northwestern territory (Rubin and Rashid 2008). To get past this underlying skepticism, America should adopt a holistic approach to solving the problem. The Obama administration has made moves in this direction. President Obama’s appointment of Richard Holbrooke as Ambassador to Central Asia is an indicator that the administration favors a comprehensive approach to regional problems. Furthermore, because of Holbrooke’s past record in complex conflict, his selection indicates seriousness in solving the problem in Central Asia. These changes offer promise to those who understand that the stabilization of Afghanistan depends on larger Central Asian regional stability. In sum, the US has the ability to stabilize Afghanistan by devising an approach that recognizes regional realities and confronts current challenges. First, troops are needed in sufficient numbers, and these troops must be well trained and appropriately stationed. Second, America needs to remain devoted to a policy that recognizes Afghanistan as one tile in a complex mosaic. By holistically thinking about Afghanistan’s geostrategic positions and broadly conceiving the stabilization operation, America can succeed in Afghanistan. 28
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Conclusion Despite the global reach of the US and its unparalleled power, America struggles to succeed in winning irregular wars. This difficulty emanates from the traditional preference for an American Way of War: one that prepares troops for conventional conflict and conflates wartime success with battle victories. I argue that this limited view has restricted America’s ability to stabilize Afghanistan, because planning for the “post-conflict operation” was insufficient, and American troops had traditionally preferred major combat to humanitarian/development-oriented missions. The US needs to move beyond these entrenched beliefs, and, indeed, evidence suggests that America is moving in the right direction. But as this chapter suggests more needs to be done to capitalize on these initial steps. The US must (1) fully accept stabilization as a key part of the Afghan operation, (2) fortify the PRT concept, and (3) capitalize on regional and allied partnerships. The bottom line is that the US must “get it right” in Afghanistan, not only for the purposes of stabilizing Central Asia, but also to ensure its own security. Flourishing insurgencies cause regional destabilization and provide a seedbed for terrorists, narcotraffickers, and piracy. These transborder threats represent some of the greatest challenges to US national security in the twenty-first century. Allowing these problems to fester and erupt is simply a risk that the US cannot take.
Disclaimer The views express herein are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Coast Guard or the US Coast Guard Academy.
Notes 1 Although scholars disagree on terminology, for the purposes of this chapter I will use the phrase “irregular warfare” to describe the operation in Afghanistan. For an informed discussion of the definitional challenges associated with the term “irregular warfare” see the DoD Special Study on Irregular Warfare conducted by US Joint Forces Command. See http://www.smallwars.quantico. usmc.mil/search/Papers/Irreg%20Warfare%20Special%20Study.pdf (accessed 10 March 2008). 2 After nearly a decade-long operation in Afghanistan, the US has experienced tremendous difficulty in quelling the pervasive influence of the Taliban, seemingly unending civil unrest, and a general unwillingness to take direction from a central authority in Kabul. Ann Scott Tyson. “US Learned its Lesson, US won’t abandon Afghanistan Again, Gates Says.” Washington Post. 9 September 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/08/AR2009090802802.html (accessed 17 December 2009). 3 This mission purpose language was drawn from the NATO, Allied Joint Force Command Brunnsom, Netherlands cite. http://www.afnorth.nato.int/ISAF/mission/mission_role.htm (accessed 17 December 2009.) 4 American PRTs typically comprise 60–100 personnel from military and civilian communities. Roughly half of the military personnel assigned to PRTs specialize in force protection, whereas the remaining soldiers are drawn from the civil affairs and administrative specialties. The civilian personnel assigned to PRTs generally include representatives from the Department of State, USAID, and USDA. There is usually an Afghan representative from the Ministry of Interior. Information drawn from “USG Provincial Planning and Operations” briefing to PRT Commanders. Fort Bragg, NC, 9 December 2007. 5 SSTR are defined “as a core mission that the US Department of Defense should be ready to conduct and support. … [SSTRs] are conducted to establish order and advance US interests and values.
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The immediate goal is to provide the local populace with security, restore essential services and meet humanitarian needs.” Defense Department Directive 3000.05, “Military Support to Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction Missions.” Washington, DC, 28 November 2005. http:// www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300005p.pdf (accessed 18 March 2008) 6 Of particular note, in 1994, Pakistan was not included on the list of those states receiving aid, supporting the notion that 9/11 caused the US to rethink aid to its newest allies in the War on Terror. Curt Turnoff and Larry Nowles. “US Foreign Aid: An introductory overview of US Programs and Policies.” CRS Report. Congressional Research Service. Washington, DC, 2004. http://fpc.state. gov/documents/organization/31987.pdf (accessed 18 March 2008).
References Anomynous (2004) Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s. Barno, General David, USA (Retired) (2008) Commanding Officer, Combined Forces Afghanistan, July 2003–July 2005. Interview with the author, 15 February. Bergen, P. (2007) Testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. 15 February. Online. Available http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/ber021507.htm (accessed 20 March 2008). Borders, R. (2004) “Provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan: A model for post-conflict reconstruction and development,” Journal of Development and Social Transformation, 1 November. Online. Available http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/moynihan/programs/dev/pdfs/borders1.pdf (accessed 21 March 2008). Burke, Jason. (2007) United States Navy. Commanding Officer, Provincial Reconstruction Team, Ghazni, Afghanistan. Interview with the author, 20 December. Bush, George. (2008) Presidential Address to a Joint Session of Congress. (20 September 2001) http:// www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2001/09/mil-010920-usia01.htm (accessed 20 March). Carothers, T. (2003) “Promoting democracy and fighting terror,” Foreign Affairs, 82: 84–97. Collins, J. (2006) “Planning lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq,” Joint Force Quarterly, 41: 10–14. Crane, C. (2005) “Phase IV operations: Where wars are really won,” Military Review 85: 27–36. Donnelley, J. (2008) “Small Wars, Big Changes,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly, January 28. Gunaratna, Rohan and Bukhari, Syed Adnan Ali Shah (2008) “Making Peace with Pakistani Taliban to Isolate Al-Qaeda.” Peace and Security Review, 1–25. Gurr, T.R. (2002) “Containing internal war in the twenty-first century,” in F. O. Hampson and D.M. Malone (eds), From Reaction to Conflict Prevention: Opportunities for the UN System, Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers: 41–62. Hernandorena, C. (2006) “US provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan, 2003–6: Obstacles to interagency cooperation,” in J. Cerami and J. Boggs (eds), The Interagency and Counterinsurgency Warfare: Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction Roles, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute: 121–70. Human Rights Watch. (2001) “Afghanistan crisis of impunity: The role of Pakistan, Russia, and Iran in fueling the civil war.” 13 July. Online. Available http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/index. htm#TopOfPage (accessed 18 March 2008). Jones, J.L. and Pickering, T. (2008) Afghanistan Study Group Report: Revitalizing Our Efforts, Rethinking Our Strategies. Washington, DC: Center for the Study of the Presidency. Maloney, S.M. (2005) “Afghanistan four years on: An assessment,” Parameters, 35: 4–15. Markey, D. (2007) “A false choice in Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, 86: 85–102. McArthur, D. (1962) “Duty Honor, Country.” Online. http://www.west-point.org/real/mcarthur_address. html (accessed 12 March 2008). McNerney, M. (2005) “Stabilization and reconstruction in Afghanistan: Are PRT’s a model or a muddle?” Parameters, 35: 32–46. Murdock, C.A., Flournoy, M. A., Campbell, K.M. et al. (2005) Beyond Goldwater Nichols: Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era. July. Online. Available http://csis.org/publication/beyond-goldwaternichols-phase-ii-report (accessed 10 March 2008).
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O’Hanlon, M.E. (2004) “The Afghani War: A Flawed Masterpiece.” The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Perito, R. (2005) “The US experience with provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan: lessons identified,” Special Report No. 15., October. Washington, DC: The United States Institute of Peace. Rubin, B. and Rashid, A. (2008) “From great game to grand bargain: Ending chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, 87: 30–44. Rumsfeld, D. (2002) “Transforming the military,” Foreign Affairs, 81: 20–32. Sedra, M. (2006) “Security sector reform in Afghanistan: The slide toward expediency,” International Peacekeeping, 13: 94–110. Shannon, R. (2009) “Playing with principles in an era of securitized aid: Negotiating humanitarian space in post-9/11 Afghanistan,” Progress in Development Studies, 9: 15–36. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (2006) “Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan: an Interagency Assessment,” June. Online. Available http://pdf.dec.org/pdf_docs/ Pnadg252.pdf (accessed 12 March 2008). U.S. Army Center of Military History (2003) “Operation Enduring Freedom: October 2001–March 2002.” Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History. Vaishnav, M. (2004) “Afghanistan: The chimera of the light footprint,” in R. Orr (ed.), Winning the Peace: An American Strategy for Post-Conflict. Washington, DC: The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Valasek, T. (2001) “The fight against terrorism: Where’s NATO?” World Policy Journal, 18: 19–25. Weigley, R. (1973) The American Way of War: A History of United States Military, Strategy, and Policy, New York: McMillan Publishing.
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3 Learning the lessons of counterinsurgency Ian Roxborough
Although the long-term outcome of the present conflict in Iraq may be difficult to foresee, it seems clear that initial US efforts to cope with the insurgencies in that country have followed a predictable course. American forces initially focused on overthrowing the existing regime, and accomplished this successfully. They were, however, largely unprepared for the support and stability operations, and then the counterinsurgency, that were to follow. There were several reasons for this, not least the hubris of the top civilian policy-makers, who believed that the invasion of Iraq would be a repeat of the liberation of France in 1944, with a rapid and unproblematic transition to democracy. In this article, I focus on one thread in a complicated story: the role of US military doctrine in explaining the approach to counterinsurgency adopted in Iraq. After 9/11, the American military found itself engaged in not one, but two, major counterinsurgencies as well as in a number of smaller operations around the globe. To make matters worse, several analysts had come to the conclusion that the global war on terror would be a protracted war, lasting decades, and would entail what military strategists increasingly came to call “global counterinsurgency” (Morris 2005; Hammes 2004). This definition of the strategic environment foresaw counterinsurgency as the principal task of military land forces for decades to come. Counterinsurgency is a difficult, and poorly understood, business. The intrinsic difficulties facing a counterinsurgent are compounded by a generally inadequate understanding, on the part of academic theorists and military practitioners, of the dynamics of insurgency and counterinsurgency. There is, at best, a list of “best practices” (Cohen et al. 2006; Sepp 2005). Military practitioners are, therefore, largely groping in the dark. Counterinsurgency is a time-consuming and difficult process, with no guarantee of success. The procedures of counterinsurgency run against the grain of “standard” military practices and thinking: it is seen as something different from “war,” which is taken to be the “real” concern of military organizations. As a result, expertise in counterinsurgency is often restricted to a small handful of officers, whereas the larger institutional military is generally reluctant to embrace the methods required for successful counterinsurgency. In short, organizational identity militates against organizational learning. 32
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Insurgencies can be and have been defeated. But success is most frequently a result of a combination of sustained effort, trial, and error, with a heavy admixture of luck, rather than the application of a well-understood analysis of the dynamics of insurgency and counterinsurgency. When US forces invaded Iraq in 2003, counterinsurgency thinking was an institutional orphan in the US armed forces and the lessons of previous conflicts had not been thoroughly assimilated throughout the military. Only a handful of experts in the military knew much about (or were interested in) counterinsurgency. Thus, the initial phases of US counterinsurgency operations relied on the default military response (the “kinetic” approach) to treat the insurgents as an opposing military force to be destroyed by firepower. Only later did US military forces grapple seriously with the specific demands of counterinsurgency. The unpreparedness of the US military for counterinsurgency was intellectual as well as organizational. Consequently, the conceptual ambiguities and debates that had characterized much of counterinsurgency thinking in the 1960s were reproduced, with similar negative results. This delay in coming to terms with the insurgency has had deleterious consequences. There are deeply rooted organizational reasons (largely having to do with issues of organizational identity and self-definition) why the US military finds it difficult to learn from its many previous experiences in counterinsurgency. Partly because of this, lessons that are learned are often mistaken or inapplicable. Only after the shock of finding that standard operating procedures do not suffice for counterinsurgency has the US military attempted to learn how to conduct counterinsurgency more effectively. Because there has been little incentive to institutionalize these lessons, they have never been properly diffused; each time the US military has confronted an insurgency, it has had to rediscover counterinsurgency theory ab initio. One is naturally led to ask whether the current relearning of counterinsurgency in Iraq will prove as ephemeral as previous cases.
Central theoretical issues in counterinsurgency There are five central, unresolved issues in counterinsurgency theory. The first is the relationship between the kinetic activity of military organizations and the political goals of counterinsurgency. The second concerns the weight to be attached to the struggle for the “hearts and minds” of the population. The third is the role of coercion and population control in defeating an insurgency. The fourth area of debate concerns how best to cope with the fact that counterinsurgency operations are protracted and highly political. Finally, the difficulties of controlling various kinds of security forces and militias are poorly addressed by counterinsurgency theory. From kinetics to politics The standard operating procedure is to focus on the kinetic task of killing and defeating the insurgents: the “iron fist” approach to counterinsurgency. This orientation is almost always counterproductive. Brute force operations alienate local populations and generate more recruits for the insurgents (e.g. US Army 2004: 2–13). Whether or not this matters depends on the kind and degree of legitimacy required to suppress the insurgency, and on the degree of population control exerted by either side (Kalyvas 2006). 33
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There was considerable variation in how different military units approached the task of occupying Iraq in 2003. With some exceptions (i.e. the 1st Marine Division, the 101st Airborne, and Special Forces), early efforts at counterinsurgency in Iraq by the US Army relied heavily on the iron fist approach. Some of these early military efforts in Iraq (like the vast sweep operations) may well have been counterproductive. No one takes kindly to having their homes burst into by heavily armed soldiers, particularly when they are culturally different and do not speak the local language. For many Iraqis, whatever benefits the American occupation may have brought, it also brought with it massive and often arbitrary violence, on the roads, at checkpoints, in prisons, and in homes. Whereas the revelations of abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison may have come as a shock to Americans, it simply confirmed what many Iraqis already knew or suspected. The US Army at the time of the Abu Ghraib abuses had come to understand that its intelligence on the insurgency was inadequate. It recognized that it was up against a serious enemy, but had no clear idea about the identity of this enemy. In response to the absence of good intelligence, in late summer and early fall of 2003 the US Army decided to “fight for intelligence” by initiating a series of offensive sweeps. Thousands of Iraqis were pulled into the net; somehow or other actionable intelligence was to be extracted from them. The intelligence and custodial services were simply not up to the task: facilities were overloaded, and military police were poorly trained and inadequately supervised. This was a classic instance of counterinsurgent forces slipping out of control, in this case stimulated by pressures from top commanders to develop better intelligence on a determined and poorly understood opponent. By 2005, many US military units had learned a lot and had greatly modified their tactics in Iraq. But by then the question had arisen of whether it was too late to suppress the insurgency. Hearts and minds? It is often said that counterinsurgency is a struggle for the “hearts and minds” of the population. This intuitively appealing slogan turns out, on closer examination to have various possible meanings, and policies designed to win hearts and minds turn out to be difficult to design and implement. Classic counterinsurgency thinking conformed to the “triangular” model: there were only two contending forces (government and the insurgency) and a third, largely inert, population whose allegiance was the object of struggle. The conflict in Iraq was not like this. There were many contending forces, few of which were “controlled” in any meaningful sense by the leadership of either the insurgents or the Iraqi government. This was not something that counterinsurgency thinkers properly understood, with their more or less explicit contrast between “insurgency” and “civil war.” The complex and hybrid nature of the Iraqi conflict was something for which they were intellectually unprepared. In the absence of solid social science knowledge, there has been a lack of careful discussion, and the substitution of “common sense” for analytic thinking. This kind of approach to winning hearts and minds is well illustrated by injunctions in the Marine Corps manual (published in 1980 but still current in 2006) and in the Army’s 2004 interim counterinsurgency manual, rushed into print during the current conflict in Iraq. Treating the population with “respect, tolerance, kindness, and understanding” (US Marine Corps 1980: 135) is an entirely laudable objective. But it is, at most, a necessary 34
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rather than a sufficient condition for the suppression of an insurgency. Further, the notion that improvements to the material standards of living of the population will win hearts and minds (US Army 2004: c-3) is an unexamined and frequently mistaken assumption; instead of simply improving conditions, rewards should be contingent upon government success (see Race 1972). Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, American counterinsurgency, in theory and in practice, continues to operate on the assumption that improvements in material conditions are the key to winning hearts and minds. Throughout the conflict in Iraq, American policy-makers have worried about the delivery of services to the Iraqi population: electricity, security, jobs, construction, etc. The general climate of insecurity, together with poor planning and implementation, has meant that much of this effort has been futile. However, even if the US had been more effective in the reconstruction of Iraq, there are reasons to doubt whether this would have had much impact on the insurgency. The notion that grievances can be ameliorated by improving government services, or by increasing the standard of living of the population, derives from a common sense (and very Western) notion of the origins of grievances. Anti-government behavior is seen as a response to poverty rather than to inequality and injustice or to issues of ethnic or sectarian identity. In this optic, incremental improvement rather than reform is the solution. For those who stress the importance of the delivery of services in creating legitimacy, “hearts” are won by the provision of material goods (see Metz 1995: 13). A slightly different take on the question of hearts and minds was to cast the issue not as one of material improvements but as one of the government addressing grievances, which would undercut the appeal of the insurgents. Unfortunately, governments (particularly those based on a narrow segment of the population) are seldom willing to recognize that subject populations might have legitimate grievances. Even if they recognize this, their ability to do anything about it without undermining their social base of support might be restricted. Recent counterinsurgency doctrine usually is quite explicit about the need to address grievances (see US Army 1990: 1–3, 2–1, and 2–9). In practice, the counterinsurgent state might do little to address grievances, and at the extreme may simply not recognize the existence of legitimate grievances at all. Certainly, it will seldom admit that the nature of the state itself might be the problem. There is sometimes a tendency to imply that satisfaction of grievances is a necessary and a sufficient condition for putting an end to an insurgency. It is not at all clear that the historical evidence supports such a proposition. In macro terms, as Jeff Goodwin (2001) suggests, the key variable is the openness of the political system. Perhaps more pertinently, 1980s counterinsurgency theory argued that governments that were not seen to be appropriately “representative,” that were seen as repressive, or that were seen to be hand-in-glove with foreign occupying forces, were all likely to be “the problem” rather than the solution. Nevertheless, by the 1980s American counterinsurgency doctrine had come to view addressing grievances as the center of the counterinsurgency effort. This generally required reforms typically of four kinds. First are efforts to promote land reform, usually one of the central concerns of peasants. Even the limited amount of land reform in the Philippines was enough to take the wind out of the Huk insurgency (Kerkvliet 1977). Reform of this kind seems not to be an issue in Iraq. Second are efforts to reform the army and control the militias so that military operations do not create unnecessary enemies. This has been a central issue in Iraq. Third, and often part of what a war is being fought about, is democratization. El Salvador is an exemplary case. The insurgency 35
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disappeared once meaningful elections were institutionalized and the military moved away from the center of power. The issue of meaningful elections in Iraq has been central to the conflict there. Fourth is national sovereignty, particularly in colonial situations or where foreign armies are present as occupation forces. Insurgencies have been most successful against colonial regimes and states relying principally on foreign military forces (as in Vietnam). The issue of national sovereignty is a central one in Iraq, and the US government is clearly intent on withdrawing from the limelight as rapidly as possible. The difficulty lies in creating an effective state and fostering a political accord that will enable the Americans to withdraw without major political costs. A foreign power will almost always have little legitimacy precisely because it is foreign. Inevitably, the burden of reform and of counterinsurgency will have to be passed to the host nation. To the extent that indigenous state institutions are non-existent, weak, corrupt, or at the service of illegitimate elites, the ability of the host nation to assume these tasks is limited. The foreign power thus finds itself in a race against time to build up the indigenous state so that it can withdraw from direct conflict as rapidly as possible. The strategy of Vietnamization is testimony to the difficulties entailed. The difficulties are not so much military as political. As of the fall of 2006, whether Iraqification would succeed was an open question. Population control and coercion Many counterinsurgency thinkers have been unconvinced by the hearts and minds school of thought. They believe either that the key dynamic is a competition in terror and coercion, and that the population will support the government or the insurgents because they see them as the lesser of two evils, and/or that the way to defeat an insurgency is to separate the insurgents from their base in the population. Control and coercion thinkers have argued that what is important is the passive support of the population, not what they think. Whether the population positively accords legitimacy to the government is less important than whether they pay taxes, support the police, refuse to aid the insurgents, and whether enough informers are willing to come forward. Adherents of this school of thought argue that legitimacy might be accorded to government simply because it is “there” and its presence is taken for granted. There is much sociological merit to this view, but, like the hearts and minds approach, it turns out to be a cluster of distinct, and not always mutually compatible, ideas. Three main positions can be identified: balance of terror, population control, and the formation of “self-defense” forces. By punishing communities for harboring or assisting guerrillas, by indiscriminate use of artillery and aerial bombardment, or by widespread detentions and “disappearances,” a counterinsurgent military can induce such levels of terror into the general population that they will shun the insurgents and perhaps move to areas controlled by incumbent forces. This approach may succeed if the counterinsurgent is willing to countenance high and sustained levels of violence against the civilian population (e.g. Central America in the 1930s, Guatemala during the Cold War, and Argentina in the 1970s). However, in Iraq, where the intent is to create a democratic government, seeking to terrorize the population is counterproductive. The second variant, population control (e.g. the Spanish in Cuba; the British in the Boer War [1899–1902] and in Malaya between 1948 and 1960 [Nagl 2002; Stubbs 1989]; and in Vietnam), is simple: to help separate the guerrillas from the population and then to defeat them militarily. 36
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The notion that the task of a counterinsurgent is to separate the guerrillas from the population (or vice versa, as is generally the practice) is a largely unchallenged assumption in much counterinsurgency writing. A different view of counterinsurgency might be to envision it as a political struggle over the terms of incorporation of that section of the population that supports the insurgents. In this view, the key task is not to drive a wedge between the guerrillas and their popular base, but to find ways to address the grievances of that section of the population and develop institutional ways for them to participate fully in political activity. It was unclear whether such measures were appropriate to Iraq. The third variant consists of the creation of a variety of local “self-defense” forces by the government. These militias are intended to provide local defense against guerrilla attacks until regular military forces can arrive. This frees up the regular forces for offensive operations against the insurgents. Creating effective self-defense forces is difficult. First, many of the villagers may actively support the insurgents. Arming self-defense forces is thus simply channeling weapons to the insurgents. Even where there is no active support, the poorly equipped and trained self-defense forces may be afraid to engage insurgents. The reluctance of at least some recently formed Iraqi police and army units to engage in firefights with insurgents illustrates the difficulties inherent in attempting to create effective self-defense forces. The role of self-defense organizations in defeating an insurgency has, moreover, often been narrowly understood as a purely military matter. Counterinsurgents have come to appreciate that organizing the rural population to defend itself is efficient. Local selfdefense forces (together with some population reconcentration) enable villages to stave off insurgent attacks. But the political aspects of local self-defense organizations are perhaps equally, if not more, important. In places where self-defense forces were closely linked to the defense of fortified villages and where they were under the control of government agencies (often the military), a form of near-totalitarian political control over the adult male population was achieved. This may not have been intended, but it worked to crowd out any space for independent organization among the villagers, subjecting them all to surveillance by the military. The local self-defense forces in Guatemala, in Peru, in Vietnam, and in Kenya all seem to have monopolized political activity and suppressed dissent (Stern 1998; Stoll 1993; Dunkerley 1988; Sorley 1999). A prolonged and political struggle Because counterinsurgency is primarily a political operation, it is a slow, prolonged struggle over who has influence over the state. In theory, this is recognized in American counterinsurgency doctrine, but is often not accepted as a matter of practical policy. Counterinsurgency practitioners make the point that successful counterinsurgency requires patience. However, patience is often in short supply. Managing the tension between the need for protracted operations and the need to minimize the political costs of counterinsurgency is seldom adequately addressed in counterinsurgency manuals. Not only are national-level political conditions in the metropolis not conducive to prolonged counterinsurgency, but the mind-set of most modern military organizations finds the protracted and indecisive nature of counterinsurgency operations uncongenial. Soldiers are usually trained to act decisively, and to seek swift victory. For soldiers with this mind-set, the prolonged and indecisive nature of counterinsurgency operations can be frustrating. Again, aside from platitudes and bromides, counterinsurgency manuals 37
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seldom directly address the tensions arising from the fact that low-intensity military operations demand a quite different set of attitudes and skills, an entirely different habitus, from those required by conventional combat. Because insurgency and counterinsurgency are political struggles about the terms of incorporation of various groups in the polity and about the nature of the state, the “solution” to an insurgency is often ultimately a matter of politics. Where insurgencies are small and isolated from a large popular support base (e.g. some guerrilla focos in Latin America immediately following the Cuban revolution), it may be possible to end the insurgency by killing or capturing the guerrillas. But where the insurgents have a meaningful social base, pacification almost always involves some sort of negotiated political bargain between the insurgents and the government. From the point of view of the counterinsurgent state, the role of military force is twofold: on the one hand, the insurgents must not be allowed to overthrow the state; on the other hand, constant military pressure must be exerted on the insurgents to convince them that they cannot win militarily. From this perspective, time is on the side of the government: so long as the insurgents do not win, the government can wait until the conditions are ripe for a political settlement. Many states have learned to live with protracted insurgencies. These insurgencies often fizzle out and fade away in fits and starts as peace agreements succeed temporarily, collapse, and are renegotiated. Key to ending insurgencies is the establishment and consolidation of a meaningful democracy. As electoral politics increasingly come to be seen as a viable and legitimate road to power, political struggles can be demilitarized. Finding settlement terms acceptable to all conflicting parties is often exceedingly difficult. At times, the solution may involve the breakup of a state into smaller entities, as occurred in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. These major issues about the nature of the Iraqi state were, at the time of writing, still very much in the air: could the Sunnis be reconciled and integrated into a national polity? Would there be, indeed, a meaningful central state in Iraq, or would the country split into three or more entities? Controlling security forces, militias, and death squads The fifth major unresolved issue in counterinsurgency thinking concerns the need to reform the host nation’s armed forces so that they became an effective agent of the government. First, the counterinsurgent armed forces themselves need to be brought under tight control. This is by no means an easy task. A whole series of principal-agent issues bedevils the conduct of military and police operations. To be concrete, if the political leadership is concerned not to alienate large numbers of the indigenous population, how can they stop soldiers from killing or injuring non-combatant civilians or damaging their property? In Iraq, the concern has not primarily been the control of US and British forces (although many of their actions, official and unauthorized, have been counterproductive), but the control of various Iraqi security forces. Military forces in the Developing World in an insurgency or civil war are seldom accountable to, or under the effective control of, the political leadership. They act with considerable impunity, and lower-level leaders often effectively operate without restraint. Indeed, a central task of US counterinsurgency efforts is to attempt to create a “modern” bureaucratic military that is an obedient servant of the political leadership. Better training of officers and men, clear rules of engagement, close supervision, and punishment for offenders are all necessary, but extremely difficult to implement in 38
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practice. Building an effective and responsible military force is difficult and expensive; that is why military forces in the Developing World are often undisciplined. Poorly resourced, corrupt, and politicized, they often fall far short of the ideal type of a rational bureaucracy. In the Iraqi case, the US had to create a new Iraqi army from scratch. It took the Americans some time to appreciate the urgency of the need to re-establish Iraqi security forces; once understood, it then became a race against time. The creation of new Iraqi security forces became the central plank in an American exit strategy. Although necessary, it was unclear whether the creation of a new Iraqi army would be a sufficient condition for suppression of the insurgency. Even if an effective Iraqi army were created, what would this new army do, and what would be its strategy for counterinsurgency? What would ensure that it operated as an effective agent of a central state, rather than responding to the tug of particularistic interests? What would be the relationship between the national army, on the one hand, and the Kurdish Peshmerga and the vast number of local militias on the other? To what extent would it be a Shiite, rather than a national, army? Besides the question of the national army, there were unresolved questions about control of the militias and death squads and about how the numerous police and security forces outside the regular army would be controlled. This is partly a question of state capacity and partly a matter of political will. It remains unfinished business. The problem of the control of armed force is compounded in many Developing World conflicts by the emergence of a variety of “self-defense” militia forces and “warlord” armies formed by local groups opposed to the “insurgents.” They may be motivated by a desire to protect themselves and their property, to wreak vengeance on the insurgents, to dispossess the insurgents, or to establish the political domination of their class, ethnic group, or sect. Self-defense militias provide the government with a vast pool of manpower, which can be used to free up regular forces from static defense. Since they are familiar with local conditions, militias are often highly effective in certain kinds of military tasks. They are often better at generating intelligence, and they are often unconstrained by the rules of engagement and laws of war that, in principle at least, restrain the actions of regular forces. The organization of self-defense forces can exacerbate conflict and divide communities. Given their local knowledge and relative autonomy from the “official” forces of the counterinsurgent state, they are often able to impose a reign of terror and assassination outside government control. Although sometimes these militias and death squads can act as proxies for (and with the tacit approval of) the government, there is a tendency for them to get out of hand. When that happens, re-establishing government control is often difficult. It is striking that after half a century of serious thinking about counterinsurgency, so many of the key conceptual and theoretical issues remain unresolved. This may perhaps be a manifestation of a deeper conceptual blindness in American strategic culture: “Western democracies knew how to deal with war and knew how to deal with peace. They were confused, however, by conflicts overlapping and blending the two” (Metz 1995: 8). Debate tended to be artificially aligned between proponents of kinetic approaches to destroy insurgent armed forces, those who sought to win hearts and minds, and those who gave priority to various population-control measures. At times, a superficial consensus around a set of “best practices” or fundamental principles of counterinsurgency would emerge (Sepp 2005; Cohen et al. 2006), which usually stressed the 39
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counterproductive nature of the kinetic approach, emphasized the importance of creating a legitimate government, recognized that ultimately the conflict was about political rather than strictly military goals, that it would be long and drawn out, that good intelligence on the insurgents was crucial, and that insurgents should be isolated from their potential supporters. It was usually argued that respect on the part of the counterinsurgent forces for the human rights of the population and of the guerrillas was an important way to win hearts and minds. Minimal force was to be used, and local hostnation military forces were to be relied on wherever possible. Such lists of counterinsurgency principles represent a clear advance on the purely kinetic approaches that, I argue, are the reflex response of modern military organizations. But these lists of principles fail to address fundamental questions about how to gain legitimacy for the government, about how the population is to be controlled and for what purposes, and which kinds of reforms are required to undercut the insurgency. Before the invasion of Iraq there were profound organizational forces steering the US Army, Marine Corps, and Special Forces away from any serious intellectual engagement with the issues entailed in counterinsurgency operations. In none of these venues did counterinsurgency thinking find a congenial and welcoming home. As may be seen in their acquisition programs, each service remained wedded to a vision of itself that centered on fighting hi-tech wars. As far as any innovative thinking (indeed, any thinking at all) about counterinsurgency was concerned, the US military was a reluctant learner. This meant that when the US military was confronted once again (in Iraq) with an insurgency, it turned for intellectual guidance to works written in the 1960s. There was no intellectual continuity; the wheel of counterinsurgency doctrine had to be reinvented. But returning to the “classics” of counterinsurgency thinking was no solution. These works had failed to resolve central issues, were conceptually ambiguous, and relied on naive theories of grievances and legitimacy.
Will the US military now assimilate the lessons of counterinsurgency? This chapter argues that the US military does learn from its counterinsurgent experience, but in a cycle of learning and “forgetting,” which means in practice that there is no sustained organizational learning. As I argued earlier in this article, modern military organizations (and certainly the US military) are predisposed to define war in terms that they find familiar and intellectually comforting. World War II (WWII) is the master template. War is seen as a massive clash of conventional armored forces. All other forms of war are basically seen as deviations, complications, or lesser-included cases (labeled “unconventional” or “irregular”). These preferences were developed during WWII and consolidated during the Cold War. By comparison with the ghastly slaughter and stalemate of World War I, WWII was seen by the services as a shift from attrition to maneuver, from impasse to decisive action. Swift, decisive victory became the acme of military professionalism and the rod against which all operations (including counterinsurgency) were measured. Military officers intend to conduct “rapid, decisive operations” to produce “decisive victory.” Much emphasis is put on being “offensively minded.” Who, after all, would want to conduct “slow, indecisive operations” – unless, of course, they were conducting a counterinsurgency campaign? 40
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The military mind-set, if one can talk in such reified terms, emphasizes actions and qualities that are probably not appropriate in counterinsurgency operations. Counterinsurgency is almost always slow and indecisive. Military operations play a subordinate role in the complex political struggles that define the insurgency–counterinsurgency dialectic. So long as “regular” military forces (and even some “special” forces) prepare for “conventional” war as their primary mission, there will be little intellectual readiness to deal with the challenges of counterinsurgency. Proponents of counterinsurgency need an organizational niche, and this they have failed to find. American military officers are smart, professional, and highly motivated. We can be sure that, now that the initial phase of trying to do things using the regular playbook is over, there will be rapid learning. They will become more effective at counterinsurgency operations. The thought that Iraq might not be an isolated case, but merely one campaign among many in a protracted global counterinsurgency, might well serve to focus attention on counterinsurgency doctrine. Moreover, there is an important difference between the current security environment and that of the Cold War. With the possible exception of China, there is no other large modern military organization that the US military must confront. Perhaps this change in the security environment, and the concomitant notion that the global war on terror will be a “long war” with many campaigns, will mean that US ground forces embrace counterinsurgency as one of their central missions. There are certainly proponents of such a view scattered throughout the Army and Marine Corps (see Roxborough 2002, 2004, 2006). The key issue is the conditions under which deeply rooted organizational identities and cultures are subject to change. As Jeffrey Legro (1995) and numerous writers on military doctrine and innovation have suggested, although some processes of endogenous change in military culture clearly occur, often as a result of the intervention of civilian politicians (Avant 1994; Cohen 2002), external shocks such as defeat in war are by far the most common precipitants of change in organizational culture. Key works include Doughty (1985), Goldman and Eliason (2003), Harris (1995), Johnson (1998), Kier (1997), Kiesling (1996), Mahnken (2002), Murray and Millett (1996), Posen (1984), Rosen (1991), Roxborough (2000), Samuels (1995), Winton (1988), and Winton and Mets (2000). On the other hand, the US military is overstretched, and there are insistent calls from parts of the political spectrum for a more cautious approach to world politics. Not surprisingly, public support for the war in Iraq has declined. A scenario could easily be imagined in which the experiment in bringing democracy to that country collapsed in catastrophic failure. US forces might get bogged down in an unproductive quagmire which might well produce a decision on the part of the Armed Forces (as after Vietnam) not to get involved in that sort of messy conflict again. If American forces were to exit Iraq relatively quickly, and if there is not another “Iraq” in the pipeline, then perhaps institutional history will reassert itself and the American military will return to its somnolence as far as counterinsurgency doctrine is concerned. We will see.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Roxborough, I. (2006) “Learning and diffusing the lessons of counterinsurgency: the US Military from Vietnam to Iraq,” Sociological Focus 39(4): 319–46. 41
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References Avant, D. (1994) Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cohen, E. (2002) Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, New York: Simon and Schuster. Cohen, E., Crane, C., Horvath, J. and Nagl, J. (2006) “Principles, imperatives, and paradoxes of counterinsurgency,” Military Review, March-April: 49–53. Doughty, R. (1985) The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919–1939, Hamden, CT: Shoestring Press. Dunkerley, J. (1988) Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central America, London: Verso. Goldman, E. and Eliason, L. eds. (2003) The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Goodwin, J. (2001) No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hammes, T.X. (2004) The Sling and the Stone, St Paul, MN: Zenith Press. Harris, J.P. (1995) Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Johnson, D. (1998) Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the US Army, 1917–1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kalyvas, S. (2006) The Logic of Violence in Civil War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerkvliet, B. (1977) The Huk Rebellion, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kier, E. (1997) Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kiesling, E. (1996) Arming Against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Legro, J. (1995) Cooperation under Fire, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mahnken, T. (2002) Uncovering Ways of War: US Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918–1941, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Metz, S. (1995) Counterinsurgency: Strategy and the Phoenix of American Capability, Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute. Morris, M. (2005) “Al Qaeda as insurgency,” Joint Force Quarterly, 39: 40–50. Murray, W. and Millett, A. eds. (1996) Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagl, J.A. (2002) Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Westport, CT: Praeger. Posen, B. (1984) The Sources of Military Doctrine, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Race, J. (1972) War Comes to Long An, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rosen, S. (1991) Winning the Next War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Roxborough, I. (2000) “Organizational innovation: Lessons from military organizations,” Sociological Forum, 15: 367–72. ——(2002) “Globalization, unreason, and the dilemmas of US military strategy,” International Sociology, 17: 339–59. ——(2004) “Iraq, Afghanistan, the global war on terrorism, and the Owl of Minerva,” Political Power and Social Theory, 16: 185–211. ——(2006) “The new American warriors,” Theoria, 109: 49–78. Samuels, M. (1995) Command or Control? London: Cass. Sepp, K. (2005) “‘Best practices’ in counterinsurgency,” Military Review, (May-June): 8–12. Sorley, L. (1999) A Better War, New York: Harcourt Brace. Stern, S., ed. (1998) Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stoll, D. (1993) Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala, New York: Columbia University Press.
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Stubbs, R. (1989) Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: the Malayan Emergency 1948–1960, Oxford: Oxford University Press. US Army (1990) FM 100–20 “Military operations in low-intensity conflict,” Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army. ——(2004) FMI 3–07.22 “Counterinsurgency operations,” Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army. US Marine Corps (1980) FMFM 8–2 “Counterinsurgency operations,” Washington, DC: Headquarters, United States Marine Corps. Winton, H. (1988) To Change an Army, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Winton, H. and Mets, D. (eds) (2000) The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918–1941, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
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4 Twenty-first century narratives from Afghanistan Storytelling, morality, and war Ryan D. Pengelly and Anne Irwin
Introduction In the last few years, Canadian Forces have taken a leading role in suppressing insurgency activities in Afghanistan, capacity building of the Afghan National Army, and supporting infrastructure projects as part of the UN-sanctioned, NATO-led International Stabilization Assistance Force (Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces 2009). Since expanding into the southern provinces of Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers have been increasingly engaged in frequent and tense combat with members of the Taliban while patrolling “outside the wire” and the safety of Kandahar Airfield’s guarded walls (Irwin 2006). As Canada’s first combat operation since the Korean War, this military and political situation has generated nationwide attention as politicians, academics, activists, and citizens engage in a polarized debate regarding the nature and legitimacy of Canada’s new international military role in Afghanistan. Canadian infantry soldiers have also been significantly contributing to this debate through storytelling based on their first-hand experience of Afghanistan, international development, and war. Unprecedented in the history of war, these twenty-first century emails and blogs offer an alternative and challenging perspective to Canadian civilians and media. Anthropologists have long been interested in storytelling as a window into a particular culture (Rosaldo 1986) and most recently as an ethnographic technique in a globalized world (Rapport 2000). For military anthropologists, oral storytelling is a meaningful element in soldiers’ lives for its contribution to social cohesion, its role in crystalizing hazy experiences, in generating social identity, and in making possible the exchange of knowledge and experience (Ben-Ari 1998; Irwin 2002). In the age of the internet, electronic storytelling (or blogging) constitutes the commemoration of soldiers’ experience in civil society (Keren 2005). Although stories play an important functional role for a particular individual, group or culture, storytelling is fundamentally a socially situated activity constituting and reflecting experiential, social, and cultural characteristics (Brenneis 1996; Briggs 1996; Gubrium and Holstein 2008; Irwin 2002; Rosaldo 1986). Stories have also been shown to embody culturally shared narratives of morality 44
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(Tolvanen and Jylha 2005) and to provide a platform for the socialization of morality and the sanctioning of individuals and groups (Garrett and Baquedano-López 2002). Using a narrative ethnography approach (Gubrium and Holstein 2008), we analyze two combat stories, comparing the ways soldiers use language, create meaning, and communicate to civilian and military audiences. Specifically, we examine one soldier’s internet blog and another’s recorded account of the same combat engagement. Drawing on the textual evidence from these combat stories, we reveal the sociomoral nature of soldiers’ narratives, including examples of social sanctioning and praise of appropriate soldierly behaviour, the narrator’s actions, and the legitimacy of war and Canada’s role in Afghanistan.
Narrative analysis Narratives and stories Narrative refers to the use of any form of language that creates a sense of coherence and meaning of the human experience of time and space (Rapport and Overing 2000: 283– 84). This medium allows a narrator and audience to create meaning, share experience, and communicate in any form of language, including visual, oral, written, body language, and architecture. Storytelling is a more specific form of narrative that expresses the human tendency to recount tales of knowledge, experience, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and perspectives. So, whereas narrative refers to any language use that embodies events in time, story refers to a more specific use of language in which a narrator relates a purposeful and meaningful account to a particular audience. One specific form of storytelling, the personal experience narrative, implies that the narrator becomes so deeply engrossed in the story that the memory of the original experience may be relived (Rosaldo 1986: 115). Personal narratives are complex expressions that are embedded with a mixture of “realities”. For example, in personal narratives “the narrator casts himself or herself as a character or figure while playing the role of animator, the person who brings all of these personages and their words and actions to life” (Briggs 1996: 26, emphasis in original) as well as commentator, observer, and interpreter. Similarly, by using personal narrative we make sense of ourselves as individuals and as members of groups (Johnstone 2001: 640; Rapport 2000: 287). Rather than simply signifying a verbal representation of an event, stories are socially situated processes and embodiments that constitute and reflect experiential, social, and cultural characteristics (Brenneis 1996; Briggs 1996; Irwin 2002; Rosaldo 1986). Drawing on his research among the Ilongot of the Philippines, Rosaldo explains that stories of hunting experiences “both reflect what actually happened and define the kinds of experiences they seek out on future hunts” (1986: 134). In the Canadian military, Irwin similarly contends that “military exercises are experienced by soldiers as opportunities for producing stories, so that the tropes and conventions of storytelling govern what is noticed and attended to during the original experience” (2002: 120). Stories, in this sense, constitute not only linguistic representations, but also embody the narrator’s personal and shared beliefs, understandings, and expectations about future experience. The context of a narrative’s generation and the particular combination of narrator, audience, purposes, and expectations have a significant influence on the style, form, and content (Brenneis 1996; Briggs 1996; Irwin 2002; Linde 2001; Rapport and Overing 45
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2000; Rosaldo 1986). The act of storytelling is thus co-narration or co-performance, such that the narrator and the audience may overtly or covertly contribute to the narrative in dialog format (Brenneis 1996; Briggs 1996; Irwin 2002; Johnstone 2001; Rosaldo 1986). In this manner, the process of storytelling and its content are contextdependent, culturally defined, and social acts guided by multiple actors. Storytelling plays a crucial role in military operations and exercises, during which physically demanding conditions and alterations in time and sleep tend to blur soldiers’ memory (Irwin 2002). Consequently, through storytelling Canadian soldiers “collaboratively reconstruct the events” of a particular military exercise (Irwin 2002: 118). Furthermore, stories serve to bind individuals and groups through the process of narration (Brenneis 1996; Johnstone 2001), such that storytelling among a group of Canadian soldiers generates intimacy and sociality through a shared experience and story event (Irwin 2002: 120–21). Similarly, in the Israeli Defence Forces, in which social cohesion is vital to the performance of military units in combat, informal activities such as storytelling, anecdotes, and “tall” tales constitute a social glue (Ben-Ari 1998: 29). The process of storytelling for soldiers becomes an essential means of recollecting military exercises and reconstructing a meaningful intersubjective experience between fellow soldiers. Morality Morality and social conventions have been conceptualized as socially constructed and guided by cultural context (Witherell and Edwards 1991). Similarly, Tolvanen and Jylha (2005) use the concept of morality in their research of gendered stories of alcohol. Although not explicitly defined, morality is treated in a broad sense as the interviewees’ opinions of right or wrong. Instead of focusing on the factual alcohol histories or exact amounts of consumption, these researchers analyze the individuals’ narratives and the “culturally shared ways of understanding and describing the use of alcohol and its place in everyday life” (Tolvanen and Jylha 2005: 420). Taking moral narratives one step further Garrett and Baquedano-López argue that morals encoded in language are “the basis for the socialization of morality, that is, the social sanctioning or rejection of actions (one’s own as well as those of others)” (2002: 352), as an individual and as part of a collective. Essentially, the social sanctions and support for particular behaviours and beliefs that are found in language orient group members to an ideal, moral action. Drawing on these authors, we define morality as the social or cultural construction of right and wrong action and belief that is expressed through narrative language of opinions, moral messages, criticisms, and judgments. In some cases, the narrator explicitly articulates notions of morality by shaping the narrative around certain actions or events and providing opinions and criticisms of what is considered morally right or wrong. In other cases, however, morality implicitly appears as narrators subtly and skillfully disguise their feelings, thoughts, and moral evaluations within an engaging story. In the Canadian military, officers and non-commissioned officers share common assumptions about ideal, moral soldier performance, which they communicate during social interaction as good and bad characteristics of soldier behaviour (Irwin 2004). Irwin (2004) argues that, despite differences in opinion between officers and non-commissioned officers in applying the “good” soldier model to soldier behaviour, all soldiers share a tacit assumption of the personal qualities that make a “good” soldier. Specifically, a good soldier “accepts responsibility, demonstrates the ability to lead, is in good shape physically, works hard, is highly motivated, and works well with his peers” (Irwin 2004: 12). 46
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Conversely, a “bad” soldier is dependent, has a negative attitude, or worst of all, is incapable of accomplishing tasks and orders (Irwin 2004: 13).
Methods Narrative ethnography Narrative ethnography combines traditional forms of narrative analysis, that is, an examination of internal elements of stories, and expands the analytical purview to include the practice of storytelling and the “contexts, conditions, and resources of the storytelling process” (Gubrium and Holstein 2008: 262). Along these lines, we have combined ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and interviewing, with narrative analysis influenced by ethnomethodology (Francis and Hester 2004; Watson 1992). Ethnomethodologists remind the narrative researcher of the importance of empirical observations situated in the text. This methodological procedure complements ethnography by approaching the text both as a field site and ethnographic technique in a globalized world (Rapport 2000). Therefore, direct quotations from the narratives are frequently used throughout our analysis of narrative morality. The study This chapter examines and analyzes two personal narratives of a mutually experienced combat encounter with enemy forces on 9 July 2006 in southern Afghanistan known as the “Battle of Panjwai”.1 The first narrative, an oral story of a Canadian soldier’s experience of being wounded in combat, was told to one of the authors while she conducted ethnographic fieldwork with members of the Canadian Forces in southern Afghanistan in 2006.2 This storytelling episode occurred as an unstructured interview with Corporal Slam,3 an infantry soldier and the company commander’s signaller, several weeks after the engagement. The second narrative, a blog composed by Corporal Brian Sanders,4 was posted as part of a series of letters on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s website (Sanders 2006). Cpl Sanders wrote to a civilian audience and gave his first-hand experiences as an ambulance driver during the weeks-long operation and the climactic battle of 9 July. Through comparative narrative analysis, we explore three questions: (1) what evidence of morals is available in these two narratives of personal combat experiences; (2) what kinds of morals are embedded in these two narratives regarding combat experience, Canada’s role in Afghanistan, and war; and (3) how do these two narratives embody different social practices of storytelling, including context, voice, and audience? These research questions have been part of an emergent and simultaneous process of theory, methodology building, and narrative analysis rather than artificially forming themselves a priori (Luttrell 2005). With extensive ethnographic and personal experience with the Canadian Forces, Irwin provides a holistic and socially situated perspective of the narratives.5 After Irwin’s return from southern Afghanistan, Pengelly transcribed the recording of the unstructured interview and storytelling episode of Cpl Slam’s combat experience, attempting to retain Cpl Slam’s speech idiosyncrasies. Together we identified Cpl Sanders’ electronic stories as intriguing social artefacts of the same combat engagement.6 The two narratives were 47
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selected for analysis because of their inherent value as the one of the first sets of soldiers’ combat stories emerging from Afghanistan and because of differences in storytelling context, conditions, and narrator voice. We identified narrative passages with explicit or implicit statements of morality regarding soldier and military unit performance, Canada’s role in Afghanistan, and other events and activities. In this process, our attention turned toward gaps, inconsistencies, and associations within and between the stories instead of searching for a truth or questioning the legitimacy of the narratives (Luttrell 2005).
Canadian soldiers’ stories and morality By recounting their combat experience, the two narrators carefully address their own behaviour and that of other soldiers through the lens of the ideal, moral soldier (Irwin 2004). Whereas Cpl Sanders significantly emphasizes his own behaviour over the actions of other soldiers and lacks explicit moral opinions about his fellow soldiers, Cpl Slam often criticizes other soldiers and their actions during the encounter in Panjwai. Portrayal of others In his portrayal of other soldiers Cpl Sanders speaks positively of his crew members; he respects their characters and the vast amount of military experience they share. Specifically, Cpl Sanders says: we were greeted by our crew commander Cpl Creelman. He’s another outstanding soldier, a former combat engineer who re-enrolled as a medic five year ago … Combined, the three of us with over 30 years of combat trade experience make up the most experienced ambulance crew in Afghanistan. (Cpl Sanders) Experience is clearly a desirable moral trait for a soldier, although Cpl Sanders does not mention what Irwin (2002: 86) has termed “time in” experience, a certain quality of experience involving “physically gruelling experiences which demand the exercise of inner strength and learned skills in simulated war conditions.” Israeli soldiers equally perceive war as an ideal and moral experience and the ultimate test of a soldier (Ben-Ari 1998). Both soldiers’ narratives similarly present war as morally appropriate and the ideal experience for which a soldier trains. Compared with the other narrative, Cpl Sanders does not report the specific behaviour of other soldiers related to ideal, moral action except for the occasion cited above. Linde (2001) discusses the importance of questioning “silences” (stories that are not told) and “erasures” (institutional censoring of particular narratives). Although there are an infinite number of issues that are not raised in narratives, it is possible to define salient silences, especially through the process of narrative comparison (Linde 2001). The absence of moral statements and criticisms of other soldiers in Cpl Sanders’ blog may reveal a silent narrative, especially since “complaining is the norm, not the exception among soldiers” in the Canadian Forces (Irwin 2002: 121). Although Cpl Sanders may be the exception, the absence of complaints and social criticism of fellow soldiers is more likely an outcome of the genre and context of his narrative. Complaining is increasingly regulated in public, 48
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civilian environments, especially in an electronic blog. Often the soldier’s voice is institutionally regulated because of its subaltern, subversive, and controversial nature (Brown and Lutz 2007). Although the Canadian Forces does not formally censor soldiers’ blogs before they are published, there are regulations governing what can and cannot be made public. More subtle, however, are the institutional pressures that may silence criticism of the institution and of its members. Criticism and moral evaluations of soldiers’ behaviour and the Canadian military might be silent narratives that are institutionally regulated, explicitly or tacitly. Furthermore, complaints and moral comments about other soldiers could be absent since Cpl Sanders and his non-military audience do not share those fundamental military experiences. Irwin (2002: 121) remarks that “complaining is one of the ways that soldiers constitute their experiences as shared, and knowing what sorts of complaints are permissible demonstrates membership in the group.” Thus, a soldier would probably not complain to a civilian audience that has not shared similar military experience. In contrast, Cpl Slam frequently offers critical moral commentary of Canadian soldiers and tends to portray them as unaware, vulnerable, and incapable. For example, Captain Jones was there and he couldn’t get his mags7 goin’. And he was focusing on his mags. He’s trying that fuckin’8 mag on and there’s bullets fuckin’ every part there was a gap in his body. That’s where the rounds went … and I’m like “fuck! Someone get him the fuck out of there.” (Cpl Slam) In several instances, Cpl Slam portrays his superiors as unaware of the surrounding danger and military situation. In this paragraph, he points to Captain Jones’s inability to control his weapon, which we discuss below as a soldier’s principal responsibility. His heaviest criticism, however, is reserved for the immoral actions of the Forward Observation Officer,9 whom he considers highly incompetent and responsible for his shrapnel wound: “… he ended up firing in one five fives,10 which I thought the FOO [Forward Observation Officer] did a horrible job … I thought that Lieutenant Halo did a way better job” (Cpl Slam). This moral narrative is just the beginning of a significant amount of negative criticism aimed at the FOO’s performance, but the basic message is that the he was unskilled and incompetent, which is highly undesirable in the Canadian Forces (Irwin 2004). Nonetheless, Cpl Slam comments positively on the performance of certain soldiers: Private Smith fuckin’ hauled Brown out with one fuckin’ hand. And the funny thing is I read some of the things in the CP [Canadian Press] ‘bout guys nominated for medals for bravery and stuff like that. Well, I was there on some of those instances. Those guys shouldn’t be nominated. They did their fuckin’ job. That day, Smith went above and beyond. (Cpl Slam) With this remark, Cpl Slam endorses the moral actions of Private Smith, who he believes epitomizes soldierly strength and bravery because Smith went “above and beyond” a soldier’s duties. Cpl Slam then criticizes the morality of the Canadian Forces because they do not recognize Pte Smith’s bravery and strength: … he never got nominated for nothing because ah who he is and how he does his job, but he did. He’ll never be nominated either. That’s the thing, you know what 49
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it comes down to? Popularity contest. That’s all it fuckin’ is, it makes me, it makes me fuckin’ sick I swear to God. (Cpl Slam) According to Cpl Slam, the moral behaviour of soldiers is not recognized, but instead becomes lost in the political process of military awards. To summarize, each soldier comments directly or indirectly on appropriate soldierly behaviour by means of criticism and praise. In some cases, soldiers use moral narratives to sanction the behaviour of soldiers exhibiting incompetence, unawareness of their surroundings or fellow soldiers, or a negative attitude. In other cases, the narratives depict characteristics of an ideal, moral soldier, such as strength and bravery, experience and awareness, and self-control. Portrayal of self In both narratives, the storytellers also portray themselves as competent, aware, in control of the combat situation, and morally good. When their narrated actions do not reflect the ideal, moral soldier, the narrators mitigate negative self-portrayal by depicting themselves as naive, in the process of learning, or with humour, but rarely in a negative light. Although Cpl Sanders often lacks moral tone in his self-characterizations, he discusses his behaviour and its consequences. Specifically, Cpl Sanders uses slight errors or moral mistakes to inform his civilian audience of lessons that he has learned. For example, On my first night there I relaxed to British humor on the telly, and it was so refreshing to laugh out loud and forget some recent events. I should have known better then [sic] to let my guard down when I was outside the wire. (Cpl Sanders) In this context, Cpl Sanders points out to his civilian audience that a soldier should never let his guard down while “outside the wire” of operations bases, where soldiers are exposed to greater danger and potential for combat. In other cases, Cpl Sanders has no qualms about characterizing his behaviour as foolish and naive: “ … it sounded like a missile buzzed over our heads, followed by a large explosion a few hundred metres behind us. Baffled, I stupidly stood up to see what it was” (Cpl Sanders). Cpl Slam also uses humour to diffuse the responsibility for his blunders, which could draw criticism from other soldiers because of their consequences. Cpl Slam recounts: I started running towards ’im and there was a little slant on the hill onto the road. Well I don’t know what happ … I lost all coordination and tripped over [narrator and interviewer laugh]. Ah fuck I had so much weight on my back, right? (Cpl Slam) This combination of non-critical narration and laughter creates a more favourable impression of Cpl Slam’s behaviour than when he condemns other soldiers’ mistakes. Cpl Slam construes other soldiers’ actions as unjustified and morally inappropriate, whereas his own actions are justified and are not treated to moral evaluation. Cpl Slam often compares himself with his Company Commander: 50
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… we threw twelve grenades into that fuckin’ compound that day and me and the OC [Company Commander] were trying to cover our ah withdrawal. He threw his. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have his safety clip off that’s why the fuckin’ thing didn’t go off, but I fuckin’ grabbed my pin and winged it. Nothing. So, I’m like “how the fuck are we going to get out a here?” (Cpl Slam) In this situation, the Company Commander fails to operate his grenade effectively, yet when Cpl Slam’s attempt yields the same outcome, his story simply switches to how they plan to withdraw from the active zone. In a similar way, themes of professionalism and control of one’s actions and weapon are important to contemporary Canadian soldiers. In both narratives, the Canadian soldiers portray control over the combat situation and skill in battle. Unlike other military narratives, which depict absolute massacre, unpredictability, and chaos (Gowing 1886), Cpl Slam narrates combat experiences in which he and his unit are successful and competent. He often expresses mastery over his experience, whether summoning increasingly more powerful ammunition, hiding in the bullet-proof light armoured vehicles, or protecting fellow soldiers. These military narratives portray Canadian soldiers as professional, competent, and sometimes heroic individuals. Conversely, Cpl Slam comments on the behaviour of an Afghan National Army soldier who had an “ND,” or negligent discharge of his weapon. Cpl Slam uses the irresponsible action of this Afghan National Army soldier as an exemplar of lack of control and professionalism: … and that’s when one of the ANA [Afghan National Army] soldiers had an ND and he fired his weapon off by accident and I was like, “Something fucked’s goin’ happen here today” and he goes “these guys are fuckin’ right out of ’er”.11 (Cpl Slam) In the Canadian Forces, control over one’s weapon is extremely important, so when the Afghan National Army soldier fails to maintain this professional soldierly behaviour, he and his co-soldiers are described as “right out of ’er,” or unaware, uncontrolled, and undisciplined. Professionalism, performance accountability, and lawfulness are clearly a larger institutional narrative that the Canadian Forces seeks to promote in its soldiers (Canadian Defense Academy/Canadian Forces Leadership Institute 2003: 14). Themes of professionalism and self-control, however, are not inherent or universal in military narratives. In the case of the 2000 UN disarmament in Sierra Leone, Mende kamajor combatants perform narratives (domei) of power, ferocity, and “uncontrolled” behaviour based on an ideal combatant of “a ‘hard’ fighter, a common descriptor of combatants noted for their skill, ruthlessness, and bravery” (Hoffman 2005: 343). Like the Canadian Forces, however, the Israeli Defence Forces share the ideal soldier characteristics of professionalism and self-control, wherein Israeli soldiers must exhibit complete control over their weapons, environment, and emotions (Ben-Ari 1998). Cpl Sanders often describes his experience with self-control and the need to regulate feelings and bodily desires. For example, he explains that as “the adrenalin [sic] was wearing off and fatigue setting in … I shook it off, just in time to hear we had more casualties … ” (Cpl Sanders). Self-control is portrayed as particularly important in 51
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regulating feelings of fatigue. Although a soldier may feel exhausted, self-control (reinforced by fear) maintains some degree of alertness out of the necessity of war. In sum, different references to soldierly ideals and moral behaviour appear in the two narratives. Awareness, experience, strength, and bravery are each to some degree important soldierly characteristics. Whereas Cpl Slam restricts his moral evaluations to the performance of members of the military, his unit, and himself, Cpl Sanders’ moral evaluations go beyond self-portrayal and the evaluation of fellow soldiers’ behaviour to consider the legitimacy and moral nature of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. Whereas Cpl Slam’s audience was the anthropologist who was interviewing him, and whom he might have assumed by virtue of her mere presence was sympathetic to the role of the Canadian military in Afghanistan, Cpl Sanders’ blog was intended for a much wider audience. In the remaining discussion, we consider several wider moral messages that Cpl Sanders’ narrative articulates and intends for a Canadian civilian audience. Morality and the legitimacy of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan In his blog, Cpl Sanders adopts an educational and political narrative that purposefully seeks to illustrate a soldier’s experience to a Canadian, civilian audience as well as the “reality” of the war and the effectiveness of NATO’s and Canada’s presence in Afghanistan. This narrative style carries subtle yet significant moral weight in the political debate of Canada’s role in Afghanistan. The move back passed quickly, everyone had a lead foot as we pushed closer and closer to the base. Night had fallen by the time we reached Kandahar city, and it was nothing like I had remembered it. Shops and restaurants and hotels had opened. Fruits and vegetables were for sale. You would never have guessed that the city had just gone through a war. It was amazing. Because of our presence, people had their lives back. (Cpl Sanders) In this paragraph, Cpl Sanders makes a direct claim about the moral nature of the Canadian Forces’ presence in Afghanistan. Evidence of positive development, increased safety, and improved freedom in Afghanistan shows the moral justness of the Canadian Forces’ actions. Cpl Sanders immediately follows this evidence with a challenge and critique of people of Canada who ignorantly oppose the Canadian Forces’ presence in Afghanistan: A lot of people in Canada think that we should not be here in Afghanistan, but those people don’t see the remarkable changes happening here. One interpreter told me, “Because Canada is here, our people are happy again.” So to all those Canadians who continue to harp about what they don’t know – here’s your straw, suck it up. (Cpl Sanders) By making use of this straw metaphor various times, Cpl Sanders challenges the sector of Canadian society that is politically opposed to the war in Afghanistan by evoking the moral ideal of the strong, professional, competent, and aware soldier. Essentially, Cpl Sanders transposes the model of the ideal, moral soldier onto Canadian civilians who complain or criticize the war in Afghanistan as unjust. These Canadians need to wake up, get tough, and “suck it up.” 52
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Political criticism is a significant theme in Cpl Sanders’ narrative. The narrative reacts, in part, to the debate in Canada about the mission in Afghanistan; Cpl Sanders hopes to articulate a different and preferable moral reality. In other words, he attempts to show the moral justness of the war in Afghanistan based on the encouraging experiential evidence of development and positive political change. This message is delivered by focusing on the moral character of a helpful and caring Canada and describing the tangible positive effects that the Canadian presence is having in Afghanistan: … after four hours on a spine board for this injured 65-year-old man, we put him in the hands of capable doctors. Later we found that the man was an influential leader of the village nearby, and our assistance helped changed [sic] the views of some Afghans. (Cpl Sanders) In various instances, Cpl Sanders provides personal experience as evidence and justification of his narrative’s moral message and the Canadian military’s moral righteousness for being in Afghanistan and waging war against the Taliban. Thus, the moral commentary pervasively embedded in Cpl Sanders’ narrative actively responds to Canada’s political environment. He tells combat stories with the purpose of sharing his first-hand experiences while additively adopting moral and political positions within a broader civilian context.
Conclusion Storytelling is fundamentally a highly complex, cultural phenomenon that challenges academic analysis. Consequently, this chapter has not attempted an exhaustive analysis of stylistic, linguistic, and moral similarities and differences between the two personal combat narratives. We have, however, attempted to show some insightful and systematic observations regarding shared narrative themes, which constitute and reflect the “vital capacity of people to work together to create, share, affirm, and celebrate something that is held in common” (Jackson 2002: 40), as well as divergent narrative themes, which highlight the importance of the storytelling context and audience (Gubrium and Holstein 2008) and distinct and idiosyncratic storytelling voices. At times the stories of Cpl Slam and Cpl Sanders draw the narrator, his experience, and his audience into a unique intersubjective reality. At other times, the stories may bridge and create a novel experience between the narrator and audience. In both cases, however, social approval or disapproval plays an intriguing role in the negotiation of morals between individual soldiers or between the Canadian Forces and Canadian civil society. In these narratives, the narrators negotiate the “integration and balance between one’s personal world and the wider world of others, such that one’s voice carries and one’s action have repercussions in the State, nation or community with which one identifies” (Jackson 2002: 40). In this way, it is exciting to bear witness to the institutional, national, and international expression of personal combat stories and their ability to mediate moral, social, and political processes through channels of social sanctioning and praise. These contemporary storytellers are writing a new chapter in the history of war as they simultaneously carry their old and new weapons into battle. 53
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Notes 1 The “Battle of Panjwai” broadly refers to the collection of combat encounters with Taliban insurgents in the Panjwai District, Kandahar Province that began in the spring of 2006. For further reading on the combat encounter of 9 July 2006 refer to the remaining blog entries by Cpl Sanders (Sanders 2006) and various news columns by Blatchford (2006a, 2006b). For reading on the broader “Battle of Panjwai” refer to Day’s (2007) three-part series in Legion Magazine. 2 In 2006, Irwin conducted ethnographic fieldwork with 8 Platoon of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (1PPCLI) in southern Afghanistan. Irwin was present at the combat engagement of 9 July 2006, but several hundred meters away from the front lines of fire with the support echelon of light armored vehicles. 3 All names from Cpl Slam’s narrative, including Cpl Slam, are pseudonyms. 4 Cpl Sanders’s actual name is used because his narrative is publicly available on the CBC’s website. 5 Anne Irwin served as an officer for 15 years in the Canadian Forces Reserves. 6 It is important to note that, even though we argue that all storytelling is socially practiced and situated, the second narrative was created beyond our ability to observe the complex nature of its production. 7 “Mag” refers to the magazine of the weapon, which holds the rounds of ammunition. In this instance, the Captain is struggling to reinsert a new magazine of bullets into his weapon while the enemy is spraying fire around his body. 8 We have retained the word “fuck” for several reasons. The use of the word fuck in the military does not carry the same emotional quality that it does in civilian environments. Reflecting the normalization of swearing in the military, this word functions as a “substitute expression”, speech filler, and/or stammer similar to the word “um” (Elkin 1946). Omitting this word would give a false portrayal of soldiers’ diction. Furthermore, the use of the word fuck indicates an important distinction between written and oral storytelling. The reader should not assume that the use and inherent meaning of the word fuck show negative emotion and disrespect, but rather provide insight into important sociolinguistic differences between written and oral storytelling and military and civilian environments. 9 The FOO, an artillery officer attached to the company, also produced a narrative of the event, which was part of our original study; however, because of length constraints we have removed that portion of the analysis from this version. 10 One five fives are artillery rounds. 11 “Right out of ’er” is slang for out of control and refers to the ND.
References Ben-Ari, E. (1998) Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions, and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit, New York: Berghahn Books. Blatchford, C. (2006a) “Canadian dies in Afghan battle,” Globe and Mail, 10 July. ——(2006b) “Three days of fierce, bloody war,” Globe and Mail, 11 July. Brenneis, D. (1996) “Telling troubles: narrative, conflict, and experience,” in C. Briggs (ed.) Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press, 41–52. Briggs, C. (1996) “Introduction,” in C. Briggs (ed.) Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press, 3–40. Brown, K. and Lutz, C. (2007) “Grunt lit: The participant-observers of empire,” American Ethnologist, 34: 322–28. Canadian Defense Academy/Canadian Forces Leadership Institute (2003) Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada, Ottowa: Department of National Defense. Day, A. (2007). “Operation Medusa: the Battle for Panjwai, part 1: The charge of Charlie company,” Legion Magazine Online, Available http://www.legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2007/09/operati on-medusa-the-battle-for-panjwai (accessed 6 December 2009). Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces (2009) Operation Athena. Online. Available http://www.cefcom-comfec.forces.gc.ca/pa-ap/ops/athena/index-eng.asp (accessed 6 December 2009).
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Elkin, F. (1946) “The soldier’s language,” American Journal of Sociology, 51: 414–22. Francis, D., and Hester, S. (2004) An Invitation to Ethnomethodology: Language, Society, and Interaction, London: SAGE Publications. Garrett, P. and Baquedano-López, P. (2002) “Language socialization: Reproduction and continuity, transformation and change,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 31: 339–61. Gowing, T. (1886) A soldier’s experience or a voice from the ranks: showing the cost of war in blood and treasure: a personal narrative of the Crimean campaign from the standpoint of the ranks; the Indian mutiny, and some of its atrocities; the Afghan campaigns of 1863, Nottingham: Thos. Forman and Sons. Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. (2008) “Narrative ethnography,” in S.N. Hesse-Biber and P. Leavy (eds), Handbook of Emergent Methods, New York: Guilford Press: 241–64. Hoffman, D. (2005) “Violent events as narrative blocs: The disarmament at Bo, Sierra Leone,” Anthropological Quarterly, 78: 329–53. Irwin, A. (2002) “The social organization of soldiering: A Canadian infantry company in the field”, unpublishedPhDdissertation,. ——(2004) “Ranking the Rank and File,” Canadian Defense Academy Online. Available http://www. cda-acd.forces.gc.ca/CFLI/engraph/research/pdf/82.pdf (accessed 29 September 2007). ——(2006) “Outside the Wire: The Lived Experience of Combat Soldiers in Afghanistan,” paper presented for 8 Platoon of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry at the University of Calgary, November. Jackson, M. (2002) The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Johnstone, B. (2001) “Discourse analysis and narrative,” in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, and H. Hamilton (eds), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Malden: Blackwell Publishers: 635–49. Keren, M. (2005) “Narrative and image in the commemoration of war: The blog of L.T. Smash,” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 7: 1–25. Linde, C. (2001) “Narrative in institutions,” in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. Hamilton (eds), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Malden: Blackwell Publishers: 518–36. Luttrell, W. (2005) ‘“Good enough’ methods for life-story analysis,” in N. Quinn (ed.), Finding Culture in Talk: A Collection of Methods, New York: Palgrave Macmillan: Ch. 7. Rapport, N. (2000) “The narrative as fieldwork technique: Processual ethnography for a world in motion,” in V. Amit (ed.), Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World, London: Routledge: 71–95. Rapport, N. and Overing, J. (2000) Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts, New York: Routledge. Rosaldo, R. (1986) “Ilongot hunting as story and experience,” in V. Turner and E. Bruner (eds), The Anthropology of Experience, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois: 97–138. Sanders, B. (2006) An Afghan Odyssey, 7 September, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Online. Available http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_sanders/20060901.html (accessed 6 December 2009). Tolvanen, E. and Jylha, M. (2005) “Alcohol in life story interviews with Finnish people aged 90 or over: Stories of gendered morality,” Journal of Aging Studies, 19: 419–35. Watson, G. (1992) Twenty Nine Lines of Fieldnotes,Manchester:. Witherell, C. and Edwards, C.P. (1991) “Moral versus social-conventional reasoning: A narrative and cultural critique,” Journal of Moral Education, 20: 293–305.
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5 Two US combat units in Iraq Psychological contracts when expectations and realities diverge Wilbur J. Scott, David R. McCone and George R. Mastroianni
During World War II (WWII), social scientists interviewed soldiers in the field (Stouffer et al. 1949), conducted focus groups with soldiers recently returned from combat, and collected oral histories from them (Marshall et al. 1946; Marshall 1947). These classic studies sought not only to document what took place within the combat zone, but also to produce theoretical schemes to account for them. Recent research by Wong (2004, 2005) and Ender (2005a,b) extends this tradition to soldiers in Iraq. Wong’s analyses emphasize the complexity of what some term fourth-generation warfare (Lind et al. 1989; Lind 2004) (war in which at least one of the sides is a military force not organized and controlled by a nation-state) and the corresponding requirement for US military personnel to perform multiple roles and tasks, often ones for which they were neither socialized nor trained. In this paper, we address these complexities, focusing on the “psychological contracts” soldiers form with their units and the military.
Psychological contracts and military units In the fall of 2004, we collected oral histories from soldiers assigned to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR) (a highly mobile reconnaissance unit equipped with armored vehicles and aircraft) and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division (4th ID) (a mechanized infantry unit stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado). Both units expected to fight, as the soldiers say, “tank on tank.” What they encountered instead was a very different battlefield with varied missions. Further, the rationale provided by the US President and his associates for the invasion of Iraq centered around claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was in a position to use them. Although the preemptive strike by US forces did topple Saddam’s government, later resulting in his capture, to date no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Hence, a central theme in our inquiry is the apparent violation of soldiers’ expectations in terms of both the rationale for the war and the type of war they would be fighting in Iraq. 56
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In such circumstances, social exchange theory explains how soldiers might subsequently view their unit, the Army, or even the civilian government. Organizational support theory (OST) (Eisenberger et al. 1990, 2001; Rhoades and Eisenberger 2002; Aselage and Eisenberger 2003), and psychological contract theory (PCT) (Rousseau 1995, 2001) are two main variants of the social exchange paradigm. OST posits that members form “globalized beliefs” about the extent to which the organization “cares about them” and, when feeling valued, repay the organization with high levels of commitment and performance. PCT emphasizes members’ perceptions of things the organization expects them to do in return for the goods and benefits they receive, material and otherwise. Thompson and Bunderson’s (2003) ideological currency theory (ICT) adds a further refinement: organizational members often are motivated to serve selflessly because of commitment to a cause. All these theories describe what happens when, in the eyes of its members, the organization fails to deliver as expected. Generally, they predict that members’ commitment and efforts rise and fall in response to perceptions that the organization is reciprocating with desired material and non-material goods and benefits. Further, research findings make clear that organizational members with different types of psychological contracts react differently to violation. Indeed, in the case of military service in a war zone, the last three motivators may be dominant. However, we did not know specifically what these might consist of for soldiers at Ft Carson. Hence, our approach to studying their experiences was drawn from the grounded-theorizing perspective (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss 1987; Glaser 1992), allowing an interplay between theoretical thinking and data collection and analysis. Our approach therefore called for us to allow our respondents to articulate these experiences in their own words as a way of guiding us toward deriving meaningful generalizations.
Sample and methods We conducted the interviews for this study as part of a larger service project at Ft Carson, Project Enduring Memory (PEM). The end purpose of PEM is to create commemorative videos of Ft Carson-based soldiers who died in Iraq. PEM invited Ft Carson soldiers who had served in the immediate units of deceased soldiers to recount their memories in sessions to be videotaped during the fall of 2004. Soldiers who volunteered to contribute to these memorial videos were also invited to take part in oral-history interviews. Of course, our self-selected sample of soldiers is not statistically representative of those from Ft Carson, much less the totality of soldiers who served in Iraq. Nonetheless, there is an especially strong substantive reason for using this sample. These soldiers not only served in Iraq in combat units, but also lost close comrades to injury and death. Hence, the questions we raise pertinent to psychological contracts with their units and the US Army would seem especially relevant in studying these respondents. We developed an open-ended, semi-structured interview using as a guide the US Army Institute of Military History questionnaire for collecting oral histories from veterans. We modified some questions to make them relevant for respondents on active duty and also added items to tap expectations and perceptions of the battlefield in Iraq. As we began to detect themes in the course of the interview sessions, we expanded the interview to pursue these topics more fully. 57
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Findings In presenting the findings we enumerate “mentions”, i.e. opinions expressed about an issue. The number of mentions often exceeds the number of respondents because a soldier could express more than one opinion about an issue. We also present verbatim snippets from the interviews to illustrate and flesh out the empirical basis for each category of mentions. Our analysis focuses on the following issues: (1) why the soldiers joined the military, (2) the effect of 9/11 on soldiers’ decisions to join or remain in the service, (3) soldiers’ perceptions of why the US is involved militarily in Iraq, and (4) similarities and differences between what soldiers thought they would be doing in Iraq and what they actually experienced. “Why join the Military?” Rousseau (2001: 515–19) has argued that an accounting of psychological contracts should begin with pre-employment experiences and expectations. Hence, it is important to know something about why our respondents joined the Army in the first place. Reflections on this question should provide insight into the first set of expectations of what military service might consist of. The modal response category, irrespective of rank, is that of “utilitarian considerations.” Just under half of the officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) give such a reason (47 percent and 46 percent, respectively), whereas 60 percent of the enlisted (lower-ranking) soldiers cite such a consideration. Typical among the reasons given are the desire to pay for schooling, stabilize an otherwise bleak job outlook, or to acquire a different set of occupational skills. For example, the following is representative of the accounts given by a number of enlisted soldiers: “I was working construction and I had gotten [laid off]. I … went to go stay with my mom, [was] cleaning out my wallet and seen I still had my recruiter’s card in there. Gave him a call and pretty much just enlisted.” Similarly, an NCO who had decided to make the Army a career stated: At the time, I think I was more worried [about] providing for my family more than anything else, and, I mean, I was married for a little over a year and just had a daughter and mainly just wanted to make ends meet. The military is one of the most secure jobs that you can get, so to speak. Finally, an officer stated: [I] originally enlisted for the college benefits. At the time, I was coming out of high school. I wanted to go to college, but my family wouldn’t have been able to support me. I would have had to get a lot of loans. So I thought, go into the Army for a few years and earn some money. And then it just worked, worked out that I got accepted into the United States Military Academy. So my goal of me going to college was attained. Among the remaining response categories, adventure and the lure of the military lifestyle is cited most frequently by NCOs (27 percent, enlisted and officers 10 percent to 11 percent), whereas about equal percentages noted a family history of military service (about 20 percent). Finally, about 20 percent of the officers give “to serve our country” 58
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as the primary consideration; the corresponding percentages for NCOs and enlisted soldiers are 5 percent and 10 percent, respectively. This, of course, does not mean that the notion of service is unimportant among most of our respondents. The findings, however, do point to the crucial role played by occupational and monetary opportunities in coloring pre-employment expectations. Many commentators are concerned that these material incentives might hold up in peacetime but attenuate psychological contracts in time of war. For example, a person might have signed up for military service before 9/11 in anticipation of college benefits and then encountered unexpected deployments to a war zone. Conversely, others might have signed up or remained in the service precisely because of a desire to serve in time of war. In other words, ICT theory would seem tailor-made to address motivations for military service in time of war. Hence, we asked respondents to reflect upon whether 9/11 had any effect on their decision to join or to remain in the military. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of the soldiers said that 9/11 had either a profound or extenuating impact upon their thinking. For example, an enlisted soldier summarized his reaction: Well, [joining the military] was something I had been thinking about for awhile and then September 11th came along. That really kinda pushed me, like, my mindset more towards, hey, you know, maybe, I should go on and do my part. … An officer recounted it this way: Absolutely. I remember the morning it happened. [W]e watched everything happen right there [on a big screen TV]. And … all of us pretty much knew at that moment … there was no doubt we were probably going to go to war. So, yes, it did have a pretty profound effect on me. Among those who commented that 9/11 had no effect on their being in the military (officers 28 percent; NCOs 18 percent; enlisted 29 percent), the common theme was that they were already committed to the military and ready to serve whatever occurred. These accounts point to the role of monetary and ideological considerations in deciding to join or remain in the military. The financial inducements for enlisting are considerable. However, service in time of war also incurs a willingness to risk one’s life in service to the country, a dangerous proposition for which it is difficult to provide adequate monetary inducements, especially among potential service members strongly motivated by a cost-risk-benefit analysis. “Why is the US in Iraq?” As noted above, OST posits that members form globalized beliefs about the organization and their place and role within it. Aselage and Eisenberger (2003: 492–93), for instance, note the tendency of members to assign almost “humanlike” characteristics to the organization and their relationship to it. Included in these globalized beliefs are notions about whether the organization uses them properly, treats them fairly, values their contributions, cares about their well-being, etc. For soldiers in a war zone, this includes a range of issues from “Why are we here?” to “Are we properly trained and equipped?” to “Are our personal and family needs being taken care of?”. 59
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The most commonly expressed reason for US military action is “to remove Saddam from power,” closely followed by “to fight terrorism” and “to find weapons of mass destruction.” These opinions account for just over three-fourths of the stated reasons, but vary by rank. Among NCOs, there was a clear modal category (45 percent): to get Saddam. For officers (25 percent of mentions) and enlisted-rank soldiers (24 percent), a focus on Saddam Hussein predominated as a prime reason for military action. For example, one officer stated, “I believe that, you know, history has shown that Saddam Hussein and his regime were bad for the world and bad for the US, bad for stability. … It’s a good thing to have stopped him.” More officers (30 percent of mentions) and enlisted ranks (28 percent) than NCOs (13 percent) linked military involvement in Iraq to the search for weapons of mass destruction and to the larger war on terrorism. In the words of one officer: Well, you know, there was the weapons of mass destruction, but I always thought we were just, it was a larger part of the global war on terrorism, because I just figured, you go in there and clean up that and move on to somewhere else. We just haven’t left yet. Several soldiers tempered considerations leading to US intervention in Iraq with caution. One officer noted wryly, “Hindsight is 20/20. At that time, we believed they had weapons of mass destruction.” Finally, a small percentage of respondents (officers 6 percent of mentions; NCOs 16 percent; enlisted 16 percent) did not articulate a rationale for military involvement in Iraq. A soldier remarked, “Honestly, I have never really thought about it. To me, it was just, we got orders to go over and that was it.” In a similar vein, an NCO succinctly stated, “I was, well, I’m in the military. I do what I’m told, so I don’t really question it too much. I’m not a diplomat, you know.” “What happened once in Iraq?” The situation on the ground in Iraq changed dramatically by the time the 3rd ACR and 4th ID arrived in Iraq. The tank-on-tank battles they had expected had vanished. What do the soldiers themselves have to say about what took place next? Mission shift The realities differed from what they expected. About half of all mentions express the position that the mission and tactics were different from expected (46 percent). This percentage was slightly higher for NCOs (52 percent) and slightly lower for enlisted soldiers (36 percent). Several respondents noted specifically that the type of war they expected disappeared before the 3rd ACR and 4th ID got there. An officer in the 4th ID stated somewhat wistfully: [A]ctually when we were flying over, we stopped in Germany and saw on television that the 3rd [ID] was pushing into Baghdad. So we initially thought our mission was going to be, continue to fight, and probably just pick up where they left off. … But at that point we [found] the war was pretty much over. We were kinda disappointed actually. 60
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Soon, however, there was plenty to do. What ensued was a kind of urban, guerrilla warfare which, although not totally foreign to armored cavalry and mechanized infantry units, nevertheless called for considerable adjustment and adaptability. A 3rd ACR officer explained: The regiment normally is the eyes and ears of the Third Corps in a major highintensity conflict role. We tended at the time to focus on that versus dismounted operations in the city. We’re just not equipped for [the latter] and that wasn’t the intent behind our formation. But as all the units [quickly] figured out, you gotta be more flexible and have a broader range of base skills, so. But what did these operations consist of? Although there were some important variations by unit, area of operation, and periods during the deployment, there were many similar components of what are called “stability operations.” An NCO in the 3rd ACR summarized stability operations in this way: Basically, just keep the roads clear from IEDs [improvised explosive devices], land mines, and make sure that there was peace, um, confiscate weapons. Basically, do the same thing a police department does. You know, just make sure everything is in order and, of course, you know, to do some raids in houses and shake down what we could, confiscate [weapons], and try to eliminate the bad people and put the fear in them. We did a pretty good job of that. An important part of performing these and other tasks is setting foot on the ground. For tankers and for scouts in Bradley fighting vehicles, this meant dismounting, i.e. climbing down out of those well-protected armored vehicles during potentially hostile situations, something they are neither inclined nor trained to do. As an NCO in the 4th ID explained: [T]here was no real tank threat as far as like tank battles and stuff, … we had … dismounted [missions], … [Y]ou know, we’re not used to dismounting. … So that was a lot, that was different! Similarly, another 4th ID NCO stated: “We started to get into the dismounted infantry tactics. We’re tankers, you know, we don’t ever really get off our tanks. At least that’s the old mentality. That’s changed now.” Yet another 4th ID NCO, this one in a mechanized infantry outfit, cautioned: [I]t was kind of more like being a police officer. … infantry ain’t … too good as police officers. You know, [we’re] not trained for that. If mission shift and changing operations were a stretch for scouts and infantrymen, it could be even more challenging for artillerymen, engineers, and support personnel, who were at times converted into infantry or dismounts. A 3rd ACR artillery NCO described the conversion: … I was expecting to do a hell of a lot more of artillery work. … [W]hen we went out there we had to do … things we weren’t really trained for, but, of course, we adjusted to it. 61
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An enlisted soldier in the 4th ID described the role conflict this could produce: … Being in field artillery, you expected to shoot a lot of rounds and we shot some but not near as much as we thought. [W]e were kind of, like, I would say MPs (military police) after a while. Some of us dealt with it pretty well. Some of us didn’t, just because of the stress. … And, for some, including those in support roles, infantry duties supplemented their usual work, a common occurrence during combat operations. Adaptation to mission shift Although a significant shift in mission often called for soldiers to do many things they had neither expected nor been trained to do, the soldiers by-and-large felt they adjusted to these demands. The comments of this NCO are typical: What we ended up doing was totally different from what … we trained, [so] what we did … was on-the-job training … I think we did an excellent job. Other expectation–reality gaps Several other trends are worth noting. Officers, more so than NCOs and enlisted ranks (26 percent, 15 percent, and 11 percent of mentions, respectively), reported that the job situation was different from what they had expected (i.e. they were not assigned the jobs they expected). Among the enlisted ranks, the most frequent mentions other than mission/tactics address “other situations” (21 percent vs 3 percent and 9 percent for officers and NCOs), i.e. observations about day-to-day conditions, especially the climate. An officer said of the heat: “[Y]ou really can’t explain how hot that is. You, you just can’t. It’s [as] if someone were to open the oven and that blast of heat that you get, that’s what’s like all day long.” Intense heat and gritty sand created special problems for maintaining and repairing armored vehicles. A maintenance NCO recalled an instance working on a tank’s engine: I remember doing tank services … which is pulling the engine out and running [it] and setting [it] back in, and it was 140-something degrees! Well, you gotta alternate your people in and out, get H2O in ’em, keep ’em hydrated. [And] you had to wear gloves! Finally, officers and enlisted soldiers were more likely than NCOs to comment on the differences in the people and culture (13 percent and 11 percent vs 5 percent). We should also note that about one in five of the respondents (18 percent) found things to be pretty much as they expected. This position, however, usually was tempered by the observation that the respondent had expected things to be “different than expected.” As one soldier stated, “Flexibility is my MOS (military occupational specialty)!” Personal and family needs Mission considerations aside, few things can more directly challenge the soldiers’ globalized beliefs about the extent the organization cares than the failure to address personal 62
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and family considerations. Across the board, the soldiers report satisfaction with the efforts and results of both the 3rd ACR and the 4th ID in this area. For starters, these Ft Carson soldiers assumed that some sort of deployment to the Middle East was inevitable for them after 9/11. In anticipation of deployment to Iraq, both units had activated plans to get soldiers’ personal, financial, and family affairs “squared away,” known formally as the Soldier Readiness Program (SRP). One NCO commented: We had plenty of time from the time we were notified. They kept putting off [our deployment date], so. Um, plus we had to go through SRP, making sure we had powers of attorneys, and wills and all that stuff for our family. And we had a chance to sit down with a chaplain (and other counselors) and talk over problems and stuff. Nonetheless, there were important differences among the soldiers in direct experiences with deployment. The officers and NCOs who had been around for a while had deployed before, and some already had a routine for handling this eventuality. For others, it was their first deployment. If married, decisions had to be made if the spouse would remain in the Ft Carson area or return home to be closer to relatives. For those not married or without partners, household goods and automobiles had to be placed in storage. For single parents, childcare arrangements had to be finalized. Finally, in some cases, both wife and husband were in the Army and were deploying to Iraq, either with the 3rd ACR or 4th ID or with other units. For example, one officer in the latter group described his family situation: Well, my wife is also a Captain and she also deployed. … I worried a lot [in Iraq] ‘cause I knew [my wife] was out on the same roads that I was out on moving around. She was company commander at the same time [I was], so I knew she had to be out there, you know, checking on her soldiers and those things. In Iraq, the two units made special efforts to provide connections with loved ones at home. As operating bases became more formally established, it became possible for soldiers to call home by phone and to set up email connections. These opportunities were unevenly distributed (some could use them daily, others only weekly or once a month) and were widely available only toward the end of the 12-month deployment to Iraq. Also, both units were able to implement mid-tour leave programs, in which a certain number of soldiers were able to come home for a week around the sixth or seventh month of the tour. Priority was given to soldiers with families. Ft Carson also had a Family Readiness Group (FRG) in place, whose task it was to monitor problems families might be having while the two units were in Iraq. Year-long separations strain any family. So, despite units’ efforts, several soldiers recounted instances of family problems, divorce, or adjustment problems by their children. Further, instant communication from the war zone to the home front had some downsides. For example, in the event of a casualty, telephone or email could deliver the bad news instantly but informally; a spouse could learn of a casualty through the grapevine before any official word had arrived. Units, therefore, often shut down email operations immediately following a casualty to allow time for word to be delivered officially to the family at home. Consequently, email shut-downs as a result of technical or other reasons send shockwaves of concern through family communities back home. 63
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Finally, by most accounts, the homecoming to Ft Carson was efficiently and effectively handled. One NCO commented: “I think it was the neatest experience coming into the Special Events Center and, you know, everybody there screaming and hollering and you’re just standing there. So it was a pretty great feeling. … ” Of course, this euphoria quickly gave way to the realities of a readjustment period for soldiers and their loved ones. One officer described the situation this way: You don’t comprehend what people back here have been through and they don’t comprehend what you’ve been through when you’re over there. … And so you try to do this, like, instant download of everything and it, it just doesn’t work. It’s such a slow process. … As a result, Ft Carson provided classes and programs to ease the readjustment process. These included orientations in what issues and symptoms to expect during this time and specialized help in family dynamics, financial management, and grief counseling. Some of these were mandatory, whereas others were optional. Commenting upon the overall effort, one NCO concluded: At first you’re just, like, oh man, this is bunk, this is ridiculous, I don’t need this. But then after I sat there and listened to it, I actually talked to my wife about it and we attended other classes after that. So, I think it’s been great, it’s been awesome, I don’t think they have overlooked anything. No matter what the soldier needs, there is a program out there to help them, no matter what.
Discussion These findings suggest that soldiers in the 3rd ACR and 4th ID maintained a high level of commitment to their units and the Army as an institution during their deployment to Iraq and thereafter. This observation invites some analysis and explanation of the factors at work in maintaining such commitment under challenging conditions, and with frequent apparent disconnects between expectations and realities. A dynamic underlying the three social exchange theories cited here (OST, PCT, ICT) is the norm of reciprocity. This principle states that organizational members are motivated to pursue organizational goals when there is a match between members’ expectations and organizational rewards. OST and PCT differ in emphasis, but share a common focus on perceptions by members of the contributions they make to the organization compared with derived rewards and benefits (material and relational). The contribution of ICT lies in its specific emphasis on devotion to a cause as a specific motivator of performance within an organization. Although these theories have been tested in civilian employment settings, we can speculate on their application to military situations in combat. In the era of WWII, some researchers caused a stir with their claims that soldiers fight and die for each other rather than for their country (Stouffer et al. 1949; Marshall et al. 1946; Marshall 1947). Since then, other military sociologists have reinforced the salience of patriotic sentiments in combat units (Moskos 1970, 1976), whereas others have noted a convergence between civilian and military organizations in factors that motivate members since the advent of the all-volunteer force (Segal and Segal 1983). As our 64
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findings reveal, soldiers in our two combat units are motivated by a range of considerations: financial, ideological, and relational. All three would seem to figure simultaneously in psychological contracts formed by soldiers. The findings also show that these considerations vary consistently by rank, a pattern no doubt reflecting differences in career contingencies. For example, at the time of our interviews, re-enlistment bonuses for non-officers, depending on a soldier’s military specialty, could be as high as $40,000 for an additional commitment of 4 years. Officers, on the other hand, do not receive reenlistment bonuses but were extended other career inducements to remain in the service, such as the opportunity to obtain an advanced degree at the Army’s expense. Further, soldiers may look to different levels of their organizational hierarchy for different kinds of rewards in return for their service. For instance, unit leaders have little or no discretion in determining how much members are paid or what their general mission will be. We know from our oral histories that financial and larger ideological considerations provide important incentives for joining the military. Hence, the larger organization of the Army and civilian authorities that oversee the military may be seen as responsible for maintaining these rewards. The unit level therefore may be the prime source of socioemotional or relational rewards and certain ideological incentives, e.g. commitment to others in the same unit (internal cohesion) and carrying out the mandates of one’s chosen profession. Our findings also document that the mission, the tactical situation, job assignments, and other situations were at odds with what soldiers in these units had been led to expect. However, these observations frequently ended with phrases such as “but we learned to adapt,” “of course, we adjusted,” or “somehow we made it happen,” suggesting the presence of conditions that mediate the disconnect between expectation and reality and mitigate the effects. PCT, in particular, focuses on the consequences when an implicit contract is violated and offers a consideration that may mediate the likelihood of negative responses: the perception of why the breach has occurred. There are several possible perceptions: that the organization deliberately acted in bad faith (reneging); that there was a misunderstanding of the contract’s actual terms (incongruence); or, finally, that the breach occurred because of circumstances outside the control of the organization (disruption). If this is considered as a kind of continuum ranging from high to low “organizational fault”, we posit that a disconnect between expectation and reality leads to negative organizational outcomes only when there is also high organizational fault. However, in our data there is little evidence of perceived organizational fault, i.e. the opinion that the breach is attributable to factors within their unit’s or the Army’s control. The many changes in mission, tactical situations, and the like, mostly represent things that, in the words of one soldier, “could [not] have been briefed prior. … ” Hence, soldiers seemed to have no feelings that they had been deceived, used, or ignored by the institution. The perception of low organizational fault also is consonant with the general requirement for adaptability in military life, as reflected in maxims such as “SNAFU” (Situation Normal, All F#%$ed Up) or “adapt and overcome.” Nonetheless, military units are configured and trained to do certain things and fight certain kinds of wars. As we have seen, the 3rd ACR and 4th ID are most suitably configured and trained to fight a near-peer in conventional tank-on-tank battles. However, the realities of the war in Iraq are different and, indeed, have aroused a rethinking of warfare within the military. For example, Chiarelli and Michaelis (2005) stress the necessity for “full-spectrum” warfare, i.e. the simultaneous implementation of “lethal” combat operations and of “non-lethal” efforts. Full-spectrum warfare calls for the ordinary soldier to have a skill-set 65
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that extends far beyond combat operations. Chiarelli and Michaelis (2005: 15) acknowledge that the Army’s current “regulations, bureaucratic processes, staff relationships, and culture,” although well suited for lethal tasks, mitigate against carrying out the non-lethal dimensions of the equation effectively. As we have seen, soldiers and small-unit leaders have been forced to improvise in order to carry out any version of full-spectrum warfare in Iraq. To this point, they have done so largely without attributing fault to the organization for the dangers, stresses, and inconveniences this entails. However, as the war in Iraq grinds on and as units rotate to and from the war zone, the willingness by soldiers to accept the disconnect between expectation and reality stoically will decline unless it is addressed more systematically through adjustments in organization and training. Given the strong internal cohesion of most combat units in today’s Army, much of the potential negative organizational consequences may be directed against civilian authorities or the Army’s higher echelons.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Scott, W., McCone, D. and Mastroianni, G.R. (2006) “Psychological contracts in two US combat units in Iraq: what happens when expectations and realities diverge?” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 301–17.
References Aselage, J. and Eisenberger, R. (2003) “Perceived organizational support and psychological contracts: A theoretical integration,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24: 491–509. Chiarelli, P. and Michaelis, P. (2005) “Winning the peace: The requirement for full-spectrum operations,” Military Review, July/August: 4–17. Eisenberger, R., Fasoto, P., and Davis-LaMastro, V. (1990) “Perceived organizational support, and employee diligence, commitment, and innovation,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 75: 51–59. Eisenberger, R., Armeli, S., Rexwindel, B., Lynch, P. and Rhoades, L. (2001) “Reciprocation of perceived organizational support,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 86:42–51. Ender, M. (2005a) “Live from the front: Military families, embedded reporting, and war in Iraq,” paper presented at the International Biennial Meetings of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society in Chicago, October 2005. ——(2005b) “US soldiers, OIF, and attitudes toward social issues,” Paper presented at the International Biennial Meetings of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society in Chicago, October 2005. Glaser, B. (1992) Emergence vs. Forcing: Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis, Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press. Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago, IL: Aldine. Lind, W. (2004) “The four generations of modern war.” Online. Available http://www.lewrockwell. com/lind/lind26.html (accessed 14 September 2005). Lind, W., Nightengale, K., Schmitt, J., Sutton, J. and Wilson, G. (1989) “The changing face of war: Into the fourth generation,” Online. Available http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/4th_gen_war_gazette.htm (accessed 13 September 2005). Marshall, S.L.A. (1947) Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Marshall, S.L.A., Westover, J. and Webber, A.J. (1946) Bastogne: The First Eight Days, Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press.
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Moskos, C., Jr (1970) The American Enlisted Man, New York: Russell Sage. ——(1976) “The Military,” Annual Review of Sociology, 2: 55–77. Rhoades, L. and Eisenberger, R. (2002) “Perceived organizational support: A review of the literature,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 87: 698–714. Rousseau, D. (1995) Psychological Contracts in Organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ——(2001) “Schema, promise and mutuality: The building blocks of the psychological contract,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74: 511–41. Segal, D. and Segal, M.W. (1983) “Change in military organization,” Annual Review of Sociology, 9: 151–70. Stouffer, S., Suchman, E., DeVinney, L., Star, S. and Williams, R., Jr. (1949) The American Soldier, Volume 1: Adjustment During Military Life and Volume 2: Combat and Its Aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Strauss, A. (1987) Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, J. and Bunderson, J.S. (2003) “Violations of principle: Ideological currency in the psychological contract,” Academy of Management Review, 28: 571–86. Wong, L. (2004) Developing Adaptive Leaders: The Crucible Experience of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College. ——(2005) “Why professionals fight: Combat motivation in the Iraq war,” in D. Snider and L. Matthews (eds) The Future of the Army Profession, 2nd edn, Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing.
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6 Capture of Saddam Hussein Social network analysis and counterinsurgency operations Brian J. Reed and David R. Segal
America’s military doctrine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was based on wars against opponents whose military forces were organized bureaucratically and acted as agents of states involved in the conflicts. Current military campaigns, by contrast, involve combatants who are non-state actors, whose organization is embedded in more traditional social structures. Doctrine for the former conflicts was informed by an understanding of bureaucratic organization. Max Weber’s (1968) ideal-typical portrayal of bureaucracy was rooted in the Prussian military. More recent campaigns, however, are more informed by Simmel’s understanding of social networks. This conceptualization contributed to Operation Red Dawn: the capture of Saddam Hussein. This chapter uses the unclassified intelligence data gathered in Iraq that, by analyzing social networks, led to the capture of Saddam Hussein. The phrase “social network” refers to a set of actors and the ties among them. The network analyst models these relationships to depict the structure of a group (Wasserman and Faust 1994). We apply social network analysis to Saddam Hussein’s network, providing an evaluation of those concepts and methods when applied to an insurgency. We identify social network methods and measures that are useful in understanding the intricacies of an insurgent network.
Insurgent warfare Low-intensity conflict, or guerrilla warfare, has been more common throughout history than conflict between armies on the conventional battlefield (Nagl 2002). The essential features of guerrilla warfare (avoiding the enemy’s strengths, clever use of the terrain, and striking at outposts and logistical support centers from unexpected locations) have barely changed since the days of the Romans and the Persians. However, what has made guerrilla warfare a more potent form of conflict for accomplishing political objectives is the addition of revolutionary thinking (Nagl 2002). Current views of insurgency are based on our interpretation of the classic texts of insurgency warfare and our experiences dealing with wars of national liberation in the 68
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late twentieth century (McCallister 2005). The basic tenets of this form of warfare are found in the writings of past practitioners such as Mao Tse-tung. Mao saw revolutionary war as protracted and organized into three phases: a phase in which the insurgents build political strength; a second phase of progressive expansion; and the final decisive phase culminating in the destruction of the enemy (Hammes 2004; Nagl 2002: 23). Mao also called for clearly defined political goals and firmly established political responsibility. Mao understood that war is fundamentally a political undertaking and that political mobilization is the most fundamental ingredient for winning (Hammes 2004). Does this view of insurgency fit our expectations of twenty-first century insurgent warfare? As we look at operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the overall global war on terror (GWOT), does the classical understanding of revolutionary warfare square with these present-day dilemmas? We believe that the past and the present are not so different. Most notably, modern conceptions of insurgency concentrate on defeating the political will of one’s enemy, rather than defeating the enemy’s army on the battlefield. Like those who came before them, insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places where the war on terrorism is being waged are dedicated to a long-term conflict. What we are witnessing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other areas is a revision of what we have witnessed in previous insurgent warfare. Precipitated by state failure, we see non-state actors organized in non-state form, organized across territorial boundaries, operating along pre-existing structural linkages that are adapted to wage insurgent warfare. In addition, there is an external foreign power attempting to restore order and governance in a country that is not its former colony. In the GWOT, one of the greater challenges the US faces is opposition from a fully mobilized, traditionally networked tribalized enemy. The insurgency possesses an unassailable base, guarded against direct attack. This unassailable base is the social network itself, merging and diverging as the situation dictates (McCallister 2005). What motivates and sustains such an insurgency is not readily found in traditional insurgency literature. We can find much better answers by re-examining the dynamics of traditionally networked tribes and clans with social network analysis and the theory of Georg Simmel. In Simmel’s treatment of affiliations we find the core concepts of networks and linkages. By identifying non-linear patterns, we begin to understand the organization at hand. With respect to clan-like organizations, Simmel outlined a conceptual understanding of how such familial associations affect an individual: In primitive clan-organizations the individual would participate in several groups in such a way that he belonged to the kinship or totemic group of his mother, but also to the narrower, familial, or local association of his father. … With peculiar purposefulness these two kinds of association are therefore so differently arranged that they do not encroach upon each other. Relationships on the maternal side have a more ideal, spiritual nature, whereas on the paternal side they are real, material, and directly effective. (1908/1955: 142) The modern insurgency represents an evolved form of warfare which considers the fact that tribal societies have pre-existing social, economic, and military networks easily adapted to fighting wars, and these extend across traditional boundaries and borders. Such networking is a trend for the future. 69
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The social network perspective The study of networks, interactions, and relationships has a long and distinct history in sociology. Georg Simmel has made, perhaps, the greatest contributions to our understanding of the patterns, or forms, of social interaction (Ritzer 1996). One of his primary interests was interaction among conscious actors; he looked at a wide range of interactions that may seem trivial at some times but crucial at others. Simmel’s sociology was always concerned with relationships, especially interaction, and his work was shaped by the belief that everything interacts in some way with everything else (268). In his seminal work, The Web of Group Affiliations, Simmel (1908/1955) outlined his interest in the sociological components of interpersonal relationships. In developing such a relationship, an individual at first sees him- or herself in an environment that is relatively indifferent to individuality, but which has implicated the individual in a web of circumstances. These circumstances impose on the person a close coexistence with those whom the accident of birth has placed next to him or her. As the development of society progresses, each individual establishes contacts with persons who stand outside this original group affiliation, but who are related or connected to him/her by some similarity or interest. This association, based on external factors, is superseded over time by association (personal relationships) or by a genuine attachment between persons that is more powerful than the external factor(s) that brought them together in the first place. The number of different social groups in which the individual participates is one of the earmarks of culture. The groups with which the individual is affiliated constitute a “system of coordinates” such that each new group with which one becomes affiliated circumscribes the person more exactly and more unambiguously (140). As one becomes affiliated with a social group, one surrenders to the group. However, the individual retains some individuality because one’s pattern of participation is unique. Multiple group affiliations can strengthen the individual and reinforce the integration of one’s personality. The individual belongs to many groups and, therefore, one feels and acts with others, but also against others (155). Thus, individuals have to negotiate conflicting loyalties. The extent to which associations form a tightly knit group may be gauged by the extent to which groups have developed a collective code of “honor” (163). Such groups ensure their members’ appropriate conduct by establishing a specific form of honor, such as family honor, professional honor, reputation, etc. However some relationships escape control, thus allowing individuals to maintain their freedom. From Simmel’s point of view, the real world is composed of innumerable events, actions, and interactions (Ritzer 1996). To cope with this maze of reality, people create order by imposing patterns or forms. The sociologist’s task, Simmel argued, is to impose a limited number of forms on social reality, on interaction in particular, to facilitate analysis. This approach involves selecting some bounded, finite phenomenon examining the multiplicity of its elements; and ascertaining the cause of their coherence by disclosing its form. Forms are the patterns exhibited by people’s associations (272). In other words, they are social networks.
Applications of social network theory When considering the GWOT, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq, our analysis is guided by the dynamic that present-day warfare favors the rise of network forms of 70
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organization. It is a great challenge to fight a counterinsurgency in a traditionally networked society. Fighting a counterinsurgency implies defeating the insurgency’s main, regional, and local fighters. It requires finding and arresting its leaders and shadow government cadre. Finally, counterinsurgency forces must disrupt the recruitment and indoctrination processes that mobilize individuals and resources to overthrow a constituted government (McCallister 2005). Network analysis helps us understand how such network-based “enemy” systems behave and how that behavior is affected by their connectivity. The intelligence and information work ongoing in places such as Iraq is known as the “Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield” (IPB) and from it one can infer the relationship between this process and sociological research. The IPB is a vital command and staff function for successful counterinsurgency operations. Assisting the commander in identifying targets, objectives, and friendly tactics, the IPB allows commanders to direct operations against the enemy. Link diagraming of various enemy cells is a key component in the IPB process. Understanding the terrain and population at large helps the commander choose the time and location of future operations, as well as tactics. These analyses support offensive operations that keep the enemy on the defensive. Many who write about terrorists observe that these groups are organized as networks. However, assessment at this level should also include showing exactly what type of network design is being used, members’ potential to act autonomously, the distribution of leadership and the interaction of hierarchical dynamics with network dynamics. Social network analysts should precisely describe a network’s structure, especially for analyzing terrorist groups (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001). In attempting to explain the situation in Iraq, analysts must consider the idea that modern warfare represents an evolved form of insurgency. A tribal society already has social, economic, and military networks easily adapted to fighting wars. The ways insurgents exploit the tribal network represent an expression of inherent cultural and social customs. The social dynamic that sustains the insurgency in Iraq is best understood in terms of tribal relationships in a traditionally networked society that offers rebels and insurgents a ready-made insurrectionary infrastructure (McCallister 2005). The full functioning of a network depends on how well, and in what ways, the members are personally known and connected to each other. Strong personal ties, often ones that rest on friendship, ensure high degrees of trust and loyalty (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001). To function well, networks may require higher degrees of interpersonal trust than do other approaches to organization, like hierarchies. For example, news about Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network reveal his, and its, dependence on personal relationships formed over the years with “Afghan Arabs” from Egypt and elsewhere who were committed to anti-US terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001). Today’s battlefield requires an assessment of the political and social architecture of the operating environment, from the friendly and the enemy perspective. A network approach aids analysis of how the enemy is organized and how it fights. Resistance networks often do not behave like normal social networks. By asking what kind of social network a resistance network is, one gains an understanding of the network and how to destabilize it.
Identifying and specifying Saddam Hussein’s network Why have the members of the insurgency assumed a network form? Why do they remain in that form? Networks are held together by the narratives, or stories, that people 71
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tell (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001), which provide a grounded expression of experiences, interests, and values. They express a sense of identity and belonging: of who “we” are, why “we” have come together, and what makes “us” different from “them.” These narratives communicate a sense of cause, purpose, and mission. They express aims and methods as well as cultural dispositions: what “we” believe in, what “we” mean to do, and how. The right story can thus help keep people connected in a network whose looseness makes it difficult to prevent defection. The right story line also can help create bridges between networks and generate a perception that a movement has a winning momentum, that time is on its side (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 2001). The tribal ethos influences all aspects of life in modern Iraqi society. The fundamental aspect of tribal identity is extended kinship. The tribe is the largest unit whose associated clan claims a common lineage. But the tribe is more than just a number of descent-based groups. Often, much of tribal genealogy is based on fictive kinship ties. In claiming a particular ancestry, individuals may align themselves with a given political position and strategy. But, tribes exist in a perpetual state of flux. Associations and alliances shift. In this sense, tribal identity is flexible, since it incorporates an invented quality that provides a context for political and social action (McCallister 2005). The clan is the second level of organization in Iraq and derives its unity of purpose from its sheikh, his family lineage, and the territorial proximity of the various sub-clan affiliates of which it is composed. Sub-clans are a composite of patrilineal groups and extended families. These, in turn, are composed of kinship groups and divided into households. The tribe and clan perform a political and military function; sub-clans and households an economic one. Leadership is traditionally reserved to the outstanding patrilineal lineage of the strongest sub-clan, with the strongest clan providing the leadership of the tribe. In the case of a pan-tribal confederation, the strongest tribe holds the “Sheikh of Sheikh” position. In a world of perpetual conflict, weaker tribes will seek security through alliances with larger, stronger ones (McCallister 2005). As a process of group formation driven by an issue at hand, members of a tribe, or members of one of its segments, may join together for collective action. Which segments of the tribe unite depends on the subject and context of the conflict. Different issues require different political alignments, and, therefore, call for the coming together of different parts of the tribe. The operational group might be restricted to a clan within the tribe, or a lineage within the clan, whereas, at other times, it might involve several clans or lineages. All the clans that constitute a tribe usually unite in matters that concern the whole tribe. Some tribes might form tribal confederations for specific purposes, usually to enhance their ability to oppose a common enemy (Charrad 2001).
The capture of Saddam Hussein The death of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in 1971 marked the beginning of a new era in contemporary Arab politics, exemplified by men like Saddam Hussein in Iraq (Musallam 1996). Although he paid lip service to party slogans, he abandoned any serious pretence of an ideological crusade, assuming a realist position as he came to understand how much Iraq might gain by pursuing his own narrow political and national interests. Saddam Hussein had been at the center of politics in Iraq for a quarter of a century. His rise to power was remarkable, characterized by tenacious perseverance, skillful manipulation, and merciless elimination of rivals (Karsh and Rautsi 1991). He succeeded 72
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through patient hard work, unprincipled manipulation of allies and enemies alike, and, surprisingly, genuine support from colleagues and many ordinary people in Iraq who admired his abilities (Henderson 1991). The capture of Saddam Hussein was the result of hard work and excellent intelligence gathering. Each day led to more of the key players being identified and located. Analysts began to build graphic descriptions of his social network showing the structure of Saddam Hussein’s personal security apparatus and the relationships among the persons identified as: … related to Hussein by blood or tribe … [Maj. Gen. Raymond T.] Odierno, [Commander, 4th Infantry Division] said those family diagrams led his forces to lower-level, but nonetheless highly trusted, relatives and clan members harboring Hussein and helping him move around the countryside. … (Loeb 2003: A27) Building these diagrams included “assigning” roles and positions to certain people within the network. These were not necessarily positions they occupied before the fall of Hussein, but instead were based on an understanding of the function they were filling in support of the insurgency or Saddam’s “underground” operations. Analysts assigned these roles based on assessments of various personalities and recent intelligence and information reports, which helped determine those closest to Hussein and their importance. Over the course of their search, coalition forces continued to track how the enemy operated. Capturing two of Saddam Hussein’s key associates in November 2003 confirmed the accuracy of the template. After several weeks of little to no new information relevant to Saddam and his network, a series of events led to an abundance of information and new intelligence about the resistance and the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein. The result was a series of raids, all designed to capture key individuals who could eventually lead to Saddam’s capture. Each raid resulted in more information, which led to a subsequent raid. This cycle eventually led into the inner circle of those most trusted by Saddam.
Explaining the network We analyzed Saddam Hussein’s network using four general network measures: size, density, transitivity, and cliques. “Size” is the number of nodes, or actors, in the network; “density” is the number of relationships in the network as a proportion of the total number of possible relationships; “transitivity” refers to the way that two linked network members often draw others into a cluster of ties in which most members are linked with each other (Wellman 1983). A “clique” is a collection of actors all of whom “choose” each other, and there is no other actor in the larger population who also “chooses” and “is chosen” by all of the members of the clique. There are 214 nodes in the link diagram of Saddam’s network; however, only 23 actors had a direct tie to him. Thus, he was insulated from most members of the network by at least one intervening node. Since the objective was to locate Hussein, it follows that one of these 23 actors would be the most likely to know his location. Therefore, we plotted the sub-networks of the 23 with direct ties to Saddam Hussein. In total, we defined 388 relationships. We disaggregated the network by identifying the trust and task 73
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ties between the conspirators. The trust ties include those defined by immediate family, extended family, close friendships, and bodyguards. The task ties include money, resources, and insurgent operations. In general, the network is neither dense, nor transitive. Most actors in the network were unconnected to most other actors. The lack of density and transitivity in this network is not surprising, given that this is a covert network. Members will establish only necessary ties. Of the sub-networks, the insurgent operations category is the most fragmented (8 components) and the least dense (1.31 density). This category is most strongly defined by function, and least by traditional ties. There are eight sub-graphs in which there is a path between all pairs of nodes in the sub-graph, and there is no path between a node in the sub-graph and any node not in the sub-graph (Wasserman and Faust 1994). This result validates what we know about resistance networks. Namely, these networks are inherently dispersed, and do not provide obvious centers of gravity. Likewise, from an information-gathering standpoint, resistance networks are characterized by incompleteness. There is an inevitability of missing nodes and links. The network may be more dense and less fragmented, but, as a result of possible shortcomings in our data collection methodology, we may not know this. Of the trust relationships (discounting the bodyguard relationship because of the small number of cases), the immediate family relationship is the least connected, within the limitations of our data. It has the most components (6) and the lowest density (1.33 percent). The number of components is not surprising given the number of sub-categories along which membership can be linked. Likewise, the low density of the network reflects the exclusiveness of the categories. A tie between a father and a son can exist only if one is a father and the other is his son. On the other hand, the high density of the close-friend relationship highlights the broadness of the sub-categories in this network: former regime official; tribe or village association; school, military, or political association. These categories are more inclusive and allow for more ties to form, or for the interpretation of a tie during the information-gathering process. Two general network measures were useful. First is the concept of transitivity. Each of us typically belongs not to a single group of acquaintances but to many, within each of which everyone pretty much knows everyone else, but between which little interaction occurs (Watts 1999). Transitivity tells us, for example, that Saddam Hussein has ties to his personal secretary, who has ties to a Fedayeen weapon supplier. However, Saddam Hussein does not have a direct relationship with the weapon supplier. Therefore, in this case, when the objective is to capture Saddam Hussein, it is unlikely that the weapon supplier will be able to provide any specific information about his location. Useful, however, is the location of the personal secretary, which the weapons supplier may be able to provide, as a result of the direct relationship between the two. Equally helpful is the idea of cliques. Looking at the network as a whole, there are 11 cliques of three members each. Five of these cliques are purely the result of immediate family relationships and reflect the persisting importance of traditional ties. Others are also due to ties based on different combinations of money and resources, immediate family relationships, and insurgent operations. Another consideration is that the strict clique definition may be too strong for many purposes. Strictly defined every member of a sub-group has a direct tie with every other member. One alternative defines an actor as a member of a clique if the actor is connected to every other member of the group at a distance greater than one (i.e. being “a friend of a friend”). This approach to defining sub-structures is called N-clique, where N stands for the length of the path allowed to 74
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make a connection to all other members’ (Hanneman and Riddle 2005). Using this relaxed criterion, where N = 2, there are 49 2-cliques for the entire network. Of these 49, only seven contain Saddam Hussein, again reflecting Saddam’s relative insulation. When the objective is the capture of Saddam Hussein, such a measure is useful because it is more inclusive. However, the standard, more restrictive clique measure highlights those most closely tied to him. Analyzing the network using the general network measures, there are six major substantive findings. First, of the 214 actors in the total network, there are only 23 actors with direct ties to Saddam Hussein. Second, the overall network is not dense. Third, the transitivity of the total network is low. Fourth, there are a small number of cliques; and fifth, no clique is larger than three actors. Last, family relationships account for much of the identified clique structure. The distances among actors in a network may be important. Where distances are great, it may take a long time for information to diffuse across a population. Some actors are neither aware of nor influenced by others, even if they are technically reachable, the costs may be too high to conduct exchanges (Hanneman and Riddle 2005). Thus, many nodes in the network may be useless when the goal is to locate Saddam Hussein. In the case of Saddam Hussein’s network, less 17 nodes without ties to the main network (since they cannot lead to Hussein), the mean degree of separation is 5.365. This means that the average distance between any pair of nodes is about five paths. Thus, on average, any one actor in the total network is connected to Saddam Hussein by five other distinct connections. Equally revealing is the percentage of actors who can reach Hussein in one step, two steps, etc.: one step – 12 percent; two steps – 36 percent; three steps – 38 percent; four steps – 48 percent; five steps – 58 percent; six steps – 64 percent; seven steps – 72 percent; eight steps – 77 percent; nine or more steps – 80 percent. Thus, almost half of the other network members are within four degrees of separation of Saddam Hussein, and about two-thirds are within six.
Conclusion This article uses the intelligence data that coalition forces gathered in Iraq that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein. We subjected these data to a more rigorous analysis using the formal conceptualizations and methods of social network theory. However, as indicated in several places, such an approach lends itself to instrumentation effects. Information-gathering focused on a particular individual, or individuals, may result in findings skewed in favor of one’s importance, and the lack of importance of others, when in reality this may not be completely true. We believe a significant contribution of this research is a description of which of these concepts and methods might prove useful when applied to an insurgency, thereby resulting in a systematic network approach for analyzing an insurgent network. One of the more important findings in this analysis is how the network members coopted the family structure for other purposes, for example, waging insurgent warfare or hiding Saddam Hussein. A tribal society already has at its disposal affiliated social, economic, and military networks easily adapted to fighting wars. The ways in which insurgents exploit a tribal network does not represent an evolved form of insurgency but the expression of inherent cultural and social customs (McCallister 2005). The traditional tribal network proffers rebels and insurgents a ready-made insurrectionary infrastructure 75
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to draw on. Hussein’s state reflected a mixture of traditional and modernizing autocracy in which he and his extended family functioned as patrons, dispensing favors to social, economic, and military networks in return for their support. Tradition was not replaced by modernity, but complemented it. These traditional ties and relationships formed the core of the network that waged insurgent warfare and supported the ousted dictator’s evasion of coalition forces. To draw an accurate picture of a covert network, we need to identify task and trust ties between the conspirators. While the mapping networks that we chose were grounded in previous research, we altered the categories in light of our experiences and our belief that trust is an important component of this particular network. In general, we believe that these are good starting points for analyzing the relationships within an insurgent network. Clearly, there are those who plan and execute attacks and those who provide resources for operations. In this case, family relationships (immediate and extended) as well as close friendships were important in terms of understanding why and how ties formed. Future analysis ought to include ideology. The relationships we studied go beyond ideology, since ideology is subsumed within each. However, considering present insurgent networks, this may not always be the case. Although kin and family were important in the Hussein network, this may not be true in an insurgent network presently operating in Iraq. It may be only ideology that ties together certain members. The lessons from this research go beyond insurgent networks, but apply equally to all resistance-type networks, including Al Qaeda. As opposed to a more hierarchical analysis, the challenge is to look across linkages and at the relationships between people and groups. One needs to identify the significant patterns of motivation, interest, and need around which common action is organized. Once we have identified the system, we can begin to tell something about the way behavior is summoned and constrained. Objectives and motivations may be different, but the conceptual network concepts remain the same. The traditional paradigm of resistance organizations as hierarchical or pyramidal structures is not completely accurate (see Selznick 1960). Instead, these organizations are often fragmented and chaotic, with webs of affiliations linking people of various positions and power. These patterns of affiliation and influence are far more important than any formal structure.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Reed, B. J. and Segal, D. R. (2006) “Social network analysis and counterinsurgency operations: the capture of Saddam Hussein,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 251–64. This research was supported in part by the Army Research Institute under contract W74V8H-05-K-0007. All thoughts and expressions contained within this presentation are solely those of the authors and are not the official position of the Army Research Institute, the Department of Defense or the United States Army.
References Charrad, M.M. (2001) States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
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Hammes, T.X. (2004) The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st century, St Paul, MN: Zenith Press. Hanneman, R.A. and Riddle, M. (2005) Introduction to Social Network Methods, Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside. Henderson, S. (1991) Instant Empire: Saddam Hussein’s Ambition for Iraq, San Francisco, CA: Mercury House. Karsh, E. and Rautsi, I. (1991) Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography, New York: Free Press. Loeb, V. (2003) “Clan, family ties called key to army’s capture of Hussein,” Washington Post, 16 December, p. A27. McCallister, W.S. (2005) “The Iraqi insurgency: Anatomy of a tribal rebellion,” First Monday, 10 (3). Online. Available http://firstmonday.org/issues/issuelO_3/mac/index.html (accessed 17 September 2006). Musallam, M.A. (1996) The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait: Saddam Hussein, His State, and International Power Politics, London: British Academic Press. Nagl, J.A. (2002) Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Westport, CT: Praeger. Ritzer, G. (1996) Classical Sociological Theory, New York: McGraw-Hill. Ronfeldt, D. and Arquilla, J. (2001) “Networks, netwars, and the fight for the future,” First Monday, 6 (10). Online. Available http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_10/ronfeldt/index.html (accessed 17 September 2006). Selznick, P. (1960) The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Simmel, G. (1908/1955) The Web of Group Affiliations, Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watts, D.J. (1999) Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Weber, M. (1968) Economy and Society, Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press. Wellman, B. (1983) “Network analysis: Some basic principles,” Sociological Theory, 1: 155–200.
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7 Apples, barrels, and Abu Ghraib George R. Mastroianni and George E. Reed
The notorious abuses that took place in the fall of 2003 at the Baghdad Central Confinement Facility, known to the world as Abu Ghraib, provoked a rapid response from social scientists eager to explain to the world how and why these abuses occurred (American Psychological Association [APA] 2004; Fiske et al. 2004; Staub 2004). In popular articles, commentary, and interviews, the consensus among social scientists who have addressed themselves to these matters seems to include at least the following: (1) the abuses at Abu Ghraib were partly rooted in the same psychological mechanisms underlying the obedient behavior of Stanley Milgram’s subjects in his classic experiments (Milgram 1963, 1974); (2) the events at Abu Ghraib are real-world examples of the behavior exhibited during the Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo 1973; Zimbardo et al. 2000); and (3) the events at Abu Ghraib underscore the power of the situation in determining human behavior. Speaking of the Stanford and Abu Ghraib prisons, Philip Zimbardo said, “It’s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything it touches” (APA 2004). These commentators have offered suggestions for steps that might be taken to prevent such abuses in the future, including improved supervision, greater transparency and accountability, increased staffing, better training, and, in one case, a suggestion that the Army seek advice from corrections experts in the Navy, Air Force, and civilian sectors (APA 2004). We argue that these analyses are too narrow and fail to confront the issue of detainee abuse as comprehensively and effectively as may be done, if the events are considered from a broader perspective, incorporating the individual, organizational, and societal domains.
Abu Ghraib: a convenient parable For many, the events at Abu Ghraib have come to represent larger issues about the war in Iraq. For those who oppose the Bush administration and/or the war itself, the abuses uncovered at Abu Ghraib may be seen to be the result of misguided policies emanating from the highest levels of government. In this view, the explanatory focus shifts away from the individuals who perpetrated the specific acts, and toward the conditions created by administration policy. For those who support the war and the administration, 78
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explanations that focus on the individuals involved in the specific abuses are more persuasive, as they displace blame away from policy-makers and onto culpable individuals. Thus the “bad barrel” and “bad apple” explanations can be seen to align with particular political perspectives: The situational, bad barrel view is likely to be endorsed by those who blame the power elites, whereas the dispositional, bad apple view is congenial to those who see bad behavior as largely a personal variable, resulting less from systemic pressures than from individual weakness. Furthermore, and aside from political considerations, social scientists generally favor bad barrel over bad apple explanations. Bad barrel explanations create an opportunity for social scientists to offer their expertise as social coopers, legitimizing and validating the practical value of social science. Bad apple explanations minimize the utility of social scientists as expert advisors on social policy. The bad barrel explanation of the Abu Ghraib abuses (at least as it has been articulated by psychologists) focuses on the putative similarity between the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the behaviors exhibited in the Milgram and Zimbardo studies. By choosing to analogize these events to these studies, we provisionally circumscribe an explanatory domain that emphasizes the factors operative in the studies. Insofar as the Abu Ghraib events appear to be instances of the general behavioral tendencies identified in the Milgram and Zimbardo studies, focusing on that explanatory domain is entirely appropriate. If, on the other hand, the conditions at Abu Ghraib appear to have departed significantly from those in the Milgram and Zimbardo studies, we will want to be careful to ensure that our consideration of the events at Abu Ghraib is broad enough to include other potentially relevant factors that might contribute to the goal of preventing such abuses in the future.
The Milgram obedience experiment Stanley Milgram’s classic study of obedience to authority (1963) has had tremendous influence within the academic community and in society. Milgram found that many of his research subjects would administer apparently dangerous levels of electric shock to other people when instructed to do so by an experimenter. The subjects acted as “teachers” in a simulated verbal learning experiment, and believed they were administering shocks to “learners” who were making errors (no shocks were actually delivered). Milgram thought his results relevant to the behavior of German soldiers who perpetrated atrocities during World War II, to the My Lai massacre, and to other well-known instances of violent and illegal acts. Bruner (2004) recently made the case for the relevance of the Milgram studies to the abuses at Abu Ghraib: Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority shocked us all when it appeared thirty years ago. How could people deliver increasingly devastating electric shocks to a fellow human being just because they had been requested to do so by a professor “in charge” of an experiment? Alas, the book’s clear warning about the ravages that mindless obedience can create echoes even more loudly today than it did then. Ordinary American soldiers, on orders from their officers, have been broadcast routinely brutalizing and humiliating jailed Iraqi prisoners. And brutalizing them routinely [sic], even taking snapshots of their acts, smiling with satisfaction for a job well done! They said they were obeying orders to “soften up” their captives for later interrogation – however ambiguous those “orders” were later found to be by 79
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official inquiries. Somehow, it didn’t even seem to matter (despite the Geneva Convention and US Army regulations) that most of the prisoners were held only on suspicion of wrongdoing, not yet even charged with specific criminal acts. The case for serious consideration of the Milgram obedience studies as analogous to the Abu Ghraib abuses seems to us tenuous. Careful consideration of the specifics of the study and of the Abu Ghraib incidents may shed some light on the comparison. Among the most striking aspects of the obedient behavior in the Milgram studies was the deep and wrenching conflict displayed by many of the subjects in the study. Nervousness and agitation, and repeated requests for reassurance from the experimenter were evident in many of the subjects. It does not seem from any of the written material or visual images concerning the study that the subjects truly enjoyed inflicting shocks on the learners. This contrasts dramatically with the grinning, leering, and clowning that are so disturbingly apparent in the Abu Ghraib images. In fact, one could view the two situations as mirror images of one another. Authority in the Abu Ghraib case was represented by the commanders and their policies and procedures, the ineffective enforcement of which contributed materially to the occurrence of the abuses. In the Milgram study, compliance was greater when proximity to the perceived legitimate authority was greatest, and diminished when the experimenter was more distant. At Abu Ghraib, it was the absence, not the presence of competent authority that most investigators blame for the abuses. Some have suggested that Military Intelligence personnel or others ordered the guards to commit the abuses, but it would seem that little more than planting the suggestion with a few guards in an ineffective leadership environment was all that was required. Many of these same issues have been raised in connection with comparisons of the behavior of Holocaust perpetrators with that of Milgram’s subjects (Mastroianni 2002). Furthermore, the moral and ethical dimensions of insurgency are genuinely complicated. What are our obligations to “detainees” who are not soldiers? What kinds of treatment are permissible if potentially life-saving intelligence might thereby be acquired? The moral calculus applied by those who abused and those who did not (insofar as abusers considered the moral implications of their actions) must have been different. The intense public controversy over the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo illustrates that there is still much disagreement about the status of detainees and the nature of our obligations to them. Some abusers, then, may have behaved as they did not because they felt compelled to do so against their better judgment, as most of Milgram’s subjects appeared to be doing, or because they were caught up in runaway role-playing, as Zimbardo’s subjects may have been, but because they genuinely believed that they were doing the right thing. After all, many of the prisoners were non-uniformed enemy combatants who violated the laws of land warfare by participation in indiscriminate killing and the destruction of civilian targets. That abusers may have been encouraged in these beliefs by intelligence personnel or others is indeed relevant, but does not necessarily place their actions in the realm of obedient behavior.
The Stanford Prison Study The Stanford Prison Study (Zimbardo 1973) is also widely known and very influential. A simulated prison environment was constructed in the basement of a building at Stanford 80
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University. Research volunteers were randomly assigned as guards or prisoners, and prisoners were picked up at their homes by uniformed officers in police cars and transported to the simulated prison. The guards were given wide latitude to run the prison as they saw fit, and within a few days, the growing prevalence of abusive and pathological behavior led the experimenter to terminate the study earlier than planned. The study has been interpreted and widely promoted as evidence of the “power of the situation” in transforming ordinary people into brutes and serves as the archetypal “bad barrel” paradigm. To be sure, the immediate similarities between guard behavior in the Stanford Prison Study and the abusive events at Abu Ghraib are striking. Zimbardo reported that he has pictures of guards sexually humiliating prisoners with bags over their heads in the Stanford Prison Study that exactly parallel the infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib (APA 2004). The breakdown in military discipline and leadership at Abu Ghraib arguably created a power vacuum not unlike the virtual carte blanche given the guards during the Stanford Prison Study. Isolation from authority and accountability occurred in both situations. In both situations, the most egregious abuses occurred on the night shift, when supervision was most lax. There were, however, some important differences between the two situations. The Stanford guards had no reason to fear the prisoners, as the situation contrived for them was one in which there were roughly equal numbers of prisoners and guards in a secure and safe location. At Abu Ghraib, on the other hand, guards were vulnerable, and were vastly outnumbered by detainees. The growing insurgency in Iraq placed the guards in constant danger of attack from without and within. Whereas neither guards nor prisoners in the Stanford study had any training in the design and operation of prisons, the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were trained in military police operations, including EPW (enemy prisoner of war) operations, and some received pre-deployment training in internment and resettlement operations. In conventional combat military police (MPs) are responsible for, among other things, the management of captured enemy soldiers. Captured enemy soldiers can usually be managed with relatively low guard-to-prisoner ratios. These lower ratios are made possible by several factors. Soldiers, even captured ones, are accustomed to military discipline, often enter captivity with an existing internal chain of authority, and have often recently undergone traumatic and frightening experiences that led to their capture. Moreover, soldier-guards can identify with EPWs as soldiers who clearly are entitled to humane treatment, just as they themselves would expect such treatment were the tables turned. Under such conditions, the vulnerability of guards to prisoner attack is comparatively low. At Abu Ghraib, however, most of the prisoners were not soldiers. Many were criminals; some were simply civilians caught up in a chaotic situation; and some were dangerous insurgents. The management of such prisoner populations requires special training and higher guard-to-prisoner ratios. MPs who staff military correctional facilities, such as the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, comprise a separate occupational specialty in the Army compared with soldiers who are trained in EPW management. The nature of the prison population at Abu Ghraib offers another relevant point of comparison with the Stanford study. Subjects in the Stanford study were mainly college students randomly assigned as prisoners or guards. Indeed, this makes the subsequent behavior of the guards especially disturbing, as it makes it difficult to dismiss them as bad apples: after all, the guards might easily have ended up as prisoners, and the prisoners as guards. As a consequence of the scientific need for randomized assignment to groups, the prisoners at Stanford University were not violent criminals, however: they were people 81
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just like the guards. Would the conditions in the basement at Stanford University, and the results of the study, have been the same had the guards been randomly chosen from a population of college students, and the prisoners from the inmates of a maximumsecurity prison? If the Stanford Prison Study functionally replicated actual prison conditions, why did the extreme reactions observed force the experimenters to terminate the study early? Would a successful replication not have resulted in a stable prison that was capable of long-term functioning, as are most real prisons? The apparent face validity of the Stanford Study masks real and potentially important departures from the emotional and social conditions existing in prisons such as Abu Ghraib. In real prisons, a complex social milieu enmeshes guards and prisoners. Real prisoners are not completely powerless, and are not (normally) subject to arbitrary, capricious, and tyrannical abuse. Moreover, prisoners and guards are not samples drawn from the same population. The random assignment of similar research subjects to one of two groups does not mirror the divergent life histories that lead guards and prisoners to the places they occupy in prisons, which probably create different emotional and psychological responses and adjustments in them. Possibly this contributed to the extreme prisoner responses observed in the Stanford Prisoner Study. A further complication (with no analog in the Stanford Prison Study) lies in the presence of intelligence agents at Abu Ghraib and their relationship to the guards. Military intelligence personnel, civilian contractors, and representatives of “OGAs” (other government agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]) may have encouraged the guards to soften up prisoners before interrogation to facilitate the production of actionable intelligence (intelligence that might help save American lives). The direct conflict between the goals and methods of intelligence authorities and sound corrections management principles was left for untrained soldiers to resolve, as apparently little guidance or supervision from the unit chain of command was forthcoming. While the Stanford guards were completely improvising, the Abu Ghraib guards were aware that rules governing the treatment of detainees existed, although they may have been confused about their application at Abu Ghraib. That confusion may have been exploited by others outside the unit but inside the prison. Whereas the behavior of the guards and prisoners in the Stanford Prison Study is interpreted as behavior thought by the participants to be role-appropriate, the Abu Ghraib abuses (including specifically those most visually similar to the photos from the Stanford study) were clearly recognized by at least some of the perpetrators as wrong. Private First Class (PFC) Lynndie England, prominent in the most infamous photos from Abu Ghraib (some of these photos are displayed on the Stanford Prison Experiment website), reports that she initially said, “No, no way” when asked to pose for the photos by the ringleaders of the abuse, but “They were being very persistent, bugging me, so I said, ‘OK, whatever.’” PFC England admitted that, “I could have said no” (Badger 2005). This sounds less like a virtuous and innocent person corrupted by the “power of the situation” and more like the kind of weakness in the face of peer pressure that parents all over the world have been teaching their children to resist since long before the Stanford Prison Study. The assertion that “the barrel corrupts anything it touches” implies that the corrosive interpersonal environment of a prison must inevitably affect all the guards (and prisoners) involved. But even in the Stanford Prison Study, Zimbardo reports that only about onethird of the guards (three or four people) became abusive. Another group (“several”) were considered by the prisoners to be “good guys,” and the remainder were “tough but 82
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fair” (Zimbardo 2005). The strong situationist interpretation of the Stanford Prison Study rests partly on the failure of the experimenters to predict which of the guards would end up in each of these three categories on the basis of personality tests administered before the study. That some personality tests did not predict the later behavior of a few individuals placed in a bizarre situation does not necessarily mean that the behavior displayed did not result, at least in part, from dispositional variables or behavioral tendencies that simply were not captured by the tests administered. Psychologists, for good ethical and practical reasons, shrink from labeling some of the subjects that volunteer to participate in their studies as “bad apples,” ascribing their behavior instead to social forces. But the Army does not have that luxury. Are the same psychological principles really adequate for both cases, when the moral tone is so different?
The Army’s understanding of Abu Ghraib The Army, like all organizations, gets a few bad apples from time to time, and has developed a leadership culture that is generally effective at ensuring that such individuals are recognized and controlled, and, if necessary, punished or ejected. The Taguba Report (2004a,b), stemming from an early Army investigation into the abuses, recommended punishment of several non-commissioned and commissioned officers precisely for their failure to establish and maintain an effective organizational environment. The Abu Ghraib abuses did not arise solely or even primarily from insidious psychological mechanisms of which the Army is unaware or needs reminding; they arose from a combination of misconduct and poor leadership of a sort familiar to the Army. Good apples were not turned into bad apples by powerful social forces: bad apples were allowed to act out because of failed leadership. Others, such as PFC England, apparently yielded to the familiar and pedestrian pressures encountered in such situations. The good apples were there all along, and were not inevitably corrupted by the bad barrel. It is through their courage and integrity that we learned of the abuses in the first place. The three categories of guards Zimbardo observed in the Stanford Prison Study were apparently also present at Abu Ghraib. Probably, they are also present in hundreds of other prisons and detention facilities, at which such abuses have not occurred. Precisely which aspects of the prison situation, then, inevitably lead to the occurrence of such abuses? Exactly what factors produce abuse in one prison, but not at another? Why does abuse occur at a prison in October, but not the preceding August? The Stanford Prison Study offers little beyond the unproven assertion that the situation is all-powerful, powerful enough to have affected even Zimbardo himself (Zimbardo 2005). If he could be so affected, guards and soldiers would seemingly have little chance of resisting such powerful social forces. Yet many did and do. Although the Abu Ghraib abuses took place in the context of a prison situation that bears a superficial resemblance to the Stanford Prison Study, it is sad and tragic that these abuses represent only a small and perhaps unique part of a much larger problem. As of late 2006, 410 investigations of alleged detainee abuse were under way or completed. Seventy-four soldiers have been charged at courts-martial, non-judicial punishment has been administered to 82 soldiers, and 68 adverse administrative actions have been taken against soldiers (Harvey and Schoomaker 2005). Many incidents of alleged abuse have occurred outside prisons and detention facilities, under circumstances bearing little or no resemblance to the Stanford Prison Study. Cases of detainee abuse have occurred among 83
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our allies, in Iraq, and elsewhere. Because a particular outcome (abuse) may lie at the end of many different causal chains, social scientists interested in assessing or asserting the role of obedience and conformity in abuse should be eager to compare the circumstances leading up to as many cases of abuse as may be found, to strengthen or refine their understanding of all the processes at work. These processes operate at the individual (micro), organizational and social (meso), and societal (macro) levels. At the individual level, it seems that there were important personal differences among key players at Abu Ghraib. Some were active abusers, some went along, some were bystanders, and some reported the abuse. It is clear that people are differentially susceptible to particular social pressures. Two-thirds of Milgram’s original subjects complied with the experimenter’s demands to shock the learners, while onethird refused. Zimbardo’s guards were far from homogeneous in their treatment of prisoners, and his prisoners were similarly diverse in their responses. Organizational and social factors also played a role in the abuses at Abu Ghraib, just as they did in the Stanford Prison Experiment. There was no effective formal system of organizational authority and control at the Stanford simulated prison; the system that should have been in place at Abu Ghraib was neutralized by ineffective leadership. The Taguba Report (2004a, 2004b) clearly placed blame on some members of the unit chain of command, citing lax supervision and a general failure of leadership and oversight. At least some of the perpetrators of the abuses were corrections officers in prisons in their civilian occupations, which may have complicated the maintenance of an effective leadership climate if the perceived occupational expertise and credibility of these individuals was greater than that of their superiors in the chain of command. The Stanford Prison Study and Abu Ghraib illustrate that leadership abhors a vacuum. When we fail to provide effective ethical leadership, we open the door to walk-ons who may rise to the occasion admirably, or who may take advantage of the situation for purposes of self-indulgence and self-gratification. The Stanford Prison Study and Abu Ghraib are examples of one kind of outcome in such situations. It is also likely that many less sensational and more favorable outcomes have occurred in similar situations in other places that have never made the news. Organizational climate, leadership, and training were dominant themes in the Taguba Report and other military analyses of Abu Ghraib. Because Abu Ghraib was operated by a Reserve unit, some have wondered whether the dysfunctional organizational climate could be attributed in part to weaknesses in training, preparation, and support in the Reserve, as opposed to the Active component. A more recent case of detainee abuse in Iraq involved a different Reserve unit, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment (Gold 2005). In this case, several soldiers faced courts-martial for abuses that occurred outside a prison environment. Other allegations of improprieties involving Iraqi civilians have also been leveled against members of the same unit, an infantry unit not primarily trained in military policing or detention operations. Another Army Reserve Military Policeman, serving with the 337th Military Police Company in Afghanistan, was recently convicted of abusing an Afghan detainee who died in custody (Caldwell 2005). Although there are differences among these instances, the issue of training (as the Taguba Report suggested) may be critical. In addition, that these instances of detainee abuse occurred in Army Reserve units at least suggests the possibility that the training and support of Reserve units compared with Active-component units may be an important factor. On the other hand, the allegations raised by Captain Ian Fishback, which involve scenarios quite similar to those that occurred at Abu Ghraib, concern an 84
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elite Active Army unit, the 82nd Airborne Division (Schmitt 2005). Whether as a result of the same, similar, or different causal factors, detainee abuse clearly has occurred in both Reserve and Active component units. At the societal level, issues beyond individual or unit training or leadership climate may also contribute to the potential for detainee abuse. The global war on terror (GWOT), as it is experienced by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, is an insurgency in which the enemy is not part of a uniformed formation. The reification of terrorism as the ultimate enemy in the GWOT has proven both difficult and imprecise. At least two attempts to rename the conflict have been made, the most recent as “The Long War,” which offers rhetorical (if not historical) resonance with “The Cold War.” Insurgents, demonized in the press, are often treated as people who have no constructive aims, and who do not legitimately represent their religion or any national or political group. The controversy over the detention and treatment of individuals at Guantanamo in the US press illustrates genuine confusion, even among the elites in the media and policy worlds, as to the nature of our obligations to detainees. Policy ambiguity results in tactical confusion. As we focus on the misconduct of some, it is worth remembering that more than 60,000 detainees have been processed since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, and while the instances of abuse that have been verified will forever stain our national honor, they represent only a small and unrepresentative set of instances. The military police company that preceded the 372nd MP Company served under comparable conditions at Abu Ghraib without having committed such abuses, as have many other units in Iraq and Afghanistan. The remedies suggested by social scientists (e.g. better training, staffing, accountability, direction, transparency) represent good common-sense approaches to effective management and leadership. All of these same suggestions may be found in the Taguba Report, prepared by the Army in the early aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Psychologists’ suggestion that the Army seek advice on corrections from the Navy and Air Force reflects confusion with respect to the roles of the services. The Army has the longest and most extensive experience dealing with these issues, and the Army is responsible for these facets of military operations in combat theaters. The other services operate only small, short-term confinement facilities primarily designed to hold service members. Correctional specialists from all branches of service are trained at the US Army Military Police Center and School at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
The power of the situation: insurgency in Iraq The situation we now face in Iraq is unique in our history. This “fourth generation war” (Hammes 2004) is a form of insurgency that incorporates familiar elements from earlier conflicts, refined and supplemented with techniques designed specifically to exploit our military weaknesses and avoid our strengths. Our military was largely designed to fight on a linear battlefield, and trained to confront a uniformed enemy in conventional formations. Instead, we face a battlefield without lines and an enemy difficult to distinguish from innocent civilians. The military is fighting this war alongside contractors, intelligence agencies, and others with vastly different organizational cultures. Our military has had to adapt its tactics to these realities, and most service members have had to adapt to jobs they never expected to perform. They have been asked to do this under the harshest of conditions, living under constant stress, in an unfamiliar land and culture, uncertain of 85
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the future demands that may be placed on them, all the while connected as never before to the news of the world and their homes even as they serve. Social science may indeed have much to say about the consequences of these conditions. The factors at work surely go far beyond obedience and conformity, however. Our contemporary military is unlike any other in our history. The force in Iraq is an allrecruited force, vastly different from the force that fought the Vietnam War. Nearly half are Reservists or Guard troops, many of whom were not acculturated to expect such deployments, and many of whom (like their Active-component counterparts) are serving multiple tours of duty in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. The effects of this operational tempo on Active and Reserve service members are only beginning to become apparent as recruiting and retention patterns across the services undergo dramatic change. Some psychologists suggest that the attitudes of American soldiers toward Iraqis have been affected by systemic tendencies to characterize the enemy in ways that enable violence (Staub 2004). Growing social cohesion within the force and a potentially widening civil– military gap may also play a role. Understanding the impact of these changed conditions will be an important and ongoing project for years to come.
Can social science help? Social scientists can play an important role in helping to understand the consequences of the demands now placed on our new military, and in developing effective strategies to cope with those demands and their consequences. This requires a rigorous and systematic analysis of conditions as they exist on the ground, and a willingness to confront the complicated and messy realities of modern warfare on their own terms. Yielding to the temptation to offer a simplistic explanation of a world media event such as the Abu Ghraib abuses, thereby drawing attention to a particular discipline, theory, or study, or as a means of attacking or defending policies or institutions with which we may or may not agree, does not sufficiently advance our understanding of these events. Zimbardo (2005) points out what he thinks are general similarities between prison life and military culture, such as the psychological consequences of stripping, delousing, and head-shaving, for example. Such comparisons (dated, inaccurate, and unrepresentative as they may be) between military service and criminal imprisonment seem especially inapt and even offensive in light of the sacrifices being made by the volunteers in our armed services today, but they also suggest that suspicion of the military as an institution may affect the analyses offered by some social scientists. Obedience and conformity to perceived role expectations may be a part of this story, but as the Abu Ghraib headlines fade, and as the scope and seriousness of detainee abuse in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom become clearer, more complex, subtle, and sophisticated explanations must be sought if we are to prevent such destructive behavior in the future. There is enough explanatory work to be done to permit plenty of room for both bad apple and bad barrel explanations to contribute meaningfully to our understanding of Abu Ghraib, and to leave plenty more room for careful analyses of organizational leadership and national policy as potential factors in these infamous abuses. The sooner we expand our focus to include those aspects and instances of abuse which may not superficially resemble famous studies, the sooner we will be able to bring the considerable resources of social science to bear on these matters of urgent national concern. 86
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Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Mastroianni, G. R. and Reed, G. (2006) “Apples, barrels, and Abu Ghraib,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 239–50.
References American Psychological Association (2004) “How psychology can help explain the Iraqi prisoner abuse,” Online. http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/prisonerabuse.html (accessed 6 September 2005). Badger, T.A. (2005) “England to face sentencing in abuse case,” Associated Press. Online. Available http://www.neilrogers.com/news/articles/2005050311.html (accessed 27 September 2006). Bruner, J.S. (2004) Foreword. In S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority. New York: Perennial Classics. Caldwell, A. (2005) “Cincinnati reservist found guilty of abuse,” Associated Press. Online. Available http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=APAB&p_action=keyword&p_theme= apabThe dark psychology of Abu Ghraib,” The Washington Dispatch, Online. Available http://www. washingtondispatch.com/article_9095.shtml (accessed 15 March 2005). Fiske, S.T., Harris, L.T. and Cuddy, A.J.C. (2004) “Why ordinary people torture enemy prisoners,” Science, 306: 1482–83. Gold, S. (2005) “5 California guardsmen face charges of abusing Iraqis,” Los Angeles Times. Online. Available http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/885482181.html?dids=885482181:885482181 &FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Aug+23%2C+2005&author=Scott+Gold&pu b=Los+Angeles+Times&edition=&startpage=A.1&desc=The+Nation (accessed 27 September 2006). Hammes, T.X. (2004) “Fourth generation warfare: Our enemies play to their strength,” Armed Forces Journal, November: 40–44. Harvey, F. and Schoomaker, P. (2005) “Detainee details,” National Review Online, 22 September. Online. Available http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/harvey_schoomaker200509220821.asp (accessed 27 September 2006). Mastroianni, G. (2002) “Milgram and the Holocaust: A re-examination,” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 22: 158–73. Milgram, S. (1963) “Behavioral study of obedience,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67: 371–78. ——(1974) Obedience to Authority, New York: Harper and Row. Schmitt, E. (2005) “Three in 82nd Airborne say beating Iraqi prisoners was routine,” New York Times. Online. Available http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70C12F83F540C778EDDA0089 4DD404482 (accessed 27 September 2006). Staub, E. (2004) “The route to prisoner abuse in Iraq,” APA Monitor 35: 9. Taguba Report (2004a) “Article 15–16 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade,” Online. Available http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/tagubarpt.html (accessed 6 September 2005). Taguba Report, Annex 1 (2004b) “AR 15–16 Investigation – Allegations of Detainee Abuse at Abu Ghraib Psychological Assessment.” Online. Available http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/t1. pdf (accessed 6 September 2005). Zimbardo, P. (1973) “The psychological power and pathology of imprisonment,” in E. Aronson and R. Helmreich (eds) Social Psychology, New York: Van Nostrand. ——(2005) The Stanford Prison Experiment: A simulation study of imprisonment, Online. Available http://www.prisonexp.org/slide-33.htm (accessed 1 September 2005). Zimbardo, P., Maslach, C. and Haney, C. (2000) “Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences,” in T. Blass (ed.) Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 193–238.
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8 The war on terror in the early twenty-first century Applying lessons from sociological classics and sites of abuse Ryan Ashley Caldwell and Stjepan G. Mestrovic
In this chapter, we analyze contemporary patterns of culture pertaining to the current war on terror through the lenses of the classic sociological perspective of Emile Durkheim, and his influence on two controversial classics, Samuel Stouffer’s The American Soldier and S.L.A. Marshall’s Men Against Fire. Our empirical data come from participantobservation research in courts-martial pertaining to three infamous sites of abuse in the current war: the abuse at Abu Ghraib that occurred in 2003 (Mestrovic 2007); the Operation Iron Triangle massacres of 9 May 2006 (Mestrovic 2009); and the Baghdad Canal Massacre of March 2007 (Zamost 2009).1 We conjoin these seemingly different sites of abuse because they all involve common, systemic issues that have been validated by other studies and by journalists. Suicide rates are currently at a 30-year high in the US Army. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rates among soldiers are the highest that they have been since the Vietnam War. Soldiers are forced to follow unlawful rules of engagement (ROE) (Iraqi Veterans Against the War 2008). The basic needs of soldiers pertaining to sleep, food, hygiene, and safety are not being met. The background of Iraqi-on-Iraqi ethnic cleansing and tribal warfare in Afghanistan and Pakistan has not yet been addressed, but contributes to the chaos and combat stress that US soldiers endure. These are some of the systemic, sociological issues that are at the center of all these events, but are treated as peripheral and without social theoretical scaffolding by media and scholars alike. Thus, these three sites of abuse are used here as a vehicle for a wider theoretical and empirical discussion of systemic issues pertaining to the war on terror. It is not immediately obvious how all of the aforementioned issues pertain to the common approach taken by Durkheim, Stouffer, and Marshall toward understanding social life in general and military societies in particular. Let us begin with Durkheim. We shall concentrate on Durkheim’s original understanding of “anomie” as “derangement” or the tendency for societies to “elevate to a rule the lack of rule from which they suffer” ([1897] 1951: 257). His original understanding has been misinterpreted by the ParsonianMertonian (Merton 1957) misunderstanding of anomie as “normlessness,” which is a term Durkheim never used or implied, and which implodes in meaning (all situations 88
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have some sort of norms, because societies abhor a vacuum). We instead argue for an interpretation of Durkheim’s anomie as having an emotive component that incorporates suffering and the literal experience of derangement, as we argue this is Durkheim’s intended connotation (Mestrovic & Caldwell 2010). Durkheim’s assumptions and findings concerning social integration influenced several generations of researchers, and found their way into Stouffer’s and Marshall’s studies of the American soldier.2 Consider for instance Samuel Stouffer’s The American Soldier (1949), which found that unit morale is directly dependent on social integration and close social bonds among soldiers. In common-sense terms, Stouffer showed convincingly that US soldiers in World War II (WWII) fought for each other, and not for national ideals, their leaders, or patriotism, and not out of hatred for the enemy (see Schwartz and Marsh 1999). This significant finding is but an echo of Durkheim’s (1897) overall finding that social integration is the most important factor in predicting adequate health and functioning in any and all social units, from families to armies to nations. Likewise, serious consideration should be given to S.L.A. Marshall’s Men Against Fire (1947), which found that it is against “human nature” for humans to kill each other. Like Durkheim and Stouffer, Marshall focuses instead on the “human touch” and “warmth” among soldiers, who regard each other as a family of sorts, to explain how soldiers withstand combat stress and the unnatural obligation to kill, which is the rule of “lack of rule” in warfare.
Interpreting Durkheim, Stouffer, and Marshall It is necessary to address briefly the controversies surrounding the three classical perspectives we use in this analysis. We begin with Marshall. Instead of focusing on Marshall’s sociological and basically Durkheimian insight that killing goes against human nature, researchers have tended to focus on his finding that fewer than 20 percent of the soldiers actually open fire against the enemy.3 From our Durkheimian perspective, we focus on passages such as the following from his classic: I hold it to be one of the simplest truths of war that the thing which enables an infantry soldier to keep going with his weapons is the near presence or the presumed presence of a comrade. The warmth which derives from human companionship is as essential to his employment of the arms with which he fights as is the finger with which he pulls a trigger. He is sustained by his fellows primarily and by his weapons secondarily. (1947: 42) Grossman (1996) and other interpreters focus primarily on the unnatural need for the soldier to pull the trigger at a higher ratio than “human nature” permits, whereas we focus for a Durkheimian analysis on the soldier’s sense of social solidarity with his comrades as a prophylactic against the combat stress caused by the horrors of war (Thomas 2007).4 Moreover, Stouffer, Marshall, and subsequent researchers have found that combat veterans are more vulnerable to combat stress than fresh troops: instead of the “skin” of the soldier becoming tougher through exposure to combat, it becomes thinner. Yet the US military continues to send soldiers on numerous redeployments in obvious contradiction of this important finding. We have personally witnessed numerous testimonies of 89
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soldiers in courts-martial who testified that they had brain injuries, suffered from diagnosed PTSD, and were unfit to go out on missions. Despite these documented facts, soldiers testified under oath that they were sent out on missions repeatedly, and we interpret this as an example of what Durkheim meant by deranged social policy. There are other connections here with Durkheim’s conceptualization of anomie as derangement, specifically with regard to changing ROE and one’s identity as a soldier. Soldiers have told us that they would ask each other, with a sense of gallows humor, “So, what is the ROE today?” We have witnessed soldiers testify that they invented their own ROE because they did not feel that the official ROE protected them from an unseen enemy who planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Soldiers expressed frustration that even after arresting enemies whom they recognized as responsible for planting IEDs or shooting at them, soldiers were forced to release enemies because of bureaucratic hassles. For example, soldiers were not issued cameras, but were required to photograph evidence of the enemy seeking to kill them. This is yet another instance of a “rule” that is really “a lack of rule.” Such chronic uncertainty is part of anomie as derangement, and has negative consequences for combat, morale, performance, and health. The military seems to have ignored what is fundamentally sociological in the findings by Stouffer, Marshall, and others whose research upholds Durkheim’s social theory. The controversies in interpreting Stouffer and Marshall strike us as academic, but not as pragmatic, or as lending themselves to empirical resolution.
Empirical connections to the Durkheimian trajectory of thought We link our empirical findings, and those made by others, directly to our Durkheimian interpretation of Stouffer and Marshall. The Durkheimian derangement that we uncover in all the cases mentioned above is that the Army expects its soldiers to perform adequately even though it subjects them to chronic sleep deprivation, does not adequately treat PTSD, continues stop-loss programs that wear out soldiers far beyond the 3-month limit discovered by Stouffer, and other systemic issues that we have found to be common to the events we use as illustration. We regard Durkheim as one of the first theorists of the stress concept, and argue that his ideas can be applied to combat stress, PTSD, and the anomic contributors to these conditions (see Mestrovic and Glassner 1983; Mestrovic and Brown 1985; Mestrovic 1985).5
Recognizing derangement in the empirical data Consider Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the violence, torture, and suffering experienced by prisoners and soldiers at Saddam Hussein’s former torture chamber. Facts regarding Abu Ghraib serve as a template for systemic problems found at Operation Iron Triangle and the Baghdad Canal Massacre. Under the occupation by American forces, the violence at Abu Ghraib, as well as these other sites, existed in many forms and degrees of suffering. A Durkheimian approach to understanding this abuse in terms of derangement and the presence of extreme social disorganization comes from factual evidence such as the US Government reports pertaining to Abu Ghraib, as well as testimony from the courts-martial, interviews with soldiers, participation with the defense, and eyewitness accounts of the trials (which are described meticulously by Caldwell and Mestrovic 2008). 90
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Another large area of systemic derangement lies in the policy, as we have witnessed it at the courts-martial, for the US military to punish rather than treat soldiers with PTSD. We found that all of the so-called “bad apples” and the accused in the massacres that we studied were suffering from PTSD. The causes were obvious and documented in court: Abu Ghraib was mortared almost daily by insurgents, and everyone in it lived in constant fear of sudden and unpredictable death. Soldiers involved in the massacres were exposed to unseen enemies bent upon killing them unexpectedly, and all had witnessed brutal deaths of their comrades as a result of IEDs. Intelligence officers testified at the Canal killings courts-martial that Iraqi-on-Iraqi ethnic cleansing was occurring throughout the pre-surge and surge periods. Approximately 100 to 150 Iraqi bodies per day were found by US soldiers. Some of the convicted soldiers told us that they were forced by their commanders to “clean up” the bodies, including decapitated heads. But instead of regarding these soldiers as psychiatric casualties of war, and treating their understandable PTSD as a mitigating factor in the crimes they committed, the US military justice system prosecuted them to the maximum extent permitted by military law. It is appropriate to label this rule of “lack of rule” as derangement on the part of the US military (see also Cooke 2009). What is more, many expert witnesses (including Ivy-League educated scholarly academics, psychiatrists, and psychologists), made the critique that a structural problem existed within the military, yet soldiers were blamed for this deviance; these arguments fell on the deaf ears of the panel in each of these courts-martial. We learned at the many different trials that at Abu Ghraib, there was a lack of a and/or confused filing system, with associated poor paperwork and poor reporting procedures. Similarly, at Iron Triangle and the Baghdad canal sites, there were no established, consistent, or lawful procedures for dealing with prisoners, who were referred to as detainees. It was unclear who was in charge of Abu Ghraib, who actually ran the prison and made all of the major decisions. This, in turn, made it difficult for those working at Abu Ghraib to identify a commanding officer or their chain of command. Similarly, at the other sites, unit affiliation changed every month, so that soldiers were not certain of their chain of command. The Abu Ghraib prison itself was overcrowded, with an illegal ratio of prisoners to guards, with a dysfunctional system for discharging prisoners, and a failed screening procedure for intake of prisoners when they were arrested and when they were processed into Abu Ghraib. What is more the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency as well as civilian contractors and government agencies, operated outside standard rules and procedures established by the Army Field Manual and the Geneva Conventions, including the failure to screen civilian contractors (Danner 2004; Strasser 2004). We discovered that in all the cases we studied the unit affiliations changed rapidly and frequently. For example, if a soldier was assigned to a particular company, that company would be reshuffled and assigned to different battalions or brigades. In the case of the Baghdad Canal Killings, brigade affiliation changed every month. Similarly, at Abu Ghraib, the soldiers testified that they did not know to which chain of command they belonged because of such reshuffling. Sometimes individual soldiers were shuffled and at other times entire companies were reassigned. Thus, even if the company remained intact, the chain of command changed frequently. This also meant that ROE, standard operating procedures (SOP), and other directives changed rapidly and unpredictably as well. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld introduced this corporate strategy of treating individuals and units as identical and replaceable (the term he used is “fungible assets”) into military planning. He is quoted as saying: “Oh, come on. People are 91
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fungible. You can have them here or there” (CNN 2004).6 Clearly, this modern, corporate model goes against the grain of Durkheim’s, Stouffer’s, and Marshall’s approaches. It is a truism in Durkheimian studies that any rapid and unpredictable change causes stress in a social group, which leads to predictably negative consequences. Predictably, testimony showed many examples of lack of standardized training or familiarity with ever-changing rules, including but not limited to the basic lack of familiarity with the Geneva Conventions. In fact, the ROE at Iron Triangle were transparently unlawful, to “kill all those sons-of-bitches,” but were not challenged by officers or soldiers (see Mestrovic 2008). In addition, the fact that the US military upheld the Geneva Conventions while various attorneys for the White House opined that the Geneva Conventions did not wholly apply to the treatment of prisoners made it confusing for many soldiers at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere with regard to the norms pertaining to prisoner handling, interrogation, etc. In addition, the US Army failed to sufficiently train Military Police (MP) and Military Intelligence (MI) in policing as well as allowable interrogation procedures, and blurred the roles of the MI and MP at Abu Ghraib. At the sites of the massacres, there was no MP involvement at all, so that soldiers were compelled to follow the deranged rule of detaining enemies who had just tried to kill them. Common sense dictates that passions, including the desire to avenge the deaths of comrades, would prevail versus the more reliable system of using MP who had not been exposed to combat to detain these enemies. There was a general lack of military discipline, along with a host of other facts that suggest extreme social chaos.7 The characterization of all these and other facts as anomic in the sense of being deranged is practically non-existent in literature, and it is this vacuum that we wish to fill.
The consequences of perceiving derangement versus “normlessness” In academia, the incorrect interpretation of anomie as “normlessness” prevails. The functionalist approach has been applied to the topic of crime and is used by criminologists, but has never been applied to war crimes. However, anomie as derangement is a descriptor for understanding war crimes that seems to be applicable to the sites we are describing. In other words, a war crime is different from an ordinary crime in that it involves a military command structure and chain of command, leadership issues, unit morale, and other phenomena that are peculiar to military societies. A civilian murder on the streets of Houston, Texas is not equivalent to the massacres at Iron Triangle and Baghdad Canal because the latter involved unlawful rules of engagement and issues pertaining to command and unit climate. Soldiers did not go to Abu Ghraib or these other sites with the intent to commit crimes, but with the intent to carry out military missions, albeit, in extremely deranged social contexts. The failure of the military to create Stouffer-like stability within the military units contributed to PTSD. To summarize, common sense dictates that one would empathize with the explanation offered by one of these convicted soldiers, interviewed at the US Disciplinary Barracks at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas: “It’s not like we went into a schoolroom in New Jersey and opened fire.” The soldier added: “Sir, every mission we went on was ‘pre-meditated.’ I am not a war criminal.” The functionalist perspective by Parsons (1937) assumes that social systems are selfcorrecting, and thus “normlessness” is truly about a simple miscalibration that will 92
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eventually correct itself back on course for the entire mechanistic system. However, the military environment at Abu Ghraib did not self-correct. This was most evident in court with the statement made by Captain Jonathan Crisp, defense counsel for Lynndie England, that the dysfunctional social system at Abu Ghraib not only failed to self-correct, but was itself self-perpetuating. Similarly, the unlawful ROE at Operation Iron Triangle to kill all military-aged males on sight, even if women and children were in the vicinity, and even if the males did not show hostile intent toward Americans, did not self-correct (Mestrovic 2008). Instead, we argue a version of this unlawful ROE continues to be used in strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Obama administration (for example see Schmitt 2009). The results have been predictable: the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan warn that their civilian populations are turning against the US, and the Taliban can more easily recruit insurgents. Durkheim (1897) assumes that anomie as derangement becomes chronic until self-conscious and deliberate remedies are sought from outside the dysfunctional system. The violence towards the prisoners at Abu Ghraib was extensive and ranged from verbal abuse, to misusing culture, religion, gender, and sexuality to exploit and torture (such as forced group masturbation, fellatio, etc.), and so on. There were forced naked human pyramids, panties on prisoners’ heads, and naked log roll “exercises,” which it was argued in court were approved techniques for controlling prisoners. Prisoners were murdered (but these murders were never prosecuted), and interrogation techniques and “enhanced interrogation techniques” were used on the prisoners at Abu Ghraib to attempt to extract information that nobody there even had. The Fay Report (in Strasser 2004) documents that 90 percent of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were ordinary Iraqis who were arrested during chaotic sweeps, while the prosecutor at the courts-martial revealed in open court that 100 percent of the abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib were not a threat to the US in any way. Similarly, the victims at the Iron Triangle and Baghdad Canal Massacres were never identified as terrorists, insurgents, or enemies of the US. In fact, the victims were never identified at all, and their bodies were never found; they were referred to as “unidentified males of Arab descent” in court documents. Regarding the derangement that Durkheim wrote about, we learned in the courtroom that Abu Ghraib was operating as a wartime prison within a war zone: a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Aside from being non-normative, this was dangerous, as the prison was without electricity, generators, food and water, and toilets, and lacked supplies such as clothing, all of which led to unnecessary suffering for prisoners and soldiers at Abu Ghraib. In addition, the prison was under constant mortar attack, making it life threatening for all inside. It was also porous to outside Iraqis, some selling goods such as disposable cameras on site. Similarly, at the other sites we are discussing, soldiers testified that they suspected Iraqi soldiers, with whom they engaged in joint military operations, to be terrorists, and did not trust them. These issues of ostensible allies mistrusting each other and being mortared even in “safe” areas do not even come up in studies by Stouffer and Marshall. One of the important findings of our research is that Durkheim’s original meaning of anomie as derangement can be used to describe and interpret the conditions and the social climate at Abu Ghraib within the courtroom. Soldiers testified under oath that Abu Ghraib was “not a normal prison,” “Bizarroworld,” and “hell on earth.” In addition, the supply officer at Abu Ghraib, Major David DiNenna, testified that he begged the Army for adequate water, food, toilets, light bulbs, and generators, and that his pleas fell on deaf ears. He testified in open court that he felt “abandoned” by the Army at Abu Ghraib (Mestrovic 2007: 107). All of these characterizations point to Durkheim’s 93
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unambiguous notion of anomie as derangement. Similarly, soldiers testified at the Operation Iron Triangle hearings that there were “kill contests,” “kill boards,” and “weird” ROE that they did not dare challenge. Soldiers at the Baghdad Canal trials complained about a “catch and release” program that was dysfunctional: the Army required soldiers to photograph evidence concerning suspects they captured, but did not issue cameras, and if the joint Iraqi soldiers did not find the evidence satisfactory, they released the prisoners that the Americans had captured. Soldiers testified that many of these same suspects would be laughing at and shooting at the Americans the following day. All of these frustrations, stresses, fears, and needless sufferings were preventable had the Army followed procedures in line with the findings by Durkheim, Stouffer, and Marshall.
Derangement in the misuse of social scientific findings One cannot escape the question of values in social scientific research because of the obvious fact that findings can be used to promote social solidarity, as Durkheim clearly intended, versus promoting “the dark side” (Mayer 2009) or negative emotions such as fear, rage, hatred, and chaos. Mayer focuses on how some social scientists implemented interrogation techniques to break down prisoners, despite it being well known that such techniques are ineffective for obtaining useful information. We wish to expand this idea to examine how ineffective and negative techniques were implemented against US soldiers as well. We leave open the question whether this resulted from deliberate intentions or was an unintended consequence of departing from Durkheim’s program of promoting social solidarity. What is now known with the release of some of the torture memos is that many of these techniques were ordered from the highest levels of the administration itself (American Civil Liberties Union 2009).8 Indeed, the Levin-McCain report, issued on 12 December 2008, documents that SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) techniques were supposed to be used against US troops to “teach our soldiers how to resist interrogation by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions and international law” (Levin and McCain 2008).9 However, these “dark side” techniques developed by the Communists to obtain propaganda from US prisoners (Biderman 1957) were used by the US government for interrogation purposes in the so-called war on terror (Levin and McCain 2008).10 The derangement in this state of affairs is the following: these SERE techniques were never intended to obtain reliable information. They were developed from North Korean Communist techniques designed to elicit propaganda from American prisoners. Yet they were used by US soldiers ostensibly to obtain truthful statements from captured insurgents at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan (Zagorin 2008). What is more, there was an established link between the training of soldiers in interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib by Major General Geoffery Miller, the head of interrogations for Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba, which was repeatedly overlooked in each courts-martial. Never mind that Miller was given immunity from each courts-martial of the “rotten apples” (White 2005),11 Miller’s job at Abu Ghraib was to “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib, so as to make it more like Guantanamo Bay in terms of their procedures (Karpinski 2005). Testimony, film documentaries, and government reports show conclusively that widespread patterns of abuse “migrated” from Guantanamo Bay and American-run prisons in Afghanistan as well as elsewhere in Iraq, and the migration begins from the White House itself. Moreover, Miller relied on teams of social scientists to develop these irrational and ineffective “dark side” techniques (Mayer 2009). 94
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Likewise, at the Iron Triangle and Baghdad Canal courts-martial, blame fell on lowranking soldiers instead of refocusing and redirecting accountability issues onto an examination of the military elite and government. Testimony showed that accused soldiers associated with Operation Iron Triangle were kept in solitary confinement for months at a time for no reason other than to keep them away from the news media, and were forced to sleep, shower, and remain in leg irons and shackles at all times. All this occurred during their pre-trial confinement, when they were presumed to be “innocent until proven guilty” according to the US Constitution. We also found that Criminal Investigative Division (CID) agents routinely use variations of the Reid Technique to lie to soldiers in order to elicit confessions, and do not read them their rights as required; we both witnessed this testimony from a CID agent in a courtroom in Vilseck, Germany. The deranged aspect of this situation is that soldiers are socialized by the Army to be honest, and their sense of honor and trust toward superiors is used against them via Machiavellian, dishonest techniques used by Army interrogators. In January 2009, it was reported that the Army reached its highest levels of rates for suicide since 1980, when the Army began collecting statistics for suicide, citing the stress of long redeployments to war zones as one possibility for this increase (Alvarez 2009).12 Some also charge that some of the suicides committed by women also involved rapes, which have, it has been argued, been subsequently covered up by the Army (Center for Constitutional Rights 2009).13 In addition, other signs of stress including obesity have doubled since the start of the Iraq war in 2003 (Zoroya 2009).14 It is not surprising that in this toxic social climate the social bonds and cohesion of soldiers break down, according to Durkheim’s very basic theory of anomie, and these kinds of behaviors can be seen empirically in Iraq and in our research, and are themselves predictable.
Conclusions We have found numerous instances when the US Army has ignored and is ignoring fundamental, classic findings by Stouffer, Marshall, and Durkheim regarding social integration and its effect on unit morale and effectiveness. Stouffer found that soldiers do not fight for ideology, democracy, their families, or even out of hatred for the enemy. He proved that soldiers come to regard each other as a “family” or a “band of brothers” and fight primarily for each other. Thus, unit morale depends on these kinds of relationships between soldiers. This unit morale is encouraged by minimizing rotation within and among units in brigades. Stouffer also found that soldiers judge events based on “relative deprivation” and “reference groups” and that infantry soldiers are “burned-out” after about three months of fighting. In total disregard for Stouffer’s widely accepted findings, the Rumsfeld Doctrine (a corporate paradigmatic perspective) holds that soldiers are interchangeable units or what he called “fungible assets,” whose allegiance to regiments and brigades changes frequently. This strategy is catastrophic for unit morale, and goes directly against Durkheim’s and Stouffer’s findings. The destruction of social bonds among soldiers by rotating individual soldiers as well as companies also promotes anomie as derangement, and the evils we have discussed above. Our major conclusions are, first, that a Stouffer-like study of the American soldier in the war on terror is needed urgently. This means that Stouffer’s Durkheimian assumptions as well as his methodology need to be replicated. Second, and without the empirical data that will most likely confirm Stouffer’s findings, we urge military planners to take Stouffer 95
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seriously and implement his existing findings from WWII. It is wiser to err on the side of caution than to go directly against findings that have come to be regarded as classic in this field. In line with Marshall, we found that in the atrocities examined above, soldiers were extremely reluctant to carry out an order given to kill all military-age Iraqi males on sight, and when they did carry it out, they did so in the role of psychiatric casualties of war. The confusion as to how the ROE should be interpreted, the frequent changes to the ROE, the different interpretations of the ROE depending on the unit, all contribute to what Durkheim called anomie as derangement. Marshall repeats often that soldiers are not machines and should not be treated as machines. Yet the unlawful ROE that were issued and continue to be issued turn soldiers into “killing machines”; the use of unmanned drones to carry out unlawful ROE should be addressed in future research. Again, we conclude that military planners ought to take Marshall’s findings seriously, including his admonition not to turn soldiers into killing machines. We touched on the fact that Iraqi-on-Iraqi ethnic cleansing was occurring in Iraq, where exposure to gruesome killing, alone, is sufficient to cause PTSD in US soldiers, impair their judgment, and make them ineffective in combat. We conclude that military planners need to prepare plans, policies, special ROE, and other phenomena to deal with ethnic cleansing; much like how the United Nations Protective Force (UNPROFOR) was prepared for ethnic cleansing in Bosnia (Cushman & Mestrovic 1996). Overall, our impression is that because of poor planning, US soldiers are thrust into a situation in which they are confused between their roles as peacekeepers (regarding ethnic cleansing) and warriors, and that the indigenous population hates them irrationally. We have seen that the military fails to provide the basic human needs of its soldiers, including sleep, water, food, toilets, and safety outside the combat zone, at least early in the war. We heard prosecutors excuse these mistakes with lame rationalizations that Iraq is “a difficult mission.” Our point is that a difficult mission becomes impossible when the soldier’s body, mind, and unit are deprived of fundamental needs. Along these lines, PTSD ought to be taken seriously and treated. Alternatives to the current policies of sending burned-out, chronically sleep-deprived, and emotionally devastated soldiers on multiple rotations ought to be found. Overall, we assert Durkheim’s relevance to issues pertaining to war, war crimes, and military preparedness in the early twenty-first century. Durkheim was the only major social theorist to address a healthy, functional, integrated society as well as a pathological, dysfunctional, anomic society. Durkheim is relevant to these issues, and he ought to be taken seriously. So far, American warfare in the twenty-first century has been informed by expedience and corporate practices, not solid, classical and accepted social theory and research. We believe that it is important to reverse this current disastrous path and rethink warfare, as well as the current war, in line with sociology’s most iconic classic, the theory of Emile Durkheim.
Notes 1 See the CNN documentary, “Killings at the Canal: The Army Tapes,” which was broadcast during the week of 16 November 2009. 2 Before and immediately following WWII, there was great interest by anthropologists in studying war, as evidenced by the works of Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson, among others. Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) became a best-seller because it explained Japanese versus American cultural attitudes toward issues pertaining to the meaning of victory,
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defeat, shame, and prisoners. Nonetheless, contemporary anthropologists have been reluctant to follow up on these efforts with regard to the current war, even decrying a pro-American “bias” in the works of Benedict, Mead, and Bateson. Likewise, the current push toward using Human Terrain Teams in anthropology is controversial (Connable 2009; McFate 2005a,b; Serrato et al. 2009). Similarly, the APA has engaged in debates concerning the use of psychologists in developing or assisting with interrogation techniques. Durkheim’s immense influence on anthropology and psychology has been neglected with regard to his most basic claims: society needs genuine moral codes in order to function effectively; anomie as derangement is destructive and dysfunctional for societies; social integration and solidarity are necessary and functional, even for psychological processes involved in language and communication. It is for this reason that we turn to Durkheim’s social theory to fill these lacunae in social theory and military planning. Marshall emphasized that soldiers are reluctant to kill, but his contemporary interpreters such as Grossman (1996) seek to find ways to increase the fire ratio by using operant conditioning. For example, Khatchadourian (2009) has documented that Grossman’s book was issued to every soldier before Operation Iron Triangle, and that the brigade in question used kill boards, kill contests, and kill coins as methods of operant conditioning to desensitize soldiers toward killing and make them more likely to kill without questioning their ROE. Mestrovic (2009) confirmed Khatchadourian’s finding through interviews with the convicted soldiers. But Marshall emphasized that soldiers are not machines, and are a delicate balance of mind, body, and society. This precarious balance can be upset easily, such that Stouffer, Marshall, and others have found that after 3 months of combat, the infantry soldier is effectively useless for combat. Criticisms of Marshall contend that he either invented his quantitative data or used incorrect quantitative methodologies to interpret his data (see Chambers’s 2003 study, Men Against Fire). First, we note that positivists and others who use quantitative methodologies routinely criticize each other’s studies along these same lines. Second, and more importantly, we note that Marshall’s study is primarily qualitative in its methodology and primarily Durkheimian in its orientation. We choose to focus on his sociological interpretations of human nature, the need for social solidarity, and the “human touch” in understanding soldiers (also see Thomas 2007 for a discussion of the controversy surrounding S.L.A. Marshall’s study). Again, it is impossible to escape controversy in academia. For example, we are aware that Morten Ender (2009) has found high morale among US troops during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and has challenged public perception with media reports that morale was low. We do not quibble with his findings, but note that Operation Iraqi Freedom was the first phase of the war, so that high unit morale was to be expected. On the other hand, Ricks (2006, 2009) has found that 5 or more years after the invasion of Iraq, the suicide rates, alcoholism, rates of PTSD, gambling, promiscuity, and other symptoms have increased dramatically, suggesting severe social stress on the troops. The Army has admitted and addressed these and other problems only in the past 2 years. From a Durkheimian perspective, there is simply no way to explain recent, documented, and rapid increases in rates of suicide, obesity, accidents, alcoholism, gambling, and PTSD among soldiers as indicative of adequate social integration. Durkheim argued convincingly in Suicide that increased suicide and other rates of pathology caused by stress are always the effects of decreased social integration (morale) and increased anomie (derangement). His findings have been verified repeatedly by subsequent social epidemiologists. Our intent is to bypass strictly academic polemics in favor of relating the many, empirically verifiable, aforementioned social problems to the works of Durkheim, Stouffer and Marshall. See transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0404/15/lol.04.html See Danner (2004), Falk et al. (2006), Hersh (2004), Karpinski (2005), Mestrovic (2007), Strasser (2004), as well as three film documentaries, Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure (2008), and Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side (2008). See Bybee and Bradbury memos at www.aclu.org See levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id = 305735 See specifically within the Levin-McCain report this section: “The SERE techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in US custody. The Committee’s investigation found, however, that senior officials in the US government decided to use some of these harsh techniques against detainees based on deeply flawed interpretations of US and international law. The Committee concluded that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in US custody.” See levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id = 305735 for the complete Levin-McCain Report.
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11 12 13 14
See See See See
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302380.html www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/us/06suicide.html?_r=1& ref = us www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8564 www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009–02–09-obesity_N.htm
References Alvarez, L. (2009) “Army data shows rise in number of suicides.” New York Times, 5 February. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/us/06suicide.html?_r=1&ref=us (accessed 5 February 2009). American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (2009) “Bybee and Bradbury memos on interrogation techniques and torture.” Online. www.aclu.org (accessed 1 August 2009). Benedict, R. (1946) The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Biderman, A.D. (1957) “Communist attempts to elicit false confessions from air force prisoners of war,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 33: 616–25. Caldwell, R.A. and Mestrovic, S. (2008) “The role of gender in ‘expressive’ abuse at Abu Ghraib,” Cultural Sociology, 2: 275–99. ——(2010) “Durkheim’s concept of anomie as ‘derangement’ applied to the abuse at Abu Ghraib: an examination of post-emotional displacement, scapegoating, and responsibility,” in S. Romi Mukherjee (ed.) Durkheim and Violence, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Center for Constitutional Rights (2009) “Court rules Abu Ghraib torture victims can sue contractor CACI, according to legal team for former detainees.” Online. Available http://www.commondream s.org/newswire/2009/03/19–22 (accessed 19 March 2009). Chambers, J.W. (2003) “S. L. A. Marshall’s men against fire: New evidence regarding fire ratios,” Parameters, 33: 113–22. CNN. (2004) “Pentagon re-ups 20,000 troops for 90 more days in Iraq; Euro leaders reject Bin Laden truce offer.” Online. Available http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0404/15/lol.04.html (accessed 15 April 2004). Common Dreams (2008) “Is there an army cover-up of rape and murder of women soldiers?” Online. Available http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8564 (accessed 28 April 2008). Connable, B. (2009) “All our eggs in a broken basket: How the human terrain system is undermining sustainable military cultural competence,” Military Review, March/April: 57–64. Cooke, P. (2009) “Post-traumatic stress disorder and the military justice system,” Mississippi Law Journal, 79. Cushman, T. and Mestrovic, S. (1996) This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia, New York: New York University Press. Danner, M. (2004) Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, New York: New York Review of Books. Durkheim, E. (1897/1951) Suicide: A Study in Sociology, trans. J. A. Spaulding and G. Simpson, New York: Free Press. Ender, M. (2009) American Soldier in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? New York: Routledge. Falk, R., Gendzier, I. and Lifton, R.J. (eds) (2006) Crimes of War: Iraq, New York: Nation Books. Gibney, A. (Director) (2008) Taxi to the Dark Side [Motion Picture]. United States: Discovery Channel. Grossman, D. (1996) On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Boston, MA: Back Bay Books. Hersh, S. M. (2004) Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, New York: Harper Collins. Iraqi Veterans Against the War (2008) Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan Accounts of the Occupations, San Francisco, CA: Haymarket. Karpinski, J. (2005) One Woman’s Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story, New York: Hyperion. Kennedy, R. (Director) (2007) Ghosts of Abu Ghraib [Motion Picture]. United States. HBO Video (n.d.) Khatchadourian, R. (2009) “Kill company,” The New Yorker, 6 July: 40–59.
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Levin, C. and McCain, J. (2008) Report on Treatment of Detainees in US Custody. Online. Available http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=305735 (accessed 11 December 2008). Marshall, S.L.A. (1947) Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Mayer, J. (2009) The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, New York: Anchor. McFate, M. (2005a) “Anthropology and counterinsurgency: The strange story of their curious relationship,” Military Review, 85: 24–38. ——(2005b) “The military utility of understanding adversary culture,” Joint Force Quarterly July: 42–48. Merton, R. K. (1957) Social Theory and Social Structure, New York: Free Press. Mestrovic, S. (1985) “A sociological conceptualization of trauma,” Social Science and Medicine, 21: 835–48. ——(2007) The Trials of Abu Ghraib, Boulder, CO: Paradigm. ——(2008) Rules of Engagement? A Social Analysis of an American War Crime: Operation Iron Triangle, Iraq, New York: Algora. ——(2009) The Good Soldier on Trial: A Sociological Study of US Military Misconduct Pertaining to Operation Iron Triangle, Iraq, New York: Algora. Mestrovic, S. and Brown, H.M. (1985) “Durkheim’s concept of anomie as dereglement,” Social Problems, 33: 835–48. Mestrovic, S. and Caldwell, R. A. (2010) “Durkheim’s concept of anomie as ‘derangement’ applied to the abuse at Abu Ghraib: An examination of post-emotional displacement, scapegoating, and responsibility,” in S. Romi Mukherjee (ed.) Durkheim and Violence, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Mestrovic, S. and Glassner, B. (1983) “A Durkheimian hypothesis on stress,” Social Science and Medicine, 17: 1315–27. Morris, E. (Director) (2008) Standard Operating Procedure [Motion Picture]. United States: Sony Pictures. Parsons, T. (1937) The Structure of Social Action, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Ricks, T. (2006) Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, New York: Penguin. ——(2009) The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq 2006–2008, New York: Penguin. Schmitt, E. (2009) “Afghan villagers describe chaos of US strikes,” New York Times, 5 May. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15farah.html?pagewanted=2r=1& ref = global-home (accessed 5 May 2009). Schwartz, T.P. and Marsh, R.M. (1999) “The American soldier studies of WWII: A 50th anniversary commemorative,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 27: 21–37. Serrato, M., Laporte, C. and Dhanju, R. (2009) “When did ‘do no harm’ become ‘do nothing’: Graduate student perspectives on the human terrain system controversy,” Anthropology News, 50: 24. Stouffer, S. (1949) The American Soldier, Volumes 1–2, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Strasser, S. (2004) The Abu Ghraib Investigations: The Official Reports of the Independent Panel and the Pentagon on the Shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, New York: Public Affairs. Thomas, E. (2007) “Fire away: Exploding one of history’s more enduring myths,” Newsweek, 7 December. Online. Available http://www.newsweek.com/id/76997 (accessed 5 July 2009). White, J. (2005), “Abu Ghraib tactics were first used at Guantanamo.” Washington Post, 14 July. Online. Available http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR200507130238 0.html (accessed 13 July 2005). Zagorin, A. (2008) “Seeking answers on detainee abuse,” Time, 17 June. Online. Available http:// www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1815571,00.html (accessed 16 February 2010). Zamost, S. (Producer) (2009) Killings at the Canal: The Army Tapes [Television Broadcast]. 16 November 2009. Atlanta, GA: CNN. Zoroya, G. (2009) “Pentagon report shows US troop obesity doubles since 2003.” USA Today, 9 February. Online. Available http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009–02–09-obesity_N.htm (accessed 9 February 2009).
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Part II War on the ground: non-combat operations, non-combatants, and operators
9 Policing post-war Iraq Insurgency, civilian police, and the reconstruction of society Mathieu Deflem and Suzanne Sutphin
The military intervention in Iraq presents sociologists with a variety of pressing questions. Intriguing sociological work can be undertaken about more routine aspects of a society that is troubled by warfare and its enduringly violent aftermath. We address this concern by investigating the sociology of social control to unravel important dimensions of policing in the context of post-war Iraq. Our analysis of the police situation in Iraq focuses on developments since an end to major combat operations was announced in the spring of 2003. Importantly, we make no assertion that the police formally legitimated forces with the tasks of crime control and order maintenance in Iraq have acquired a degree of popular legitimacy comparable with that of law-enforcement agencies in other nations, especially those with a long history of democratization. Considering the rapid changes in the Iraqi situation, it is important to note that this article was completed in August 2006, at a time when discussions on the insurgency in Iraq were already implying a shift towards civil war. Focusing on the reformation of the civilian police system in Iraq since the collapse of the Ba’ath regime, we devote special attention to the continued violence that has plagued Iraqi society, particularly the manner in which the insurgency has focused its most deadly efforts against the newly formed Iraqi civilian police. The Iraqi police are among the favored targets of the insurgency (Chandrasekaran 2004; Housego 2004; Reuters 2006; Redmon 2006; Shadid 2005). Yet, no scholarly analysis has examined the role played by the reformed civilian police forces in the reconstruction of Iraq, and, particularly, the difficulties Iraqi police face regarding the ongoing insurgency. Our analyses rely on news articles retrieved via the Lexis-Nexis database, archival sources collected from government and private websites, and interviews with representatives of the US Department of State and the Department of Justice. Theoretically, our analysis is rooted in sociological perspectives of the evolution of the police function, especially the role of police in the democratization process. 103
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Policing the state, policing society Sociological work on the institution and function of policing is well grounded in sociological theory, especially Max Weber’s explicit linking of the state with the legitimate means of force, defining the state as the political community which within a certain territory “claims for itself [with success] a monopoly of legitimate physical coercion” (1919: 506). Further indicating the centrality of coercion in conceptualizing the state, Weber included “the protection of personal security and public order [police]” as one of the important functions of the state (1922: 516). The fact that the police in nation-states are formally charged with lawfully executing the state’s monopoly over the means of internal coercion (Manning 1977) should not lead us to view the relations between the police and the other state organs as necessarily intimate. On the contrary, a comparative-historical viewpoint reveals an important degree of variability in how the police are institutionally placed and function within the concrete sociohistorical circumstances of specific societies (Deflem 2002). Policing powers were traditionally very broadly conceived to include political (or high) policing duties as well as criminal (or low) police objectives (Brodeur 1983). Over the course of history, however, police systems have become more independent (Deflem 2002; Manning 1977), becoming functionally oriented to law enforcement and crime control. In autocratic regimes, conversely, police power remains closely tied to the quest of governments to maintain power and secure order, often through violent means and in close conjunction with military forces that are less differentiated from police powers than is the case in democratic societies. As police institutions tend to be closely associated with the military, civilian police duties (of crime control) are often subsumed under a broader security regime (of order). Turning to Iraq, the institution of police during the reign of Saddam Hussein was intimately tied to the autocratic Ba’ath regime. Consequently, the Iraqi police as a civilian force was not well developed relative to the military and secret intelligence and security agencies. Since the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, these conditions have drastically changed to usher in a democratization of the Iraqi polity and commence an effort of civilian police reform. This is a slow and ongoing process that may require much time and effort and that, at present, has produced mixed results. Although some variations in the forms of policing democracies exist, the police function in a democratic society must at a minimum (Bayley 2001, 2005) fulfill the following dual conditions: the police must have a position of independence relative to the center of the state and be responsible towards the needs of citizens and accountable to law; and police actions must abide by standards of human rights and be transparent. In contemporary Iraq, these conditions are tentatively beginning to emerge, but many problems persist. In view of the fall of the Ba’ath regime and Iraq’s transition towards democratic rule, the case of Iraq’s civilian police presents a striking real-life experiment by which the evolving dynamics of policing and the difficulties facing the democratization process can be investigated. In the following analysis, we investigate the reformation of Iraq’s police since the occupation by the international coalition forces; we highlight some of the difficulties Iraq’s new civilian police forces have faced since the spread of the insurgency that erupted after an end was declared to major combat operations. 104
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Policing Iraq During the Ba’ath regime, the Iraqi National Police were responsible for all law-enforcement duties. Although staffed by officers trained in police academies, the police were placed under military oversight. Law-enforcement functions involving more serious criminal violations were delegated to the security services, leaving the police to deal mostly with petty offenses and traffic regulation. Three decades of Saddam Hussein’s rule brought about poorly managed police forces, which had low standards of education and operation. Corruption among the police was high, as was distrust towards the police among most Iraqi citizens. Police officers rarely ventured outside their stations, and when they did, they randomly rounded up suspects, extorted confessions by force and torture, or took bribes from family members to release suspects.
Policing the occupation The Iraqi invasion and the absence of police The invasion of Iraq brought about a swift toppling of the Ba’athist regime. Yet, many problems ensued once major hostilities had ended. Initially most striking was the general lawlessness that erupted in Baghdad after the invasion of the city. Some of this violence damaged the police infrastructure, later contributing to impede the rebuilding of the civilian forces. Also, at the time lawlessness had erupted, most Iraqi police and military had simply gone home ( Jones et al. 2005; Moss and Rohde 2006; Perito 2005). Although US officials had been informed about the likely breakdown of law and order in post-war situations, military command did not count on continued unrest after the cessation of major combat operations (Borger 2003; PBS 2003b). The US military appealed to Iraqi police to return to work, and although they were not allowed to carry weapons, many Iraqi police soon reported back to their stations. On 14 April 2003, joint patrols of Iraqi police and US soldiers were first spotted in the streets of the Iraqi capital. But the initial police presence produced considerable outrage among Iraqi citizens, as many of them were thought to be leftovers from the Ba’athist regime. That there was some truth to this perception was most clearly shown in May 2003 when Zuhair al-Naimi, a Ba’athist loyalist and interior ministry official under Saddam Hussein, was appointed as the new police chief in Baghdad. Al-Naimi was forced to resign within a week because he refused to implement the new police procedures suggested by the US (Rai 2003). Besides formally reporting to work after the invasion, most returning Iraqi police officials rarely left their offices. A careful vetting process would have to be conducted to train new officers and weed out those who were corrupt loyalists of Saddam Hussein (PBS 2003a). Police training is vital, as police in a non-democratic society, such as Ba’athist Iraq, are simply not accustomed to routine police activities, such as arrest, criminal investigation, and patrol (PBS 2003b). Besides training in technical matters of effective police techniques, the new Iraqi police also had to be familiarized with the procedures of democratic policing (Swiss Foundation for World Affairs 2005). The establishment of the Iraqi Police Service Under the direction of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the Iraqi Police Service (IPS) was created and placed under the authority of the Ministry of Interior (Global 105
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Security website; Jones et al. 2005). The new police service has formal charge of lawenforcement duties related to crime control and order maintenance. The police can also assist the coalition forces, but the latter remain primarily responsible for investigations involving terrorism and military crimes. Ba’ath party members are now no longer allowed to serve in any public sector function. Ironically, hindering the development of a well-functioning police, the purging of Ba’ath Party members from the Iraqi police implied a loss of officers at the senior and mid-level ranks, leaving important leadership positions vacant. Many resources have been and are still being devoted to the professionalization of the new Iraqi police, including aid from the military and from foreign police experts (Perito 2004, 2005). In May 2003, a team from the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program in the US Department of Justice concluded that international assistance was needed for the Iraqi police to maintain order. This pessimistic outlook was confirmed by a US soldier stationed in the city of Falluja, where, based on his observations, there simply was no police “because the insurgents just kill them. Most of the police are corrupt and the good ones get killed” (private correspondence, 2005). To assist with Iraqi police reform, an International Police Training Center was set up by the CPA in Amman, Jordan, in December 2003 (Cha 2003; Perito 2005). By October 2005, some 67,500 Iraqi police had been trained in the Jordan training center as well as in the Baghdad Police College and similar regional academies (US Department of Defense 2005), by officials from military and justice departments of the US, UK, and other countries, as well as by a host of officials from private contractors (Cha 2003; Jones et al. 2005). The ongoing challenge of Iraqi police reform Soon after its creation, the IPS turned out to be severely underequipped and far from successful in fulfilling its mission. Police officers who had been reinstalled from the police forces during the Ba’athist regime often turned out to be unreliable ( Jones et al. 2005). Many of the new recruits, also, engaged in corruption or were poorly trained and ineffective in carrying out their duties. To resolve the situation, a Civilian Police Advisory Training Team was established in May 2004 under the control of the international coalition forces and assigned responsibility for training and equipping the IPS ( Jones et al. 2005; Perito 2005). In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 36 assigned principal responsibility for the training of the Iraqi security forces, including the civilian police, to the US Department of Defense (US Department of State 2005). The coalition military forces initially carried out many police and other civilian tasks. However, the military was not ideally placed to perform police tasks and assist in the reformation of the Iraqi civilian police. Arguably the most tragic case concerning the blurred edges of responsibility between military police, civilian authority, the Central Intelligence Agency, and contracted security companies was the scandal surrounding conditions in the Abu Ghraib prison (Hersh 2004). In the fall of 2004, the Iraqi Interim Government conducted a purge of the IPS and removed several officers from the police because of corruption, lack of qualifications, or for failing to report to work. By May 2004, the total number of officers formally “on duty” in the IPS was about 90,000, but the number of police actually serving may have been as low as 40,000. Since its establishment, the IPS has continually expanded, to approximately 90,000 personnel by December 2004 (Global Security website; Jones et al. 106
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2005; Perito 2005). The Department of Defense projected that 135,000 IPS officers were to be fully trained by February 2007 (US Department of Defense 2005). Of course, whether securing a sufficient number of officers in the Iraqi police will be enough to ensure a structural change towards an effectively functioning civilian police institution is an altogether different matter. In 2006, the US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, announced a “year of the police,” but right up to the fall of that year, repeated efforts had to be made to reform and control the Iraqi police forces (McKeeby 2006; Moore 2006). The intensifying Iraqi insurgency has placed a particularly troublesome and evergrowing burden on Iraq’s civilian security forces.
The Iraqi insurgency The insurgency in Iraq refers to the armed campaign by a wide variety of irregular forces, drawn from Iraq and other countries, that are operating against the international coalition forces and the new Iraqi government. Since the end of major hostilities in the spring of 2003, the insurgency has increased considerably in size and intensity. The total number of active insurgents is estimated to be between 12,000 and 20,000, representing some 40 groups and many more smaller cells. By the spring of 2006, debates in the popular media began to refer to the situation in terms of a civil war. And by the summer of 2006, even US military generals had openly stated the possibility of an escalation of violence in Iraq that would amount to an outright civil war. It is difficult to define the insurgency in precise terms without lapsing into a politically contentious debate, but it is clear that the insurgency does not refer to a unified collective engaged in a clearly defined objective. Among the insurgents are Ba’athist sympathizers of Saddam Hussein, Sunni extremists, foreign Islamist fighters, including members of Al Qaeda, and the group surrounding the now slain militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (who was killed in a US air strike on 7 June 2006), as well as criminal groups that lack political–ideological motivations. Irrespective of the difficult questions surrounding the causes and objectives of the insurgency, it has effectively managed to destabilize Iraqi society. Originally aimed at the coalition forces, the insurgency rapidly spread out across Iraqi society, targeting Iraqi civilians and institutions, including police and security forces. Attacks have also taken place against mosques, political parties, hotels, the UN headquarters, foreign embassies, the International Red Cross, and international diplomats. Polls conducted among the Iraqi population show that anti-occupation sentiments occasionally go hand in hand with sympathy for the insurgents (Bender 2005).
Target: Iraqi police Available evidence suggests that the Iraqi police have been especially targeted by the insurgency. The Iraq Body Count (IBC) website provides a database with numerical information, based on a variety of news sources, about the incidents and casualties involving insurgent and other attacks since March 2003 (IBC 2005). Because of selective reporting, findings of the IBC website have to be treated with care. In order to avoid even the remotest possibility of overcounting, we rely on the minimum numbers in the database. We report the monthly number of incidents and casualties involving Iraqi police. 107
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Of the more than 40,000 deaths included in the IBC database by 17 August 2006 (end-date of last recorded casualty: 25 July 2006), 3,640 were police officers. Even although many deaths are reported for which occupational category is not known, police officers are represented more often in the database than any other occupation, including politicians, religious leaders, and legal professionals. A report published by the Iraq Body Count website confirms that police account for the single largest occupational category (IBC 2006). Of the 2,210 victims on which occupational information was available for the period from March 2003 to March 2005, no fewer than 977 police officers were counted among the 1,182 deaths recorded among security professionals. The IBC numbers are largely much lower than the actual death toll. According to a report by Robert Perito (2006) of the US Institute of Peace, several thousand Iraqi police officers have died in the line of duty since the invasion. There has been a general trend toward an increase in the number of attacks involving police and the number of casualties involved, peaking between May 2005 and January 2006. The increase is not steady from month to month, with some of the most lethal months following months that produced relatively fewer deaths. The evolution of the casualty rate (the number of casualties per incident) is more erratic, because some months had relatively few incidents with a relatively large number of casualties and because the lethality of each incident can vary considerably. Not all casualties reported in the IBC database are due to insurgent attacks, but evidence suggests that insurgent attacks are primarily responsible for the killings of Iraqi police. Based on information from one of the collaborators of the IBC website (personal communication, 28 October 2005), in the period from March 2005 until October 2005, 514 police were killed, of whom 384 were victims of attacks by anti-coalition agents. Despite the enormous casualty rate among the Iraqi police, new police recruits are readily found. Economic urgency rather than patriotism is a major motivation for many young Iraqis to join the police (Chandrasekaran 2004). One of the new recruits explained the situation well when he argued that joining the Iraqi police (or the army) is among the few options available for employment, although he fully realized that Iraqi police officers are “walking dead men” (Fainaru 2004).
Police and the pacification of society Following the 2003 invasion, the regime of Saddam Hussein collapsed quickly, much as the US government and the other coalition powers had hoped for, but the old Iraqi regime did not collapse in the manner that was expected. Among the greatest difficulties in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq have been the resurgence of ethnic and religious rivalries, the eruption and intensification of the insurgency, difficulties in mobilizing medical supplies and other necessary goods, and the restoration of Iraq’s primary social institutions. Clearly, the coalition forces were prepared to wage war, but were much less prepared to establish peace (Roxborough 2003). The process of pacification and reconstruction in Iraq must also include adequate attention to the civilian police situation. The Bush administration and its allies did not adequately anticipate what had to be done to establish a new Iraqi police force. A welldeveloped civilian police in Ba’athist Iraq was extremely unlikely, because states with a strong military and dictatorial past have inherent difficulties in separating internal security tasks from national defense functions. International support and political will are the 108
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minimum conditions for the successful creation of a well-functioning civilian police in countries where a radical regime change has taken place (Stanley 1996). A careful adaptation to local cultural and political circumstances and a clear separation of military and police functions are also needed (Bayley 2001). Robert Perito, a former official in the US Department of State who has extensive experience in implementing civilian police programs abroad, takes a pragmatic view and argues that “[l]arge-scale breakdowns in public order should he anticipated in the aftermath of international interventions, particularly in societies emerging from brutal oppression” (Perito 2005). Under those circumstances, Perito argues, police reform is always difficult, because even when police officials are given new equipment and better training, they have great difficulties performing in an effective and accountable manner. The problems associated with civilian police reform in Iraq have further been compounded because the US, as the dominant participant in the international coalition, does not have a national police force in the style of the semi-military gendarmerie forces that exist in many European countries. Therefore, the US military had to perform police functions in the immediate days following the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and had to rely on newly created Special Forces in the army and the US Military Police for an extended period thereafter (Perito 2003). The capabilities of such units are limited, primarily because they are made up of military personnel who are neither trained nor equipped to act as law-enforcement officers. It is also highly unlikely that military units will be recognized and accepted as police forces among the civilians they are meant to serve. Run by the State Department, the US Civilian Police Program in Iraq is administered through the company DynCorp International, which hires law-enforcement personnel from state and local agencies to fill civilian police posts abroad. Many DynCorp officers have little if any foreign experience. During the UN peace-keeping mission in Bosnia, DynCorp-deployed police were involved in arms trading and the sexual exploitation of women and children (Perito 2004: 283–88). Since the spring of 2006, DynCorp has been under investigation by US officials following reports of criminal fraud by DynCorp employees in Iraq, including the illegal selling of fuel and ammunition designated for the Iraqi police. It has also raised concerns that DynCorp delivers military troops and equipment to assist in foreign missions, thus effectively blurring the boundaries between military and civilian-police powers (Singer 2003). In Iraq, some 1,000 US police sub-contracted from DynCorp act as “International Police Liaison Officers” to aid the reorganization of Iraq’s police systems on the basis of a $750 million contract (Merle 2004; Moss and Rohde 2006). There are currently at least 36 such private security companies with some 25,000 employees, mostly from the US and the UK, as well as 16 Iraqi firms registered for security functions in Iraq, besides as many as 50 more companies thought to be operating illegally (Finer 2005). Employees from these private security companies, which perform various police functions because of the void left by the absence of Iraqi police, have reportedly been involved in several dozen shootings against Iraqi civilians. Private company employees are immune from prosecution under a new law adopted by Iraq’s interim government. The worst form of punishment they can receive is dismissal from their jobs. The Iraqi civilian police forces remain at an extreme disadvantage against the insurgency. Poorly equipped and undertrained, Iraq’s police forces simply cannot engage in law-enforcement duties when the minimal conditions of a basically safe and secure society are not met. These conditions of insecurity additionally create an environment in which other criminal ventures, such as organized crime, human smuggling, and drug 109
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trafficking, may take root (Tosti 2004). In these circumstances, also, many police matters take on a war-like character and remain primarily within the province of military forces.
Conclusion Formally, the Iraq war ended on 1 May 2003. Yet, President Bush’s declaration of the end of major combat operations did not usher in a period of peace for Iraqi society, as insurgent violence bordering on the brink of, and possibly anticipating, civil war has continued to ravage the country. The strength and effectiveness of the ongoing insurgency also drastically hindered the further development and effectiveness of the Iraqi police. A society that has not attained a degree of pacification cannot afford a civilian police. As Max Weber (1922) observed, it is only in the context of a pacified society that the forces of internal coercion can develop and the police can take on the position as “the ‘representative of God on earth’” (516). “Pacification” is hereby conceived to imply, as a minimal condition, an absence of warfare and a continuation of a state of durable peace that allows for a stabilization of the political order and a normalization of social life. Conditions of peace and the functioning of social institutions mutually influence one another. For as much as pacification is a condition of civilian police development, so too would the development of a well-functioning police force in Iraq signal the beginnings, however small, of the normalization of Iraqi society. A well-established and regularly functioning police force in Iraq would represent an important and highly visible indicator of a pacified society. Attacks against the police, therefore, are meant to thwart the reconstruction and pacification of Iraqi society. Although the insurgent attacks are also oriented against coalition forces, Iraqi civilians and security forces account for 80 percent of all casualties (US Department of Defense 2005). As the analysis in this paper has revealed, Iraqi police are particularly targeted by the insurgency. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought about a toppling of the Ba’athist regime and ushered in a new era for Iraq’s police system as well as other social institutions. As the coalition forces were caught by surprise over the enormity of the task of civilian police reform, the newly created Iraqi police forces were clearly in need of training in technical respects of adequate law enforcement and also in view of accountability and the use of democratic police methods. As is often the case with foreign police assistance, the need to assist police reform hovers between the dangers of providing insufficient support to build a well-functioning police, on the one hand, and creating a powerful tool of repression, on the other (Bayley 2005). Efforts to accomplish Iraqi police reform, at first clearly underestimated by the US-led occupation forces, have been increasingly recognized. Inasmuch as the Iraqi police is no longer the political tool of an autocratic regime, the police institution in Iraq is thus undergoing a process of societalization, however modest its current accomplishments. Therefore, we argue, the insurgency is aimed at attacking the Iraqi police in order to prevent the normalization of Iraqi society. Our thesis that the civilian police forces of Iraq are primary targets of the insurgent attacks because of the normalizing role a functioning police plays in society does not imply that there are no other factors contributing to the police being targeted. Indeed, another reason the police are a preferred target is that the Iraqi police forces are the primary Iraqi instrument in the counterinsurgency, thus positing the police as direct 110
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combatants against the insurgents. Also, because the Iraqi police forces are poorly trained and ill-equipped, they are relatively soft targets, especially compared with the US military troops. We do not mean to suggest that the Iraqi police, in being targeted because of their normalizing role, have already attained the status of a professional and democratic civilian force. Clearly, residues of the Ba’athist regime remain in place in the Iraqi social order. An additional and important complicating factor is the infiltration of militia groups in the police and the sectarian violence they engage in with Iraqi civilians. The relevance of the past is most tragically revealed in the continued reliance among the Iraqi police on methods of extortion and torture. In the summer of 2005, human rights activists stated that torture tactics, including such brutal methods as the hanging of detainees from wires and the drilling of holes into parts of their bodies, remain common among Iraq’s police (Galpin 2005). As recently as March of 2006, US military leaders and Iraqi authorities cooperated to investigate continued reports of police misconduct, leading to dismissals of corrupt officers and, in at least one case, the firing of an entire police unit (McKeeby 2006). By then, reports also indicated that the Iraqi police had more and more been infiltrated by sectarian militia groups and continued to show an extreme lack of professionalism (Allbritton 2006; Moss 2006). The Sunni community, especially, has complained about police brutality from a civilian force that is now dominated by a Shi’a majority. Recent reports have even indicated that the Iraqi Interior Ministry is connected to sectarian militias and has supplied militiamen with police uniforms and vehicles (Zavis 2006). Because of the inability of police to protect the population, Iraqis have continued to resort to neighborhood militias (Baker 2005). The Iraqi police are even more victimized by insurgent attacks than they are distrusted by the civilian Iraqi population, which indicates the significance of the development of a civilian police. Inasmuch as the Iraqi police forces aspire no longer to function as an arm of an autocratic state but to become an independent and professional law-enforcement service, ironically, they are more prone to the violent attacks from insurgent groups that continue to be committed to destabilize Iraqi society.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Deflem, M. and Sutphin, S. (2006) “Policing post-war Iraq: insurgency, civilian police, and the reconstruction of society,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 265–83.
References Allbritton, C. (2006) “Why Iraq’s police are a menace,” Time, Online. Available http://www.time. com/time/world/article/0,8599,1175055,00.html (accessed 20 April 2006). Baker, L. (2005) “Frustrated Iraqis ready to take law into own hands,” Common Dreams News Center. Online. Available http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0718–02.htm (accessed 17 August, 2006). Bayley, D. (2001) Democratizing the Police Abroad: What To Do and How To Do It, Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. ——(2005) Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Police Abroad, New York: Oxford University Press. Bender, B. (2005) “Insurgency seen forcing change in Iraq strategy: New aim to bring Sunnis into fold,” The Boston Globe, 10 June, p. A1.
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Borger, J. (2003) “Pentagon was warned over policing Iraq,” The Guardian, Online. Available http:// www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,965096,00.html (accessed 4 November 2005). Brodeur, J.-P. (1983) “High policing and low policing: Remarks about the policing of political activities,” Social Problems 30: 507–20. Cha, A.E. (2003) “Crash course in law enforcement lifts hopes for stability in Iraq: Academy set to train a new generation of the country’s police,” The Washington Post, 9 December, p. A22. Chandrasekaran, R. (2004) “Police recruits targeted in Iraq: Bomb kills scores near headquarters,” The Washington Post, 15 September, p. A1. Deflem, M. (2002) Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation, New York: Oxford University Press. Fainaru, S. (2004) “For police recruits, risk is constant companion.” The Washington Post, 27 September, p. A1. Finer, J. (2005) “Security contractors in Iraq under scrutiny after shootings,” The Washington Post, 10 September, p. A1. Galpin, R. (2005) “Iraq police accused of torture,” BBC News. Online. Available http://news.bbc.co. uk/2/hi/middle_east/4718999.stm (accessed 4 November 2005). Global Security (n.d.) “Iraqi police service (IPS).” Online. Available http://www.globalsecurity.org/ intell/world/iraq/ips.htm (accessed 20 April 2006). Hersh, S.M. (2004) Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, New York: Harper Collins. Housego, K. (2004) “Insurgents target Iraqi police with car bomb, gun ambush, killing at least 59,” Free New Mexican, Online. Online. http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/4294.html (accessed 4 November 2005). Iraq Body Count (2005) “A dossier of civilian casualties in Iraq 2003–5,” Online. Available http:// www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php (accessed 4 November 2005). ——(2006) Online. Available http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ (accessed 20 April 2006). Jones, S.G., Wilson, J.M., Rathmell, A. and Riley, K.J. (2005) Establishing Law and Order after Conflict, Santa Monica, VA: RAND Corporation. Online. Available http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs /2005/RAND_MG374.pdf (accessed 17 August 2006). McKeeby, D.I. (2006) “In Iraq, 2006 is the ‘year of the police,’ says US General.” The Washington File, Online. Available http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2006/03/iraq-060324usia01.htm (accessed 20 April 2006). Manning, P.K. (1977) Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Merle, R. (2004) “DynCorp took part in Chalabi raid,” The Washington Post, 4 June, p. A17. Moore, S. (2006) “US offers plan to curb rogue Iraqi police forces,” The Los Angeles Times, 15 August, p. A5. Moss, M. (2006) “How Iraq police reform became casualty of war,” The New York Times, 22 May, p. 1. Moss, M. and Rohde, D. (2006) “Misjudgments marred US plans for Iraqi police,” The New York Times, 21 May, p. 1. PBS (2003a) “The new Iraq,” Transcript of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, April 21. Online. Available http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june03/recon_4–21.html (accessed 4 November 2005). ——(2003b) “Truth, war, and consequences: interview with Robert M. Perito,” Frontline, Online. Available http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/perito.html (accessed 4 November 2005). Perito, R.M. (2003) “Establishing the rule of law in Iraq,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 104. Online. Available http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr104.html (accessed 17 August 2006). ——(2004) Where Is the Lone Ranger When We Need Him? America’s Search for a Postconflict Stability Force. Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace. ——(2005) “The coalition provisional authority’s experience with public security in Iraq,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 137. Online. http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/ sr137.html (accessed 4 November 2005). ——(2006) “Policing Iraq: protecting Iraqis from criminal violence,” United States Institute of Peace, USI Peace Briefing. Online. Available http://www.usip.org/pubs/usipeace_briefings/2006/0629_po licing_iraq.html (accessed 17 August 2006).
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Rai, M. (2003) Regime Unchanged: Why the War on Iraq Changed Nothing, London: Pluto Press. Redmon, J. (2006) “Iraqi police fear dangers in ranks,” Cox News Service, Online. Available http:// www.ajc.com/search/content/shared/news/stories/IRAQ_POLICE_0223_COX.html (accessed 20 April 2006). Reuters (2006) “Iraq police find 32 bodies of security forces,” Reuters News Service, Online. Available http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006–04–24T181409Z_01 _GEO464503_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-RECRUITS.xml (accessed 25 April 2006). Roxborough, I. (2003) “Iraq, Afghanistan, the Global War on Terrorism, and the owl of Minerva,” Political Power and Social Theory, 16: 185–211. Shadid, A. (2005) “Iraqi police bear brunt of suicide bombings,” The Star Tribune. Online. http://www. startribune.com/stories/484/5228151.html (accessed 4 November 2005). Singer, P.W. (2003) Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Stanley, W. (1996) “International tutelage and domestic political will: Building a new civilian police force in El Salvador,” in O. Marenin (ed.) Policing Change, Changing Police: International Perspectives, New York: Garland Publishing. Swiss Foundation for World Affairs (2005) “Security in a world of conflict: needs and strategies in international policing,” For the Record: Conference Report. Online. Available http://www.swissfou ndation.org/events/040605_FTR_HiRes.pdf (accessed 4 November 2006). Tosti, P. (2004) “Forecasting crime and narcobusiness: Iraq after the war,” Conflict, Security & Development 4: 91–95. US Department of Defense (2005) “Report: Measuring stability and security in Iraq,” Report to Congress, Online. Available http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/20051013_publication_OSSRF.pdf (accessed 4 November 2005). US Department of State (2005) “United States participation in international police (CIVPOL) missions,” Factsheet, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Online. Available http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/fs/47759.htm (accessed 4 November 2005). Weber, M. (1919/1988) “Politik als beruf,” in Gesammelte Politische Schriften, Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). ——(1922/1980) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Zavis, A. (2006) “US hopes to build Iraqi police force,” The Guardian, Online. http://www.guardian. co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,-5774878,00.html (accessed 25 April 2006).
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10 Policing Afghanistan Civilian police reform and the resurgence of the Taliban Mathieu Deflem
Introduction Modern police institutions have historically developed from government agencies involved with the suppression of political dissent (against the state) towards the development of independent expert institutions involved with the control of crime (in society) (Deflem 2002, 2009). This historical development towards an increasing bureaucratic autonomy of policing also has an important comparative dimension, for police institutions only reach a high degree of autonomy when a society is relatively peaceful and the polity is democratized. In autocratic regimes, conversely, police power remains closely tied to a government’s quest to maintain power and secure order. This typically occurs through violent means and in close conjunction with military forces that are not so sharply differentiated from police as is the case in democratic societies. As police institutions under autocratic polities tend to be closely associated with the military, civilian police duties (of crime control) are typically subsumed under a broader security regime (or order). In democratic regimes, by contrast, police and military are not closely intertwined except in exceptional circumstances, such as a period of warfare. These theoretical insights are used to analyze the evolving police condition in Afghanistan since the invasion of the country in 2001. Accompanying the analysis of policing in contemporary Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006; chapter 9 in this volume), it will be shown that the establishment of civilian police forces in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, is not only difficult and slow, but has also been hampered by violent attacks against the police by the Taliban’s deliberate efforts to impede democratization. From 1996 until the invasion of 2001, Afghanistan was politically controlled by the autocratic Taliban. Based on the theory of policing that argues for the gradual development of professional police systems (Deflem 2002), it can be postulated that the police function under the Taliban was intimately tied to the political objectives of the state. As a result, civilian police functions will not have been well developed compared with those of the military, secret intelligence, and security agencies. However, since the invasion of Afghanistan and the introduction of a democratic system of government, these conditions will have led to a 114
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democratization of the country’s polity and to a development of accompanying civilian police systems. This process of police professionalization, however, has been substantially hindered by Taliban fighters, who seek to disrupt Afghanistan’s path to democracy. The Taliban uses violent strategies against the newly instituted police forces in order to destabilize Afghan society. Like the insurgent activities that have plagued the development of policing in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the militant activities of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, I argue, are purposely aimed at hindering the development of the newly established Afghan police institutions. Thus, the military intervention in Afghanistan has not only responded to the terrorism of 9/11, it has also brought about an entirely new set of conditions of terrorist violence. Given the connections between the development of civilian police and the democratization of society, I argue, the terrorist activities of Taliban forces in Afghanistan are aimed at the police institutions that are being established because a regularly functioning police would represent an important and highly visible indicator of the pacification and normalization of society. Civilian police forces are ironically a preferred target of terrorist activities, precisely at times when these institutions are needed, even more urgently than under peacetime conditions, to fight terrorist activities. This analysis is based on a variety of government and agency reports and international news sources.
Policing autocracy: Afghanistan under Taliban rule Given the variable connections between police and politics, it is useful to situate the development of the organization and function of policing in Afghanistan within the country’s political evolution (Ewans 2002; Rogers 2004; Runion 2007). Although Afghan civilization dates back several thousands of years, a modern state of Afghanistan was not founded until the middle of the eighteenth century, when Persian rulers took control of a region that now covers Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as parts of Iran and India. In the early nineteenth century, the UK extended its colonial empire to the Afghan region, until Amanullah Khan was installed as Shah in 1919. Afghanistan’s monarchial dynasty was stable, with Mohammed Zahir Shah ruling from 1933 until 1973, when he was ousted by a relative, Mohammed Daoud Khan, who became the first President of a newly formed Republic of Afghanistan. In 1978, Daoud Khan was killed following an uprising led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, at which time the country was officially renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Backed by the Soviet Union, the new regime was secular and introduced various modernization reforms, leading to opposition from religious conservatives and other factions, including the Islamic warriors of the so-called Mujahideen. On 24 December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Faced with international opposition and an increasingly better organized Mujahideen, which could also count on the backing from the US government, Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in the late 1980s. During the 1990s, secular and Islamic forces in Afghanistan continued fighting for control of the country. In 1996, the Islamic political forces of the Taliban seized the city of Kabul and gradually took control over almost all of Afghanistan. During the Taliban era, many police functions were subsumed under broader military powers and formulated in terms of principles derived from Islam (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001; Mohammad and Conway 2003; PBS 2006). Besides a constant involvement in battling rivaling militias, the Taliban also maintained an elaborate internal 115
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enforcement regime to impose its strict version of Islamic law (sharia). Partly based on a similar police force in Saudi Arabia, this “religious police” was formally overseen by a Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Amro bil mahroof ) and was expected to enforce various Taliban edicts oriented at making Afghan society Islamic in all respects. Such edicts were promulgated to ban all non-religious music, all books not published in Afghanistan, television sets, videocassettes and recorders, satellite dishes, and movies, all of which were judged to be offensive to Islam and, consequently, subject to police action. Behavior forbidden under Taliban law included laughing in public, dancing, keeping pigeons, and smoking. Neckties, fashion catalogues, musical instruments, computer discs, and flying kites were also banned, and police were ordered to seize all such items. Afghan women were particularly targeted by Taliban laws, which forbad women to work or go to school, to wear white shoes or heels that clicked or clothing other than the all-covering burqa, to use lipstick, or to walk outdoors unaccompanied by a close male relative. In August 2001, a Taliban edict banned all organizations in Afghanistan, except the Taliban militia headquarters in Kandahar, from using the internet (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001). The Taliban police would beat or imprison anyone who broke the rules of sharia law. Men could be beaten by the religious police for having beards shorter than the length of a fist. Taliban policemen would sometimes stop vehicles on the street and search for music or video tapes, telling people to spend more time praying and going to the mosque. Barbers were arrested for giving men haircuts, known as the “Titanic,” that mimicked the style of actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie about the famous ship. Thieves could have their arms or legs amputated, anyone caught drinking liquor could be whipped, adulterers could be stoned to death, and women were generally not granted any independent rights (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001).
Post-invasion police reform As has been the case since Iraq was invaded (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the invasion of Afghanistan brought about many immediate and long-term changes. Although the military interventions were motivated differently in terms of their purported connections to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, they each envisioned a political regime change and the installation of a new, democratically elected government. The democratization of primary social institutions, including Afghan police and security forces, would have to be part of this process. Because the Al Qaeda movement was linked to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where terrorist training camps were organized and Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding, the US government, in direct response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, launched Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 October 2001 with the support of coalition forces of some 50 countries. After the invasion, local Afghan warlords sided with coalition forces in fighting the Taliban and joined the so-called Northern Alliance, a collection of anti-Taliban Afghan political and religious groups. Once the Taliban forces had been largely defeated, the Alliance helped install an Afghan Transitional Administration in 2002. This paved the way for a new permanent government allowing the 2004 Presidential elections, when Hamid Karzai became President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Congressional elections were held in September 2005 to establish a National Assembly. 116
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In April 2002, an international conference on Afghanistan was held in Geneva to formulate a plan for Afghan security in the post-Taliban era (Combined Security Transition Command 2008; Del Vecchio 2008; Library of Congress 2006; Murray 2007; Powell 2005; Sedra 2003; US Department of State 2006; Wardick 2004; Wilder 2007). The initial goal was to install a new Afghan national police that would consist of some 44,300 uniformed police, 12,000 border police, 3,400 highway police, and 2,300 counternarcotics police. In 2003, a new Afghan National Police (ANP) was established along with an Afghan National Army. The newly formed national police resembles a gendarmerie in having a military character, but it is responsible for regular law-enforcement duties, including criminal investigations, drugs enforcement, and border security. The ANP is supervised by the Afghan Ministry of Interior, which developed a document, the Tashkil, that specifies the structure and functions of the new police. By 2009, the number of police officially part of the ANP had risen to about 79,000. Yet no accurate information is available of the number of officers actually serving, as police commanders are known to accept salaries of nonexistent “ghost officers” (Saunders 2008). The Afghan National Police consists of several specialized branches. The Uniformed Police (at 34,000 the largest unit in the ANP) is responsible for general law enforcement, public safety, and internal security. A Civil Order Police is responsible for security involving civil disturbances in large urban areas. In addition, specialized law-enforcement functions are maintained by the Border Police, the Counter Narcotics Police, the Criminal Investigation Division Police, as well as a Counter Terrorism Police. On the basis of the 2002 Geneva conference, German authorities in 2003 took on the lead role in Afghan police reform through the German Police Project Office, which aimed to help the Afghan government create a national police that is both effective and respectful of the rule of law (Auswärtiges Amt n.d.). Since June of 2007, the German initiative has been expanded into a European effort through the European Union Police Mission to Afghanistan, called “EUPOL Afghanistan” (Council of the European Union n.d.). Largely made up of German as well as other foreign police, EUPOL Afghanistan provides training, advice, and equipment to the Afghan National Police. Consisting of some 200 officers, EUPOL Afghanistan decided, in May 2008, to bring the size of the mission to a total of 400 personnel on the basis of a budget of more than 35 million euros (nearly 52 million US dollars). Besides Germany and the European Union, other coalition forces, especially Canada and the US, have also assisted in the reorganization of the Afghan police. Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have been deployed to Afghanistan since 2005 to monitor and train the Afghan National Police (RCMP n.d.). The United States policing efforts in Afghanistan are not primarily involved with Afghan police reform but at eradication of poppy crops, especially by intervention of the US Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (and the Drug Enforcement Administration) (see Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs n.d.; Risen 2007). Since 2005, the US Department of Defense has assisted the Afghan National Police, using US marines and other military units to train police recruits (Rohde 2007b). As in Iraq, US efforts to train Afghan police are also handled by DynCorp. By June 2006, the private company had 245 police trainers in Afghanistan. Police training is conducted at the Afghan National Police Academy (Central Training Center) in the capital city of Kabul as well as in several regional training centers across the country. By 2006, more than 60,000 Afghan police officers had received training. Because the government of 117
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Afghanistan does not have the necessary funds, the reorganization of the country’s police is funded by members of the international community. Although some former Afghan militia members have been recruited into the army and the national police, several thousands of militia organizations have continued to exist under the command of local warlords. Additional problems exist because the Afghan criminal justice system has developed slowly and there are not enough attorneys, judges, and other necessary personnel to carry out law-enforcement activities. Also, some areas of the country remain unprotected by army or police and are under the control of drugs traffickers and local militia groups. By 2009, there were still plans to increase the size of Afghanistan’s national police. Yet, because Afghan police forces have not been able to provide adequate security with respect to civil order, drugs enforcement, and border security, Afghan National Army troops have been deployed in areas that are lacking in law enforcement. As in Iraq, police in Afghanistan have also been accused of being ineffective as well as unprofessional, using torture to extort confessions and being involved in corruption (Berglund 2008). As a result, the need for international assistance in Afghan police training remained high as late as the fall of 2008 (Canwest News Service 2008; Deutsche Welle 2008).
Target: Afghan police Again paralleling the development in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the invasion of Afghanistan has brought about continued problems of violence and civil unrest despite the efforts that have been made to introduce democratic rule and establish new social institutions. Democratic rule has been formally instituted in Afghanistan, but ongoing outbursts of violence by Taliban forces have prevented a normalization of Afghan society. As in Iraq, the newly formed Afghan civilian police forces have been especially targeted by the renewed violent unrest. Despite the fact that a democratic government has been installed in Afghanistan, Taliban forces have been able to regain control over several areas in the country (and in neighboring Pakistan). As early as 2005, coalition forces had to mount a new offensive against Taliban positions. A year later, Taliban resistance continued to increase, especially by means of attacks involving improvised explosives and suicide bombings. As a result, Afghan society has been destabilized by what has been described, since as early as the summer of 2006, as a fully fledged Taliban resurgence (de Borchgrave 2006). The Afghan National Police, moreover, has been judged to be ineffective in dealing with the upsurge in Taliban violence, as the police have remained understaffed, undertrained, and underequipped (Chivers 2008; CTV 2008). By July 2008, the violence perpetrated by Taliban forces had reached such proportions that the US government decided to extend the tour of duty of some its troops, and asked other NATO nations involved to increase their respective troop levels (Dillow 2008). In February 2009, US President Barack Obama announced that an additional 17,000 troops would be deployed to Afghanistan (Alberts 2009). There is no systematic information available on the fatalities of the Taliban resurgence that is comparable with that provided by the Iraq Body Count website on the situation in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006). In more ways than one, the military intervention in Afghanistan is a “forgotten war.” However, based on information provided in published media reports, there are clear indications that the Taliban resurgence has increased since at least 2005 and that its violent tactics have been specifically and increasingly aimed at 118
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Afghanistan’s new civilian police forces (Rohde 2007a; Motlagh 2007). Although Afghan police were already targeted by Taliban forces soon after the new National Police was installed (McCarthy 2003), attacks against the police particularly increased during the spring of 2007, when Taliban tactics moved from attacking the military troops of the (foreign) coalition forces to hitting the (domestic) police forces. By early September 2007, at least 379 Afghan police were reported to have already been killed in that year, compared with a total of 257 police fatalities for all of 2006. Other sources put the numbers even higher, estimating some 1,200 police killed in 2007 (CNN 2008). Data provided by Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry indicate that more than 900 Afghan police officers were killed as a result of Taliban violence in 2007 (Shah and Gall 2008). Other sources put the numbers even higher, with as many as 1,700 Afghan police fatalities in the first 4 months of 2007 (Chivers 2009). Throughout 2008 and the first half of 2009, media sources continued to report on Taliban attacks purposely aimed at killing Afghan police officials (e.g. Farmer 2009; Gul 2008; Khan 2009; Shah 2009). By the spring of 2009, US military command estimated that 1,500 Afghan police were killed in 2008 (Garamone 2009). In June of 2008, the first-ever killing of a woman Afghan police officer was reported (GEO TV 2008). A few months later, the highest ranked woman police officer in the city of Kandahar was also murdered in an attack the Taliban claimed as part of the increasing wave of attacks purposely aimed at Afghan women (Burns 2008). A surge of Taliban attacks took place in the weeks and days leading up to the Afghan presidential and provincial council elections that were held on 20 August 2009. Afghan police forces were thereby particularly targeted (Weissenstein 2009). The total number of fatalities among the Afghan police as a result of Taliban violence appears to be lower than the number of insurgency killings of police in Iraq. In the years 2008 and 2009, when violence against Afghan police was on the rise, similar incidents against Iraqi police were on the decline but were still at levels comparable with that in Afghanistan at the time. Extending from the analysis by Deflem and Sutphin (2006), numbers reported in the Iraq Body Count database show that by 27 February 2009 a total of 9,490 Iraqi police officers had been killed in 3,291 incidents since May 2003 (Deflem 2010). The total number of Iraqi police fatalities rose from 962 in 2004 to 1,454 in 2005, 2,413 in 2006, and 3,107 in 2007. After the total number of US troops in Iraq was increased to 152,000 in March of 2007, the number of police fatalities decreased, but the level of insurgent violence involving police fatalities remained higher than it had been before the summer of 2006. In the 8-month period from November 2005 to June 2006, 1,009 police were killed, whereas 1,225 police died in the 8-month period from August 2007 to March 2008. In 2008, the total number of police killed was 1,241, considerably less than the year before, but still more than in 2004. The violent attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq indicate a similar pattern: militants avoid targeting military troops and resort to roadside bombs and suicide attacks directed at police forces. Afghan police officers are additionally vulnerable because many are based in small police stations in regional districts and are attacked at night. More fundamentally, the Taliban attack Afghan’s new system of policing to bring about a destabilization of society. The attacks against the police are not merely tactically motivated to fight antiTaliban forces. Rather, they broadly target Afghan police institutions throughout the country, irrespective of the role of police in counterterrorism or other civilian tasks. Taliban forces have also sought to destabilize a democratic Afghanistan by targeting other important social institutions such as schools and mosques. 119
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Police, democracy, and the normalization of society Soon after US Special Operations and other coalition forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban was quickly ousted and a nascent democratic regime was soon installed. The quick overthrow of the Taliban took place much as the US government and the other coalition powers had hoped for. However, even more than is the case with the insurgency in Iraq, the Taliban forces were able to regroup and regain control, at least in some areas of Afghanistan. As in Iraq, the greatest difficulties in the reconstruction of Afghanistan since a democratic government was put in place have come from the resurgence of ethnic and religious factions, the eruption and intensification of militant violence, and the slow and incomplete restoration of primary social institutions. A durable peace and normalization of Afghanistan have not yet been firmly established. Continued violence from Taliban militants in Afghanistan (like the violent operations from insurgents in Iraq) have hindered the normalization of social life, including the development of civilian police systems. Societies that have not reached a degree of pacification are unlikely to develop a new civilian police force. As argued elsewhere (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), pacification can thereby not be understood to imply merely an absence of warfare and extreme levels of violence, but should also entail a durable peace that allows for a normalization of social life. Importantly, conditions of peace and the functioning of primary social institutions such as the police can be observed to mutually influence one another. A well-functioning Afghan police system is thus an important element in the transition to a democratic Afghanistan. Precisely because of the role a civilian police plays in the democratization of Afghan society, the newly established Afghan police forces (much like the Iraqi police in the post-Saddam era) have been among the favored targets of terrorist violence. Affirming the importance of the police as a primary institution, it can be noted that terrorist attacks against police, often specifically targeted at new recruits, have also taken place in other nations that, for various reasons, have gone through periods of instability. Since the summer and fall of 2008, attacks against police and police stations, claimed to have been organized by a variety of terrorist groups, have been reported in countries as diverse as Yemen, Algeria, China, Turkey, Zimbabwe, and the Russian republic of Ingushetia (Deflem 2010). Although more systematic research is needed, it is not unthinkable that at least some of these actions have been undertaken because of the successful implementation of similar attacks against police in other nations, thus indicating a spread of terrorist tactics across national borders. In Pakistan, moreover, the attacks against police in 2008 and 2009 have been attributed to the same Taliban forces that operate in neighboring Afghanistan (Deflem 2010). Confirming the analysis of police reform in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the case of the post-invasion Afghan police suggests that a pragmatic perspective is needed that acknowledges that military intervention in autocratic political regimes inevitably brings about breakdowns of the social order at multiple institutional levels (Perito 2005). Rather than merely assuming and hoping that invading powers will be “greeted as liberators,” as then US Vice President Dick Cheney claimed before the invasion of Iraq, a more sobering and realistic estimate about restoration efforts following military interventions is in order (Milbank 2003). Even under the best of circumstances, police reform in post-autocratic regimes should be expected to take several years. The development of a civilian police in post-Taliban Afghanistan (as in post-Ba’athist Iraq) is especially difficult because states with a strongly militaristic and dictatorial past cannot easily separate internal security tasks 120
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from national defense functions. As the case of Iraq also shows, a rigid separation of military and police functions and an adaptation to local circumstances are needed to enable the successful creation of a civilian police in post-autocratic regimes (Bayley 2001). In the current global era, it is unthinkable that the democratization of any society can occur in isolation from the rest of the world. In the case of civilian police reform in Afghanistan (and Iraq), international assistance has therefore proven to be instrumental. However, these international programs have faced inherent difficulties because they depend not only on support from police in the assistance-providing nations, but also have to rely on military units and private companies whose police-reform capabilities are by definition limited. Private security groups, such as DynCorp, can often rely on officers recruited from professional law-enforcement agencies, but they lack the accountability that characterizes public police institutions. Military personnel are neither trained nor equipped to deal with matters of law enforcement unless they have been recruited from law enforcement. The assigning of police tasks to the military is also counterproductive and highly ironic in view of the fact that a primary goal of police reform in post-autocratic regimes is precisely to demarcate the civilian police more clearly from the military.
Conclusion Besides the inherent difficulties in forming a democratic polity in post-war societies, the development of democratic police institutions poses many additional concerns. Although some variation exists in how democracies are and can be policed, the police function in a democratic society must at a minimum fulfill the following dual conditions: (1) police agencies must have a position of independence relative to the center of the state and be responsible towards the needs of citizens and accountable to law; and (2) police must abide by standards of law and human rights (Bayley 2001, 2005). In contemporary Afghanistan (as in Iraq), these conditions are tentatively beginning to emerge, but many problems persist. Most distinctly, civilian police forces are expressly pursued as the preferred targets of violent operations by factions expressly oriented at destabilizing society. At the time of this writing (August 2009), indications suggest that Afghanistan, even more so than is the case in Iraq, does not (yet) have a stable democratic polity and also that the country cannot (yet) count on a civilian police that can truly lay claim to a legitimate and effective monopoly of force. Yet, inasmuch as the newly instituted and developing police institutions of Afghanistan are no longer the mere political tools of autocratic regimes, Afghan society is undergoing a slow and difficult process of normalization and democratization. It is for this reason that terrorist attacks against the civilian police are meant to thwart the pacification of society. Yet, to the extent that Afghan police forces succeed in attaining a position of bureaucratic independence as professional law-enforcement institutions, they will remain among the preferred targets of violent attacks from Taliban militants.
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Managing humanitarian information in Iraq
Aldo Benini, Charles Conley, Joseph M. Donahue and Shawn Messick
Iraq and humanitarian information management Recent humanitarian crises in conflict areas such as Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq have been locations for assessing information resources and practices. Post-conflict environments are complex, fast moving, and highly uncertain. This turbulence and its consequences have been analyzed for research conducted during and after war (Barakat et al. 2002) and for information processing within the humanitarian community during protracted war (Benini 1997). The turbulence continues into the post-conflict period. Notably, armed conflicts tend to destroy the kinds of foundational data and baseline information on which research and program monitoring in peaceful environments can depend. Moreover, the post-war humanitarian community itself creates a turbulent organizational field. Its numerous actors construct a “negotiated information order” (Heimer 1985), although this construct usually lacks coherence and timeliness. These basic conditions prevailed in Iraq after April 2003, with the added challenge that growing insecurity has since made them worse. This chapter sketches the information landscape in Iraq before and after the spring 2003 war. We analyze the challenges of information management through the lens of two major rapid assessments. This analysis leads to some applicable lessons for humanitarian information management in future post-war situations.
Information needs in post-conflict situations Humanitarian practitioners discuss the turbulence of post-conflict environments in different terms. They recognize that creating a “common operating picture” for and about many stakeholders in this sort of environment is a constant challenge. As King and Dilley (2001) observed: Amidst the chaotic and rapidly changing situation, no single organization or entity has all of the necessary information. Making this core information available to the wider humanitarian community not only reduces duplication of effort, but also enhances 125
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coordination and provides a common knowledge base so that this critical information can be pooled, analyzed, compared, contrasted, validated, reconciled and mapped. Practitioners often think in terms of the programs and projects they implement, which are organized by broad themes such as relief, reconstruction, rehabilitation, governance, development, and civil/military coordination. These are then subdivided into “sectors” such as health, education, food, security, and infrastructure. Originally considered sequential activities, these thematic areas increasingly intermingle in post-conflict environments. Defined by the terms of their funding and the mandates of their agencies, projects and programs tend to run their course in relative isolation from other organizations, projects, and programs. Informational activities and their results are similarly isolated. Multiple surveys are often conducted concurrently, all assessing the same topics or locations and generating survey fatigue. As a result, information is fragmented by the number of organizations and the many projects they implement while competing for donor and media attention. No relief or development strategy seeks to provide information “oversight” or consolidation. In fact, no strategy or practice looks at recovering critical government data as a foundation for stability and restored governance. Later in this chapter, we briefly describe the Humanitarian Information Center (HIC) concept, pioneered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as a progressive new organizational form meant to reduce information chaos by actively seeking out new data sources and making them available to relief providers. In addition, we provide a detailed depiction of how one initiative of the HIC for Iraq, the Rapid Assessment Process (RAP), was affected by organizational turbulence.
An announced war and humanitarian preparations Why is Iraq an attractive case for the study of humanitarian information management? The period before the 2003 war is the story of an announced war. The humanitarian community took advantage of that time for extensive preparations that included resources and systems for humanitarian information management and, within this sector, for the subset of rapid assessments. MacGinty (2003) stresses the point that the US and the UN had extensively reviewed the experience of recent post-war environments and were ready to plan for post-war Iraq. US civilian and military leadership, extrapolating from Afghanistan, were convinced that humanitarian relief could be initiated while fighting continued. The UN prepared for all components of humanitarian assistance (relief, reintegration of displaced persons, and reconstruction), anticipating that rapid assessments should contribute information in a multisectoral format with little time to debate and test such formats. As MacGinty saw, needs were “presumed rather than assessed” (2003: 601). Humanitarian planners were allowed to concentrate upon the practical demands of pre-positioning staff and equipment and of recruiting subcontractors.
The humanitarian information landscape During the pre-war period, available public information regarding Iraq was sparse. This was surprising for a modern state with a high degree of urbanization and a substantial 126
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technical infrastructure. Most ministries were using computerized data management including technically advanced engineering software in the 1980s. So what happened to such data? As with most authoritarian regimes, control of information was integral to state power and internal security. Ministries had access to records and were able to manage data, but non-official citizens did not. Beginning with the Iran–Iraq war, even tourist maps were banned from publication and sale in Iraq: “During Saddam Hussein’s reign, only highlevel loyalists had access to maps that showed where roads, hospitals, and sewers were located. And those maps were 10 years out of date” (Kharif 2003). When the aid community arrived in Iraq in 2003, they found that most government entities were relying on hand-drawn sketch maps to visualize spatial information. The culture of secrecy transferred to international relief efforts for Iraq, which had continued since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. In early 2003, it was known that significant information was recorded in various databases regarding health, education, population, and many other critical elements of Iraqi services and infrastructure. However, these data were never released. For example, the Public Distribution System dating from the Iran–Iraq war held data concerning registered recipients of food aid, down to each local distribution agent and neighborhood. The UN’s World Food Program prevented other agencies, including OCHA, from accessing the raw data. After the war, the Coalition Provisional Authority showed intense interest in these data, but could never organize sufficiently to identify, acquire, and release it to stakeholders. Reflections of the challenges mentioned above are manifest in two rapid assessments in which we were directly involved. Because of innate time pressures and consensus needs, rapid assessments offer a rich view of organizational and cognitive elements. We explore their interplay in detailed accounts of the RAP, a multisectoral exercise, and of the Emergency Mine Action Survey (EMAS), a data-collection effort focused on one sector.
The un-rapid RAP The common or interagency assessment process is a frequently applied tool for building consensus, a common understanding of needs, and an interagency coordination process. The RAP was the term adopted for this effort in Iraq. The RAP was based in the HIC. Before the current Iraq emergency, HICs had been selectively used in several countries. Only in Iraq was the HIC faced with a data-collection task as challenging as the RAP. In concept, the RAP was to serve as a summary baseline data tool, providing a format for recording a subset of information that organizations would already be collecting. The RAP, it was hoped, would provide a triage tool to quickly record waraffected communities with needs in various functional areas and keep track of what had been assessed in order to reduce duplication of effort. In fact, the RAP was intended to discipline data collection by a host of actors under UN leadership, avoiding duplication and ensuring focus on essentials as well as comparability across agencies and locations. The next section focuses upon the internal politics of designing the RAP and, to a lesser degree, upon actual data collection, which was prematurely concluded by the devastating 19 August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. 127
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Negotiated information order: the politics of designing a form The development of the RAP instrument was requested by OCHA and the UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (UNOHCI) in January 2003. Responsibility for this effort was delegated to the then coalescing HIC. In practice, the HIC served as secretariat to multiple stakeholders drawn from United Nations (UN) agencies and elements of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, DC, and Kuwait, as well as some non-governmetnal organization (NGO) stakeholders. USAID also shared the document and comments with coalition military Civil Affairs units, which at that time sought the development of a standard assessment form. The initial design resulted from a canvassing of UN agencies and NGOs for elements of information they preferred in the “common assessment” and included plans for two twopage forms. Throughout the design process there were competing demands for inclusion of more data, exclusion of other data, and a simultaneous requirement to reduce form size and complexity. These demands resulted in one three-page form to serve rural and urban areas. USAID demanded that the form be condensed to one page, but participating organizations were unwilling to volunteer questions for elimination. The struggle continued well beyond the allotted design timeframe, with the number of pages becoming a significant issue. HIC staff struggled to avoid simplifying questions to the point where the data would have no utility. Finally, UNOHCI and NGO representatives in Amman endorsed a final form. During April, the HIC developed and presented numerous training courses to NGOs, UN agencies, coalition forces liaison personnel, and donor teams in Jordan, Kuwait, and Cyprus. It quickly became apparent that despite support and assurances from a broad range of partners, organizations operating in the field would make little use of the form. A primary reason was the failure to use the form as intended and the lack of formats that met other assessment methodologies. As designed, the form was intended to provide an information overview of a community, primarily in terms of current service levels. A smaller section was devoted to protection-relevant public order questions. However, the USAID Office of US Disaster Assistance, Disaster Assistance Response Team, coalition forces, and others began using the form to assess unique locations such as hospitals, warehouses, or port facilities. Understandably, the form was found lacking.
Goal displacement and design modifications In early June 2003, as governing authority status in Iraq became clearer and reconstruction became the focus of international efforts, the HIC was tasked by UNOHCI and the UN Development Group (UNDG) to compile all available information in support of a development conference held in New York in the second half of June. Even although UN agencies were directed to comply by providing all data to the HIC, the resulting data were disappointing. UN agencies’ previous insistence that they had all the data they needed to design and monitor their programs was proven incorrect and their credibility with the UNDG and other stakeholders tarnished. Taking advantage of this situation, the HIC offered the RAP as a potential tool to meet multiple requirements from UN reconstruction planners with a single quick survey. 128
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Earlier objections by several UN agencies were muted after their failure to produce the required data. The RAP could potentially provide a straightforward and easy-to-use data set regarding current conditions at settlement, district, and governorate levels for the entire country. At the end of June 2003, the HIC formulated a plan to implement a modified RAP. It proposed that the RAP be contracted by the HIC rather than using the earlier approach of inviting voluntary data collection from organizations already operating in Iraq. In addition, the RAP was to validate the accuracy and completeness of the settlement database; a data section for this use was already part of the form. Minor modifications were made to several RAP questions based on early field-testing in northern Iraq. Major urban areas were to be omitted because of insufficient resources. Not wanting to upset the fragile interagency consensus, major changes were avoided. The overarching goal was that the results of the modified RAP would provide information for donor reconstruction and planning conferences.
A galaxy of places and data Using a variety of arrangements across regions that defy brief summary, RAP data were collected beginning in June 2003, with a dramatic acceleration in July. In July and the first half of August, RAP interview teams covered an average of 80 populated settlements per day. After the attack on UN headquarters, the data collection slowed significantly. Data collection was suspended entirely by mid-September, with data entry complete by the end of that month. In examining RAP results, we are limited to northern Iraq because relatively complete coverage makes analysis feasible. Here the RAP collected information on more than 200 substantive variables from 5,694 populated places. Excluding missing values, more than 852,000 data points were entered into the database. Only part of this huge collection of information has been analyzed (Benini and Ross 2003). In retrospect, the analysis revealed numerous limitations in design and data collection. Coverage was uneven, geographically and in filling the substantive variables. Gaps in geographical coverage were due to the distribution of rapid assessment personnel on the two sides of the Green Line. The Kurdish-controlled region readily marshaled a trained survey force. South of the Green Line, data collection was in part contracted out to unproven local agencies and was affected by the deteriorating security situation. The “politics of designing a form” meant that many of the agencies whose consensus was sought contributed “wish lists” for things to collect, without a central figure charged with this responsibility, or an organizational analysis plan. Little care was given to separate structure, performance, and outcomes in specifying the variables, and their relation to needs and capacity measures were vague. As a result, the analysis produced little of interest, even for regions with relatively dense coverage. At best, the effort validated the relevance of several “proximity-to-services” measures. Correlated with some outcome measures, they suggested that improving access to, and the effectiveness of, various kinds of services was a key variable for revitalizing local communities. This held particularly for those in the ethnic friction zone that runs alongside the Green Line. The analytic gains, therefore, were modest, and because of design defects they probably would have remained so, even if the data collection had not been terminated. 129
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EMAS Significant landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination from two previous wars was known to exist in parts of Iraq. In Iraqi Kurdistan the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and several NGOs had been engaged in landmine/UXO survey, clearance, mine risk education, and victim assistance. The scale of these activities before the 2003 war was considerable, and included the creation of local humanitarian mine action NGOs. That this war would create newly contaminated areas was an accepted fact. During winter 2002–03, UNOPS relied on the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining to create an adapted data management tool for an emergency survey to be initiated as soon as security conditions would permit. Its design incorporated a concern for abandoned and hazardous ordnance sites. Such sites are dangerous, even when they do not block access to resources, as they may provide armed opposition movements or other unauthorized groups and individuals with ready access to weapons and munitions, and may draw scrap and explosives scavengers seeking to supplement incomes. At the same time, the traditional objective of ascertaining the impact of landmine/UXO contamination on the livelihoods of local communities was also maintained.
An expectation of speed In terms of process, EMAS was expected to advance faster than standard landmine impact surveys do in settled post-war conditions. Data were to be handed over from survey organizations to UNOPS at short intervals, as opposed to being evaluated in total at the end of data-collection activities. This process would split responsibilities for collection and analysis between different organizations. This division of responsibility was expressed even in the database structure, with UNOPS equipping data-collecting NGOs with a “mobile module” and reserving a “head office module” for its regional mine action offices in northern and southern Iraq. UNOPS ended NGO input to the design in February 2003 and later resisted the majority of substantive requests to adapt the database structure in accordance with field pre-test findings. Changes that implementing NGOs and UNOPS field personnel unanimously voted in at a national review meeting in July were summarily rejected by the New York headquarters. For the rest of the data-collection period, field managers had to reconcile the tension between a rigid data entry structure and the working definitions that data collectors followed in administering the questionnaire. We are particularly familiar with the conduct of the EMAS in the northern region. Here, UNOPS tasked the UK-based charity Mines Advisory Group (MAG) with data collection. MAG, in turn, asked Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) to coordinate technical execution of the survey. Program establishment and fieldwork occurred between June 2003 and March 2004. The survey team counted six expatriate members and a national staff ranging between 32 and 86 at different periods of operations. Notably, MAG filled four Field Team Leader positions with Lebanese personnel experienced as supervisors in the earlier MAG/VVAF landmine impact survey in their native country. These Arabic-speaking expatriates were crucial to the accelerated training of national staff and to translating feedback to survey management. 130
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Survey areas were assigned sequentially and with varying precision. In Iraqi Kurdistan, UNOPS intended MAG to visit all communities within 5 kilometers of the Green Line that had not already been surveyed before the war. However, major survey ambitions were aimed at recently contaminated areas south of the Green Line in districts and governorates that, before the war, the Iraqi government had controlled. From this region, the UNOPS Mine Action Coordination Centre in Erbil possessed little information specific to the community level and did not direct MAG to address or avoid specific communities. EMAS implementation was punctuated by prolonged halts of survey activity caused by dramatic deterioration in the security environment, with the attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August, and the murder of a MAG expatriate advisor in September.
The landscape changes The institutional landscape also changed during the life of the EMAS project. Shortly after the August attack, the UN withdrew most expatriate personnel from Iraq, including those who worked in the UNOPS Mine Action Program (MAP) in Erbil. The MAP Mine Action Coordination Center was finally shuttered in November, concurrent with the end of the Oil-for-Food Program (OFFP) regime. Beginning in August, MAG handed over fortnightly data sets to a working group composed of the transitional government’s Regional Mine Action Center (RMAC), coalition force representatives, local UNOPS planners (until November), five local mine clearance NGOs, and MAG itself. In total, EMAS surveyed 1,760 communities in 11 districts of the six northern governorates. It located 290 contaminated communities (16.5 percent), with an estimated 263,780 residents. This population was living close to 574 distinct dangerous areas with a total surface, according to the claims made by local informants, of 627 square kilometers. These dangerous areas primarily affected access to grazing land (in 154 or 53 percent of the affected communities), cropland (121; 42 percent), repatriation (68; 23 percent), and water resources (62 communities; 21 percent) (Shaikh 2004: 7). Among the 290 affected communities, 58 (20 percent) reported 122 recent victims (43 killed and 79 injured) from contamination-related accidents. These victims came to harm between the end of March and their respective dates of survey by EMAS (Shaikh 2004: 27). In contrast to the RAP, EMAS data were put to practical use during the survey process. MAG transferred data twice per month, at first to UNOPS, and then to the RMAC when it replaced the UNOPS MAP. By 1 March 2004, partly as a result of this survey clearance and disposal work was either complete or ongoing in 122 (22 percent) of the identified dangerous areas. The cleared surfaces totaled 13.6 square kilometers (Shaikh 2004: 35) or roughly 2 percent of the area that local informants claimed were contaminated. Assuming that in northern Iraq the ratio of claimed dangerous area to areas actually contaminated is somewhere between five and ten, between 10 and 20 percent of the area was cleared.
Critical issues Based on the number of communities surveyed, both of the rapid assessments described above were large exercises. The detailed information available allows the formulation of 131
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tentative insights regarding humanitarian information management in Iraq. These insights may be organized around four topics: the value of the information collected and processed for decision support; rural bias and a corresponding weakness of urban assessment tools; the importance of short learning cycles; and the need for broad top-down information management support.
Value of information In the field, political, institutional, and security factors (rather than information needs and research designs) are the major influences in humanitarian information management, and Iraq was no exception. Nevertheless, donors who pay for this information want to see it produced and used effectively, and applied to humanitarian needs. Thus, donors are a willing audience for “value-of-information” arguments. This school of thought attempts a rigorous approach to the collection and use of information when decisions must be made in highly uncertain conditions. More information helps reduce uncertainty, but also costs more. If the consequences of different decisions can be assigned monetary value, the value of the information can be calculated. Although Dakins’ (1999: 281) programmatic statement below is an oversell if applied to humanitarian information management, there is merit in thinking through the costs and benefits of rapid assessments in more serious “what will this do for decision-making?” terms: Value of Information (VOI) analysis is useful because it makes the losses associated with decision errors explicit, balances competing probabilities and costs, helps identify the decision alternative that minimizes the expected loss, prioritizes spending on research, quantifies the value of the research to the decision maker, and provides an upper bound on what should be spent on getting information. Obvious first targets for evaluation are sample sizes and production times. In Iraq, the 5,700 populated places surveyed by the RAP will be remembered as a figure of stark magnitude. Some will use this figure as a deterrent because of the lack of practical application; others will take it as a demonstration that rapid large-scale data-collection exercises can be successful under difficult conditions. Both will agree that assessment protocols are necessary, with stopping rules that kick in at the appropriate points to say: “Enough!”. This team conducted a detailed VOI analysis on the EMAS (Benini et al. 2005). Only 3.3 percent of all EMAS-surveyed communities accounted for 80 percent of the total contaminated area claimed by local informants. To reach this threshold for the cumulative population, the largest 29 percent of the surveyed communities sufficed. However, in retrospect, these measures are inappropriate to evaluate the extent of under- or oversurveying. The prior information on which samples could possibly be stratified (e.g. prewar population statistics) was scant. Using a regression model of which communities EMAS interviewers visited this team was able to show that if the choice of communities to visit had been stratified on distance to the nearest dangerous area (which the coalition forces had made available before the start of the survey), substantial savings might have been achieved. After all, contaminated communities tend to cluster in space. Such considerations put the debate of sampling versus full-census approaches back on the research agenda of humanitarian information management. Barakat et al. (2002) 132
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emphasize the limitations of sample surveys and advocate a multimethod approach. They describe an experience from Somalia in which previous qualitative research was used to draw samples of communities and, within these, households. Time pressure and availability of human resources, however, often preclude either adequate qualitative research or the design and administration of explicit samples. In addition, where sample surveys do occur, data collectors and field supervisors exercise considerable autonomy in situations of insecurity and sparse baseline information. They use it to adapt samples in response to guidance from local experts, employment concerns, and the need to replace unavailable sample members with convenient substitutes. Such adaptive sampling, contrary to formalized adaptive sampling (Thompson 1991), often remains undocumented, resulting in unknown bias. For the operation of HICs, this poses a question as to whether sample survey design can be incorporated in a meaningful way at all.
Rural bias and urban assessment tools Both assessments (RAP and EMAS) went to large numbers of small rural places, thereby overacquiring information. This behavior is in line with the kind of small-community rural bias that Kent (2004: 12) accuses many in the humanitarian arena of practicing. At first glance, this alleged rural bias is surprising. Much of the development critique in recent decades concerned urban bias, privileges in terms of subsidized services, and other non-market benefits that politics and aid bestowed upon some urban groups. A reversal of this concept in the evaluation of humanitarian practice will, therefore, rouse astonishment. However, Kent’s criticism is based on the anticipation of strong urban growth in countries prone to humanitarian disasters during coming decades. The willful destruction of cities and their inhabitants (e.g. Grozny and Kabul) together with instances of massive destruction of cities in natural disasters such as earthquakes may warrant some typified scenario-building by humanitarian information managers. Short of such extremes, responders and policy-makers in urban emergencies may still benefit from rapid assessments; this is one of the things that, under different names, civil defense and emergency services do in many countries. The published literature does not suggest that there are well-developed toolboxes that are ready to be applied in countries with weak administrative systems, including those in a post-war phase. Exceptions are few. The mental maps, questionnaire templates, and training syllabi for national data collectors seem to require the clarity of villages and small towns that are physically separate, and to which institutional traits can be attributed unambiguously. There have been successful distinctions made of urban subdivisions in assessments: in southern Iraq, a rapid inventory of health facilities in Basrah was mapped using special health districts, creating a common operating picture of health care in this major city within 45 days of humanitarian re-entry (Benini et al. 2005). The RAP data analyzed for northern Iraq illustrate the difficulties in grappling with urban communities. Only 103 communities were subdivided into several assessment areas; 5,367 were not. The city of Zakho (population 113,000) attracted 26 neighborhood surveys; Kirkuk, with an estimated 750,000 residents, received only one global assessment. Clearly, we need to develop rapid assessment methods for large settlements. There have been sporadic advances, such as in the use of remote sensing for estimating populations in otherwise inaccessible cities (Alspach and Kariuki 2002). Where cities are 133
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accessible, sampling approaches based on small areas (houses, street, blocks, and neighborhoods) need to be developed further. A deeper assessment of humanitarian information management remains highly desirable.
Building in shorter learning cycles Meanwhile, economies of information in rural areas may be feasible. In the early stages of post-war humanitarian intelligence, quick accounts of essential-service provision levels in the towns that form the district administrative centers may prove sufficient to characterize the relative levels of hardship suffered by the district populations. This can be combined with creative elicitation and analysis of expert opinion, as carried out by ElGuindi et al. (2003) on district poverty estimates in central and southern Iraq. After this first cut is analyzed, disseminated, and transformed into a new assessment plan, extensions in scope and in geography may be undertaken. Perhaps assessment might be extended to all communities assumed to have populations greater than 1,000 residents, or, alternatively, to all market towns (see Benini and Ross [2003] for some perspective from Iraq). If resources permit, a concurrent validation exercise might lead assessment teams in two or three experimental districts to administer the instrument to all communities with 100 residents or more. Alternatively, facility surveys in high priority sectors such as health care or farm supply businesses might touch every community known for a pre-war facility. These data would be integrated by an information organization with the requisite technical skills and mission. The essential point here is not to prescribe a particular sequence of survey types and assessment organizations. Rather, our experience suggests keeping the initial assessments small, manageable, and, above all, rapid. Speed is valued because earlier results will be appreciated during an emergency and because more learning cycles can be built in. Except for cross-culturally validated instruments pre-tests are necessary. Assessments strung out into several phases, with renewed testing and retraining during interim periods, are certain to produce better results than mammoth data-collection exercises.
The politics of information coordination Once the war outcome and the occupation, with its attendant insurgency and insecurity, are factored in the impact of politics on the ways humanitarian information has been managed in Iraq is surprisingly mild. This is in marked contrast to the multitudes of lower-order institutional conflicts and contradictions that interfered with good practice of survey research and data management. Certainly, one must not be naive about the definitions that the conflict at large foisted upon humanitarian information management. Many readers who may never before have heard of HICs, the RAP, or EMAS will be at least superficially conversant with a rapid assessment that estimated 100,000 excess deaths since the end of the war, most of them a result of actions of the occupying coalition (Roberts et al. 2004). This bombshell article filled a niche in the humanitarian information landscape left vacant by the Pentagon’s refusal even to attempt a tally of civilian casualties. Conversely, the refusal of UN agencies working under OFFP to share detailed location and population data can be stylized as passive civil disobedience by relief bureaucrats who fundamentally disagreed with the 134
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war and the subsequent elimination of their program. Politically ineffectual, it nevertheless condemned the HIC in Iraq to designing the RAP on a weaker basis. In the lower arena of institutional contention, efforts to build bodies of humanitarian information capable of supporting relief and later reconstruction policies were assailed by two opposing tendencies. On one side, there was a tendency to undertake detailed planning and to engineer fixed solutions far removed from reality on the ground; the early EMAS experience is but one example. On the other side, aid agencies were ready to invest in informational activities chiefly to the extent that they served their own fundraising and reporting needs. The need for a class of information expediters to visit points and sources of humanitarian interest and to acquire, clean, compile, process, and package the data for broader use was difficult to advocate unless there were some tangible benefits to the collecting organizations. The noted strengths and weaknesses are not unique to the emergency in Iraq. Despite its peculiar traits, which include the extended lead-time, the destruction of the UN country headquarters, and the virulent insecurity dampening reconstruction, we believe that the Iraq experience confirms important regularities observed in major humanitarian information endeavors in recent times. The fact that HICs have since been established in Liberia and Darfur (Sudan) and for the Asian tsunami relief suggests recognition of the need for an overarching information approach and the continued search for a workable solution.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Benini, A., Conley, C., Donahue, J. and Messick, S. (2006) “Challenges of humanitarian information management in Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 39(4): 285–300.
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Kent, R. (2004) “Humanitarian futures: practical policy perspectives,” London: Overseas Development Institute. Humanitarian Practice Network (HPN), April: 46. Kharif, O. (2003) “Plotting the war on terror and disease,” BusinessWeek Online. Online. Available http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2003/tc20030819_8703_tc126.htm (accessed 24 August 2003). King, D. and Dilley, M. (2001) “Structured humanitarian assistance reporting (SHARE)”, Paper for the Symposium on Best Practices in Humanitarian Information Exchange Agenda, Geneva, Switzerland, 7–8 February 2002. Online. Available http://www.reliefweb.int/symposium/SHAREarticle.htm (accessed 30 September 2004). MacGinty, R. (2003) “The pre-war reconstruction of post-war Iraq,” Third World Quarterly, 24: 601–17. Roberts, L., Lafta, R., Garfield, R., Khudhairi, J. and Burnham, G. (2004) “Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: Cluster sample survey,” The Lancet, 364: 1857–64. Shaikh, I. (2004) UNOPS/MAG/VVAF Emergency Mine Action Survey (EMAS). Project GLO/02/R72 Contract PS 130171. Final Technical Report, Manchester and Washington, DC: Mines Advisory Group (MAG). Thompson, S.K. (1991) “Adaptive cluster sampling: designs with primary and secondary units,” Biometrics, 47: 1103–15.
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12 Role of contractors and other non-military personnel in today’s wars O. Shawn Cupp and William C. Latham, Jr.
Introduction Post-Cold War battlefields have become filled with individuals who are not in uniform. Particularly in conflicts involving the US and its NATO allies, combat forces now share their once-isolated battlefields with a growing number of civilian agencies and individuals, whose priorities and procedures often differ dramatically from those of military commanders. These civilians fall into at least three discrete categories: contractors, federal employees, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), each of which carries its own challenges. Contractors now provide an ever-increasing array of services and support to military forces, but their priorities focus on profit motives rather than on support of military objectives, and these individuals may choose to abandon the mission if the level of risk becomes intolerable. Some theorists, including Phil Williams, have described the conflicts of the twentyfirst century as continuing to be a “growing number of increasingly disorderly spaces” (Williams 2006). These conflicts will be defined by some “concrete factor such as ethnicity, religion, or language or increasingly by self-defined and self-selected criteria” (Moodie 2009: 20). These future conflicts will be less politically motivated by ideology, as most were in the twentieth century. The next series of conflicts in the world will instead center on territory, resources, and social power. Based on this emerging nature of conflict, they will be inherently difficult to counter with only military forces. The modern battlefield has become exponentially more complex, as soldiers compete with a growing number of civilian individuals and agencies for information and influence. Contractors, government agencies, and NGOs now clutter and complicate modern military operations, and the trend will probably continue. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly called for more civilians, ranging from agronomists to economists, to support America’s ongoing counterinsurgency in Afghanistan (Maurer 2009). He asked for those who “might serve as a bridge” (Maurer 2009: 1). This chapter examines the role of non-military agents on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and addresses several trends that will characterize future conflicts. Although these trends are of particular concern for the democracies of the West, we recognize that 137
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many non-Western military organizations face similar challenges and opportunities. Companies from the People’s Republic of China, for example, currently employ several thousand civilian engineers, technicians, and private security personnel on construction, mining, and drilling projects throughout Africa, with the majority of projects in oilexporting nations (Levitt 2006). The Chinese presence boosts local economies, but critics view these projects as a foot in the door for Chinese paramilitary intervention (Hammes 2007). Likewise, the benefits and challenges of other non-military agents on the battlefield are becoming a global phenomenon, as various government and humanitarian agencies respond to the natural and man-made crises of the post-Cold War era. This chapter focuses on the relationships between these agencies and the American military, whose annual expenditures and strategic commitments dwarf those of its allies and rivals (Shah 2009). Contractors Aside from refugees and inhabitants, most civilians on the modern battlefield are contractors, usually paid employees of private companies that provide goods and services to one or more of the combatant forces. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the availability of contract support made feasible the prospect of conducting two major military campaigns at the same time. Particularly during the build-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), ready access to contract support enabled military planners to construct airfields, barracks, and training areas in Kuwait, and then to rapidly deploy the invasion force several thousand miles from bases in Europe and America (Wright & Reese 2008: 496–97). Once coalition forces captured Baghdad, the Pentagon sent a second wave of contractors to support its massive security and reconstruction efforts, and to build and operate the forward operating bases that housed coalition forces (Kidwell 2005: 29–32). Contractors have supported similar efforts in Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom, albeit on a smaller scale (Singer 2008: 245–48). Continuing support of these two campaigns has created enormous strain on the American military, particularly within its Army and Marine Corps units. Nevertheless, the availability of contract support has enabled this ambitious strategy in at least three ways. Political benefits First, military planners aggressively employed contractors as substitutes for military manpower, enabling the Pentagon to radically increase the scope of operations without engaging in a public or Congressional debate regarding the size of the military. Between 2003 and 2008, the Pentagon spent 106 billion dollars on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, and although the scope of this commitment has drawn occasional public and Congressional criticism, America now employs approximately the same number of contractors as uniformed personnel in those two combat zones (Schwartz 2009). According to Peter W. Singer, the Pentagon’s willingness to use contractors on an unprecedented scale also relieved the Bush Administration from having to make diplomatic concessions to gain greater troop support from European allies (Singer 2008: 244– 45). As retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian argues persuasively, “contractors are an integral and permanent part of US force structure” (Cancian 2008). 138
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Rapid deployment Second, contractor support significantly enhanced the speed and sophistication of these military campaigns, enabling the Pentagon to move, house, feed, equip, and train US and coalition forces at an unprecedented pace (Wright & Reese 2008: 19). Again, the preliminary stages of OIF illustrate this influence. In less than 4 months, the Pentagon assembled a formidable invasion force, deploying over 200,000 troops and nearly 1,100 major weapons systems (including main battle tanks and combat helicopters) from Europe and North America to staging areas in Kuwait (Fontenot et al. 2004: 80). To accomplish this feat, military planners hired private corporations to provide everything from cargo trucks and chemical toilets to military training exercises for newly arrived units. Once the war began, contractors supplied, maintained, and in some cases helped operate high-tech weapons systems (such as Patriot missiles and the unmanned aerial vehicles [UAV]) that enabled coalition forces to overwhelm their Iraqi adversaries (Singer 2008). Outsourcing reconstruction Contractors have played a dominant role, albeit with mixed results, in American efforts to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq. This reliance has proven particularly expensive in Iraq, where Congress allocated approximately 50 billion dollars to rebuild the nation’s economy and infrastructure (Bowen 2009). Although reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan have been more modest, availability of contract support enabled the US government to undertake exceptionally ambitious projects in both nations without significantly expanding the all-volunteer military. Transparency and accountability Contract support enables governmental agencies to do more with less, but the transfer of functions from public agencies to private industry sacrifices transparency in the process. When the Pentagon employs its own manpower to accomplish a mission, the policies, procedures, and costs of that operation are usually subject to public scrutiny, legislative review, and media criticism. Citing the proprietary nature of their business practices, however, contractors rarely share such information with the public. In a particularly memorable 2005 television documentary, officials with Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), the Army’s primary logistics contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, politely dodged questions regarding the cost of meals in KBR’s dining facilities (Gavira 2005). Corporate policies often prohibit employees from sharing such information. The common practice of sub-contracting further complicates the efforts of government officials and media watchdogs to accurately determine responsibility for the success or failure of specific projects. This confusion can become particularly embarrassing when things go wrong, as in the case of a private American security team that was ambushed in Fallujah on 31 March 2004. The case prompted a wrongful death lawsuit against the security company, Blackwater USA, along with several public hearings in Congress (Lardner 2007). In the face of numerous inquiries, meanwhile, the Pentagon scrambled to determine exactly which contract the Blackwater team was supporting on the day of the ambush. In February of 2007, the Secretary of the Army reversed previous Pentagon statements by announcing that Blackwater’s team in Fallujah had been working as a subcontractor for KBR (Margasak 2007). 139
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The inevitable lack of transparency has contributed to other accountability issues in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly regarding the number of contractors employed, their qualifications, and the legal jurisdiction for misconduct. Although the Pentagon has significantly improved its ability to track the number of contractors in the combat zone, such improvements are long overdue. The Pentagon’s first estimate of contractors, in December of 2006, was “approximately 100,000” (Singer 2008). As with the confusion regarding Blackwater’s relationship with KBR, the Pentagon’s difficulty in providing Congress with an accurate headcount of contractors provided a glaring reminder of the military’s inability to effectively manage its multibillion dollar contracts. The legal jurisdiction issue has proven even more problematic, as Iraqis and Afghans, along with many critics in Congress and the media, perceived that widespread misconduct by contractors has gone unpunished. Blackwater USA, which provides security for State Department facilities and personnel in Iraq, attracted the most scrutiny. In addition to the incident in Fallujah, Blackwater employees had been involved in a series of high-profile incidents, most notably the 2007 Nisoor Square shooting, in which Blackwater guards allegedly killed 17 Iraqi civilians during a firefight in downtown Baghdad. Company officials insist the convoy was ambushed, but a Congressional memorandum characterized the company’s use of force as “frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage” (Elsea et al. 2008: 11–12). Congress has also extended the US military’s legal authority to include Pentagon contractors participating in contingency operations. To date, these new provisions have produced only a small number of prosecutions, and the continuing perception of contractor impunity undermines the legitimacy of the Iraqi and Afghan governments. Credibility and cohesion The heavy reliance on contractors to support military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq has undermined the Pentagon’s credibility, at home and abroad. Many individuals and corporations providing support to these two operations have performed magnificently, but every new scandal undermines perceptions of the military’s competence and integrity. Before the war in Iraq, both Congress and the Pentagon had long ignored the need to maintain a competent staff of contract administrators (Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations 2007: 14). The unanticipated demand for contract support in Iraq exposed this shortcoming, in the process wasting billions of dollars because of waste, fraud, abuse, and administrative shortcomings (Singer 2008: 252–53). The ensuing scandals undermined public and legislative confidence in the management of the war. Whereas contracting scandals damage the Pentagon’s credibility at home, perceptions of contractor misconduct have undermined American strategic goals in Iraq and Afghanistan, where local residents make little or no distinction between Western soldiers and civilians. After the shootings in Nisoor Square, for example, the senior American commander in Baghdad described the tragedy as a setback: “In the aftermath of these, everybody looks and says, ‘It’s the Americans.’ And that’s us. It’s horrible timing” (Raghavan and White 2007: 2). Iraq’s prime minister, meanwhile, described the incident as “a challenge to Iraqi sovereignty” (Rubin and Kramer 2007). The increasing reliance on contractors to achieve military objectives thus creates a significant additional barrier between the formulation and execution of foreign policy. 140
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The privatization of war may also have a psychological impact on the uniformed military. Initial studies suggest that the presence of contractors may undermine the cohesion of the military units they are hired to support. Sociologist Ryan Kelty has conducted several preliminary studies indicating that when soldiers serve alongside contractors in a combat zone, the perceived differences in pay, benefits, working conditions, and job satisfaction have a direct impact on morale, and at least an indirect impact on soldiers’ intentions to re-enlist. Although limited to small population samples, Kelty’s initial findings indicate that “soldiers’ social comparisons with contractors negatively influence perceptions of unit cohesion” (Kelty 2009: 19). Tentative steps towards reform The federal government, and particularly the Pentagon, proved slow in acknowledging these challenges, but continuing pressure from Congress and the media, along with results on the battlefield, have recently inspired long-overdue reforms. The Army, in particular, has taken dramatic steps to improve its management of contracts. In 2007, Secretary of the Army Peter Geren commissioned a study to identify solutions to the Army’s contracting problems. The result, the so-called Gansler Report, identified four major areas that needed improvement: the stature and career development of contract managers; the organization and responsibilities of contracting agencies; training on contract management for deploying personnel; and policy and regulatory guidance for deployed contract administrators (Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations 2007: 5–8). The Army has since embraced the report’s recommendations and is continuing to implement them as policy (Association of the United States Army 2009). Other federal agencies have also instituted reforms. The most significant of these is the State Department’s 2007 agreement with the Pentagon to work together in coordinating contract support in Iraq. The agreement required the two agencies to develop and implement policies applicable to the approximately 11,000 private security employees working for US government agencies in Iraq (Memorandum of Agreement, Department of Defense 2007). In July of 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the two agencies had made significant progress in meeting these goals, particularly in terms of better coordination and increased oversight. There was still room for improvement, however, especially in pre-deployment training for military units and resourcing contract management positions in Iraq (US Government Accountability Office 2008). The Pentagon, meanwhile, seems to have learned from earlier failures, and has implemented a series of new policies and procedures to improve oversight of military contracting. In April of 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates directed all Pentagon agencies to review and justify any new functions that require contractors instead of government personnel (Deputy Secretary of Defense Memorandum 2009). Like other recent reforms, the Pentagon’s in-sourcing policy is too new to evaluate. There is a high probability, however, that at least some of its well-intentioned measures will do more good than harm. The US Congress has also taken a more active role in governing the military’s contracting procedures, and has passed a series of legislative requirements and restrictions concerning military contracting. In addition, the US Senate has established a watchdog group, the “ad hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight,” to investigate and review 141
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federal acquisition policies and management (US Senate Committee 2009). The myriad of new policies, procedures, restrictions and guidelines may improve the efficiency and responsiveness of contract support for American military operations. As long as military commitments exceed uniformed force structure, however, contractor support (and its inherent risks) will remain an integral feature of modern welfare.
Governmental agencies in full spectrum environment US government officials represent the second category: serving with the military but not in the military. This group includes subject matter experts from different agencies and various departments, including State, Commerce, Labor, Transportation, and Agriculture, and their expertise plays a critical role in the pursuit of modern counterinsurgency operations. Unfortunately, the federal workforce has been slow to embrace this new requirement. A recent article on Afghanistan’s civilian surge summarized this point, “All civilian branches of the US government aren’t designed to deploy people the way the Pentagon can” (Lubold 2009: 1). These civilians provide certain skill sets and knowledge that is not resident in military service members. Thus, they are crucial to engage the complex battle space and provide the best answers to problems that are not necessarily within the military field of view. The deployment of large numbers of civilians first took place in Iraq during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The CPA was developed and implemented shortly after the cessation of major combat operations in Iraq. The CPA was “assigned the mission and given the authority to run Phase IV operations in Iraq – with military in direct support” (Sanchez 2008: 179). Several problems resulted from this mission assignment, among them an ambiguous command relationship between the CPA and the American military that further complicated an already Byzantine chain of command. In addition, the short tenure of CPA members conflicted with that of their military counterparts. Many of the CPA civilians were on dramatically different rotation plans. Then Colonel David Perkins stated, “We go by position. They don’t. I would learn to work with Ms. X and then she would rotate out. Someone else came in and you had to develop this personal relationship again. It is all based on personal relationships” (Wright & Reese 2008: 304). These personal relationships affected not only the military–civilian interactions but the Iraqi–civilian/military interactions. People would leave and the Iraqis would still seek to speak with someone who was no longer in country and had rotated back to the US. Another perceived negative impact was that the CPA exhibited arrogance in a combat zone. During one of his first meetings with the military, Ambassador Paul Bremer announced to Lieutenant General Wallace, the V Corps commander, “I’m the CPA administrator and I’m in charge. I want you to co-locate your command and control center with the CPA in the Green Zone, immediately” (Sanchez 2008: 178). This edict was not the best way to start a relationship with the senior military commander in a turbulent combat zone. One of the first things that Ambassador Bremer did was to meet with the Senior Leadership Council (Sanchez 2008). This entity was developed by Lieutenant General (retired) Jay Garner and the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq. After meeting with the group, Ambassador Bremer stated “You are not the government, the CPA is in charge” (Sanchez 2008: 178). The advisory group never met again. 142
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A major challenge of OIF was with civilians and military members working together during the end of major combat operations. The sheer numbers of civilians required to do the work was and continues to be an issue. Several years ago, the State Department began recruiting a pool of volunteers willing to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. In 2004, at the urging of the Pentagon, President Bush created a new State Department office for “civilian stabilization and reconstruction missions” (Feith 2009: 1). This organization directed the implementation of the Civilian Response Corps (CRC). This would provide civilians with expertise in water systems, police training, and judicial administration to assist military forces. This organization was developed so that the president could mobilize trained civilian volunteers the way he could already mobilize military reserves (Feith 2009). At this writing, the Obama administration supports this initiative with over $300 million should the Congress approve the new budget (Feith 2009). Even with the dollars funding this initiative, the State Department is still hard pressed to fill necessary postings in Afghanistan and Iraq due to the constant operational tempo of the past 7 years. If one compares the Department of Defense budget of $534 billion with the State Department budget of $53 billion, it is ten times more (Lubold 2009). Not only must a culture of change take place but also a change in funding if federal civilians are to be available for deployment and integration to support a military operation. Other federal agencies face similar obstacles, with career civil servants reluctant to accept either the inconvenience of extended deployment or the considerable risk of such duty in any combat zone. The US government’s outdated personnel system creates further roadblocks. Some deployed civilian employees, for example, receive significantly less pay and benefits than military personnel or even less than some of their fellow civilian federal employees. Some of these policies are still in place today. A recent report by the House Armed Services Committee states that “locality pay is one area of disparity and contention among Department of State employees. Department of State employees, both Foreign Service Officers (FSO) and civil service (CS) employees receive locality pay if they are on temporary duty status (TDY)” (Fenner 2008). However, their colleagues do not received TDY funds if Afghanistan or Iraq is their official duty station: “If their official duty station is Washington, DC those on TDY status receive nearly 20 per cent above base for locality pay” (Fenner 2008). This single example illustrates the obstacles within the civilian personnel management system that create perceived inequality. Capabilities to provide federal government assistance have dwindled from previous conflicts. For example, the United States Agency for International Development was required to reduce its force structure from 12,000 during the Vietnam War to the current 2,000 (Binnendijk & Cronin 2008). This reduction shows the increase and decrease of civilian capacity based on budget considerations not sustaining capacity. It takes resources, primarily time and money, to begin to replace some of this lost capacity. This lost capacity is not usually available at the beginning of a conflict and sometimes does not even exist when it is needed. For example, General Tommy Franks, the Central Combatant Commander in 2003, made it quite clear that he had planned for the invasion. The mission for post-conflict activities was left up to the civilians: “Their number was small, their time to plan limited, and their resources negligible” (Binnendijk and Cronin 2008: vi). Civilians bring many capabilities to the battlefield that are not inherent in military formations but are required to support military operations. However, some issues of personnel qualifications have come under scrutiny. Although the US military has experienced and continues to experience multiple deployments and stretching of personnel resources, some US civilian agencies are not faring much better. For example, a recent Government 143
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Accountability Office report stated that the US State Department has employees who do not meet the proficiency skills for foreign language capacity. Specifically the report states that, “in Iraq 57 per cent and in Afghanistan 73 per cent of the officers were unable to meet the requirement” (Parker 2009: 1). Even bringing civilians who possess unique skill-sets to the battlefield can be problematic. The ebb and flow of force structure for civilian capacity brings into question just how much and what design of civilian capacity is necessary. One point of agreement is that a single overarching scenario will not fulfill all the requirements for a civilian response force. One design that was proposed was a “1–1–4 sizing construct” (Binnendijk and Cronin 2008: 2). This design would be enough for civilians to support one large, one medium, and four small complex operations. This design may or may not be right, but at least it is a start in defining requirements for a civilian response force.
Post-Cold War humanitarian space? NGOs constitute a third category of civilians on the modern battlefield; NGOs include groups, such as Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), Catholic Charities, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Red Crescent, usually seek to provide basic health and social services to refugees and displaced civilians within a specific region. Despite their good intentions, these organizations rarely share the same agenda as the US military and often prove either suspicious or openly hostile to US military initiatives. One issue is the “militarization of humanitarianism – or the tensions between mandates as well as operational difficulties” (Van Baarda 2001: 103). The largest number of NGOs are humanitarian based or are primarily focused on humanitarian goals. These organizations occupy the same battle space as military forces but rarely share the same priorities: “NGOs have strengths and limitations. Most NGOs approach their work with a wisdom acquired from experience” (Jordan et al. 2009: 540). For the sake of the military, this is often a good and welcomed approach to solving primarily post-conflict situations. Most humanitarian organizations, however, complain that the military “does not understand the humanitarian organizations and vice versa” (Van Baarda 2001: 103). According to these critics, military commanders want to get the mission accomplished, but not necessarily in a methodical manner. Military planners have to remember that NGOs in most cases try to develop capacity for local communities to become closer to sustaining that development. It is often the case that the military and NGOs “are mostly disparate, and they have joined together owing to circumstance and necessity rather than a shared ideology” (Smith 2007: 304). Some critics maintain that cooperation between humanitarian organizations and the military is by itself “undesirable” (Van Baarda 2001: 103). Nevertheless, NGOs have become “partners in armed conflict management, violence prevention, and post-war reconstruction” (Waisova 2008: 66). As with other civilian agencies in the battle space, NGOs have important limitations. “NGOs can make mistakes, but they are not generally held accountable for their actions. NGOs may also have conflicting constituencies that they have to satisfy, which may include private and state donors” (Jordan et al. 2009: 540). It is also important to note that most NGOs are present at the request of the host government. Anytime an NGO becomes too involved in political affairs, rightly or wrongly, it may be asked to leave prematurely. 144
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On the other hand, these agencies provide unique capabilities in areas where military commanders cannot operate, because of either lack of resources or local distrust. “Some governments believe that NGOs have better logistic capabilities at the local level than governments and international institutions do and that they are more trusted among the local population” (Waisova 2008: 66). This reality can sometimes put NGOs at odds with military personnel. International donors and NGOs have contributed to the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, including “a 76 per cent expansion of healthcare since 2004” (Crane 2009: 98). This increased access to health care has reduced the mortality rate for all Afghan children under the age of five by 26 percent (Crane 2009). NGOs often do good work, but military leaders must understand what they do and how they do it. In future conflicts, commanders must establish mutual trust without compromising the neutrality of these agencies. In a recent article the author encapsulates the essence of emergencies and what emergencies mean to organizations trying to respond, “The management of emergencies and conflict is very big business and a very big part of what multilateral agencies and NGOs do” (Calhoun 2004: 375). Specifically in Afghanistan, three factors have contributed to less than friendly relationships between the Afghan government and NGOs. These include questioning the neutrality of NGOs who participate on Provincial Reconstruction Teams, NGO criticism of the government, and the fact that some NGOs have capacities that the state authorities lack (Waisova 2008). Military personnel must understand some of these perceptions and be able to advise government and NGO officials that there is a common goal among many competing agendas.
Summary Efforts by American commanders to exclude an array of civilians from the battlefield have proven universally futile, and future battlefields will probably include even more civilians. Current enemies relying on terrorist tactics, and most likely our future ones, will not bother to comply with those categories within the Geneva Conventions that distinguish armed combatants from innocent civilians. Retired General and military historian Robert Scales argues that future enemies of the US will use primitive means to defeat us, and that “the enemy understands that our most vulnerable center of gravity is dead Americans” (Scales 2007: 23). If Scales is correct, future opponents will engage in asymmetric warfare that attacks soft targets. In such a conflict, civilian individuals and organizations will present the softest of the soft targets. To prevail, American commanders must face the difficult task of establishing security in an environment that is, by definition, unsafe. American forces now feature a terrifying array of firepower, but this advantage no longer guarantees a monopoly on the use of violence. Mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught much about the need for security and the path to achieving it. These lessons include the need to deploy with enough soldiers to establish security until local authorities can resume this obligation, the benefits of minimizing damage to a society’s structural and governmental infrastructure, and the value of establishing mutual trust and respect with local authorities. While civilian agencies and actors impose an added security burden on military forces, they also present a variety of avenues in which to restore the societal functions that will inhibit violence and expose insurgents. They provide core competencies no longer found within the US military force structure. 145
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To successfully accomplish future missions, commanders will have to establish and maintain professional relationships with all of the civilian agencies on the next battlefield. While this requirement may seem implicit within a commander’s responsibilities, the task is complicated because each category of civilian has a different set of priorities, and thus has a separate and unique relationship with the military. Contractors, for example, may seek to establish a profitable business relationship with the military, whereas some NGOs may seek access to groups for their own purposes. Future military leaders will be required to continue to train planners and commanders to respect the boundaries of other agencies without comprising their mission or the safety of their personnel. The American military has made great strides in recognizing the need for this training, and war games and field exercises now incorporate a host of civilian actors within their training scenarios. It remains to be seen, however, whether this training produces a safer environment and a better relationship with the civilians who now share the battlefield. Despite the many challenges they create, these agencies and individuals offer significant force multipliers for the commander who anticipates their involvement and establishes the appropriate relationships with them. Future research on the relationships between the military and the civilians on the battlefield should assist in each understanding their specific roles in peace and combat.
Disclaimer The views and conclusions expressed in the context of this document are those of the authors developed in the freedom of expression, academic environment of the US Army Command and General Staff College. They do not reflect the official position of the US Government, Department of Defense, Department of the Army, or the US Army Command and General Staff College.
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US Government Accountability Office (2008) Rebuilding in Iraq: DOD and State Department Have Improved Oversight and Coordination of Private Security Contractors in Iraq, but Further Actions Are Needed to Sustain Improvements. Online. Available http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08966.pdf (accessed 17 September 2009). United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (2009) Online. Available http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=AboutCommittee.Jurisdiction (accessed 25 November 2009). Van Baarda, T. A. (2001) “A legal perspective of cooperation between military and humanitarian organizations in peace support operations,” International Peacekeeping, 8: 34–45. Waisova, S. (2008) “Post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan and the changing NGO-government relationship,” China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 6: 65–85. Williams, P. (2006) “Who controls the night? Disorderly spaces and global security,” Online. Available http://globalcrim.blogspot.com/2009/06/having-endured-tensions-of-long-cold.html (accessed 17 October 2009). Wright, D. P. and Reese, T.R. with the Contemporary Operations Study Team (2008) On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign: The United States Army in Operations IRAQI FREEDOM May 2003– January 2005. Fort Leavenworth, TX: Combat Studies Institute.
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13 Evaluating psychological operations in Operation Enduring Freedom James Griffith
Shortly after 9/11 (11 September 2001), the US began efforts to depose the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Even before hostilities, some of the Afghan people, especially the Pashtuns, had a negative view of the US and were less than supportive of US involvement in their country. The Taliban and Al Qaeda attempted to convince the people of Afghanistan that America was attacking their religious faith (Friedman 2002). In October 2001, the US military’s 4th Psychological Operations Group (POG) was called on to develop a strategy to engender among the Afghan people more favorable attitudes toward US involvement in Afghanistan. The battle for people’s “hearts and minds” was set. The topic of this chapter is US psychological operations, in particular, those performed in the early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).1 I describe the purpose of psychological operations in this context and how content for media was developed, disseminated, and evaluated. I respond to important questions about evaluating psychological operations: What are psychological operations? How has the US military used psychological operations in past conflicts? More specifically, what psychological operations were conducted during the early stages of OEF, and to what extent were operations effective? Responses to these questions inform and improve future evaluation studies.
Defining psychological operations Psychological operations are defined by the Department of Defense as a set of “planned operations to convey information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and, ultimately, the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals” (Department of Defense Dictionary 2001: 441). Common methods of psychological operations have included aerial leaflet drops, newspaper circulation, radio broadcasts, and more recently, television and internet websites and messages. At present, the 4th POG, based at Ft Bragg, North Carolina, is the only active duty Army psychological operations unit. Its primary mission is to develop, 149
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design, and conduct psychological operations throughout the world. About 2,300 personnel, soldiers, and government civilians comprise the unit. The civilian staff includes approximately 36 specialists in the regional politics, cultures, and religions of the potential target audiences. Uniformed military in the 4th POG are often experts in media design and presentation, for example, in radio broadcast and printed journalism.
Past uses of psychological operations As far back as the Revolutionary War, the US military has used psychological operations to influence the enemy (Jowett & O’Donnell 1999). Leaflets were distributed to British soldiers at the battle of Bunker Hill. Those leaflets promised free land to British soldiers who came over to the American side. In the Civil War, the North and the South used methods to influence their own people and others to support their cause, although most efforts were not deliberate and not well organized (Propaganda in the Civil War 2009). The North made announcements and speeches, such as the Emancipation of Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address, at critical junctures of the war to rally support. In the media, the South embellished the vastness of the South’s cotton, attempting to appeal to European nations’ dependence on cotton for their textile industries. During World War I (WWI), many of the warring countries used persuasive media messages to influence others to support their cause (Wartime Propaganda 2009). US President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information to promote the war domestically and American war aims abroad. Posters, films, and canned slogans were the primary means for disseminating messages, which often played on negative stereotypes. These messages served to justify to each nation’s people involvement in the war and the need for personnel and resources to sustain its military forces. Psychological operations became more organized during World War II (WWII), being directed primarily at enemy soldiers. The US military made extensive use of leaflets, the most successful being “the safe passage” leaflet, which guaranteed surrender without bodily harm to enemy soldiers (for a review, see Herz 1949). In modern conflicts, the target population has broadened, largely because of the changed nature of warfare (Shanker 2009), which has made gaining the support of the indigenous population a key goal. As coined by Liddell-Hart (1954), the major battle in modern warfare was “winning hearts and minds” of the local people. During the Korean War, the US Army Far East Command conducted radio broadcasts, leaflet drops, and ground loudspeaker broadcasts. Messages directed to enemy soldiers centered on several themes: that they were good soldiers but being led very poorly; that they could surrender and be treated well; that they were being crushed by opposing forces; and that they could rejoin friends and family at home. Messages directed to the civilian population emphasized the commitment of the US and its allies to South Korea and shared commonalities among the Korean people (Andrews et al. 1954; Friedman 2009). During the Vietnam War, the US government made concerted efforts, organized in the program Chieu Hoi, to win over the Vietnamese people. The program was carried out by the US Information Service (see Jowett & O’Donnell 1999). Media messages were developed around five themes; the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers’ fear of death; extreme hardships; worries about their families; disillusionment with the war; and the remoteness of Communist victory. US forces would often have North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, who had surrendered, make loudspeaker announcements 150
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to the front line of their forces. Loudspeaker broadcasts were made from the air by helicopters and from the ground (Whittaker 1997). During the war, about 50 billion leaflets were dropped throughout South Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trial, and in North Vietnam. One study estimated that from 1963 to 1972, more than 200,000 people, mostly lower-ranking and less ideologically committed communists, aligned themselves with South Vietnam (see Jowett and O’Donnell 1999). More recently, the US military has used psychological operations in Haiti, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the first Gulf War. Activities included air-dropping leaflets, broadcasting messages and music from airborne radio stations, distributing newsletters, and making announcements by vehicle-mounted loudspeakers. During the first Gulf War, the 4th POG dropped 29 million leaflets on Iraqi forces. The US also sponsored the radio program “Voice of the Gulf,” which featured satisfied Iraqi prisoners of war, prayers from the Koran, and notifications of future bombing targets so as to avoid civilian injury. Experience suggests that nearly three-quarters of Iraqi soldiers who surrendered were influenced by the leaflets and radio broadcasts (see Jowett and O’Donnell 1999). However, their effectiveness was largely based on anecdotal and observational accounts, with a few limited scientific evaluations.
OEF psychological operations Under the Taliban in Afghanistan, there was only one radio station, Radio Shariat, which was operated by Radio Television Afghanistan, the national television and radio authority. No other national media existed in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2002. Given this void, the US military saw the opportunity to present messages via staterun media that would unify Afghans and encourage their support for and confidence and trust in their new government. One strategy was broadcasting Radio Malumat from its platform in the sky (called Commando Solo) and later from ground-based platforms. Radio Malumat broadcasts were hour-long formats, similar to commercial radio stations. News and information were interspersed with music: traditional Afghan, contemporary, and folk. Content included information about the interim government, the reopening of Kabul University, Afghans training for the 2004 Olympics, information about obtaining identification cards and polio vaccinations, and cautions about unexploded ordnance. In addition, radio broadcasts stressed that the conflict was a war against terrorism and not against the people of Afghanistan, explaining that the US had been the target of terrorist attacks, leaving no choice but to seek out suspected perpetrators. Broadcasts argued that the Afghan people were not being targeted, but Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who themselves were oppressors of the Afghan people, and the combined efforts of the international community and the Afghan people were needed to remove them from Afghanistan. Messages also attempted to separate the Taliban from the Afghan people: “The Taliban have … destroyed your national monuments, and cultural artifacts. They rule by force, violence, and fear. … That which has brought you together as a nation over the past thousands of years is being slowly torn apart” (Friedman 2002). Other messages informed Afghans of impending humanitarian aid through air drops and of cautions to be taken when approaching air-dropped materials. Another strategy for Army organizations was to print and circulate a biweekly newspaper, called Sulh, or “peace.” The newspaper typically published an article on the new Afghan National Army, “good news” stories about building schools and other 151
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development projects, and an article or two that exposed Taliban misrule. After the Afghan National Police (ANP) was organized, articles and hero comics that celebrated the ANP began appearing. The paper was trilingual, with articles repeated in English, Pashto, and Dari. The length of the newspaper varied, increasing to 12 multicolor pages.
Determining the effectiveness of psychological operations Militaries have used psychological operations extensively (Jowett and O’Donnell 1999), although often without clear empirical evidence of their effectiveness. Psychological operations are important because they challenge justifications that individuals and groups use to gain support for participation in war; such challenges may reduce support and perhaps participation. Content of psychological operations can also bolster one’s own forces’ reasons for fighting. Thus, psychological operations seemingly have widespread effects at limited costs, monetarily and in terms of battle casualties. Yet, there are very few documented, peer-reviewed studies of the effectiveness of psychological operations, e.g. in WWI (Bird 1928), WWII (Gurfein and Janowitz 1946; Herz 1949; Shils and Janowitz 1948), the Korean War (Andrews et al. 1954), and the Vietnam War (Whittaker 1997). These few studies offer important considerations in evaluating designs, such as who might be study respondents, what might be appropriate comparison groups, and what data might be gathered as outcome measures. At the same time, methodological shortcomings are evident, largely because of the nature of the wartime environment. Past studies lack external validity or confidence that research results represent those to whom results are to be generalized. In conventional wars, the target population has been the enemy soldiers. Past studies have gathered data from soldiers who had surrendered (Andrews et al. 1954; Herz 1949). For example, estimating exposure to the target audience by observing what prisoners of war possessed (leaflet or not), reported seeing or hearing themselves, or reported what they heard other soldiers had seen or heard (Gurfein and Janowitz 1946). To estimate exposure effects across time, Gurfein and Janowitz plotted responses of captured enemy soldiers at specific intervals. Such studies, however, do not consider enemy soldiers who have been exposed to media and have not surrendered, thus limiting generalizability of study findings. In addition, given the changed nature of modern conflicts, the target population has become expanded, including people who coexist with enemy soldiers. Past studies lack internal validity or confidence that associations among concepts represent causal relationships. Past studies can be described as consisting of a treatment group without a comparison group or a control group (Campbell and Stanley 1963). Nearly all evaluations of psychological operations performed during WWII made use of focused information gleaned from captured soldiers, such as counts of leaflets found on German prisoners, recall of leaflets, and favorable mention and detailed discussion of leaflets among enemy soldiers who surrendered (Herz 1949). Such designs ignore an appropriate comparison group or those who had not surrendered, especially the target population of greatest interest: enemy soldiers with “wavering commitment” (Gurfein and Janowitz 1946). Attempts were made to obtain such data: prisoners were asked whether soldiers who had not surrendered possessed leaflets and talked about their content (Herz 1949). To discern whether psychological operations have affected individual attitudes, commitment, or desire to surrender, a control group of enemy soldiers who were not exposed to messages is needed. Their commitment would be expected to be 152
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higher and desire to surrender lower than soldiers exposed to the messages. Given the changed nature of modern conflicts, people who coexist with enemy soldiers also need to be included in treatment, comparison, and control groups.
A design to evaluate OEF psychological operations In 2002–03, the 4th POG was tasked to devise an information campaign to develop among the Afghan people favorable and supportive attitudes toward the US and their newly formed government. One aspect of the campaign was to evaluate the effectiveness of various media. There were two major challenges. The first challenge was determining a data-collection methodology that would result in a representative sample of the target population, namely, the Afghan people. The 4th POG team sought a sampling methodology that took into account the difficulties of identifying potential respondents when their geographic dispersion and safety of data collectors were issues. An approach previously used in Liberia was chosen (Palmer 2003). Sampling was not probabilistic, but attempted to obtain respondents from different regions and of varied backgrounds and occupations. Geographic regions throughout Afghanistan were identified, and within regions; locales were chosen, such as bazaars, cafes, schools, and government offices. “Passers-by” were asked to participate in the survey. Hired and trained indigenous teachers were instructed to interview people from a variety of occupational categories, such as government workers, shopkeepers, and taxi drivers. Since women in Afghanistan practice “purdah” or “hejab” (i.e. seclusion and veiling), women interviewers were hired and trained. Early on, the team found the sampling method yielded respondents who were likely not representative of all Afghans, in particular, the rural population. At the outset, data collection was limited to seven cities and towns, primarily because of security threats and the extent to which coalition soldiers could provide some protection. The seven circled cities and surrounding regions in Figure 13.1 are where respondents were selected from. To remedy the likelihood of non-representative respondents, we weighted respondent data to match the census data for the population. Weighting the sample for ethnicity and gender brought the percentages of respondents within each ethnic group and gender to those of the Afghan population. This method has shortcomings. In underdeveloped countries, census data are limited and often quite dated. Only population counts by ethnicity and gender were available, not for specific regions. In addition, the weighting procedure assumed that respondents and those of similar backgrounds who did not participate would have responded similarly. The second challenge was to develop a study design that would test the presumed effects of psychological operations. In research that attempts to show causal effects, experimental designs are superior, but such designs are not feasible in conflict-ridden areas. Instead, we used an emerging analytic method, structural equation modeling (SEM) (see Schumaker and Lomax 1996). If the process of persuasive communication can be articulated and supported by past research, concepts, and variables and their interrelationships can be represented in a conceptual-analytical model (see Stephenson et al. 2006). The model in turn can be applied to gathered data and tested for “fit.” This method is similar to path analysis, except that SEM examines all paths simultaneously, not serially as does path analysis. Thus, SEM provides an overall evaluation of the proposed model, which leads to more valid conclusions at the concept level (Werner and Schermelleh-Engel 2009). 153
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Figure 13.1 Afghanistan and seven geographic regions from which respondents were selected
Drawing on the social-psychological literature, a framework of content and process and their interrelationships was developed for assessing various aspects of the psychological operations and its potential effects. A sequence of stages in the communication process, which could be associated with attitude change, had been previously developed by Hovland and his associates (1953). Characteristics of the media or aspects manipulated by psychological operations (independent variables) include the source (who says), content (what is said), medium (how it is said), and audience (said to whom). Thus, specific aspects of the communication process could be judged as effective or ineffective. This framework dictated what data to collect, and after their analysis, could answer what (content and medium) works best for whom (audience) (see Figure 13.2). Attitude change within the individual typically involves a sequence of stages (McGuire 1968). First, the person must pay attention to what is being communicated. Second, the person must comprehend what is being communicated. To be successful, in the third stage, the person must ascribe to the position advocated by the message or yield to the message appeal, and then be able to remember or retain the message content, and finally, changed behavior. The questionnaire was then developed to represent stages of persuasive communication and their effects. We could then use SEM to examine specific aspects of the 154
Figure 13.2 Stages of persuasive message communication and its effects Sources: Adapted from Osilamp (1977).
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media (e.g. content or medium) obtained from sample data in relation to a specified model of attitude change and to estimate regression coefficients showing how aspects of the media content are associated with self-reported attitudinal and behavioral change.
Evaluation results of OEF psychological operations Between June and August 2003, questionnaire data were obtained from 2,905 adult Afghans. Data were then analyzed to determine the extent of exposure to Radio Malumat and the newspaper Sulh, and which of their attributes were associated with the persuasive communication process. Table 13.1 reports basic descriptive information concerning the attributes of the radio and the newspaper. Surprisingly, exposure was slightly greater for Sulh than for Radio Malumat. In addition, the newspaper appeared to appeal to its target audience, the literate person, more than did the radio to its wider audience of readers and non-readers. About two-thirds of the respondents rated the quality of the newspaper favorably compared with about onethird who rated radio content favorably. One-third or more of the respondents liked the trilingual format of the newspaper and found it interesting and informative. Top themes desired by respondents included safety and peace, with nearly one-half of the respondents desiring such content. Other desired themes included national unity, human rights, law and order, Islam, and democracy, with about one-third of the respondents expressing such desires. The newspaper was also better understood than the radio (2 percent compared with 11 percent who did not understand). The message content of the newspaper and radio was equally believed, with about two-thirds in agreement. Two-thirds of the radio audience indicated that messages were useful to them. Proportionately more respondents reported that they acted on messages from the newspaper than the radio (81 percent versus 24 percent). All the variables were then arranged in an SEM in the hypothesized sequence of persuasive communication processes: attention, comprehension, belief, utility, and action. SEM (conducted in AMOS 7) tests whether the model can reasonably reproduce the data, usually in terms of the variance–covariance matrix. Fit indices indicate the extent to which covariances implied by the model correspond to the observed covariances in the data. Concepts represented by multiple items were retained based on significant and positive relationships with comprehension and belief variables. After initial analyses, models were trimmed based on the overall fit measures and the strength of the standardized path coefficients. Figures 13.3 and 13.4 display the trimmed models. Dotted lines indicate paths and variables that were trimmed from the final models. χ2 values for the trimmed models for the radio and newspaper suggested adequate fit to the data. For Radio Malumat, the χ2 value was 2.17 (not significant). (A non-significant χ2 value means that the variance–covariance matrix implied by the model and that of the data do not differ.) Although the χ2 value for Sulh (χ2 (8) = 32.62, p < .001) was statistically significant, large sample sizes (generally greater than 200) are known to produce statistically significant χ2 values when there is a model-data fit (type II error). In these instances, other indices are recommended to determine model-data fit. Other indices include the ratio of the χ2 value to degrees of freedom (CMIN/df < 5), CFI (.90 or higher) and the RMSEA (.10 or lower) (Hu & Bentler 1999; Schumaker & Lomax 1996). Using these indices, both models were supported by the data. Coefficients without parentheses are based on SEM which does not considered weighted data; and 156
Table 13.1 Exposure to Radio Malumat and Newspaper Sulh and self-reported evaluation of communication characteristics
Weighted % (of total unweighted valid N in parentheses) Communication attribute
Radio Malumat Newspaper Radio-newspaper (N = 924) Sulh (N = 995) comparison (t-test probability)
Exposure (listened, read): Q15 Radio Malumat Q24.1 Newspaper Sulh (read newspaper) Communication characteristics Content for attention: Radio: Quality of content/favorableness (“nearly all music played” for Q22) Newspaper: Quality of content (includes “excellent” and “good,” Q29) Interesting and informative (“yes,” Q28.1) Trilingual format (“yes,” Q28.2) Photographs (“yes,” Q28.4) Layout and appearance (“yes,” Q28.3) Newspaper content on: Safety (“yes,” Q35.1) Peace themes (“yes,” Q35.4) National unity (“yes,” Q35.3) Human rights (“yes,” Q35.6) Law and order (“yes,” Q35.5) Islam (“yes,” Q35.8) Democracy (“yes,” Q35.7) Health education (“yes,” Q35.2)
35 (2,676)
37 (2,660)
35 (820)
Not asked
p < .05
Not asked
61 (925)
Not asked
43 (955)
Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not
asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked asked
31 (955) 8 (955) 4 (955)
Comprehension: Messages not well understood (includes “not so well,” 21/Q33)
11 (820)
2 (888)
p < .05
Belief: Messages are believed (includes “always” and “usually,” 20/Q34)
61 (791)
64 (830)
ns
Message utility: Content is useful to me (includes “quite useful,” Q17)
63 (829)
Not asked
Action: Content discussed with / shown to others (includes “once or more” for Q18; “yes” for Q26)
24 (785)
81 (926)
49 48 39 37 34 31 29 27
(955) (955) (995) (955) (955) (995) (955) (955)
p < .05
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coefficients in parenthesare based on weighted data. Coefficients are statistically significant at p<.05. For Radio Malumat (Figure 13.3), perceived quality or the attention characteristic was significantly and positively related to understanding or the comprehension characteristic (standardized b = .24) and to belief (.20). Understanding and belief, in turn, had positive and significant relationships to action, respectively .10 and .14. Understanding had an additional indirect effect on action through belief (.34 * .14). Results were similar for Sulh (Figure 13.4). Photographs appeared to enhance comprehension (.08), and message content of Islam (.13) appeared to bolster belief in the message. In sum, results identified attention characteristics that are associated with belief and comprehension. Perceived content and presentation quality (favorableness of music and newspaper quality, including pictures) were associated with belief and understanding of the message, both of which were, in turn, associated with action. Message content about Islam was associated with greater belief in message content. Understanding had an additional indirect effect through belief. Quality and appeal of the media (music favorability and picture quality) appeared to be important ingredients for persuading action. Islam helped understanding and belief in the messages. Some findings may be explained by artifacts of dissemination methods and related factors. For example, proportionally more respondents had received newspapers and talked about such messages than radio broadcasts. This likely pertained to the accessibility of target audiences, dissemination methods used, and changes in the way in which radio messages were transmitted. Newspapers were circulated in urban environments allowing straightforward access to its target audience, i.e. urban dwellers who were literate and in close proximity to friends and neighbors. Rural Afghans, being geographically remote and often illiterate, became the target audience of radio broadcasts, being suited for radio rather than print media. Initially, to broadcast signals in the mountainous rural areas, the aerial platform, Commando Solo, was used. This method was replaced by ground-based Special Operations Media System-B (SOMS-B) shortwave radio platforms. The change resulted in weaker transmissions, and Afghans interviewed who lived in rural regions often complained about the bad reception of Radio Malumat.
Lessons for future evaluation studies Earlier, I described challenges to carrying out evaluation studies of psychological operations, in particular in regions of conflict. The team attempted to overcome these challenges. Concerning issues of external validity, sampling methods typically used in developed countries, such as household enumeration and random-digit dialing of household telephones, are difficult, if not impossible, to implement in underdeveloped countries, where the necessary sampling frame information is not available. Also, the lack of up-to-date, detailed census data hindered our ability to adjust respondent data to be more representative of the Afghan population. Threats to security hampered our ability to implement sampling that would achieve representativeness. We were limited to specific geographic regions in which US forces could provide security. This situation is not uncommon (e.g. collection of stress and morale data from US combat soldiers; Mental Health Advisory Team 2008). Even if we were able to go to more regions, displacement caused by the earlier armed conflict made sampling based on residence difficult, if not impossible. 158
Figure 13.3 Radio Malumat: linkages among message characteristics, communication, and action
Figure 13.4 Newspaper Sulh: linkages among message characteristics, communication, and action
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Sampling is likely to remain a significant problem for evaluation of future psychological operations conducted in areas of conflict. A recent, alternative sampling method may offer some promise (ABC News 2009; Asia Foundation 2006). This method entails specifying a number of sampling points/geographic locations. For example, if the total sample size is 1,600, then 200 sampling points (geographic sites) might be chosen, sampling about 80 people at each point. The 200 points should be distributed across government jurisdictions (such as provinces) proportional to the population in the provinces. More-populated provinces would have more points than less-populated provinces. Within each province, the allocated points should again be distributed across district locations (such as cities, towns, and villages) proportional to the distribution of the district population. For each district, places where people gather should be enumerated, such as mosques, schools, and bazaars. If people at the locations are similar (e.g. schools), then other gathering places should be chosen that reflect other characteristics of the population. An assigned starting point (e.g. mosques, schools, bazaars) should be given to start in each district. A structured method should then be used to select respondents at each location, such as every Nth person who passes by or selecting every Nth street and then every Nth household. For locations having multiple people, a random method might be used to select respondents (see Kish 1965). Concerning the issue of internal validity, the team used SEM to validate presumed interrelationships among media attributes, individual attitudes, and individual behavioral change. Drawing on research literature concerning persuasive communication process, it is possible to develop a conceptual model, which then guides instrument design to provide data for variables and concepts represented by the model. The analytic fit of the model to the data validates the model. Specific results show design features associated most with understanding and belief, and subsequently, with changes in behavior. Improvements to the present study and future studies include developing questionnaire content specific to content (what is said), medium (how it is said), and audience (said to whom). Thus, specific aspects of the communication process could be judged as effective and ineffective. Future studies might also consider designs involving those of the target population who receive messages and those who do not. Psychological operations are often implemented broadly across geographic areas. This, combined with the inaccessibility of the affected population, makes experiments difficult to carry out. A possible compromise is matching regions on demographic characteristics and exposing some regions with one form of media content, and others with another form of media content. Data then can be gathered on exposure and effects. This design emulates a post-test non-equivalent control-group comparison design.
Summary Psychological operations have long been a part of US military operations. Use of psychological operations over time attests to the confidence that the US military has had in their effectiveness to diminish the morale and commitment among enemy soldiers and reduce their combat effectiveness. Yet, systematic evaluations are lacking. In this chapter, I summarize published evaluations of psychological operations, pointing to needed methodological improvements, especially with recent conflicts that are less conventional. The Afghan War provided the opportunity to develop psychological operations and improve on their evaluation, specifically obtaining study respondents of broader scope 160
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and using an analytic method to provide greater confidence in causality among concepts. Evaluation results showed that sampling to achieve representative study respondents remains difficult, especially in underdeveloped countries not having census, household, or telephone information that can be used for sampling and for adjusting respondent bias. One solution would be to use a sampling methodology more appropriate for underdeveloped countries, as public opinion in these countries becomes more important.
Acknowledgments This paper is intended to promote the exchange of ideas among researchers and policymakers and does not reflect the position of the US Department of Army. This chapter was produced in collaboration with the 4th Psychological Operations Group, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, NC. Special thanks are extended to the 4th POG team who participated in this effort, including Drs Bob Jenks, David Champagne, Joseph Arlinghaus, Mark Dwyer, and Ehsan Entezar.
Notes 1 Leaflets were not part of the evaluation study described here. The US military designed and airdropped many different kinds of leaflets. Some were black-and-white and others were color in various grades of paper. Example content of leaflets were: an American soldier shaking hands with an Afghan; American Muslims practicing their religion, American mosques, etc.; an Afghan sitting with his entire family and enjoying the feast sent by the Americans; an American family on the left and an Afghan family on the right with hands extended in handshakes. For a full description and display of leaflets, see Friedman (2009).
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Gurfein, M. I. and Janowitz, M. (1946) “Trends in Wehrmacht morale,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Spring: 78–84. Herz, M. F. (1949) “Some psychological lessons from leaflet propaganda in World War II,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall: 471–86. Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L. and Kelley, H. H. (1953) Communication and Persuasion: Psychological Studies of Opinion Change, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hu, L. and Bentler, P. M. (1999) “Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives,” Structural Equations Modeling, 6: 1–55. Jowett, G. S. and O’Donnell, V. (1999) Propaganda and Persuasion, 3rd edn, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kish, L. (1965) Survey Sampling, New York: Wiley. Liddell-Hart, B. H. (1954) Strategy: The Indirect Approach, 3rd edn, London: Faber and Faber. McGuire, W. J. (1968) “The nature of attitudes and attitude change,” in G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (eds), The Handbook of Social Psychology, 2nd edn. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley: 136–214. Mental Health Advisory Team (2008) Operation Iraqi Freedom. Washington, DC: Office of the Surgeon General. Oskamp, S. (1977) Attitudes and Opinions, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Palmer, E. L. (2003) “The CGP rapid survey method: A new survey tool for broadcasters in war zones,” Online. Available http://www.cgponline.org/research/index.htm (accessed 14 April 2009). Propaganda in the Civil War (2009) Online. Available http://www.civilwarhome.com/propaganda.htm (accessed 8 May 2009) Excerpted from Baker, J. H., Donald, D. H., Holt, M. F. (2001) The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 536–76. Schumaker, R. E. and Lomax, R. G. (1996) A Beginner’s Guide to Structural Equation Modeling, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Shanker, T. (2009) “Pentagon rethinking old doctrine on 2 wars,” The New York Times, (15 March 2009). Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/washington/15military.html?sq=pe ntagon (accessed 7 April 2009). Shils, E. A. and Janowitz, M. (1948) “Cohesion and disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 12: 280–315. Stephenson, M. T., Holbert, R. L. and Zimmerman, R. S. (2006) “On the use of structural equation modeling in health communication research,” Health Communication, 20: 159–67. Wartime Propaganda, World War I (2009) “The war to end all wars,” Online. Available http:// www.100megspop3.com/bark/Propaganda.html (accessed 8 May 2009). Werner, C. and Schermelleh-Engel, K. (2009) “Structural equation modeling: Advantages, challenges, and problems.” Online. Available http//www.user.uni-frankfurt.de—cswerner/sem/sem_pro_con_ en.pdf (accessed 6 July 2009). Whittaker, J. O. (1997) “Psychological warfare in Vietnam,” Political Psychology, 18: 165–79.
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14 Armed conflict and health Cholera in Iraq Daniel Poole
The effects of extreme violence such as the war in Iraq can be far-reaching, often having severe indirect consequences. We typically think of the direct health consequences of war, such as soldier and civilian casualties caused by bullets and bombs. There are, however, numerous indirect health consequences that devastate populations (Ghobarah et al. 2003; Murray et al. 2002). Because many of these indirect effects only become evident over time, policy-makers and those who have the most control over initiating violence often do not take these factors into consideration. As armed conflict continues to affect populations around the globe it is extremely important to explore the real human cost of war. Armed conflict disrupts all aspects of civil life. Agriculture, trade, and production may all be interrupted. War can have devastating effects on economies if the means of production are limited or eliminated and consumers are killed or displaced. Governments can be overthrown or destabilized. If governments do remain intact and functional, war often draws resources away from public services such as food security, water treatment and distribution, sewage management, and the production of electricity. The displacement of large proportions of communities as well as the loss of public servants also regularly occurs during violent conflict. All of these factors contribute to adverse health consequences. In this chapter I focus on indirect health effects of the war in Iraq, which began in 2003 and continues as of the publication date of this book. I explore the cholera outbreak that was first reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2003 shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq (WHO 2003). The destruction of physical infrastructure, depletion of public health care systems, and limited access to medical supplies and clean water are said to account for the severity and duration of the outbreak (WHO 2007). When any of these important societal elements are disrupted, the negative impact can be far-reaching. One specific example is that with the absence of basic medical care, common ailments and illnesses that are easily treatable and not typically life-threatening have the potential to become overwhelming epidemics. I provide examples of this by exploring the outbreak of cholera in Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion. 163
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Previous work Until recently few studies have explored the indirect health effects of war. Studies that do exist pay particular attention to psychological well-being (Carlton-Ford et al. 2008). Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in particular, has been given careful consideration in many studies (Falger et al. 1992; Basoglu et al. 2005; Murthy and Lakshminarayana 2006; Levy and Sidel 2009). The literature is fairly consistent in showing a constant increase of psychological disorders such as PTSD as the result of exposure to armed conflict for militants as well as civilians. A growing body of research looks at the effects of conflicts on infectious diseases. Bunton and Wills (2005) discuss the increased rates of sexually transmitted diseases such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) that often accompany war. Sexually transmitted diseases are especially prevalent when rape is used as a weapon against populations. History provides many examples of warfare in which armies use sexual assault as a weapon to demoralize, destabilize, and humiliate their enemy (Ashford and Huet-Vaughn 2000). In the early twentieth century Prinzing published a book that examined the effect of disease in relation to war (Prinzing 1916). He found examples throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries in which diseases tore down entire armies, laid waste to significant proportions of civilian populations, and destroyed economies in direct relation to armed conflict. In the midst of a world war scholars wrote about the need to understand disease within the context of war. Hill (1942) makes note that during World Wars I and II diseases such as malaria killed more soldiers than bullets or bombs did in many conflict zones. The idea that diseases kill more people in war than combat is a reoccurring theme in the medical literature. Smallman-Raynor and Cliff (2000) claim that disease epidemics, which devastate military and civilian populations, are responsible for the most serious human costs of war. Infectious diseases such as measles, malaria, dengue fever, and leishmaniasis reached epidemic levels as a result of war in Nicaragua during the 1980s (Garfield et al. 1987). Other work has focused on the importance of health care workers and information systems related to disease during times of war (Iacopino and Waldman 1999; Murray et al. 2002). The latter article explains that war contributes greatly to the burden of disease throughout the world. The authors note the importance of understanding that information systems can be severely limited during armed conflict. Because information gathering and record keeping can be limited during war, it is safe to assume that estimated rates of disease infection related to conflict are often conservative. Other scholars have explored specific methods of warfare that devastate the health of civilians. The destruction of crops and food sources has been a common practice in war throughout the ages (Westing 1981). When access to food is limited, opposing forces gain advantages over weakened populations, who are more susceptible to malnutrition and disease. The most vulnerable and defenseless segments of the population typically suffer the most. One specific example is the suffering experienced by children in Mozambique during the 1980s. Nearly half a million excess deaths among children were estimated as a result of war from 1981 to 1988 (Cliff and Noormahomed 1993). Of those children who were not killed, several hundred thousand were orphaned or separated from their families. Within the social sciences, the indirect health consequences of war have not been researched in great detail despite the fact that they play a significant role in morbidity and mortality across the globe. Levy and Sidel (2009) find that armed conflict creates direct 164
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and indirect health problems for military personnel as well as civilians. Murray et al. (2002) conclude that war-related injury and deaths are a large contributor to disease on a global scale. One example of an empirical investigation exploring the indirect health effects of war attempts to uncover the effect of armed conflict on adult mortality across countries and over time by using several different armed conflict measures to explore the effects of various types of conflict on adult mortality (Li and Wen 2005). It was found that the effects of civil war were stronger than the effects of interstate armed conflict on mortality immediately following the conflict. The opposite was found for the long-term effects of war. As most would expect, they did find that the effects of severe conflict were stronger than the effects of minor conflict. Studies have also examined the effects of war on specific segments of the population such as children. Children tend to suffer disproportionately as a result of armed conflict. Carlton-Ford (2004) reported that child mortality more than doubled during the 1991 Gulf War and that rates of diarrhea had doubled after the start of the 2003 war in Iraq. In this chapter I focus on cholera, which is a diarrheal disease that has caused an increase in mortality, especially among Iraqi children, as a result of armed conflict. As a result of war, children under the age of five experience higher rates of mortality than most other age groups. According to Carlton-Ford, limited access to food supplies as a result of war can increase child malnutrition rates by about 25 percent. This can have devastating effects on the health and well-being of populations. Other research has focused specifically on the impact of civil war on civilian populations (Ghobarah et al. 2003). This study also used WHO data to explore death and disability among populations who had experienced internal armed conflict. The authors focus on the long-term effects and examine a variety of different debilitating diseases and conditions that emerge as indirect consequences of civil war. In their conclusions they suggest that the amount of death and disability experienced in the year 1999, because of lingering effects of war, was equal to that experienced as a direct result of war during the years 1991–97. In other words, 1 year of indirect health effects is equivalent to that of 7 years of direct effects. Although this study does provide important insight into the effects of civil wars, it does not examine the impact of interstate conflict or the varying levels of intensity associated with various types of conflict. The current war in Iraq has displayed characteristics of both civil and interstate armed conflict.
Cholera Cholera is an acute, diarrheal disease that infects the intestine. The bacteria are spread by fecal contamination of food and/or drinking water. Symptoms range from mild to severe and include vomiting, leg cramps, and diarrhea. Children as well as adults are susceptible to the disease. Only about 1 in 20 cases of infection are considered to be severe. Typically, cholera is easily treatable if lost fluids and salts are replaced. If severe cases are left untreated, death by severe dehydration and kidney failure can occur within hours. The incubation period is short: 2 hours to 5 days. This short incubation period can increase the chance of widespread infection. Nearly three out of four individuals infected with cholera do not notice any symptoms (WHO 2008). An individual can carry the bacteria for 1–2 weeks and can therefore unknowingly contribute to the infection of others. Cholera is more dangerous than other diarrheal diseases in that it can kill a healthy adult 165
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in a matter of hours. Populations affected by war are often at greater risk of experiencing severe effects. Internally displaced persons, refugees, and many individuals affected by war often experience deteriorated states of well-being and can therefore fall victim more easily to the effects of cholera. Persons who are malnourished or have a weakened immune system are especially vulnerable and can suffer severe consequences shortly after contact with the bacteria. During times of armed conflict, infectious diseases can spread quickly as populations are unable to seek or obtain treatment, medical systems are limited or non-existent, food and water supplies become contaminated, and populations can be confined to unhealthy living situations such as those often experienced in refugee camps. For example, when armed conflict broke out in Iraq, many individuals sought asylum in neighboring urban areas or had no choice but to find sanctuary in refugee camps. Both scenarios create a situation in which sanitation is difficult, supplies are limited, and infectious diseases can spread quickly throughout the dense population. In 2003 WHO began reporting fears that the volatile security situation in the Iraqi conflict zones was creating conditions in which a cholera epidemic (an unusually high rate of disease infection) could become a dangerous reality (WHO 2003). WHO cited the lack of access to safe drinking water combined with security problems as the cause of major concern. WHO also expressed its concern that diarrheal diseases were one of the top three killers of Iraqi children. Although the first signs of the outbreak were detected in 2003, the outbreak became widespread by mid-August 2007. By 2007 fears of increased infection rates began to manifest themselves as WHO reported that a widespread cholera outbreak had emerged in Iraq. As of October 2007 half of the Iraqi provinces had been affected by the outbreak (WHO 2007). In 2007 WHO estimated that more than 30,000 individuals had become stricken with acute watery diarrhea. At the time, more than 3,000 of those infected were confirmed cholera cases. The disease was expected to spread as the rate of infection climbed.
Destruction of physical infrastructure In 2008 the Iraqi Health Minister, Salih al-Hasnawi, stated that Iraq had experienced degraded water-treatment facilities as a result of years of war (Al Jazeera 2008). The depletion of infrastructure has forced many Iraqis to go without clean water. Hacaoglu (2008) describes extensive pollution and deteriorated infrastructure in many Iraqi rivers and cities. Some of the Iraqi infrastructure was already in a dilapidated state before the 2003 invasion as a result, in part, of more than 10 years of sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War. Water and sewage systems were further dismantled and destroyed after the 2003 invasion. A variety of factors related to the armed conflict account for the dysfunctional state of the Iraqi utility infrastructure. These include bombings, lootings, sabotage, inconsistent delivery of electricity (which disrupts water treatment), disrupted manpower, and system failures. Each of these factors is discussed in this section. Attacks on infrastructure and public utilities in particular often aim to disrupt the US efforts and increase instability in the region. Reports of treatment facilities being attacked have been made public. One report explains that in 2005 a sewage treatment plant in southern Baghdad had been targeted by insurgents in order to undermine the efforts of coalition forces in Iraq (Hacaoglu 2008). Workers were attacked and the plant manager was killed. Looters stole pipes, electrical equipment, and wiring, which severely disabled 166
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the facility. The plant, which was now unable to operate, had been recently repaired by US forces. Raw sewage continued to flow into the Tigris River 3 years after the dismantling of the plant. Physical infrastructure is a key component of success or failure for insurgents and coalition forces in Iraq. There is a direct correlation between depleted infrastructure and insurgent support in Iraq (Chiarelli and Michaelis 2006). When basic services such as water, sewage, and trash removal are disrupted or non-existent, insurgent recruitment and activities increase. As members of the community experience more difficult living conditions, they become more willing to engage in desperate activities, which may involve receiving payment for attacking or sabotaging coalition forces or participating in these activities to satisfy their own vengeance. Thus depleted living conditions and violence feed on each other. Increased violence is also correlated with higher rates of disease infection. On the other hand, when reconstructive forces are able to improve the quality of life by creating or repairing services, members of the community are less likely to engage in confrontational behavior and more likely to work towards stability in their neighborhood. Armed conflict can also interfere with supply chains and prevent necessary aid from reaching populations. Kratovac (2007) reported that 100,000 tons of chlorine designated for water treatment in Iraq were stopped at the Jordanian border in September 2007. Security issues were said to be the cause of the delay. It was feared that insurgents would use the chemical in explosives, as they had done in the past. The author quotes the head of the provincial health department, Hom Suhail al-Khishali, as saying that the deteriorated security situation prevented medical personnel from reaching those affected by contaminated water. The author also mentioned that many cases of cholera were reported in provinces such as Diyala where there were high concentrations of fighting in 2007. In this case, the armed conflict limited access to necessary treatment chemicals needed to provide safe drinking water. Iran has been accused of bribing local Iraqi officials to purchase expired chlorine, which was used to treat Iraqi water. The expired chlorine was no longer effective, which resulted in water that was not properly purified. This caused an increase in the exposure to contaminated water, and therefore increased rates of cholera infection (Cockburn 2008). Looters also contribute to the dismantling of necessary infrastructure. Building materials such as copper pipe and electrical wiring are often sought out by those wishing to make a profit from the stolen goods. One report found that the Red Cross had supplied water pipes to a Baghdad hospital in order to create access to clean water. Looters stole the pipes, leaving the hospital unable to access the water that it needed (Dyer 2003). A tactic that has proven successful for insurgents in Iraq is to disrupt services in order to gain political support from residents (Chiarelli and Michaelis 2006). If services are disrupted insurgents can gain support by denouncing the ability of coalition forces to provide stability and progress. Insurgents can then take credit for improvements that have been made, whether or not they are actually responsible, and sway support toward their cause. Coalition forces have countered this strategy by advertising reconstruction projects and employing citizens to help complete them. Municipal water supplies were severely damaged in Basrah during armed conflict (Valenciano et al. 2003). The authors report that 50 percent of the area’s water-treatment plants and the raw water pumping station were damaged. Bombs and mortars can severely disable and completely dismantle pumps, storage tanks, piping, and electrical components involved in the processing and distribution of water. Electricity disruptions 167
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and shortages can also have devastating effects on water-treatment and distribution facilities. If pumps fail, water cannot be treated, properly maintained, or delivered. The damage in Basrah during the war created a situation in which clean water was no longer reaching destinations throughout the area. This led to individuals breaking into existing pipelines to obtain water, thereby further deteriorating the system. Treatment and pumping stations were also looted, leaving the water and sewage infrastructure severely damaged. There were also reports of sewage systems clogging and backing up. Trash was not collected, causing drains to become blocked. Pumping stations were not working properly and shortages of electricity disrupted the pressure in the pumping system, which caused backflows and further contamination. The Basrah municipal sewage system backed up and flowed into the city. In this perfect breeding ground for cholera it is no wonder that rates of infection increased. From 17 May to 18 June 2003 there were nearly 3,000 confirmed diarrhea consultations in the Basrah governorate. These numbers are likely a conservative representation of the total rates of infection, as many cases go undetected or undocumented during normal conditions. During war time rates of infection are often greatly underreported. Dyer (2003) found that Iraqi hospitals were being looted, which left them without necessary medical equipment and supplies. Doctors and medical staff were arming themselves in order to guard hospitals and clinics. Some medical facilities were abandoned as the doctors and staff were trying to protect their own property and therefore unable to defend the hospitals as well. In 2009 many hospitals were still unable to receive reliable electricity and water.
Depletion of public health infrastructure The withdrawal of medical personnel confounds problems associated with disease outbreaks. Docquier et al. (2007) explain that “brain drain,” or the departure of educated individuals, is often experienced in nations such as Iraq. They also note that this departure of skilled individuals increases during times of political unrest. Often, the most educated individuals in a society are the ones who have the resources to leave a conflict zone. Highly educated people may have connections outside their home area that can provide them with a destination in times of crisis. They are also likely to have the financial means necessary to migrate to a safer location. Those with less education and fewer resources are often unable to flee their home when war reaches their doorstep. The UN High Commission for Refugees (2008) reported that Iraq was the most common country of origin for asylum-seeking refugees in 2006. In 2007 there were more than 45,000 asylum-seeking claims filed by Iraqis. One in six asylum requests globally were Iraqi. During 2007, when the cholera outbreak became widespread, the number of refugees seeking asylum from the armed conflict was almost double the number of those in 2006 (UN 2008). In Iraq, medical staff were being targeted by terrorists for kidnapping and extortion as well as being killed, which caused many medical doctors and health workers to flee the country (Zarocostas 2007). That report claims that as many as 2,000 doctors were killed and two million individuals fled the country. There were 34,000 registered medical doctors in Iraq before the invasion (Cockburn 2008). After the invasion, 250 had been kidnapped, 2,000 had died, and 20,000 had left the country. Joseph Chamie, former director of the UN Population Division and an Iraq specialist, claimed that Iraq’s health 168
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had deteriorated to a level not experienced since the 1950s (Kramer 2007). During times of conflict, when resource supplies are limited or cut off and clinics become short staffed or unavailable, infectious diseases such as cholera can quickly create serious problems. In short, after the beginning of the conflict, organizations such as the Iraqi Red Crescent and UNICEF attempted to provide Iraqis with potable water (Valenciano et al. 2003). Limited resources resulted in water being supplied from contaminated rivers. The security situation prevented distribution of water-treatment chemicals as well as clean water from distant locations. A UN Humanitarian Situation Report described the security situation as preventing key humanitarian supplies such as medicine and clean water from reaching their intended destinations (UN 2008). Hospitals faced shortages of necessary medicine as well as equipment. Medical staff also reported being the targeted victims of violence. Ambulances were attacked in order to prevent medical staff from reaching hospitals and clinics. Limited access to basic medical supplies, and more importantly, to clean water were key elements in the onset of cholera outbreaks that spread across Iraq.
What is being done Cholera can be easily treated and mortality greatly decreased if proper medical supplies are available. If a person is able to be properly rehydrated, their chance of survival is greatly increased. The WHO (2008) reports that up to 80 percent of patients can be adequately treated with oral rehydration salts. Under normal conditions remaining cases can be resolved with antibiotics and other simple medical treatments. The WHO states that the acceptable fatality rate should not exceed 1 percent if normal conditions exist. In contrast, during times of conflict, basic medical supplies and personnel needed to treat patients can be limited or non-existent. Various components of the medical infrastructure are often directly and immediately destroyed during war. Hospitals and clinics can be inadvertently or intentionally targeted and damaged or destroyed. Physicians and staff may be killed, wounded, or flee the area. If they do remain in the area, they may be concerned with essential aspects of survival and not present in their place of work. If infrastructure remains intact, it runs the risk of being looted or not supplied in the first place. In order to overcome infectious disease outbreaks, such as the one experienced in Iraq, medical supplies, clean water, and trained personnel must be made available and a secure environment must be insured. The WHO along with other aid organizations have put forth a great deal of resources and effort to help prevent and control disease outbreaks in areas adversely affected by conflict. Particular attention has been paid to Iraq and the suffering that has occurred there. In 2003 the WHO immediately began mobilizing resources to address potential disease outbreaks and general health concerns associated with the invasion of Iraq (Valenciano et al. 2003). In April 2003 the WHO sent a team of health experts to Kuwait. Within days of the start of major combat operations in Iraq, these health experts had set up a base in Basrah. The purpose of the base was to provide a central staging area to allow health workers to identify needs, maintain information systems, plan for and identify disease outbreaks, and to assess the health care needs of the population. An important aspect of managing the health care needs of the Iraqi population centers around the military activities in the area. Without a certain level of stability, aid organizations are not able to deliver treatment and care. The coalition strategy for winning the 169
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war in Iraq includes improvement of infrastructure, training of local security forces, and education focusing on the fundamentals of democracy in addition to traditional military operations aimed at combating insurgent activities (Chiarelli and Michaelis 2006). The authors explain that the population in Iraq can essentially be divided into three demographics. These include anti-Iraqi forces (insurgents and terrorists), supporters of the coalition forces and provincial government, and fence-sitters who have not fully committed to one side or the other. In order to achieve full-spectrum success, each of these groups must be dealt with accordingly. The fence-sitters must be persuaded to become supporters and those in opposition must be eliminated. Supporters must be trained, educated, and provided with the infrastructure and government that are necessary for a healthy society to flourish. This is achieved only in part by killing, capturing, or otherwise inhibiting insurgents and terrorists through traditional military means. Perhaps more important is to provide training and employment for security forces, civilian contractors, and employees, who can rebuild and maintain infrastructure, and government actors to maintain legitimacy and stability. In the short term, victories are achieved by providing temporary solutions to infrastructure such as electricity production and distribution, reliable access to clean water, and consistent waste removal and disposal. Not only do these activities provide encouraging signs of progress that legitimize support for coalition operations, they also create the potential for significant employment opportunities. If members of the community are engaged in gainful employment they will not only be working towards stability in the region but they will also be deterred from engaging in violent acts towards coalition forces. This is an extremely desirable outcome in that violence is decreased and local communities are given the opportunity to build and the potential to flourish. Success is then maintained by ensuring that temporary solutions become permanent, functioning components of the infrastructure. Full-spectrum operations have the potential to put an end to the cholera outbreak in Iraq. A decrease in violence will allow supplies to enter the country and be distributed and for medical professionals to be able to practice and provide necessary treatment and preventative efforts. Less violence also means more human capital being devoted to construction rather than destruction. Improved infrastructure such as water-treatment plants, electricity-generation operations, and waste removal and treatment systems will decrease the spread and occurrence of cholera. In 2009 contaminated water was still taking a toll on the Iraqi population. Diarrheal diseases such as cholera were one of two main causes of death for Iraqi children (UN 2009). Eighty percent of those living outside Baghdad did not have access to functioning sewage facilities. Less than 20 percent of the sewage in Iraq is treated before it is dumped into rivers such as the Tigris and the Euphrates, which flow through the nation’s capital. The UN and many other organizations are focusing large amounts of their efforts on water projects throughout the country. As of March 2009 35 new water-treatment facilities were under construction in Iraq (Department of Defense 2009). Many of the projects are over budget and behind schedule (Office of the Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) 2008a). Sustainability is a key issue among many of the major water projects in Iraq. Some of the plants that have been or are being built do not have contracts for future fuel supplies. There is concern that adequate amounts of fuel will not be made available to operate the newly constructed facilities (SIGIR 2008b). It will be up to the Iraqi government to ensure a reliable supply of fuels in the future. 170
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Conclusion This chapter has provided a current example of the adverse effects violent conflict has on physical infrastructure, health care systems, and resource supplies, which in turn lead to destructive health outcomes. Specifically, contaminated water and limited access to medical personnel and supplies led to an outbreak of cholera in Iraq. Predictions about the human cost of war in the Middle East were expressed at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. As resolved by the World Council of Health Worker Organizations for Social Well-Being, Health, and Peace: The Gulf war has demonstrated the terrifying nature of modern methods of destruction. Whole cities can be wiped out in a matter of days. People can be destroyed in hundreds of thousands by invisible air armadas; ecological catastrophes can lay waste entire regions; epidemics, famine, and forced migrations of entire populations can result. Nor do such wars solve any problems; they lay the basis for future, even more destructive wars. (Coordinating Committee 1993: 73) As discussed in this chapter, local civilians, health workers, children, and populations in general experience severe indirect consequences as a result of armed conflict. A better understanding of the indirect effects of war would be beneficial to the lives of those who arguably suffer the most: civilians. I have touched on a few of the many complex issues regarding indirect health consequences of violent conflict. With more sociological and epidemiological exploration, researchers will be able to move the field forward, providing valuable information to military, government, non-governmental organizations, and other influential entities. Ideally, this information will be used to strengthen diplomacy and when the need arises, refine armed conflict to be as effective as possible while minimizing the far-reaching devastation of innocent populations. It is important for relief programs to focus on health issues centered around food, water, and sanitation to prevent excessive morbidity and mortality associated with war. Social scientists collaborating with public health experts will be able to provide insightful new methods of measurement, resulting in better ways to predict and prevent the devastating health consequences of war on populations around the globe. A better understanding of the complete human costs of war will allow those with control over the matter to weigh the consequences over the benefits associated with war. Although it is unrealistic to say simply that we should end violent conflicts, it is important to refine our knowledge and understanding of armed conflicts to develop better methods of preventing, engaging in, and ultimately minimizing the devastation of war.
References Al Jazeera (2008) “Cholera outbreak spreads in Iraq,” Al Jazeera. Online. Available http://english.aljaze era.net/news/middleeast/2008/09/200891113412105764.html (accessed 27 July 2009). Ashford, M.W. and Huet-Vaughn, Y. (2000) “The impact of war on women,” in Levy, B. S. and Sidel, V.W. (eds) War and Public Health. Updated Edition, Washington, DC: American Public Health Association: 186–96. Basoglu, M. Livanou M., Crnobari C., Franikovi T., Sulji E., Duri D. and Vranei M. (2005) “Psychiatric and cognitive effects of war in former Yugoslavia: Association of lack of redress for trauma and posttraumatic stress reactions,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 294: 580–90.
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——(2008b) Al Kazim Water Supply Nassriya, Iraq. Arlington, VA: Office of the Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction. United Nations (2008) Humanitarian Situation Report: Baghdad, Basrah, Wassit and Babylon. Online. Available http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/488d7d9e2.html (accessed 27 November 2009). ——(2009) “Humanitarian update No. 5.” Online. Available http://ochaonline.un.org/OchaLinkClic k.aspx?link=ocha& docId = 1109728 (accessed 3 December 2009). United Nations High Commission for Refugees (2008) Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, 2007. Online. Available http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/STATISTICS/47daae862.pdf (accessed 27 July 2009). Valenciano, M., Coulombier, D., Lopes Cardozo, B., Colombo, A., Alla, M.J., Samson, S. and Connolly, M.A. (2003) “Challenges for communicable disease surveillance and control in southern Iraq,” The Journal Of The American Medical Association, 290 (April-June): 654–58. Westing, A.H. (1981) “Crop destruction as a means of war,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 37: 38–42. World Health Organization (2003) “Cholera in Iraq – May 8 2003,” Online. Available http://www. who.int/csr/don/2003_05_08a/en/index.html (accessed 12 May 2009). ——(2007) “Cholera, Iraq – Update,” Weekly Epidemiological Record, 82: 357–58. ——(2008) “Fact sheet No. 107: Cholera.” Online. Available http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsh eets/fs107/en/print.html (accessed 12 May 2009). Zarocostas, J. (2007) “Exodus of medical staff strains Iraq’s health,” British Medical Journal, 334: 865.
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15 Iraqi adolescents Self-regard, self-derogation, and perceived threat in war Steven Carlton-Ford, Morten G. Ender and Ahoo Tabatabai
Introduction In a country at war, how do adolescents fare? How do they think of themselves and how does their sense of self react to the threat that war poses? This study triangulates three explanatory frameworks (Social Identity Theory, theory about mortality threats, and research about psychological reactions to war-related events) in examining the selfesteem of Iraqi adolescents in war-torn Baghdad during the summer of 2004. The first approach holds that self-esteem enhancement occurs in the process of accentuating differences between in-groups and out-groups, especially during times of conflict. The second approach focuses on the conditions under which mortality threats lead individuals to strive to enhance their self-esteem, arguing that when central aspects of one’s social identity are threatened, individuals will strive to enhance their self-esteem. In contrast, the final approach, which considers children and adolescents who grew up with war, typically finds that conflict-related experiences result in higher levels or higher rates of post-traumatic stress reactions, depression, and grief. We then briefly describe life in Iraq and Baghdad, focusing on the degree to which the conditions appear consistent with one or the other of the research traditions. After describing our sample and our measures, we examine the links among these adolescents’ social backgrounds and their sense of threat and their self-esteem. Although we cannot provide an explicit theory test, by the end of the chapter we will have determined the explanatory framework that appears the most consistent with our results.
Explanatory frameworks Social Identity Theory People strive to feel positive about themselves, their circle of significant others, and the larger social context in which they reside (Hogg 2003). Similarly, people belong to social 174
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groups that provide social distinction, often by contrasting themselves to members of out-groups. This drive for self-esteem and distinction provides Social Identity Theory with an explanation that links intergroup discrimination to self-esteem enhancement (Tajfel et al. 1971; Tajfel and Turner 1979). Individuals tend to categorize themselves in terms of in-groups; within a group, they seek positive self-esteem by distinguishing between out-group and in-group membership, varying from harmless rivalries to hatred to violent conflict (Hogg 2003). From this theoretical point of view, the process of accentuating the boundaries between in-groups and out-groups enhances self-esteem, particularly under conditions demanding clarity of in-group and out-group boundaries such as times of conflict (Hogg 1995). Self-esteem and mortality threats Theory and research consistently indicate that individuals act to bolster important social identities when their sense of mortality is threatened and that these individuals interpret the world in ways that do indeed bolster self-esteem. The evidence suggests that individuals whose sense of mortality is threatened are more likely to engage in important activities that will bolster self-esteem. For example, when faced with indirect mortality threats, Israeli soldiers whose self-esteem is predicated on their vehicle-driving ability are more likely to become involved in risky driving (Pyszczynski et al. 2003). When the source of esteem is relatively permanent (as in the case of religion, ethnicity, and national identity) (see Freeman 2001, 2003), individuals are expected to engage in activities that reinforce self-esteem (Pyszczynski et al. 2003). Research shows that wars, especially the day-to-day disruptions of wars (e.g. electricity outages, food shortages), are just as potent in raising anxiety about the prospect of one’s death as are the more horrific (e.g. forced family migration or death of a family member) conflict-related experiences (Abdel-Khalek 2004; Roshdieh et al. 1998–99; Thabet et al. 2002). As a result, the dayto-day disruptions caused by war may lead individuals to strive for higher self-esteem. Psychological reactions to conflict-related events In contrast, research on children in war-torn countries provides a consistent picture. The more traumatic experiences related to conflict that children and adolescents witness or experience, the more likely they are to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to have a strong grief reaction, or to feel depressed. This general pattern of reactions appears to hold cross-nationally (see Shaw 2003). The results are the most consistent for PTSD and grief, and weaker for depressed mood. Although depressed mood is a common reaction to conflict-related events, some studies fail to find increased levels among children and adolescents (e.g. Begovac et al. 2004; Carballo et al. 2004; Smith et al. 2002). The less common events tend to be more traumatic. Children might be at home when soldiers raid their neighborhood; they might inhale tear gas; they could be forced to flee from their homes (becoming either internally displaced or refugees); they could witness the beating of a friend or family member, fear for their own lives, or know of someone who is killed; they might see dead bodies or body parts or witness the death of a friend or family member. These types of experiences predict post-traumatic stress reactions well. In contrast, the less horrific experiences of war (e.g. witnessing someone being detained) do not predict post-traumatic stress or other outcomes, such as behavior problems or 175
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depression, so strongly (see Dyregrov et al. 2002; Mollica et al. 1997; Munczek and Tuber 1998; Paardekooper et al. 1999; Sack et al. 1999; Smith et al. 2002; Thabet and Vostanis 1999). Very little research has examined the self-esteem either of children or of adolescents directly threatened by conflict. The results of this research are mixed. Some researchers find little relationship of self-image to war-related experiences (e.g. Begovac et al. 2004). Other studies suggest that children and adolescents who witness traumatic war-related events react with lower levels of self-esteem (Elbedour 1998; Qouta et al. 2001). Some research examining self-esteem suggests that the less traumatic war-related events (e.g. witnessing people shooting guns) do not affect self-esteem. The lack of impact for less horrific conflict-related events raises the question: how will individuals react to a context of war (rather than to direct conflict-related events), a context that may raise the specter of death without directly threatening it? Social Identity Theory leads us to expect, especially during times of conflict, higher levels of self-esteem for members of high-status groups; theory about indirect mortality threats leads us to expect higher self-esteem in the face of threats to valued social identities (similar to Social Identity Theory). In contrast, research on war-related traumatic events leads to the contrasting, although weak, expectation of lower self-esteem.
Arab adolescence and adolescents in Iraq The available English-language literature suggests that Arab adolescents and Iraqi adolescents, in particular, probably react to the threats of war with heightened self-esteem. In general, Arab societies stress a patrilineal and collective sense of identity focused around national-ethnic identities (see Oyserman 1993). The group is the focus, providing a guarantee of protection and an emphasis on avoiding all hints of weakness. When called upon, one is expected to sacrifice for the “dignity” or “honor” of the group (AlKrenawi et al. 2001; Oyserman 1993). Research documenting the prominent national identities of Iraqi adolescents confirms this portrayal. Iraqi adolescents identified with their country (at a time when Iraq was not at war) more strongly than a comparison Arab country at war. In addition, identification was at least as high as in two comparison Anglo countries regardless of whether they were at war or not (Hosin and Cairns 1984). Recent results for Iraqi adults support these conclusions, finding high levels of national pride; similarly, nearly all Iraqi adults indicate that faith is very important in their lives (Inglehart et al. 2006). Notably, these identifications are unlikely to be relinquished easily; they are just the sorts of identities that one would expect Iraqi adolescents to defend. Baghdad, summer of 2004 There is no doubt that civilian mortality increased after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Estimates indicate that the risk of mortality (excluding Fallujah) increased by about 50 percent after the invasion, with violence (rather than disease or accidents) becoming the major cause (Roberts et al. 2004). The civilian death rate in Iraq from overall violence was 267 per 100,000 (calculated from Roberts et al. 2004, Table 2). In Baghdad, the mortality among civilians (overwhelmingly adult men) at about the time of our study appears to have been between 88 and 102 per 100,000 per year (based on information reported in Roberts et 176
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al. 2004; Iraq Body Count 2005). This mortality is higher than, but consistent with, high regional mortality related to war in the Middle East (Reza et al. 2001). Adolescents in Baghdad, no doubt, were aware of the increase in violent deaths. Subsequent checks of available (English) news reports clearly revealed that violent activities (ranging from large explosions, to violent battles, to deaths of civilians) occurred during June and July of 2004 in the neighborhoods where our survey was administered. US and coalition forces engaged in combat operations during the summer of 2004 (Chiarelli and Michaelis 2005), with 36 US soldiers in Baghdad being killed during May, June, and July (Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 2005). Assuming that the number of casualties was proportional to the number of deaths, over 380 US soldiers would have been wounded in Baghdad during those 3 months (authors’ calculation based on statistics from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count 2005). In addition to the deaths of coalition forces, adolescents in Iraq would doubtless have been aware of the much higher post-invasion civilian homicide rates in Baghdad (see Roberts et al. 2004). Most of the Iraqi population was dependent on the government for food; power, water, and sewage facilities were severely degraded by sanctions (Physicians for Human Rights 2003), the kind of disruptions that raise anxiety about death. These foundations of everyday life were further degraded by the war in Iraq, with the electricity-generating system suffering direct war damage, as well as being looted for valuable metals (see Chiarelli and Michaelis 2005; MedAct 2004). During the summer of 2004, day-to-day life was disrupted by the ongoing conflict, with most of the population seemingly apprehensive about being out in public, and waiting to see the outcome before deciding whom to support (Chiarelli and Michaelis 2005). Despite the efforts of the US-led Task Force in Baghdad in 2004, which sought to balance combat engagements with the restoration of essential services such as water and electricity (Chiarelli and Michaelis 2005), nearly half of civilians in Iraq strongly agreed that “in Iraq these days life is unpredictable and dangerous” (Inglehart et al. 2006). Given the day-to-day disruptions and continued random and sporadic violence increasing in Iraq and Baghdad, how did Iraqi adolescents fare?
Methods Data collection During the summer of 2004 one of the authors (Ender), on the faculty at the US Military Academy at West Point, was working in Iraq under the auspices of the US Army, and recommended a study focused on Iraqi adolescents. Contractors identified an Iraqi interview team that was directed by professional Iraqi survey researchers in Baghdad. The Iraqi researchers were briefed concerning informed consent practices and concerns, and they assured us that equivalent Iraqi informed-consent procedures would be followed. Given the dangerous political context for individuals who worked with the US forces, respondents and parents were informed only that the survey researchers were affiliated with the research center and with Baghdad University (which they were); no other sponsorship or affiliation information was provided. Professional Iraqi survey teams (typically one man and one woman) conducted 1,000 interviews, using a structured questionnaire. Iraqi survey researchers first purposively selected 10 Baghdad neighborhoods. Within these neighborhoods, the researchers 177
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randomly selected households based on a sample frame typically used in Iraq. Any randomly selected adolescent (male or female) was eligible. Only one adolescent per household was interviewed. According to the Iraq survey team leader, female adolescents are underrepresented because of the cultural reluctance of parents to allow their daughters to talk with strangers. Consistent with concerns about protecting human subjects, the Iraqi researchers did not record which individuals were from which neighborhood. Interviews were conducted in the adolescent’s home, requiring the verbal consent of an adult for entry, and the (verbal) assent of a parent and the adolescent who was interviewed. Adolescents were free not to answer specific questions or not to take part. Characteristics of the sample Adolescents were asked their age on their last birthday (ranging from 12 to 17 years at the time of the interview), their gender (70.5 percent male; 29.5 percent female), and their ethnicity (Arabs 88.9 percent; ethnic minorities 11.1 percent). Adolescents were also asked about their faith (Sunni Islam 36.3 percent; Shi’a Islam 57.5 percent; Christian 6.0 percent; other faiths 0.2 percent). Although nearly all of the Muslims are Arabs (91 percent), only slightly more than half (55 percent) of the Christians (and others) are Arabs. The rest are members of ethnic minorities (e.g. Kurds, Turkmen). We identify six categories of ethnoreligious background (e.g. Arab-Sunni 31.5 percent; Arab-Shi’a 54.0 percent; Arab-Christian 3.4 percent; Minority-Sunni 4.8 percent; Minority-Shi’a 3.5 percent; and Minority-Christian 2.8 percent), using dummy variables. Given Baghdad’s central location in Iraq (near the predominantly Sunni areas and away from predominantly Shi’a and Kurdish areas), the higher representation for Sunni Arabs and lower representation for Shi’a Arabs and Sunni Kurds in this sample compared with Iraq as a whole is not surprising (see ReliefWeb 2006 for comparison statistics for Iraq). The measures Self-esteem The adolescents were asked six questions from the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg 1986), each having four possible responses, ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Four of the items had a positive wording. Two of them had negative wordings. The six items we used comprise a commonly used short version of the 10-item scale (see Mahaffy 2004). Factor analyses with oblique rotation indicated two clear factors. The first contained only the positively worded items (reliability = .74). Positively worded items are coded so that a high value indicates high self-esteem. We refer to this dimension of self-esteem as “self-regard.” The second contained the negatively worded items. Perceived threat Each adolescent was asked five questions about safety: “How would you rate … ” “ … your personal safety,” “ … the safety of your family,” “ … the safety of your neighborhood,” “ … the safety of Baghdad,” and “ … the safety of Iraq.” Each item was rated on a 4-point scale from “poor” to “excellent.” Factor analysis identified two distinct but correlated factors. The first three items (self, family, and neighborhood) clustered together (reliability = .85). The two remaining items (Baghdad and Iraq) formed a separate 178
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cluster (reliability = .85).We reverse-coded the items and labeled the respective factors “family threat” and “national threat.” In subsequent analyses of self-esteem, only national threat (and not neighborhood threat) was found to be important. Attitudes, issues, and concerns Adolescents were asked about the importance of their faith (very important; somewhat important; a little important; or not important). Six adolescents did not respond to this question. The variable is coded so that high values indicate high levels of importance. Adolescents were also asked two questions to determine psychologically central life areas: “What is the most important thing in your life?” (family; god; friends; good job; football [soccer]; my country; or other), and “What is the most important issue for your country?” (peace; the multinational force leaving Iraq; jobs; or democracy).
Results Religion is, on average, quite important to these adolescents, with the average score above a 3 on a 4-point scale. The national issues most often indicated as important are: the multinational force leaving Iraq (41.7 percent), peace (28.6 percent), and security (19.6 percent), with democracy (5.3 percent) and jobs (4.0 percent) a distant fourth and fifth. The most important personal concerns are family (46.5 percent), country (25.7 percent), and a good job (15.1 percent), in that order. Concern about friends (5.2 percent) and sports (soccer) (3.9 percent) were not chosen often. Overall, adolescents have reasonably high levels of self-regard (13.41 of a maximum of 16), as high as the selfregard of adolescents in other primarily Arab societies (e.g. for comparable Palestinian adolescents, see Abu-Rayya 2005; Dwairy 2004). In contrast, these adolescents from Baghdad in the summer of 2004 felt clearly threatened, with high scores for “national threat” (4.85 out of 6). We begin by discussing the importance of faith by ethnicity, religion, and gender. In addition, we mention the relationship between the social backgrounds of the Baghdad adolescents and the issues facing their country that they perceive to be the most important, as well as their most important personal concerns. One’s religious faith is rated generally as at least “somewhat important” by all groups (averaging at least a 3.0 on a 1–4 scale), with Arab (p .001) and female (p .01) adolescents rating their faith as somewhat more important than others. Ethnicity, religion, and gender affect how Iraqi adolescents view the issues facing their country and themselves. Adolescents from different ethnic backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, and of different genders selected different issues as the most important. When we look across the background variables, we see a consistent pattern to which issues these adolescents chose. In contrast to members of majority groups, members of minority status groups (e.g. Kurds and other ethnic minorities, Christians, and females) consistently chose peace as the most important issue facing Iraq (averaging about 39 percent), with the majority groups averaging about 12 percent points lower. Members of minority statuses (ethnic minorities and non-Muslims) chose democracy at roughly twice the rate (about 10 percent) of members of the corresponding majority status groups (about 5 percent). Differences across statuses are statistically significant: p .001 for ethnicity; p .05 for religion; and p .01 for gender. 179
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In terms of personal concerns, a similar pattern emerges. All groups choose “family” as the most important personal concern (averaging more than 49 percent). However, members of minority status groups tended to choose family slightly more often (slightly more than half of non-Muslims versus slightly more than 45 percent of Muslims; 65 percent of females versus 39 percent of males). Differences across statuses are statistically significant: p .001 for ethnicity, for religion, and for gender. Table 15.1 presents the correlations among the measures of perceived threat and the measures of self-esteem, as well as the correlations among the social background, issue orientations, and attitudes (on the one hand), and perceived threat and self-esteem (on the other). The top two lines of the table contain the correlations of the two measures of perceived threat with self-regard and self-derogation. Contrary to what one would expect based on the reactions of children to war-related events, but consistent with expectations based both on Social Identity Theory and on reactions to mortality threats, the individuals who indicate the highest levels of “national threat” reported Table 15.1 Correlations of threat and self-esteem with social statuses, faith importance, national issues, and personal concerns
Perceived threat
Self-esteem
National
Family
Regard
Derogation
National threat Family threat Age Gender (male = 1)
– +.51* +.12* +.06
+.51* – +.09 +.09
+.22* +.09 +.11* +.12*
–.13* +.01 –.00 +.06
Ethnic-religious group: Arab Sunni Arab Shi’a Arab Christian Minority Sunni Minority Shi’a Minority Christian Faith important?
+.05 +.10** –.03 –.12** –.23** .00 +.05
+.08** –.01 –.06 .00 –.11** –.02 +.03
+.05 +.16** –.08* –.17** –.13** –.16** +.16*
–.06 –.10** +.10** +.16** +.08** +.05 –.10*
+.11*
+.06
+.07
–.08
+.02 –.03 –.13* –.12*
+.01 +.02 –.12* –.07
–.09 +.11* –.11* –.08
+.00 +.02 +.10 +.07
–.07 +.20* +.02 –.16* –.14*
–.16* +.29* –.00 –.09 –.10*
–.12* +.12* +.12* –.08 –.08
–.08 –.03 +.03 +.10* +.09
National issuea: Multinational force out Peace Security Democracy Jobs Personal concerna: Family Country Good job Friends Soccer (football)
*p < .001; n = 1,000 except for faith important n = 994. Correlations with dummy variables for missing data are omitted. None of these omitted correlations was significant. *p = .05, **p = .01.
a
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the highest levels of self-regard and the lowest levels of self-derogation. Perceived “family threat” was not significantly related either to self-regard or to self-derogation. Four patterns of correlations between social background (i.e. age, gender, and ethnoreligious group), importance of faith, national issues, and personal concerns (on the one hand), with the measures of perceived threat and self-esteem (on the other hand) are evident. First, background, faith, national issues, and personal concerns are more consistently and strongly related to national threat than to family threat (9 of 17 versus 6 of 17 correlations are significant). Second, these variables are more strongly and consistently related to self-regard than self-derogation (11 of 17 correlations versus 6 of 17 correlations are significant). Third, consistent with Social Identity Theory, individuals in favored statuses (older, male, Arab Muslims [Sunni and Shi’a]), tend to feel more threatened and have higher levels of self-esteem (higher self-regard and lower self-derogation). In contrast, individuals with a minority religious (i.e. Christian) or a minority ethnic identity tend to feel less threatened, and have lower levels of self-esteem (lower self-regard and higher self-derogation.) Fourth, those for whom faith is more important report higher self-regard and lower self-derogation. In general, majority status groups (whether ethnoreligious or gender) feel more threatened and have higher self-esteem. In addition, issues and concerns correlate with measures of perceived threat and self-esteem. Given this pattern of results, the positive correlations between threat to the nation and measures of self-esteem (at the top of Table 15.1) might be artifacts arising strictly from differences in social background, positions on national issues, and personal concerns. The analyses presented in Table 15.2 address this concern. In these analyses, we examine the relationship between perceived threat to Iraq and self-regard. The top line in Table 15.2 presents the standardized regression coefficient between self-regard and perceived national threat. The first model in Table 15.2 presents the same bivariate relationship between perceived national threat and self-regard that we presented in Table 15.1. This regression coefficient serves as the baseline against which we compare the partial regression coefficient presented in model 2, which controls for age, gender, membership in one’s ethnoreligious group, and the importance of one’s faith. We turn first to the relationship between national threat and self-regard. As can be seen clearly when we compare model 1 with model 2, the introduction of control variables reduces the magnitude of the unstandardized relationship between self-regard and national threat by about 30 percent (from .294 to .208); this change is statistically significant (p .001). Age, gender, ethnoreligious group membership, and the importance of faith all are significantly related to self-regard. Consistent with expectations, older adolescents and males have higher levels of self-regard; members of ethnic and religious minorities have lower levels of self-esteem. The more important one’s faith the higher one’s self-regard. In analyses not shown, controlling for all issues and concerns variables reduces the magnitude of the relationship (from .208 to .170; p .001). Of the concerns and issues, concern about friends and football and about democracy and peace are all associated with lower self-regard. However, the relationship between perceived national threat and self-regard remains statistically significant. We performed a parallel analysis considering the relationship between national threat and self-derogation (not shown). Although the regression coefficients are weaker, the general patterns of results are the same for self-derogation as for self-regard. 181
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Table 15.2 Multiple regression of self-regard on threat to nation, demographic background, importance of faith, personal issues, and national issues (standardized coefficients, unstandardized coefficients, and significance levels; n = 994 for all models)
Model 1 Threat to nationb Age
.220 .294*** –
Gender (male = 1)
–
Ethnic-religious group: Arab Shi’a
–
Arab Christian
–
Minority Sunni
–
Minority Shi’a
–
Minority Christian
–
Faith important?
–
r2 change Total r2
.048*** .048
Model 2a .156 .208*** .086 .109** .082 .365** .039 .160 –.066 –.746* –.149 –1.420*** –.084 –.930** –.156 –1.924*** .140 .321*** .101*** .149
a
The set of ethnic-religious groups and importance of faith are each significant (p < .001). Tests for the significance of the change in the size of regression coefficients (Clogg et al. 1995) show that controlling for age, gender, ethnic-religious group, and importance of faith significantly reduces the coefficient for “Threat to nation” (model 2 versus model 1). * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. A* *p = .05, **p = .01, ***p = .001. b
Discussion and conclusions This study provides a unique look at the situation of adolescents in Iraq’s capital city, Baghdad, during the summer of 2004. At that time, Baghdad, and Iraq, had been in a state of war for over a year. Mostly Western troops had occupied the city (and country) and were focused on combat and reconstruction missions; most of the population was living in a state of disequilibrium (Chiarelli and Michaelis 2005; Inglehart et al. 2006); daily life and the institutions that support it were disrupted; violent conflict was common in the neighborhoods where our adolescents live. Despite these obvious threats to their sense of security, Iraqi adolescents appeared to be coping fairly well; their self-esteem was comparable with that of Palestinian young people. The more detailed patterning of self-regard and self-derogation was consistent with the idea that these adolescents were maintaining their sense of self in the face of threats to central aspects of social identity, rather than reacting to threats to their own (or their family’s or friend’s) immediate safety. Specifically, Iraqi adolescents’ self-esteem was significantly and persistently related to the sense that their country was threatened, with those who felt that their country was threatened reporting the highest levels of self-regard and lowest 182
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levels of self-derogation. In contrast, a perceived threat to one’s self, one’s family, and one’s neighborhood did not correlate with self-regard. Adolescents from high-status demographic backgrounds (older, male, Arab, Muslim [Sunni and Shi’a]) generally reported higher levels of self-esteem and higher levels of perceived threat. Self-esteem is higher for those whose faith is more important. Selfesteem and perceived threat were also related to five important personal concerns and four important national issues. The relationship between self-regard and perceived threat persisted (although reduced in strength) in the face of controls for demographic background, importance of faith, national issue orientations, and personal concerns. Our interpretation of the results is tied not only to the pattern of significant results just described, but also to the pattern of non-results involving “family threat.” If adolescents were responding to immediate threats to their local environment, to their family or to themselves, we would expect to see that threats to one’s family would be significantly related to lower levels of self-regard, higher level of self-derogation, or both. That, however, is not the case. Instead, threats to family are only weakly and not significantly related to either measure of self-esteem. Similarly, the social status variables and issue variables correlate less strongly with threats to family than they do with threats to the nation. This pattern of results clearly highlights our interpretation of our findings as not involving a response to direct exposure to conflict, but instead to threats to key social sources of identity. That the basic relationship between threat to the nation and self-regard remains significant after controlling for social statuses, importance of faith, and different national issues, and personal concerns suggests that the results are not merely a result of social stratification processes and their associated attitudes, as suggested by Social Identity Theory. These results, particularly the positive correlation between perceived national threat and self-regard, are not what one would expect based on research about conflict-related trauma. In the presence of conflict-related trauma one generally observes lower levels of psychological well-being (e.g. PTSD, grief reactions), and sometimes lower self-esteem. Our results are, however, consistent with a body of theory and research that predicts selfesteem striving and higher self-esteem among individuals who face indirect threats to central components of their social identities (rather than directly facing traumatic warrelated events). In other words, in a situation in which we observe a broad social context involving the presence of foreign forces (a clear violation of Muslim principles) combined with general violence throughout Baghdad and Iraq, we also observe a heightened sense of self, at least to the extent that one’s self is tied to one’s nation. This relationship persists despite controls for social background, the importance of one’s faith, and the selection of different important national issues and personal concerns. This study is, of course, not without its limitations. The data are drawn from a crosssectional random sample of 1,000 adolescents in Baghdad, which represents a “snapshot” taken at the beginning of a rapidly deteriorating situation. As a result, we are unable to assess change. In addition, the data do not include measures of war-related traumatic experiences, fear of death, or additional outcome measures (e.g. PTSD). Also, although the interviewers selected respondents at random from purposively selected neighborhoods, females are underrepresented in the sample. Our sample size allows us to detect small effects as statistically significant; we have, however, focused primarily on the broad pattern of results. The strengths of the study are, however, important to consider. Little is known about adolescents’ reactions to war. What we do know is based on adolescents who have grown up with war as children, rather than facing war as a new threat in adolescence. 183
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Our study provides an examination of adolescents who began living with war as adolescents (rather than as children), but who probably had not witnessed the horrific war-related events that most previous research subjects had. Future research should attempt, when possible, to maintain the ability to field followup studies so that adolescents’ adaptation can be tracked as they move into early adulthood. Are there more specific aspects of the adolescent self-concept that are affected by conflict and war? What aspects of war and conflict are the most potent in shaping selfconcept? Are specific subgroups of adolescents adversely affected? Which adolescents flourish under conditions of war and conflict? Do international conflicts strengthen an overall sense of national identity; do they strengthen subgroup identities? Are there specific conditions under which national identities are strengthened and subgroup identities subordinated? What are the long-term implications for international relations as this cohort of adolescents come of age in the new Iraq? In an increasingly globalized world, in which conflict (international and civil) appears endemic, answers to such questions have important implications for sociology and social psychology, as well as for the prospects for peace and reconciliation in post-war countries.
Note This chapter was adapted from: Carlton-Ford, S., Ender, M.G., Tabatabai, A. (2008) “Iraqi adolescents: self-regard, self-derogation, perceived threat in war,” Journal of Adolescence, 31: 53–75.
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Part III The war back home: the social construction of war, its heroes, and its enemies
16 Globalization and the invasion of Iraq State power and the enforcement of neoliberalism Daniel Egan
One of the unintended, long-term casualties of the US invasion of Iraq may be the ideology of globalization that presents global capitalism as an inevitable process that is beyond the control of states. The war revealed one of the principal contradictions of capitalism: the contradiction between the global scope of capitalist economic forces and the more spatially and politically limited boundaries of the nation-state. Calls from US foreign policy officials and intellectuals for a new American imperialism, in which no threats to US power will be tolerated (Foster 2003; Research Unit for Political Economy 2003), seem to violate the basic tenets of globalization, with their emphasis on US political-military might. After all, if globalization is truly an inevitable and irreversible process emerging from the logic of markets, a process that necessarily brings the benefits of prosperity and democracy to all, what need is there for coercive state power to impose this system? The contemporary politics of global capitalism are defined by neoliberalism: market liberalization, state deregulation, and privatization (Tabb 2001; Teeple 2000). All nonmarket forces that might challenge the hegemony of the market risk being either marginalized or absorbed through commodification. At the same time, subordinate social forces are disciplined by legal restrictions on union activity, punitive reductions in social welfare provision, and the extension of institutional social control. In addition to these concrete policies, an essential component of neoliberalism is the ideological argument that capitalist globalization is an inevitable process that operates independently of human agency (Steger 2002). One important expression of this ideological argument is the suggestion that global capitalism has led to the supersession of the nation-state. The political authority of the nation-state is seen as inadequate to limit the transnational movement of capital, and so the best that state officials can do is make their national territories more competitive to attract hypermobile capital (Friedman 1999). Peripheral regions have, of course, always been subordinated to the needs of capital; thus, the disciplinary power of the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment policies or the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) liberalization of trade rules are contemporary expressions of a centuries-long pattern of capitalist development. What is new, it is argued, is that core regions have increasingly been subjected to the same disciplinary power. Mainstream 189
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claims of political powerlessness have been rightly criticized as disingenuous (Hirst and Thompson 1996; Weiss 1998). Core states have served as agents of the internationalization of capital, not its passive victims. A consistent feature of mainstream political debate, the argument that the nation-state has been increasingly marginalized by global capitalism, has also found expression in more critical social science circles. Teeple (2000), for example, argues that neoliberal policies are “the last national policies to be promulgated, the final act of the independent nation-state” (81). A post-Fordist system of production has simultaneously dispersed and integrated production globally, accompanied by the rise of “a relatively coherent multiplicity of supranational agencies and organizations, dominated by the US state, that oversee the broad reaches of the global economy in the interests of corporate private property” (157). Sklair, in his outline of global systems theory, makes a similar argument. Global systems theory offers “a decisive break with state-centrism” by examining transnational practices, “practices that cross state borders, but do not originate with state agencies or actors” at three interrelated levels. Political transnational practices are institutionalized in a transnational capitalist class consisting of “globalizing bureaucrats, politicians, and professionals” (2001: 4, 16; 2002: 10); economic transnational practices are institutionalized in transnational corporations, which provide the material base for the transnational capitalist class; and cultural/ideological transnational practices are institutionalized in the dominance of consumerism as a value system. Hardt and Negri argue that the globalization of markets and production has been accompanied by a transformation of political power. The power of nation-states, which can no longer regulate global economic and cultural flows, has been replaced by a network of national and supranational institutions referred to as “Empire.” They define this new form of global sovereignty, as “a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanded frontiers” (2000: xii). Proponents of transnational historical materialism, grounded in the Gramscian theory of hegemony, have made perhaps the most important contribution to this discussion. Gramsci argued that the dominance of the ruling class is not simply based on economic power or political-military coercion, but is also a function of its ability to provide cultural and moral leadership (1971: 57–58). In this context, a class is hegemonic to the extent that it offers an integrated system of values and beliefs that support the established social order and which project a particular set of class interests as the general interest. Hegemonic power is not imposed on subordinates, but, instead, is a negotiated process. Within the dominant coalition of capital, state managers, and organic intellectuals and in their relations with subordinate social forces, dominant groups must negotiate with subordinate groups in order to secure the latter’s consent to their rule. This process of negotiation, which Gramsci referred to as trasformismo or “passive revolution,” can make some accommodation to the economic interests of subordinate groups and may even appropriate their symbols and discourse, but will not question fundamental social relations (Boggs 1976; Showstack Sassoon 1987). Transnational historical materialists argue that a hegemonic bloc of transnational capital, political officials from core capitalist states and multilateral economic institutions, and global intellectuals has emerged and is exercising power through its construction of a consensus for capitalist globalization. An important part of this hegemonic power has been the fundamental reorientation of the nation-state toward supporting global rather than national capital accumulation, a process that Cox (1987, 1996) refers to as the internationalization of the state. Cox explains that this is defined by the conversion of the 190
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state “into an agency for adjusting national economic practices and policies to the perceived exigencies of the global economy” (1996: 302). The nation-state now serves to facilitate global capital accumulation as well as insulate new supranational economic institutions from democratic accountability from below. It helps to secure a generalized acceptance of globalization as a “common-sense” description of an uncontrollable, inevitable, and, ultimately, desirable process. Because hegemony is a negotiated process in which the consent of subordinate social forces is essential, the ideology of globalization plays an important role in the internationalized state’s efforts to win the consent of its population to neoliberal policies. The continued US war in Iraq provides an opportunity to reevaluate these arguments. These critical theories of global capitalism overstate the absorption of the nation-state into the processes of transnational capital; national political structures and cultures and the needs of national capitals continue to play a major role in global capitalism. By emphasizing the hegemonic nature of neoliberalism, these theories overlook the significance of nation-state militarism in shaping the contours of global capitalism.
Militarism and capitalism Despite the fact that capitalism, in contrast to earlier modes of production, is defined by the apparently non-coercive nature of exploitation (Marx 1967), militarism and war have played a major role in the development of capitalism since its origins. Coercive state power, directed within the state’s territory against the peasantry to force them off the land and compel them to serve as “free labor,” and outside the state’s territory in the form of forcible extraction of resources from peripheral regions, has been instrumental in the process of primitive accumulation. Marx’s writings on Ireland, India, and China all address how British military power was used to subjugate the indigenous population and ensure that other potential competitors were blocked from having access to colonial markets (Marx and Engels 1972). Lenin’s analysis of imperialism suggested that war between the major colonial powers was an inevitable result of the drive for capital to become more concentrated and centralized (Lenin 1939). War provided the means to defend and extend a state’s role as a colonial power, thereby ensuring access to cheap labor and natural resources, as well as markets for the core state’s manufactured goods. Lenin also pointed to how the resulting “super-profits” could be used “to bribe the labor leaders and the upper stratum of the labor aristocracy” (1939: 13); by ensuring that segments of the working class would benefit from colonialism, the ruling class could be more confident in securing popular support for its military policies. Rosa Luxemburg (like Marx, Engels, and Lenin) examined the role that war plays in primitive accumulation, colonialism, and imperialism; she saw war itself as a form of capital accumulation: “[f]rom the purely economic point of view, it is a pre-eminent means for the realization of surplus value” (1968: 454). In addition, war provides new opportunities for accumulation. Militarism can be seen as a form of indirect taxation on the working class that, by reducing its standard of living, provides resources that can be directed toward the production of military goods and services; this reduced standard of living, in turn, ensures the existence of sufficient labor power for the military. Baran and Sweezy (1966) elaborated further on Luxemburg’s argument, stating that militarism is one way in which economic surplus can be absorbed, thereby reducing the severity of capitalist crises resulting from underinvestment. 191
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Critical theories that emphasize the consensual nature of neoliberalism have marginalized the central role that coercion and militarism have played in the history of capitalism. An appreciation for the significance of militarism for capital accumulation leads to a renewed focus on the major role that the nation-state has and continues to have in global capitalism as a facilitator for and an obstacle to capital accumulation. The US war on Iraq provides a vivid illustration of this.
Iraq and neoliberalism With its emphasis on the importance of the state’s coercive power, the US invasion of Iraq reflects the inability of neoliberalism to suppress intercapitalist rivalry and secure a global consensus for the continued expansion of capital. Armstrong (2002), in his analysis of the Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) document prepared in 1992 during the first Bush administration, which has served as the foreign policy blueprint for the current administration, writes that this document: stated that the “first objective” of US defense strategy was “to prevent the reemergence of a new rival.” Achieving this objective required that the United States “prevent any hostile power from dominating a region” of strategic significance. America’s new mission would be to convince allies and enemies alike “that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.” (Armstrong 2002: 78) With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US remains the sole military superpower. DPG sought to capitalize on this monopoly by arguing for “a ‘US-led system of collective security’ that implicitly precluded the need for rearmament of any kind by countries such as Germany and Japan” (79). This assertion of the need for unchallengeable US power is reflected in more recent policy documents. The report Rebuilding America’s Defenses prepared by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 2000 and reflecting the views of the “new imperialists” in the Bush administration (Foster 2003), states: At present, the US faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible. … America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces. (PNAC 2000: i-iv) To achieve this goal, the US must ensure that it can fight multiple wars simultaneously, and, even more interesting, that potential competitors are tightly constrained by US-led institutions. Europe, for example, must not be allowed to develop a military identity outside NATO, where the US can continue to play a leading role in European foreign policy matters. US bases must be maintained in Japan if the US is to remain “the guarantor of security in Northeast Asia”; increasing the US military presence in East Asia is the key to coping with the rise of China to great-power status (PNAC 18–19). Finally: 192
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For US armed forces to continue to assert military preeminence, control of space – defined by Space Command as “the ability to assure access to space, freedom of operations w/in the space medium, and an ability to deny others the use of space” – must be an essential element of our military strategy. (PNAC 2000: 55) To argue for the necessity to “deny others the use of space” not only means preventing military attack from space, but also potentially placing constraints on other countries’ commercial space programs. The most recent statement of these ideas, and the one that is currently driving US political-military policy, is the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published in September 2002 (White House 2002). The report refers to “the possible renewal of great power competition” (26), and then calls on a sufficiently strong US military to “dissuade future military competition. … Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the US” (29–30). One way in which the Strategy foresees this is through US support for a European Union foreign policy and military identity and a commitment “to ensure that these developments work with NATO” (26). NATO is clearly seen as being led by the US, and the Strategy states that “[t]he alliance must be able to act wherever our interests are threatened” (25). Other potential competitors, such as Russia, India, and China, are to be contained by a commitment to “our common principles” (28), which include opposition to “terrorism” and support for free markets. The latter point is especially important, as it makes explicit the connection between military and economic policy. The goal of US policy is to “promote economic growth and economic freedom beyond America’s borders.” This means “pro-growth legal and regulatory policies,” lower taxes, “strong financial systems,” “sound fiscal policies to support business activity,” and the expansion of free trade by strengthening the WTO and creating regional and bilateral free trade agreements (17). These documents provide the intellectual and political foundation for the US invasion of Iraq. They suggest that, although the direct object of US military power was Iraq, the advanced capitalist competitors of the US as well as countries likely to emerge as competitors in the near future were targets of a different kind. Critics of the war who said the war was about oil are correct, but less so in terms of US oil-consumption needs. Iraq is one of the world’s major sources of oil, with proven reserves that are second only to those of Saudi Arabia (Klare 2001: 55). Given the central role that oil plays not only in economic growth as a source of energy and as an input for manufacturing but also in maintaining a large military, and with estimates that global oil-consumption needs will increase by more than half between 1997 and 2020 (56), whoever exercises dominance in the region will necessarily exercise dominance globally: “What better way for the US to ward off that competition and secure its own hegemonic position than to control the price, conditions, and distribution of the key economic resource upon which those competitors rely?” (Harvey 2003: 25). Although this resource provided the deep structural foundation for the war, it, more than a commitment to the UN or to principles of international law, was simultaneously the driving force behind the opposition of other major states to the US invasion. During the 1990s, Iraq had signed contracts with French, Russian, Chinese, and Italian companies to develop Iraqi oil fields (Research Unit for Political Economy 2003: 50). With the US occupation of Iraq and the granting of contracts to major US corporations such as 193
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Halliburton and Bechtel for the reconstruction of Iraq, these pre-war contracts were suspended. The continued opposition by France, Germany, and Russia in the UN to unilateral military action by the US is thus strong evidence of the strength and persistence of intercapitalist rivalry. While intercapitalist rivalry calls into question the omnipotence of neoliberal consensus from above, neoliberalism has been increasingly challenged from below. Popular mobilizations against the institutions of global capitalism helped derail the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment and have disrupted meetings of the WTO, the World Economic Forum, and other multilateral institutions. Organized by Brazil, a coalition of 22 countries opposed US proposals for expanding liberalization, leading to the collapse of talks at the 2003 WTO meeting in Cancún. The World Social Forum has grown into an important space for the development of global opposition to neoliberalism, and Venezuela has joined Cuba in making the challenge to global capitalism a central feature of its system. It is in this context that efforts by the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to remake Iraq’s economy along neoliberal lines must be understood. Where neoliberalism has not succeeded through political or economic means, the US appears to be willing to impose it by force. The imposition of neoliberalism on a conquered Iraq was a central element of elite policy discussions leading up to the war (Center for Strategic and International Studies 2003; Cohen and O’Driscoll 2003; Council on Foreign Relations 2003). Under the leadership of the Ba’ath Party, Iraq’s constitution promoted a statist version of socialism through state planning, nationalization of natural resources, state-owned industries in major economic sectors, and limits on the ownership of private property. In addition, the state subsidized the prices of basic necessities, provided free education and health care, and offered extensive employment guarantees to workers (al-Khalil 1989). The Ba’ath Party saw the Soviet Union and its state socialist system as a development model for Iraq, but the Ba’ath’s commitment to socialism existed within the context of its pan-Arab nationalism; resident citizens of Arab countries were granted the same rights as Iraqis to operate or own private businesses. To dismantle this statist economic system, the CPA enacted orders seizing all public property, suspending all tariffs and trade restrictions except a short-term 5 percent surcharge for reconstruction, limiting individual and corporate income taxes to 15 percent, permitting complete foreign ownership (with full remittance of profits) of all sectors except natural resources, liberalizing securities markets, creating strong protections for intellectual property, permitting foreign banks to purchase up to 100 percent of local banks, and weakening existing labor protections. This is a form of “shock therapy” consistent with that which has proceeded, with disastrous effect, in Russia and with the structural adjustment programs that have ravaged economies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It seems clear that Iraq is to serve as a lesson for the global South as well as the rest of the capitalist core of the determination of the US to ensure the success of a US-dominated neoliberalism on a world scale.
Reconsidering transnational historical materialism The argument that the nation-state is undergoing a fundamental reorientation in the interests of transnational capital is revealed by the US war on Iraq to be premature at best. I would go further than this and argue that the war reinforces the centrality of the nation-state in global capitalism. Calls for a renewed patriotism and “support” for US 194
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troops in Iraq (as well as in Afghanistan), as well as the oft-cited theme of “homeland security,” all evoke the significance of the nation-state for domestic political forces. At the same time, efforts by the US to unilaterally impose its will on Iraq as well as other major competing states reflect the significance of nation-state power in international politics. National political structures and political cultures, as well as direct economic interests, explain the continued opposition of France, Germany, and Russia to US policy in Iraq. The war thus provides further evidence of the central role that the nation-state continues to play, even in the face of powerful multilateral institutions, within global capitalism. Although transnational historical materialists acknowledge the significance of the state in global capitalism (Augelli and Murphy 1988; Gill and Law 1993), their assertion of a transnational hegemonic bloc is problematic. Germain and Kenny (1998) are critical of transnational historical materialism for its tendency to “see this hegemony largely as a one-dimensional power relationship. … ” (18). This criticism is reinforced by Drainville’s conclusion that transnational historical materialism has “an exaggerated view of the coherence of neo-liberalism” that comes from its emphasis on “an organic unity of global elites, and the political cogency of transnational concepts of control” (1994: 111). These critiques suggest that transnational historical materialism has inadequately addressed the methodological core of a “Gramscian materialism” (Showstack Sassoon 1987: xvii), which asks us to see social reality as dynamic, multifaceted, and contradictory. The dialectical relationship between the material and ideological found in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony suggests structural possibilities for conflict that can undermine the power of the hegemonic bloc: “[b]ecause one is acting essentially on economic forces, reorganizing and developing the apparatus of economic production, creating a new structure, the conclusion must not be drawn that superstructural factors should be left to themselves, to develop spontaneously, to a haphazard and sporadic germination” (Gramsci 1971: 247). In turn, the resolution of particular hegemonic conflicts changes the terrain of conflict itself, as each hegemonic compromise serves as the foundation for the next round of conflict: “what is this effective reality? Is it something static and immobile, or is it not rather a relation of forces in continuous motion and shift of equilibrium?” (172). To the extent that transnational historical materialism posits a correspondence between the internationalization of capital and the internationalization of the state, it assumes a highly deterministic understanding of hegemony, thereby undermining one of the great strengths of Gramsci’s work, which is its “non-deterministic yet structurally grounded explanation of change” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 5). This critique of transnational historical materialism is reinforced by its problematic approach to coercion. Gramsci (1971) clearly sees power as a dialectic of consent and coercion, maintaining that the state “is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules” (244). The coercive power of the state’s military and legal institutions, the specific mechanisms of “dominance,” is reinforced by its role as an “educator” that constructs a worldview supportive of capitalism (260). For Gramsci, “State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion” (263). Although transnational historical materialists acknowledge this dialectic, their work tends to emphasize the relevance of hegemony at the expense of coercion. In the work of van der Pijl, for example, the distinction between Hobbesian and Lockean states corresponds roughly to the separation of coercion and consent (van der Pijl 1998). For van der Pijl, the more authoritarian, 195
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centralized Hobbesian state (e.g. fascist Germany, Italy, and Spain, the socialist bloc centered on the Soviet Union, and postwar Latin American dictatorships) is, in part, characterized by the more explicit use of coercion. The development of global capitalism, and the rise of a transnational class, results from the ascendancy of Lockean states associated with a strong civil society and market economy. Although van der Pijl is clear that these are ideal types, his theory suggests that the production of a consensus for global capitalism by the major core states is a more significant factor than is coercion in explaining the strength of global capitalism. Likewise, Robinson argues that there has been a major shift in the forms of US intervention since the end of the Cold War from coercive to consensual strategies. Today, the US maintains its position of dominance relative to the periphery through promoting “polyarchy,” “a system in which a small group actually rules and mass participation in decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections carefully managed by competing elites” (Robinson 1996: 49). Polyarchy is a restrictive form of democracy that emphasizes procedural rules rather than substantive concerns of equality or social justice (see Held 1987). This strategy recognizes the powerful demands of subordinate social forces for the right to make the decisions that affect their lives, but it does so in a way that does not threaten the core’s domination of the periphery in global capitalism. The significance of this strategy, Robinson argues, was brought home by the military defeat of the US in Vietnam. Coercion was judged to be counterproductive to the goal of winning the political subordination of the periphery. The strategy of “democracy promotion” grants symbolic concessions to the periphery by providing assistance in transitioning away from dictatorship. For Robinson, polyarchy is the global political system that corresponds to a global capitalism characterized by a transnational hegemonic bloc. The US, as the principal agent promoting polyarchy globally, “is assuming a leadership role on behalf of a transnational hegemonic configuration” (Robinson 1996: 12). This strategy emphasizes the development of civil society rather than the direct imposition of power by force, which has become “a fetter to the emergent patterns of international capital accumulation corresponding to the global economy” (Robinson 1996: 37). Although this strategy plays an important role in US foreign policy, it is far from clear that it represents the fundamental strategic shift suggested by Robinson. US support for “democracy promotion” has taken place when it has been safe for the US to do so. For example, in the case of the Philippines and Haiti, the US supported “democratization” only after dictatorships it long supported had lost legitimacy. Elsewhere, “democratization” was accomplished only after military dictatorship had so thoroughly institutionalized neoliberal policies that dictatorship was no longer necessary (as in Chile), or after a war of such devastating social costs that people would choose the “correct” leadership (as in Nicaragua). I would argue that Gill’s transnational historical materialism comes closest to incorporating Gramsci’s dialectical understanding of consent and coercion. Gill argues that contemporary capitalism is characterized by market civilization, which is the collection of cultural and ideological practices that define capitalism, and disciplinary neoliberalism, which refers to the structural power of capital as well as surveillance power “associated with the coercive reproduction of globalization” (2003: 182). One expression of US power is its leading role in developing and deploying panoptic technologies for monitoring states and populations. The use of these technologies is an important component of global capitalism, as they serve to maximize predictability and minimize risk. The US, as the dominant world power, has deployed panoptic technologies in its search for 196
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“weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq as well as North Korea, Iran, and Libya, and has used these technologies to pressurize members of the UN Security Council before the US invasion of Iraq to support US policy. At the same time, the war has shown the limits of panopticism as a form of power. The detailed reports of Iraqi weapons programs that provided the Bush administration with the primary justification for war proved to be false. Future claims of transgressions by other states are likely to be greeted by even greater skepticism, if not outright rejection and resistance, than that which characterized the war in Iraq.
Conclusion The invasion of Iraq calls into question the “internationalization of the state” thesis offered by transnational historical materialism, as well as other critical theorists of globalization such as Teeple, Sklair, and Hardt and Negri. Far from the nation-state becoming a “transmission belt” for global capital, “the state has, as always, been a fundamental constitutive element in the very process of extension of capitalism in our time” (Panitch 1996: 109). Globalization is not something that is happening to nation-states, but a process in which nation-states are active participants. The use of military power by the US to shape the contours of global capitalism, in its relations with other core countries and rising competitors and in its efforts to impose neoliberalism by force, is a powerful example of this. Consent and coercion are the specific mechanisms through which nation-state agency is organized. Although there is a tendency to see these as opposites, they are more appropriately understood (as Gramsci suggested) in a dialectical manner. The Bush administration’s justifications for invading Iraq (threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and later claims concerning democracy and human rights) and as well as its going through the motions of seeking UN support for US policy (even although it was ultimately not forthcoming) are evidence of the importance of constructing consent for the use of military power. At the same time, the lack of international legitimacy for the war, as seen by the massive, worldwide protests against the war, as well as the way in which US justifications for war have proven false, place important limits on the exercise of US power. Any subsequent military intervention by the US elsewhere in the world is likely to be met with even greater opposition because of the US invasion of Iraq. In this light, consent is not an alternative to coercion. Rather, they are inseparable: war is simultaneously a means of generating consent (e.g. the invasion of Iraq is “doing something” about terrorism) and the product of that consent. Likewise, militarism provides opportunities for the economic expansion state officials depend on to win popular consent for their policies, but it also carries the potential to undermine that consent. What came to be known in the US as the “permanent war economy” following World War II (WWII) imposed substantial limits on US capital (Melman 2001). Investment in military production is unproductive investment in that the resulting outputs (i.e. weapons) do not simultaneously serve as inputs for continued production elsewhere in the economy. This represents an extraordinary loss of opportunities for capital accumulation in the civilian economy. In addition, the “wall of separation” (Markusen and Yudken 1992) between military and civilian corporations, reflecting the different market environments in which they operate, their different organizational structures and cultures, and their different production practices, ensures 197
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that investment in the former has limited applicability to the latter. Indeed, as US capitalgoods industries became more dependent on military contracts in the post-war period, they became less competitive in civilian markets relative to their advanced capitalist counterparts. High levels of excess productive capacity in military-related industries represent a further loss of accumulation opportunities in non-military production. These constraints on capital accumulation were not experienced as such as long as the US maintained economic dominance following WWII. They had dramatic consequences, however, in the context of growing competition from an increasingly global economy; the post-war economic crisis that began in the US in the late 1960s can be traced, in large part, to the costs associated with a “militarized state capitalism” (Melman 2001: 132). With the reassertion of US military dominance, these constraints will continue to have a major impact on the US economy, and are thereby likely to make more difficult the continued reproduction of consent. By emphasizing consent at the expense of coercion, transnational historical materialism misses the ways in which coercion simultaneously reinforces and undermines consent for global capitalism. As long as coercive power remains centered in the nation-state, therefore, the nation-state will continue to be at the center of theoretical understandings of and political mobilizations against global capitalism.
Note This chapter was adapted from: Egan, D. (2007) “Globalization and the Invasion of Iraq: State Power and the Enforcement of Neoliberalism,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 98–111.
References al-Khalil, S. (1989) Republic of Fear, New York: Pantheon Books. Armstrong, D. (2002) “Dick Cheney’s song of America,” Harper’s Magazine, October: 76–83. Augelli, E. and Murphy, C. (1988) America’s Quest for Supremacy and the Third World, London: Pinter Publishers. Baran, P.A. and Sweezy, P.M. (1966) Monopoly Capital, New York: Monthly Review Press. Boggs, C. (1976) Gramsci’s Marxism, London: Pluto Press. Center for Strategic and International Studies (2003) “Iraq’s post-conflict reconstruction,” Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cohen, A. and O’Driscoll, G. (2003) “The road to economic prosperity for a Post-Saddam Iraq,” Backgrounder 5 March, p.1. Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation. Council on Foreign Relations (2003) Iraq: The Day After, New York: Council on Foreign Relations. Cox, R. (1987) Production, Power, and World Order. New York: Columbia University Press. ——(1996) “Global Perestroika,” In R.W. Cox and T.J. Sinclair (eds) Approaches to World Order, New York: Cambridge University Press, 296–316. Drainville, A.C. (1994) “International political economy in the age of open Marxism,” Review of International Political Economy, 1: 105–32. Foster, J.B. (2003) “The new age of imperialism,” Monthly Review, 55: 1–14. Friedman, T.L. (1999) The Lexus and the Olive Tree, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Germain, R.D. and Kenny, M. (1998) “Engaging Gramsci: International relations theory and the new Gramscians,” Review of International Studies, 24: 3–21. Gill, S. (2003) Power and Resistance in the New World Order, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Gill, S. and Law, D. (1993) “Global hegemony and the structural power of capital,” in S. Gill (ed.) Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, New York: Cambridge University Press, 93–126. Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York: International Publishers. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. (2003) The New Imperialism, New York: Oxford University Press. Held, D. (1987) Models of Democracy, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (1996) Globalization in Question, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Klare, M. (2001) Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, New York: Henry Holt. Lenin, V.I. (1939) Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, New York: International Publishers. Luxemburg, R. (1968) The Accumulation of Capital, New York: Monthly Review Press. Markusen, A. and Yudken, J. (1992) Dismantling the Cold War Economy, New York: Basic Books. Marx, K. (1967) Capital, Volume I. New York: International Publishers. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1972) On Colonialism, New York: International Publishers. Melman, S. (2001) After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Panitch, L. (1996) “Rethinking the role of the state,” in J.H. Mittelman (ed.) Globalization: Critical Reflections, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Project for the New American Century (2000) Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, Washington, DC: Project for the New American Century. Research Unit for Political Economy (2003) Behind the Invasion of Iraq, New York: Monthly Review Press. Robinson, W. (1996) Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony, New York: Cambridge University Press. Showstack Sassoon, A. (1987) Gramsci’s Politics, London: Hutchinson. Sklair, L. (2001) The Transnational Capitalist Class, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 83–113. ——(2002) Globalization: Capitalism and Its Alternatives. New York: Oxford University Press. Steger, M.B. (2002) Globalism: The New Market Ideology, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Tabb, W.K. (2001) The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-first Century, New York: Monthly Review Press. Teeple, G. (2000) Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform: Into the Twenty-first Century, Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. van der Pijl, K. (1998) Transnational Classes and International Relations, New York: Routledge. Weiss, L. (1998) The Myth of the Powerless State, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. The White House (2002) The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Washington, DC: The White House.
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17 The Pakistan and Afghan crisis Riaz Ahmed Shaikh
Introduction Pakistan played a crucial role in the Afghan war after the Soviet invasion in 1979. The biggest operation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was conducted, with the support of Pakistan, during the Cold War against communist Russia. The joint military operation between Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the CIA created an environment that ultimately forced the USSR to retreat from Afghanistan in 1989. Pakistan supported the Afghan resistance movement through a seven-party alliance based in the Pakistani city of Peshawar (Grare 2003). After the Soviet forces withdrew, fighting Afghan Mujahideen groups, because of their internal ethnic and sectarian differences, failed to reach any consensus about the future political setup of Afghanistan. Simultaneously, key regional actors supporting the Afghan jihad (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran) backed their own favorites, which further complicated this crisis. Eventually, these internal differences and complications led to civil war among the Mujahideen themselves. However, after the intervention by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan an accord was signed between different Mujahideen groups on 24 April 1992 in Peshawar. But it could not be sustained for more than 4 months when Kabul was attacked by Hikmatyar in August 1992 with ISI support (Jones 2002). The violence-wracked environment in Afghanistan led to the mysterious emergence of the Taliban, with Mullah Omer as its new leader in Kandahar in 1994. It was seen as a new force that could restore much desired peace and stability in Afghanistan. Pakistan is suspected of providing all-out support to the Taliban. By 1996, they were able to bring about 80–90 percent of Afghanistan under their control (Maley 2001). The Taliban became a threat to world peace when they joined hands with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda after taking over Kabul. Again the ISI played a key role in the development of contacts between Al Qaeda and the Taliban (Coll 2004). With this nexus, Afghanistan became a safe haven for Al Qaeda’s global jihad and planning was begun for future terrorist activities from there. Because of Osama’s link with the 1998 missile attacks on US embassies in East Africa, the US targeted the safe havens of Al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan. These attacks failed to eliminate Osama but resulted in killing significant 200
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numbers of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A year later, the hijacking of an Air India aircraft and the Taliban’s role as mediator between Pakistan-based hijackers and the Indian government fostered the feeling that the Taliban–Al Qaeda alliance would embolden the agenda of global terrorism. This alliance eventually led to the world’s most significant terrorist activity when Al Qaeda suicide squads hijacked aircraft and attacked various locations in the US on 9/11 (Moore 2003).
9/11, the Taliban and Pakistan Al Qaeda’s terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, resulting in the death of about 3,000 people from different countries, was one of the most important events in recent history. Pakistan’s proximity to Afghanistan placed it in a key position in the event of any US military action in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda. Coincidently, ISI head General Mahmood Ahmed was in Washington on 11 September 2001 to discuss further collaborative steps between Pakistan and the US. General Mahmood, a pro-Taliban hard liner, extended his stay to engage in a serious discussion of the ISI’s role in the Afghan crisis. During these meetings General Mahmood calculated that the US was furious and in no mood for any discussion, as public pressure was high on the US government to take immediate, appropriate, and powerful steps. In fact, the US gave Pakistan’s ambassador a list of seven demands with which Pakistan was to comply at all costs (Hussain 2007). To the US’s surprise General Musharaf readily agreed, without any reservations, to all their demands. Pakistan was even ready to immediately break its diplomatic relations with the Kabul government. But, the US favored the continuation of existing arrangements as a source of intelligence gathering about the future plans of the Taliban government (Rashid 2008). Musharaf, despite his assurance to the US of Pakistan’s full support for any military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, was worried about the reaction of Pakistan’s army. The ISI, as a result of its decades-long work with the Mujahideen and later with the Taliban, had developed an affinity for them. It was not easy to reverse the nearly unbreakable contacts between ISI and the Taliban. Musharraf’s real difficulty was to convince his cohorts and senior generals (including General Muhammad Aziz and his own Deputy, General Muzaffar Usmani) who were arch Taliban supporters and did not endorse Pakistan’s pulling its support from the Taliban. For them it was, first, a betrayal of trust and second, a threat to Pakistan’s strategic interests (Sharma 2006). Given this plight, General Musharaf wanted the US to completely rule out the military option and give diplomacy time to negotiate an amicable solution to this crisis. For this purpose, in just 2 weeks, he met several times the US ambassador to Pakistan. A second option was to postpone the military attack for some time, so that Pakistan could try to convince the Taliban to expel Osama and other Al Qaeda leadership from Afghanistan. For this purpose, the ISI Chief visited Afghanistan on 17 September to hold talks with Mullah Omer. He failed to convince the Taliban leadership to withdraw their support for Osama bin Laden. On instructions from President Musharaf, the ISI arranged another meeting with Mullah Omer and other Taliban leaders, in which the officials of ISI and Ministry of Foreign Affairs joined a large number of Pakistani Deobandie clerics in negotiating with the Taliban leadership. The outcome of all these hectic efforts was not looking constructive as the Taliban refused to expel Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri 201
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from Afghanistan. The CIA held the ISI chief responsible for the failure of these talks, which encouraged the Taliban to ignore US warnings. General Mahmood, on his return, assured President Musharaf that Mullah Omer’s response was positive and encouraging for the peaceful settlement of the problem and that the US should further delay attack. The US considered this advice as a delaying tactic to gain additional time for Al Qaeda and the Taliban to further strengthen their positions (Rashid 2008). The CIA, although understanding the ISI’s double-gaming methodology, involved itself directly in dealing with the Taliban. CIA official Robert Gremier met a key Taliban leader Mullah Akhter Muhammad Usmani. Gremier requested him to convince Mullah Omer to hand over Osama to the US. Usmani was approached a second time with a revised attraction of gratifications and rewards, if he were to desert his leader, Mullah Omer. He refused to leave him (Coll 2008). As the ISI calculated, the Taliban could resist for more than 6 months and later this resistance could be extended by shifting the conflict zone into the mountainous areas, converting it into a guerrilla war against the US. Accordingly, Pakistan (despite giving assurances to the US about ending its support to the Taliban) covertly maintained all logistic and weaponry support, evidence of which was provided to the US by the Northern Alliance. ISI officials through their own physical presence in Afghanistan facilitated the Taliban in planning their strategy to handle the US attack ( Jalal 2008). The US attacked Afghanistan on 7 October 2001, when all hopes of Osama and other Al Qaeda leadership being handed over ended with Mullah Omer’s flat refusal. As the American preparations were reaching their peak, Pakistani Madrasah students and volunteers started arriving in Afghanistan to help their Afghan brothers. Sufi Muhammad, the self-styled cleric and advocate of the enforcement of Sharia in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, called for volunteers and gathered more than 10,000 people to participate in the holy jihad. Pakistan’s religious parties ignited violent protests against the US attack (International Crisis Group [ICG] 2002). In total contradiction of the ISI’s skepticism, the Taliban’s resistance decreased significantly in just 4 weeks. After the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Kabul, only two significant cities (Kunduz in the northeast and Kandahar in the south) were under the Taliban’s control. In Kunduz thousands of the Taliban, including a good number of Arabs, central Asians, and Pakistani fighters were surrounded by the Northern Alliance forces. Kunduz remained under siege for the next 10 days. Musharraf became worried about the safety of the ISI officials and the soldiers of Pakistan’s Frontier corps who were also stranded while fighting in support of the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. Musharraf approached President Bush to pressurize the Northern Alliance into temporarily halting its bombing in order to secure the safe evacuation of Pakistan’s military. All Pakistanis were evacuated before the Taliban surrendered on 24 November 2001. Some reports suggest that besides rescuing its ISI and other military officials, Pakistan also airlifted hundreds of key Afghan, Arab, and Central Asian fighters and safely landed them in Pakistan’s own federally administered tribal areas (FATA). These fighters were to reactivate the Taliban insurgency after a lapse of a few months and also create a troubling situation for Pakistan 2 years later. Becoming deeply concerned, Pakistan had to start its first military operation in its tribal area (FATA) in 2004 ( John 2007). The Taliban’s last stronghold, Kandahar, was surrounded on 5 December 2001. Before their surrender, the Taliban engaged the invading forces in longer negotiations, so that Mullah Omer and other prominent Taliban leaders could safely escape. Now, the last haven for Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was the nearly inaccessible mountain 202
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of Tora Bora, in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, not far from Pakistan’s tribal area of Kurram (Johnson 2005). These bunkers in the mountains of Tora Bora had been developed as a base camp for Mujahideen during the Russian invasion. During the Taliban regime (1994–2001), top Al Qaeda and Arab fighters occupied them after their ousting from the rest of Afghanistan. As the American air strikes continued on the mountains of Tora Bora, Osama and other leaders of Al Qaeda safely escaped into Pakistan’s tribal area of Kurram to continue the war from there (Rashid 2008).
Post-American attack scenario and the Taliban regroupings After being routed from the Tora Bora, the Taliban, Al Qaeda leadership, and the Mujahideen started gathering in FATA, particularly in South Waziristan, where the town of Angur Adda was to become the future headquarters of Al Qaeda after their dislocation from Kandahar (Mir 2009). In the winter of 2002 Mullah Omer arrived in Quetta. Here, he reorganized and revived his strategy to restart his resistance movement against foreign forces in Afghanistan. The Taliban started sending heavy weaponry and ammunition to their commanders in Southern Afghanistan within the next few months. They gained sufficient strength to start their fight in 2003 in Helmand and Zabul provinces. For these activities, the Taliban were getting full support from the provincial governments of two Pakistani provinces (Balochistan and Northwest Frontier Province [NWFP]) that border Afghanistan. In Pakistan’s 2002 elections, these provinces, for the first time, had pro-Taliban governments with the alleged support of ISI. The Balochistan government’s provincial ministers, including Maulana Fazullah, Malauna Noor Muhammad, and Hussain Sharodhi, openly supported the Taliban movement and Madrassahs students were motivated to join the Taliban in fighting “Infidels” and the “apostate” rulers of Kabul (Haqqani 2005). Time and again, the Karzai government complained about the ISI’s support of the Taliban, but, for the ISI, Karzai and his entire cabinet was anti-Pakistan and pro-India. For them, establishment of Indian consulates along the Afghan–Pakistan border was a clear indication of the establishment of an anti-Pakistan government in Kabul. The ISI further believed that, as a result of stringent resistance and increasing casualties, US forces would not stay longer in Afghanistan and that without US military support the Karzai government would not survive. It was, therefore, necessary to keep the Taliban alive (John 2007). Despite the Afghan government’s strong protests, Pakistan refused to accept their allegations of the ISI’s secret support of the Taliban. In fact, Pakistan’s extremist parties and groups, in the name of charity, were openly collecting funds in aid of the Taliban. Donation boxes were placed in shopping malls, restaurants, and other public places. Most of the religious clerics while using mosques adopted the path of denunciation and appealed to the Pakistani nation to help their brothers fighting for the glory of Islam in Afghanistan (Rubin 2003). With the support of the ISI and Pakistani religious parties, the Taliban solidified their hold in Southern Afghanistan by spring 2003. In the next few weeks, a deadly assassination attempt was made on Hamid Karzai, killing more than 15 people; Karzai himself narrowly escaped. An upsurge was seen when Mullah Omer constituted a 10-member council to strengthen coordination between different groups of the Taliban and Pakistanbased extremist religious parties (Rashid 2008). 203
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Under the Jamiat Ulama Islam government, most of the madrassahs in Pushtundominated areas of Balochistan (including the cities of Chaman, Zhob, Killa Saifullah, Killa Abdullah, and Pishin) had become hiding places and recruitment centers for the Taliban. The ISI facilitated such training (Malik 2006).
CIA–ISI joint operations in Pakistan and the arrest of Al Qaeda members After the fall of the Taliban, the US was more concerned about the Arab members of Al Qaeda, most of whom had escaped to Pakistan. So the CIA established a fully fledged station in Pakistan to coordinate with the ISI in capturing Al Qaeda leadership. The CIA and ISI jointly launched an extensive operation to locate these extremists, who might strike 9/11-style again somewhere in the world (William 2005). The first success came in July 2002, when Sheikh Ahmed Saleem, planner of bombing attacks on US embassies in East Africa in 1998, was arrested in Karachi while attempting to escape from the country by sea. During his interrogation, he revealed that Al Qaeda members were moving freely and unhindered in Pakistan’s coastal area. Another key Al Qaeda member, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, was arrested at the Afghan–Pakistan border. He was the first Al Qaeda member to provide pivotal details of the 9/11 attack (Daily Dawn, July 2002). Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda’s third in command after Osama and Al-Zawahiri, was arrested in Punjab’s important industrial city, Faisalabad, on 28 March 2002. Based on his identifications, 27 other Al Qaeda men were arrested in Lahore and Faisalabad (Daily Dawn, 29 March 2002). Khalid al-Attash, wanted for bombing of USS Cole, was arrested on 30 April 2002 along with five other terrorists from Karachi. Zubaydah, during harsh interrogation by the CIA, revealed the whereabouts of Ramzi Ibn al-Sahibh an important leader of the Hamburg cell, responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Ramzi was arrested in Karachi (Daily Dawn, 1 May 2002). Based on the CIA’s identification, on 1 March 2003, the ISI arrested Al Qaeda’s most active and crucial member, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, as well as Mustafa al-Hawsawi from Rawalpindi. Khalid was Al Qaeda’s chief operational planner, responsible for planning the 9/11 attacks; Mustafa, a Saudi national, was considered to be Al Qaeda’s chief financial officer and fund collector. In July 2004, the interrogation of an arrested Pakistani extremist revealed the whereabouts of two additional important Al Qaeda members: Ahmed Khalfan Gailani (a Tanzanian national and key character in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in East Africa) and Dhirsen Barot, who had been given the task of bombing New York Stock Exchange and an underground parking area in London (Mohamedou 2007). As a result of CIA and ISI joint operations, 689 alleged Al Qaeda members were arrested in Pakistan and more than half, being key persons required for further interrogation, were handed over to the US.
War within and out The Pakistan army, who considered the Taliban as their assets, not only provided them with refuge on their displacement from Afghanistan, but also left them at liberty to plan 204
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their future activities. After a brief silence, the Taliban and Al Qaeda started their insurgency during the middle of 2002 from the South Waziristan area of FATA. FATA was going to be the new theater for planning international terrorist activities to achieve the goal of global jihad (ICG 2006). The terrorist attacks in the underground tubes of London on 7 July 2005, the Madrid blast, and the attacks on favorite tourist spots in Bali and Cairo, all had links with FATA. Initially, Pakistan refused to accept the presence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership in FATA. Although rejecting Karzai’s claim regarding Pakistan’s alleged support to the Taliban, Musharaf blamed the Afghan government for its failure in dealing with its own domestic affairs. The situation became serious when, in January 2003, the US commander Lt General Dan McNeill warned Pakistan to rein in these terrorists, otherwise US forces would cross the border and chase terrorists inside Pakistan. The US was sure that the attacks on military personnel in the Shikin and Lawara areas of Afghanistan were impossible without Pakistan’s support. They had reliable intelligence reports that Pakistan’s paramilitary force, the Frontier Corps was actively helping the Taliban. South Waziristan was being used as a base camp for attacks in Afghanistan (Giustozzi 2007). Flaring terrorist activities in Afghanistan as well as international pressure forced Pakistan to stop propping-up the Taliban and to launch its first military operation in South Waziristan in July 2004. The first major assault was a few kilometers away from its headquarters: Wana in Kalosha village. The US had provided a confirmed report about the presence of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader Tahir Yuldashey and a few other Chechniyan extremists. Military operations failed to capture them; rather several soldiers were killed and some were also taken hostage. The ISI was considered to be responsible for this failure as they had leaked information about the military’s action to the terrorists (Van der Schriek 2005). Furthermore, in response to India’s demands to restrain militant terrorist activities, General Musharaf had to announce a ban on several Pakistan-based militant organizations in January 2002. They had been responsible for carrying out terrorist activities including attacks on the Indian parliament in Delhi, the Provincial Assembly of Kashmir in Srinagar, and Red Fort (the symbol of Indian military might). In these attacks more than a hundred people were killed (Smith 2005). In the next few years, however, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, in collaboration with Pakistan-based militant organizations, began terrorist activities in Pakistan that targeted Western and US interests in Pakistan (Daily Dawn, 16 January 2002; Kepel 2002). Hardly 3 weeks after the fall of Taliban government in Afghanistan (on 25 January 2002), the first important event to take place in Pakistan was the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, who was working on a story about the Al Qaeda network in Pakistan (Levine 2003). A few weeks later as the result of a suicide attack, 11 French naval engineers working with the Pakistan Navy on a submarine project were killed at the gate of a five-star hotel in Karachi. Soon, the American consulate was targeted in Karachi, killing about two dozen people, mostly Pakistanis. Hardly one week later, close to the US embassy, Islamabad’s Protestant International Church (where mostly foreign diplomats prayed) was bombed, killing five diplomats, including two Americans. Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership, who considered the Pakistani government and especially General Pervaiz Musharaf responsible for ongoing operations against them, made two suicide attempts on his life, both of which failed. On 9 June 2004 an identical attempt was made on the life of a senior general in Karachi, Lt Gen. Ashan Saleem Hayat. The General received bullet injuries but remained safe (Hussain 2007). 205
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These attacks on the commanders of the Pakistan army forced the military to become cautious about the army itself, since such attempts were impossible without the connivance of army personnel. Later investigations revealed that a number of Army and Air Force officials were involved in these attacks. On a tip from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, five officers (including one lieutenant colonel and a major) were arrested. These officers, serving on the Pakistan–Afghanistan border, were in contact with Al Qaeda terrorists (Nawaz 2008). A thorough and long investigation of more than 200 military and police officials and a few civilians revealed that the military and police officials involved were hired by Amjad Hussain Farooqui, a member of the extremist organization Jaish-e-Mohammad. Farooqui had long been working in the Afghan Jihad and the Kashmir insurgency under the guidance and patronage of ISI. Because of his dedication and expertise, he had become a close confidant of Taliban leader Mullah Omer and Osama bin Laden (Zahab and Roy 2004). This revelation forced General Musharaf to make the vital decision to rid the Pakistan army of extremist elements. The first target was the ISI. General Musharaf immediately replaced the ISI Chief with his close confidant General Nadeem Taj who reorganized the ISI by removing fanatic officers from key positions, by transferring them back to the army, or by forcing their retirement (Haqqani 2005). The Afghan crisis resulted in further difficulty for Pakistan when the country’s sectarian parties developed and cemented their relations with extremists in Al Qaeda’s Wahabi and the Taliban’s Deobandi networks. The immediate outcome of this nexus was the upsurge in rampages against the Shia-Muslims. Shias, who constitute 20 percent of country’s predominant Muslim population, were frequently attacked by the Deobandi extremists. These attacks targeted Hazara policemen, Shia Muslims at religious events, and hundreds of Shia professionals (ICG 2005). These Deobandies, trained during the Afghan Jihad, embarrassed Pakistan seriously when in January 2007 they occupied the important Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and an adjacent children’s library in the heart of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. This complex mosque structure, spread over several acres of land, was hardly a few hundred meters away from the ISI’s headquarters and was frequently used as a stopover for militants traveling from Afghanistan to Pakistan and Kashmir. Two clerics responsible for the management of the mosque had previously participated in the Afghan and Kashmir jihads. The mosque remained under siege for more than 6 months, until, on 8 July 2007, the army carried out a vital operation to gain control of the seminary. In 3 days, official sources confirmed the deaths of more than 102 students and militants. Ten soldiers also lost their lives (Daily Dawn, 13 July 2007).
Fata: new war theater The Pakistan army’s extensive military operation, launched on 8 May 2009 to flush out terrorists from Swat, Buner, Dir, and adjoining tribal areas resulted in the world’s worst internally displaced persons (IDP) problem, with approximately three million people displaced. The launching of this operation, Rah-e-Rast (the right path), was appreciated by the US and other Western countries. The army’s attempt to destroy all the training camps being used by militants to launch terrorist attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan progressed well and recovered the entire ceded territory of Malakand from the militants’ control. Previously the army and other paramilitary forces had launched unsuccessful operations in 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2008 (Daily Dawn, 11 May 2009). 206
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Since 2007, US intelligence reports have expressed worries about the increasing role of FATA in the global jihad and international terrorism. President Bush described this region of Pakistan as “Wilder than the Wild West.” FATA was being used as a training camp for launching attacks in the US and Europe. In July 2007 an attempt to destroy Glasgow airport, an attack on a night club in London, a suicide bombing that killed seven Spanish tourists in Yemen, and an attempt to blow up the US air base in Ramstein, Germany all had direct links with FATA; most of the terrorists linked with these activities had spent some time in the Waziristan area of FATA for training. In September 2007, eight people including several Pakistanis were arrested in Copenhagen for planning to carry out terrorist activities in Denmark. They had also been trained in FATA. In an attempt to convince Pakistan to eliminate the terrorist network in FATA, US Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Robert Gates held meetings with President Musharaf and other army officials. But still the army response was frosty. It wanted to keep intact its peace agreement signed by the NWFP government with the key Pakistan Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud. General Orkzai, Governor of the NWFP, viewed the Taliban movement as a “national liberation movement” and not as a terrorist organization. He proceeded to Washington with President Musharaf to give justifications about these truces to President Bush and other American officials. The US remained adamant that Al Qaeda’s terrorists trained in FATA were desperately trying to strike the US again. In July 2007, a US National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Al Qaeda had successfully reestablished its central organization training infrastructure and lines of global communication while using FATA as safe haven (Mir 2008). In response to US demands, General Musharaf cancelled the peace agreement and removed General Orkzai from the governorship of the NWFP. Simultaneously, another military operation was launched in the area to dismantle Taliban and Al Qaeda safe havens. In reaction, terrorists increased their activities in the country. In September 2007, 26 army personnel were killed in two suicide attacks in Rawalpindi. A month later, on 18 October 2007, a worse terrorist activity was committed in Karachi when Benazir Bhutto’s convoy was attacked by two suicide bombers, killing more than 250 party workers. She blamed Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a key actor in founding a number of radical organizations and one of the few people who remained in Afghanistan with Mullah Omer after the US attack on Afghanistan. Two months later (on 27 December 2007 in Rawalpindi), Bhutto was killed in another suicide attack, when she was returning from a public rally. President Musharaf accused Baitullah Mahsud (the Pakistani Taliban leader) for her murder. Parallel to these terrorist activities, another extremist movement, headed by Mullah Fazlullah, was emerging in Swat. He had close links with the Taliban and with the Al Qaeda network operating in FATA. For the next 2 years his network, with the support of thousands of fighters from FATA (including Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks), killed hundreds of army soldiers, policemen, and local people who refused to join in their jihadi activities. These jihadis made odious speeches against the Pakistan army, issued instructions, and gave sermons through their own FM radio communication system. The Pakistani state lost its writ in the area until an extensive military operation was launched on 8 May 2009. In their attempt to maintain control, extremists killed hundreds of policemen and Pakistan army personnel. All the police stations were converted into Taliban stations. Civil courts were ordered to stop functioning, having been called unIslamic (Mir 2009). Girls were prohibited from attending schools. Primitive and rigid Sharia laws were revived and enforced and Swat became a de facto “no-go area” for the 207
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state officials. All adult Muslim men were to grow beards, and women were to observe veiling strictly. Women were flogged publicly on shady charges of adultery. In fact, extremists established their own parallel state in Swat.
What lies ahead for Pakistan’s future? Pakistan initially participated in the Afghan crisis in 1979, hoping to create a friendly government in neighboring Afghanistan, one with whom they could settle their border disputes. But the hijacking of the Afghan resistance movement by Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations (in the name of global jihad against the West), while using Pakistani and Afghan terrorists, converted this area into one of the most dangerous zones on earth (Kepel 2004). With ISI patronage the Taliban and Al Qaeda alliance succeeded in creating a propitious environment for global jihad. After the fall of the Taliban government in December 2001, terrorists (including the entire leadership of the Taliban and Al Qaeda) slipped inside Pakistan (Rana 2007a). The ISI and the Pakistan Army facilitated the regrouping of Talibans, as they would be used as an important tool against what was perceived to be an anti-Pakistan and pro-India Karzai Government in Kabul. Several newly established Indian consulates in Afghanistan along Pakistan’s border further supported these apprehensions. However, the US recently requested that India reduce the number of its consulates in Afghanistan (Daily Dawn, 27 June 2009). By supporting and patronizing these terrorist networks Pakistan created many problems for itself. Al Qaeda and the Taliban escalated their influence in Pakistan’s tribal areas and soon several indigenous groups (either active in the Kashmir jihad or in other newly established extremist organizations) willingly developed their plans for carrying out terrorist activities in Pakistan. The nexus of these internal and external elements so seriously threatened the existence of Pakistan that the world began seriously calling Pakistan a failed state, one which could easily slip into the extremists’ hands (Rana 2007b). The Taliban’s full control in FATA and later in Swat and Buner terrified the world, which feared that the next target might be Pakistan’s own capital Islamabad, hardly 100 kilometers away from the extremist controlled areas (Daily Dawn, 7 April 2009). The successful military operations in Swat, Dir, Buner, and FATA have somewhat dispelled the world’s serious concerns about the immediate takeover of the Pakistani state by the extremists. Pakistan’s involvement in the Afghan crisis three decades earlier engendered intolerance in the society. Numerous terrorist organizations (including Tehrik-e-Nifaz-eShariat-e-Muhammadi of Sufi Muhammad, Harkatul Jehadul Islami of Qari Saifullah Akhtar, Jamiat ul Ansar of Maulana Fazal ur Rehman Khalil, Lashker-e-Jangvi of Akram Lahori, Jaish-e-Muhammad of Maulana Masood Azhar, Lashkart-e-Taiba of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, and Hizbul Mujahideen of Syed Salahuddin) expanded throughout the country, using a wide network of about 20,000 madrassahs and other religious seminaries (Ali 2002). They have been able to gather funding through their own charity networks and generate finances through various illegal means including bank robberies, highway murders, and kidnapping people for ransom. Tahreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)’s emergence along the lines of the Taliban of Afghanistan, which is blamed for the murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is the most dangerous symptom for Pakistan. Baitullah Mehsud (42 years old), the leader of TTP, acted as the coordinator for all activities of Al Qaeda and Taliban in Pakistan till his death in a US drone attack on 5 August 2009. The Pakistan’s army’s ongoing operation brought a lot of success in the 208
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war against extremists. Along with restoring the writ of state, a number of top leaders of the TTP (including Muslim Khan, Maulvi Omer, Commander Mehmood Khan, Mufti Rehman, and Abdul Rehman) have been captured. After asserting control in Swat (beginning on 16 October 2009), the Pakistan army has extended its operations in FATA, which is now labeled as the epicenter of global jihad. On the other side of the border, the allied force built up considerable pressure in the Taliban-controlled Helman and Urozgan provinces before the second Afghan presidential election held in August 2009. With the death of Baitullah Mehsud, Al Qaeda lost one of their key allies in Pakistan and the TTP is going through a leadership crisis. Although the TTP has announced the appointment of Hikmatullah as its new leader, the power struggle has not settled down as yet. Another productive outcome of this operation is that now the IDPs who returned to their homes have joined hands with the army against the militants. This indigenous support would play a key role in defeating the extremists. Other bad news for the TTP is that the Afghan Taliban has refused to help the TTP, which is certainly affecting its fighting capacity against the Pakistan army (The News, 7 September 2009). According to General Stanley A. McChrystal, the new commander of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, another 12 to 18 months would be required to uproot Al Qaeda and catch or kill its leaders (Daily Dawn, 7 September 2009). The allied force also requires an additional 40,000 troops to effectively counter Taliban insurgency. But every success in Afghanistan is heavily linked to the destruction of Al Qaeda safe heavens in FATA. The stiff resistance faced by allied forces in Afghanistan from the strengthening Taliban and the Al Qaeda network in Pakistan brought the US to this conclusion: that it would have to stay in the area for a longer duration and not leave in haste, as done previously after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. Keeping this aim in view, the US has planned to expand its Embassy in Pakistan. Additional land is being acquired to construct housing to accommodate newly arriving Marines. Recently, hundreds of houses in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and other major cities have been acquired by the US government. The services of Blackwater (now Xe World Wide) have been hired for the security of American citizens and other US interests in Pakistan. Pakistan’s establishment, especially the army, has created a general impression among the ordinary masses that the US plans to deprive Pakistan of its nuclear arsenal in order to create Indian hegemony in South Asia as a counter to escalating Chinese influence. Public opinion has been created to the effect that the war against terror is purely a US war for the enforcement of its new world order. In this regard, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an unusual and unprecedented 3-day tour (28–30 October 2009) to assess first hand Pakistani public opinion and also to clear up several ambiguities. But Pakistan must understand that after initiating military operations in Swat and FATA, it is in the midst of a do-or-die struggle and will have to curb the extremists in the society. Pakistan will have to accept that it aided, abetted, and inspired terrorism during the Afghan war and that now a victory for the Taliban in Afghanistan would have catastrophic consequences for the whole world, including Pakistan itself. For its own security and prosperous future, Pakistan must desist from pursuing its previous path and outrightly support the war against terror.
References Ali, T. (2002) The Clash of Fundamentalism, London: Verso. Cloughley, B. (2006) A History of Pakistan Army, Karachi: Oxford University Press.
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Coll, S. (2004) Ghost Wars, London: Penguin Books. ——(2008) The Bin Ladens, London: Penguin Press. Daily Dawn (2002, 2007, 2009) Various issues, Karachi: Dawn Media Group. Giustozzi, A. (2007) Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop, London: Hurst & Company. Grare, F. (2003) Pakistan and Afghanistan Conflict 1979–1985, Karachi: Oxford University Press. Haqqani, H. (2005) Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Lahore: Vanguard. Hussain, Z. (2007) Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam, Lahore: Vanguard. International Crisis Group (2002) “Pakistan: Madrasas, extremism and the military,” 29 July. Online. Available http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=2086&l=1 (accessed 16 August 2009). ——(2006) “The state of secretarianism in Pakistan,” 18 April. Online. Available http://www.crisisgro up.org/home/index.cfm?id=3374&1=1 (accessed 12 August 2009). —— (2006) “Pakistan’s tribal areas: Appeasing the militants,” 11 December. Online. http://www.crisi sgroup.org/home/index.cfm?=4568 (accessed 17 August 2009). Jalal, A. (2008) Partisans of Allah-Jihad in South Asia, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications. John, W. (2007) The General and Jihad, Delhi: Pentagon Press. Johnson, R. (2005) A Region in Turmoil, London: Penguin Press. Jones, O. (2002) Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, Lahore: Vanguard. Kepel, G. (2002) Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, London: I.B. Tauris. ——(2004) The War for Muslim Minds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Levine, S. (2003) “Killing of Pearl fit into Pakistani web of radical Islam,” Wall Street Journal., 23 January 2003 Maley, W. (2001) Fundamentalism Reborn? London: Hurst & Company. Malik, I. H. (2006) Jihad, Hindutva, and the Taliban, Karachi: Oxford University Press. Mir, A. (2008) The Fluttering Flag of Jihad, Lahore: Mashal Books. ——(2009) Talibanization of Pakistan, New Delhi: Pentagon Security International. Mohamedou, O. M. (2007) Understanding Al-Qaeda, London: Pluto Press. Moore, R. (2003) The Hunt for Bin Laden, New York: Random House. Nawaz, S. (2008) Crossed Swords-Pakistan: Its Army and the Wars Within, Karachi: Oxford University Press. The News (2009) 7 September 2009, Karachi: Jang Group. Rana, M.A. (2007a) A to Z of Jihadi Organization in Pakistan, Lahore: Mashal Books. ——(2007b) Terrorism: How the Suicide Attackers Operate in Pakistan. Online. Available http://san-pips. com/index.php?action=san& id = 29 (accessed 10 August 2009). Rashid, A. (2008) Descent Into Chaos, London: Allen Lane/Penguin Group. Rubin, B. R. (2003) The Search for Peace in Afghanistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press. Sharma, S.R. (2006) General Pervez Musharraf, Delhi: Alfa Publications. Smith, P.J. (2005) Terrorism and Violence in South East Asia, Delhi: Pentagon Press. Van der Schriek, D. (2005) “Recent developments in Waziristan”, Terrorism Monitor, 3: 1–69. Williams, P. L. (2005) Osama’s Revenge: The Next 9/11, New Delhi: Viva Books. Zahab, A., M. and Roy, O. (2004) Islamist Network, New York: Columbia University Press.
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18 Mass media as risk-management in the “war on terror” Christopher M. Pieper
Introduction From “embedded reporters” and round-the-clock images of Old Glory, to live broadcasts of the “shock and awe” bombing campaign and the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, the role of the mass media in the “war on terror” was central and pervasive. Although a flurry of recent scholarship examines the nexus of these two subjects (Chapter 23 in this volume; Kuypers 2006; Martin and Petro 2006; Schechter 2003), few have situated their analysis within larger theoretical frameworks that could explain a diverse array of related phenomena. In what follows, I sketch such a model, which operates on the premise first proposed by Giddens and Beck that many of the seemingly unrelated yet formidable problems facing the human community are in fact calculated, manufactured risks deemed acceptable by economic and political global leaders and generated by a small nexus of interlinked processes (Beck 1992). I further argue that the partnership of the mass media is essential to the effective functioning of this global process. Specifically, the objective of this chapter is to better describe and explain the behavior of the mass media during times of elevated societal risk, in this case the “war on terror.” The empirical object of this investigation is media coverage during the period immediately after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and the “end of major combat” on 2 May 2003. The assumption motivating the choice of this empirical object is that the relationship between the media and the state, especially its military and political components, fundamentally changed after 9/11. Preliminary data suggest that the traditional boundaries, rules of objectivity and balance, and roles of each institution were fundamentally shaken, resulting in a media system much less adversarial, more compliant, and even partisan than before. Finally, I consider the utility of Giddens’ conception of social structure and ideology to shed additional light on the role of the mass media in global social systems. Furthermore, the activities of the media during the war on terror surveyed below point to the possibility that a model of media as managers of the risks of globalization might be a valid and valuable sociological framework. 211
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Giddens: mass media in the risk society Since the 1980s, Anthony Giddens has been one of sociology’s most prolific analysts on the elusive subject of modernity, carefully charting its historical development, meanings, and various effects on society, present and future. Along with Ulrich Beck, Giddens has made the notion of manufactured risk a central feature of modernity. Manufactured risks, according to Beck, are risks that are produced by the modernization process, particularly by innovative developments in science and technology (Beck 1992). They create risk environments that have little historical reference, and are therefore largely unpredictable. Beck and Giddens argue that modernity manufactures risk as a very condition of its existence, therefore a substantial portion of the society’s resources must be committed to the management of risk (Giddens 1999). To take one example, the US relies on nuclear power for a significant segment of its energy needs. Enormous economic and state sectors are in turn created to manage, regulate, and dispose of the toxic waste that is inevitably generated as a result. Thus, the solution to one problem begets another problem seeking solution. Likewise, as another feature of modernity, Giddens has expounded extensively on the phenomenon of globalization. Generally, Giddens’ writing on globalization treats the subject as a given, a rather natural expectation of free-market capitalism wedded to the tremendous capabilities provided by instant communications and high-speed transportation systems. Globalization is as much a trait of modernity as risk, suggests Giddens, and indeed the two are conceptually interwoven in his treatment. One of the most acute risks of globalization emerges as a defensive reaction in peripheral and semiperipheral nations when the presence of foreign culture, politics, or capital is unwelcome. The reasons for this reaction vary, but among the more common of late have been religious, nationalist, or widespread economic desperation in a large youth population. The combination of these elements can result in what globalization scholars term “blowback” (Johnson 2000). When coupled with the recent extension of American political and military influence in sovereign states, which is often perceived as tinged with imperial intentions, the potential for violent anti-globalization tactics is high. Since 9/11, an increasing number of scholars have taken the position that terrorism is best explained by this “blowback” or manufactured risk model (Bergesen and Lizardo 2004; Coker 2002; Heng 2002, 2006; Khan 2004). Indeed, two of the better-known articles on this topic were penned by scholars at the London School of Economics and Political Science, coincidentally Giddens’ academic home. Christopher Coker of that institution quotes Anatol Lieven on the relationship of globalization to terrorism: “This is the dark side of the global village – the ability of that village’s alienated minorities to hit out at their perceived oppressors over huge distances” (Coker 2002: 4). This has not been lost on the global business sector; The Conference Board, one of the world’s leading management advising firms, noted in 2002, “The dual threats of terrorism and war may be able to achieve what anti-globalization forces have not – a significant decline in global trade and investment” (Fosler 2002). Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz commented at the World Social Forum in April 2005 that globalization that does not bring economic security will only beget more violence (Pierri 2004). Giddens’ own statements in this debate have been provocative. In January 2005, he contributed a widely reprinted essay to the New Statesman titled “Scaring people may be 212
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the only way to avoid the risks of new-style terrorism.” In it, Giddens unmistakably sides with Tony Blair and the neoliberal position of decisive and even prolonged military involvement as the first and best response to global terrorism. “It won’t do to say there are no serious threats. It won’t do to blame the troubles of the world on George W. Bush or the Iraq war,” he writes (Giddens 2005: 29). He goes on to chastise the left for not having a united, patriotic front on issues like terrorism, just as they did not for crime, and further criticizes progressive groups for an obsession with root causes while avoiding the immediate problems that confront them. One of his main recommendations to confront terrorism is to make its risk real to society. “In order for people to take a risk seriously and respond in the right way, they have to know how potentially dangerous it is … Scaring people may be the very condition of minimizing or avoiding danger” (31). With these statements, the potential of Giddens’ general theoretical model and specifically the role of mass media in times of “blowback” come into clear view. The language of “getting people to know” and “scaring people” plainly suggests a societal-level action, specifically one involving information, power, and sectional interests. This is the vernacular of ideological influence, even by Giddens’ own analysis of the concept. In oblique terms, Giddens in this essay outlines a crude preliminary framework for understanding how mass media and the state might cooperate (with or without collusion) in a process to manage the varied domestic and foreign risks accompanying the globalization project.
Giddens II: ideological power and agency Through this extensive discussion of ideology, it is clear that Giddens is sensitive to the potential of dominant social classes to exert power, even manipulate other classes, to advance their interests. However, because the theory of structuration includes a complex rendering of the individual actor, one cannot too hastily place Giddens in the “strong society” camp. Unlike Parsons, whose actors can be roughly considered as merely imprints of the organic social system, containing a microcosm of the generalized values and norms, Giddens’ actors maintain a higher degree of independent awareness and reflexivity, which theoretically enables them to counteract ideological strategy, naturalization, and all the rest, and even enact their counterwill via the dialectic of control. Although this description is ostensibly true, examples below also illustrate that Giddens’ theory may yet be more open to ideological penetration than perhaps he would at first recognize. The theoretical mechanism I wish to advance operates via Giddens’ (1979) concept of practical consciousness, which he dissects at length in Central Problems. This set of automatic routines, codes, practices, and thoughts are presumably socialized, albeit subconsciously, for if they were inborn we must assume Giddens would have partitioned them into the unconscious. If, as Giddens says, one of the primary features of ideology is its ability to naturalize that which is merely socially constructed, then the colonization of practical consciousness would seem an obvious, if not prime target. The “ontological security” (a sense of order and continuity about the outside world) provided by a naturalized, repeated, familiar, and emotionally potent definition of reality could prove to be among the most influential yet subtle sites for the deployment of dominant ideology. Indeed, since much of the mass media content from the war 213
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on terror does involve the reduction of anxiety and tension management, the messages of dominant ideology appear custom-made to meet the demands for ontological security.
Building the risk management model The risk management media model implied in the previous theoretical discussion is illustrated schematically in Figure 18.1. It proceeds from the assumption that globalization creates opportunities (e.g. democracy, new markets, economic development, and cultural exchange) as well as risks (e.g. increased inequality, loss of traditional cultures and values, ecological damage, or terrorism). Global players (especially those from core countries) must then develop strategies to manage these risks (e.g. treaties, trade agreements, nongovernmental organizations, etc). Occasionally, as in the case of global terrorism, risks must be managed with a violent global strategy, such as the war on terror (Heng 2002; 2006). The Iraq War, in fact, has been described as “preemptive risk management” (Calabrese 2005). However, as has been plainly manifest by the Iraq War, violent risk management of this type also carries the potential of generating its own additional significant risks; hence, the idea of “cascading risks” (stage 5 in Figure 18.1). One of these is the risk of domestic rejection of the strategy and loss of support. This form of risk, which threatens the political stability of those who intervene, must be managed by domestic strategies, such as the mass distribution of patriotic or pro-intervention messages. In terms of the relationship between media and state elites, it must be underscored that they do not face a predetermined path of action in the domestic management of globalization-related political risks. This is particularly true in the case of international terrorism. Essentially, however, two dominant classes of choices emerge: Choice 1: The “Thatcher”/Strategic Approach: This option is based on the widely accepted logic of depriving terrorists of the “oxygen of publicity.” Former US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is a proponent of this view, arguing that media should
Figure 18.1 Model of risk manufacture and management
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not cover or disseminate information provided by terrorist groups, coverage that he claims they depend upon to survive and grow. This approach requires significant coordination between mass media organizations and rather severe limits on press freedom, more than would probably be tolerated in the US. Choice 2: The Giddens/Blair Approach: This option involves active and deliberate collaboration between mass media and state leaders to defeat terrorism. Media organizations would consciously and publicly embrace patriotic, nationalistic values and purposely select stories or frame issues in ways sympathetic to the sponsoring government, and unfavorable to the enemy. In its most obvious moments, this approach resembles the “propaganda model” (Herman and Chomsky 1988) or classic depictions of government manipulation of media during wartime. As emphasized above, the theoretical basis for the risk management media model is provided by Giddens through his depiction of mass media and the state working together as “blind” partners, reminiscent of Block’s (1977) description of the relationship between political leaders and the capitalist class. Ultimately, a workable risk management media model should produce the following expected functions for the social system: Notification: minimizes risk of further attack, such as through the color-coded terror warning system, a state–media partnership. Unification: generates support for national antiterror efforts through patriotism and pride; Limitation: controls images of opposition and expression of dissent; minimizes risk of defeat. Since risk here is defined as “another terrorist attack,” risk management in this sense would hold that media should be actively involved in the warning, notification, and continued vigilance in the anticipation of future terrorist attempts (see stage 6, item 1). The media’s well-documented reliance on official sources and natural attraction to dramatic news, such as arrests and counterterrorist actions, naturally incline them toward this role. Acts of terror are almost universally defined as “news”; therefore mass media as the warning and identification mechanism for global risk is easily accomplished. Risk management specifically applied to the domestic front focuses on preventing future terrorist acts. Unity, solidarity, and national pride are effective measures in this effort. The heavy use of patriotic symbols, values, and messages in media products work subtly to shore up this essential arena (stage 6, item 7). Similarly, and perhaps most importantly, voices of dissent are by nature a risk inherent to democracy, not normally to be suppressed (stage 6, item 7). But in the context of global terrorism, margins of tolerance must necessarily shrink in the interest of preventing future attacks. Dissent in this environment is functionally equivalent to terrorist sympathy, and would be treated as added risk. Therefore, we should expect mass media to frame those protesting war or other “necessary” instances of risk management as anti-American at the very least. Given these conditions, we may generate the following hypotheses: H1: During the period of the war on terror, the relationship between the mass media and the state will be closer than normal, nearing a collaborative partnership. H2: Mass media content (coverage, discourse, and framing) during the period will be uncritical, war-supportive, patriotic, absent dissent, and dehumanizing of the enemy. 215
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Media analysis I surveyed all the significant available scholarly literature on the subject of the US mass media in the war on terror, focusing particularly on the interaction between the press and the US government and military, as well as actual media content (e.g. framing, language, discourse, sources, etc.) regarding the war during the period just after the 9/11 attacks to the spring of 2003. Marginal “mass media” such as blogs, social networking sites, and other independent outlets were not included. Studies or articles were vetted for their relevance to the specific topic, reducing the pool of content to a manageable and germane group. Findings were then categorized into analysis of relationships between media and the state/military, and analysis of manifest media content. Relationships A number of the stories in the sample illustrated high levels of self-awareness and deliberate strategies among media organizations and government agencies to influence news content. On the military side, for example, in a 2001 US Army War College briefing paper, military officials describe the media as “a strategic enabler in a number of ways,” including executing psychological operations, deception of the enemy, and as a supplement to intelligence collection efforts (Belknap 2002: 14). Another study by Marine Col. Starnes in 2004 referred to the military’s media-embed initiative as “the weaponization of reporters.” He added, “the embed reports … focused audiences on the fighting men and women and silenced or smothered national dissent … If the embedded reporters had not been present, the propaganda war would have had a much different outcome.” He stressed that “the rules prohibited embedded reporters from reporting the names of casualties and required that they refrain from filming casualties” (Starnes 2004: 3). In other cases, media outlets relinquished journalistic integrity entirely, handing off significant reporting directly to government sources. On 11 September 2002, WHBQ, a FOX affiliate in Memphis, broadcast a report on how US aid was crucial in the liberation of Afghani women. Later it was discovered that interviews in the story were conducted by State Department contractors, who also selected the quotes from those interviews, shot the video, and wrote much of the narration. A White House memo from 2003 described this project as “a prime example of a White-House led effort that could facilitate strategic, proactive communications in the war on terror.” Recent examinations have found that at least 77 mass media outlets unwittingly used these “video news releases,” which the Government Accounting Office is at this writing investigating as “improper covert propaganda” (Barstow and Stein 2005; Buncombe 2006). Some media organizations displayed remarkable acquiescence in the face of the slightest pressure from Washington on the question of reporting on the war on terror. On 10 October 2001, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice held a conference call with executives from ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and CNN requesting that they not broadcast any more unabridged video from Osama bin Laden. Rupert Murdoch, head of FOX, responded in a Reuters news article, “We’ll do whatever is our patriotic duty” (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] 2001). Such instances are not restricted to the conservative-friendly media, such as FOX. Media scholar Douglas Kellner cites the cases of CNN chief Walter Isaacson and FOX head Roger Ailes unabashedly issuing directives of patriotic support to their network reporters. Ailes reportedly sent a confidential message to the White House urging the president to “act 216
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harshly” to guarantee public support. Isaacson was quoted as saying, “It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan,” and told CNN commentators to stress the loss of life in the terrorist attacks whenever mentioning combat casualties (Kellner 2003: 66). Through pool reporting and the almost exclusive reliance on embedded sources, CNN (as well as most other news organizations) uncritically carried images and messages highlighting the effectiveness and success of the Iraq campaign early on, with little or no inquiry as to the veracity of the content presented. On 1 December 2004, for instance, the Los Angeles Times divulged that the US military lied to CNN in its psychological warfare operations surrounding the attack on Fallujah. According to the story, an anonymous Pentagon official told reporter Howard Kurtz, “This is the most informationintensive war you can imagine … We’re going to lie about things.” It was also later discovered that the famous toppling of the Saddam statue in central Baghdad was the work of a “quick-thinking Marine colonel” acting in concert with an “Army PSYOPS [psychological operations] team that made it appear as a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking” (FAIR 2004). A growing number of academic studies of the relationship between mass media and the military after 9/11 have found consistent evidence of the breakdown of conventional journalistic standards of balance, impartiality, and independence. A panel of international media experts convened in 2002 to discuss the US media coverage of the war on terrorism noted the high level of overt patriotism in news broadcasts. Said British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) correspondent Tim Franks, “We were struck by the fact that all the networks had those patriotic logos … it would have been absolutely inconceivable at the BBC” (Johnson 2002). Similarly, a study by the Center for International and Security Studies found that the Bush administration’s repeated linkages of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq were reflexively adopted by the media in mainstream coverage, despite the dubious factual connection between them (Moeller 2004). Content Findings regarding sudden and dramatic shifts in the relationship and behaviors exhibited by media outlets and government sources may reveal significant support for the risk management media model, but without systematic investigation of the manifest content found in mass media reporting of the war on terror, the analysis will be inadequate. Nevertheless, a robust consensus emerges in a metasample of significant research focusing on how media organizations reported on events related to the campaign, at home and abroad: A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that between September and December of 2001, 49 percent of media coverage was “all pro-US,” 13 percent was mostly pro-US, 30 percent was mixed, 5 percent was mostly dissenting, and 3 percent was all-dissenting. Researcher Roland Schatz of Media Tenor also found that the dominant frame of this coverage was “who?” rather than “why?,” suggesting the pursuit of retribution rather than an interest in root causes and global political conflict. (Schechter 2003: 55) Domestically, in a fascinating cross-cultural analysis of coverage of anti-war protests, Boaz (2005) found that US media outlets tended to portray demonstrations as unpatriotic 217
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and largely irrelevant to “real politics,” whereas European media framed the protests as legitimate and necessary. Similarly, Ravi (2005) compared US and UK media coverage of the war on terror with that of media organizations in India and Pakistan. He found that the British and American press focused heavily on military strategy and the level of broad public support for the war. Indian and Pakistani media, instead, tended to take the perspective of the Iraqi people and their experience, while focusing on civilian deaths. The practice of “embedding reporters” was systematically studied by Pfau and colleagues (2004), comparing the coverage they produced with that of non-embedded reporters. They discovered that embedded reporters’ stories were framed in a highly episodic fashion, maximizing the dramatic elements, and emphasizing favorable impressions of the US military. These patterns were not so pronounced among the non-embedded journalists. Dunn et al. (2005), using intensive textual analysis of newspaper articles, found that American media outlets used “destructive words” (such as “explosion.,” “threat,” or “attacker”) to refer to acts of violence in Iraq perpetrated by terrorists, but “benign words” (“campaign,” “action,” or “strategy”) for violent acts undertaken by the US military. In another intriguing comparative media study, Strömbäck and Dimitrova (2006) reported that US press coverage of the war emphasized military conflict and relied heavily on official, government sources, whereas Swedish coverage focused on the many protests and tended to take a negative tone toward the war.
Synthesis This research suggests that the risk management model serves as a useful, albeit imperfect framework for understanding media/state relations in the build-up and early prosecution of the war on terror. The model accurately predicts and describes the events and processes of the early war on terror period, although it fails to explain the significant reversals in public opinion toward the war beginning in mid-2005. Similarly, critics will marshal credible cases from the period, indicating high levels of protest, resistance to dominant ideology, and even trenchant war criticism proffered by the commercial media. This chapter cannot address this issue with the justice it is due, but Giddens makes clear that his theory allows for such resistance. Giddens portrays a decidedly knowledgeable and independent actor, especially through his concept of discursive consciousness. Presumably, all actors have the ability to reflect on their own situation and knowledge, and act accordingly, even in revolutionary ways. He holds the power of the lay actor in high esteem, and discounts those theories that weaken this idea. Also his emphasis on practices as the central mechanism in structuration makes every agent a powerful social system-builder, as it were. The point here is not that Giddens be recast as among “strong society” theorists, but rather to observe that within his rather voluntaristic images of structure and agency, we still find surprising allowances for the workings of dominant ideology, even the occasional need for it (Coser 1956). These facts also converge to paint a much more “powerful structure/weak agent” image of social relations than is usually portrayed in connection with Giddens. The foregoing chapter is not meant as a declaration of a new theory of ideology and media within the debate on structure and agency, but merely to observe that under certain circumstances, these social forces have the potential to paint pictures of reality far more controlled and ideological than might normally be allowed by prevailing social theories. 218
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As a caveat, it is essential to consider the role of historical context in this empirical example. It would be difficult to overstate the exceptional nature of the social environment surrounding the events of 11 September 2001, politically, militarily, economically, and psychologically. Consequently, it should not be too unexpected that such a trauma to the basic pillars of modern society would result in a surge of solidarity through all social subsystems, but particularly the cultural and integrative segments. However, such events also emphasize how fragile constructs such objectivity, balance, truth-seeking, and journalistic independence prove to be when the host society perceives a threat. One could even argue that sufficiently potent social dangers peel back the veneers of such claims of dispassionate interest to reveal the powerful ideological forces always ready to be called into action. As the forces of globalization ineluctably press forward, the probability of a greater number of manufactured risks of greater severity increases apace. Accordingly, the management of these risks, materially and ideologically, will be a necessary accompaniment, one obviously worthy of intense sociological attention. The model described here offers researchers a theoretically grounded and empirically validated tool for analyzing mass media behavior and processes for such instances.
Future research At this writing, the campaign against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan is in its eighth year of operation. One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to cease referring to the military effort as the “war on terror.” Administration officials were urged to use phrases such as “overseas contingency operation,” whereas the President himself has opted repeatedly for “our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism.” Subsequently, news organizations have also retreated from the once-ubiquitous war on terror moniker and have adopted a variety of less bellicose terms. Although appearing at first blush as a mere semantic or rhetorical polish, this shift in language appears to reflect meaningful changes in the perception of and plans for the war by the new administration, as well as its shifting place in the minds of American citizens. Faced by unprecedented fiscal struggles, elites and citizens have been forced to move their primary focus to attend to basic economic security. The prudence of fighting a major war on terror in two separate, remote theatres has come under question in the context of lay-offs, massive government bail-outs, and the demise of dozens of major corporations. Given these new facts, further research in this vein should investigate any shifts in media content regarding antiterror military operations, and in particular the media’s changed relationship with government elites. In such a context of comparatively reduced manufactured risks because of the more restrictive investment climate abroad, a more ecologically sensitive administration in Washington, a more open and dialogue-based foreign policy, and an overall reduction and less aggressive stance in foreign military operations, a logical hypothesis would predict a mass media less deeply involved in risk management. Such a mass media system would involve more press independence, more tolerance of dissent, fewer displays of overt patriotism/nationalism, and an overall lower interest in terrorism as a source of news. Scholars from cognate fields are encouraged to develop this and related lines of inquiry made possible by this dramatically altered sociopolitical landscape. 219
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References Barstow, D. and Stein, R. (2005) “How the government makes news: under Bush, a new age of prepackaged TV news,” The New York Times, 13 March, p.1. Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, New Delhi: Sage. Belknap, M. (2002) The CNN effect: Strategic enabler or operational risk. Parameters, 32: 100–114. Bergesen, A. J. and Lizardo, O. (2004) “International terrorism and the world system,” Sociological Theory, 22: 1. Block, F. (1977) “The ruling class does not rule: Notes on the Marxist theory of the state,” Socialist Revolution 7: 6–28. Boaz, C. (2005) “War and foreign policy framing in international media,” Peace Review 17: 349–56. Buncombe, A. (2006) “Bush planted fake news stories on American TV,” The Independent, 29 May. Calabrese, A. (2005) “Casus belli: US media and the justification of the Iraq War,” Television & New Media, 6: 153–75. Coker, C. (2002) “Globalization and terrorism,” paper presented for the LSE Social Economic Forum in Japan and the G8 Research Group, 10 June 2002. Coser, L. (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Dunn, E. W., Moore, M. and Nosek, B. A. (2005) “The war of the words: How linguistic differences in reporting shape perceptions of terrorism,” Analyses of Social Issues & Public Policy, 5: 67–86. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) (2001) Networks Accept Government Guidance. Press release, 12 October. ——(2004) Military’s Media Manipulation Demands More Investigation. Press release, 3 December. Fosler, G. D. (2002) War and terrorism put globalization at risk. Straight Talk, The Conference Board, 14, 2. Giddens, A. (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——(1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——(1999) “Risk and responsibility,” Modern Law Review, 62, 1–10. ——(2005) “Scaring people may be the only way to avoid the risks of new-style terrorism,” New Statesman, 10 January, 29–31. Heng, Y. (2002) “The war on terrorism: a ‘risk management exercise’ in war clothing?” paper presented at the Political Studies Association Conference, April. ——(2006) War as Risk Management: Strategy and Conflict in an Age of Globalised Risks, London: Routledge. Herman, E. S. and Chomsky, N. (1988) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon Books. Johnson, C. A. (2000) Blowback: Costs and Consequences of American Empire, New York: Metropolitan Books. Johnson, T. (2002) Europeans Note Overt Patriotism by US Media. Press release, American University School of Communication, 28 January. Kellner, D. (2003) From 9/11 to Terror War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy, Boston, MA: Lanham. Khan, M. A. (2004) “Teaching globalization in the era of terrorism,” lecture given at University of Richmond, 2 February 2004. Kuypers, J. A. (2006) Bush’s War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Martin, A. and Petro, P. (2006) Rethinking Global Security: Media, Popular Culture, and the “War on Terror,” Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Moeller, S. (2004) “Weapons of mass destruction and the media: anatomy of a failure,” YaleGlobal, 14 April. Online. Available http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/ (accessed 14 April 2004). Pfau, M. et al. (2004) “Embedding journalists in military combat unites: Impact on newspaper story frames and tone,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81: 74–88. Pierri, R. (2004) “Globalization begets insecurity begets violence,” InterPress Service, 20 January. Ravi, N. (2005) “Looking beyond flawed journalism: How national interests, patriotism, and cultural values shaped the coverage of the Iraq War,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 10: 45–62.
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Schechter, D. (2003) Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War in Iraq, Amherst: Prometheus Books. Starnes, G. T. Col. (2004) “Leveraging the media: The embedded media program in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” unpublished thesis, Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Center for Strategic Leadership. Strömbäck, J. and Dimitrova, D. V. (2006) “Political and media systems matter: A comparison of election news coverage in Sweden and the United States,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 11: 131–47.
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19 Talking war How elite US newspaper editorials and opinion pieces debated the attack on Iraq Alexander G. Nikolaev and Douglas V. Porpora
How did it happen that the US, the world’s only superpower, made what it termed a “preemptive” attack on Iraq in 2003? As much of the world disapproved, this question is more than just of academic interest. The simple answer is that the attack was an executive decision of President George W. Bush. The simple answer, however, does not suffice. The Bush administration made its decision neither alone nor in a political vacuum. Although the US may not be so democratic as it perceives itself to be, it is at least a pluralistic society in which even executive decisions reflect wider, societal sanction. The executive decision was authorized by a Congressional vote that was preceded by considerable public debate. Thus, understanding why the US acted as it did requires examining the wider debate. Public debate takes a variety of forms. It includes political leaders making speeches or just commenting informally to the press. It includes the protest activities of social movement organizations. The opinion pages of the press are also one major forum in which public debate takes place. Together, these and kindred practices constitute what Habermas (1989) called “the public sphere,” which he imagined as the steering mechanism of a democracy. This chapter examines the debate on Iraq in the opinion pages of America’s elite news publications: The New York Times (NYT), The Washington Post (Post), The Christian Science Monitor (CSM), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Time, and Newsweek. Opinion pages include unsigned editorials representing the publication’s position, and signed opinion pieces, representing individuals’ opinions. The study presented includes both. In August 2002, the Bush administration launched what White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card described as its “marketing” of war. On 10 October, Congress authorized President Bush to use armed force against Iraq. This study covers the elite op-ed debate from the months preceding until just after the crucial Congressional vote. Our goal was to determine how America deliberated about war. Which arguments were entertained the most in the elite press? Were the opinions largely of one accord, and if so, was that accord for or against going to war? Some described the elite press as slavishly supportive of the government in foreign affairs (Parenti 2001; Thomas 2006). Others (e.g. Bennett 1990; Herman and Chomsky 2002; Mermin 1999) argue that 222
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although some press criticism of foreign policy can be expected, it only echoes prevailing disagreement among political elites. Thus, this argument goes, the opinions expressed in the elite press set a narrow agenda of acceptable opinion that excludes the most damaging criticisms of government policy. Most recently, Entman (2004) has argued that since the end of the Cold War, press criticism of foreign policy will go beyond such narrow limits when the situation to which the government responds is sufficiently ambiguous. The data presented here help adjudicate among these various perspectives. In particular, we will show that opinion in the elite press was not of one mind on Iraq and that there was, rather, considerable opposition to presidential policy (opposition not aptly described as merely reflecting elite disagreement). Simultaneously, opposition expressed in the press kept within fairly strict boundaries, addressing almost exclusively prudential considerations and only rarely broaching moral or legal criticisms.
The public sphere, the press, and hegemony Our study of op-eds takes Gamson’s (1996) Talking Politics and Eliasoph’s (1998) Avoiding Politics to the next level. Whereas they explore the cognitive frames deployed when small groups discuss politics, op-eds represent a national discussion about politics. Op-eds represent one of the central forums Habermas referred to as the “public sphere,” which is an institutionalized site of citizen discourse operating between the state and market. Ideally in the public sphere, citizens from all levels of the social hierarchy come together as equals to discuss and debate the national interest. Op-ed pages fit this model in various ways. First op-eds are an institutionalized forum. Second, op-eds bring together politicians, generals, journalists, academics, writers, and others, writing not in an official capacity but as private citizens. Third, in op-eds, writers address each other, the government, and the public at large on matters of public interest. They do so, finally, through rational argument. According to Habermas, in the process of rational public argument a citizenry develops what Rousseau called a “general will” in a way that makes it a rational subject of history. If, as Kant believed, there is some mechanism that makes democracies less inclined to war with each other, it is their distinctive responsiveness to their respective national public spheres. The major theoretical question about the public sphere is not whether it exists. The major question, rather, is how close to Habermas’s ideal the public sphere actually functions. Ideally the public sphere should constitute an “ideal speech situation,” in which all members of a society have equal opportunity to be heard without regard for rank or distinction. Under such circumstances, the only social force that operates is the “unforced force of the better argument.” Societal decisions, then, are determined by reason rather than power (Habermas 1993). To the extent that speech situations depart from this ideal, residual sources of inequality operate in the public sphere to “systematically distort” the pattern of communication (Habermas 1984). Residual sources of inequality certainly do operate in op-eds, especially in elite news publications. For example, 25 percent of the op-eds we examined were written by the editors of the publications, and 50 percent were written by the regular columnists of the publications. Thus, only 25 percent of op-eds voices were unaffiliated with the publications. About half of these were written by politicians, generals, or other public figures. Lesser-known people lacked equal access to the op-ed pages of the nation’s elite news publications. 223
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One question to ask of elite op-ed pages is how unequal access might systematically distort communication, to ask which points are present and which are absent. The question, in other words, is about the agenda or range of acceptable opinion set within the op-ed pages of the elite press. This question coincides with wider interest in the agenda-setting function of the press. Virtually all commentators on this issue agree that democracy needs a press independent of government and partisan bias (Mermin 1999). Nevertheless, few see the press as truly independent. Instead, most commentators think news reporting and opinion are politically distorted somehow. Those on the right continually charge the elite press with liberal bias (see Alterman 2003). Those on the left view foreign correspondents and commentators as too ideologically supportive of the US government. The simplest left-wing view is sometimes called “the hegemony” model. According to this model the government is so powerful that the elite press simply mirrors the government line, utterly forsaking its role as the so-called “fourth estate.” In a Nation article entitled “Lap dogs of the press,” Helen Thomas, Dean of the White House Press Corps, accuses the press of behaving so on Iraq (2006: 18). A more complex view is called the “indexing” model, which holds that the elite press indicates disagreement, if it exists, among political elites (Bennett 1990; Herman and Chomsky 2002; Mermin 1999) and may act independently of the president, although it does not act independently of official Washington (Mermin 1999). As a result, critical commentary remains within narrow boundaries. The execution of foreign policy tends to be critically scrutinized but not the definition of the problem itself. In a more complex cascade model, Entman (2004) argues that with the end of the Cold War, the elite press does act more independently of official Washington in certain circumstances, such as when elites and public opinion are divided over a foreign policy issue and the issue itself is ambiguous and eludes easy framing in terms of US selfperception. One such case, he argues, was the first Gulf War, and in the approach to that conflict he does, indeed, find considerable dissenting opinion registered in the elite press.
The context In January 2002 Bush named Iraq as part of an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address. A few days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke of “regime change.” By April, a number of journalists had begun asking whether the White House was planning to take the US to war with Iraq. At the end of August, Bush’s Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, advised reporters that, according to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, the president had no need for “explicit authority from Congress to wage war with Iraq.” Similarly, on 10 August, Richard Perle, head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, told the London Daily Telegraph that, if necessary, the US would act unilaterally. These pronouncements conveyed the impression that the Bush administration was prepared to “go it alone” on Iraq, nationally and internationally. Democrats, retired generals, and even elder Republican statesmen were alarmed and urged the administration that constructive debate, an international coalition, and consultation with Congress would be prudent. The administration’s hard stance conditioned the subsequent debate. The Democratic leadership, in an effort to persuade the White House to consult Congress, began signaling that, if consulted, Congress would largely comply with presidential wishes. With the Democratic 224
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leadership in such a supine posture, the outcome of Congressional debate was determined before it began. Thus, the subject of debate soon shifted from substance to scheduling. At this moment, the White House initiated a media blitz. It began with an address by Vice President Dick Cheney on 26 August to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The entire last third of this speech was devoted to Iraq and contained a refrain that would often be repeated: “The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action.” Cheney’s speech was soon followed by a series of television appearances by Bush cabinet members: a massive PR campaign within a span of just 2 days. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice went on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer to deny that Saddam Hussein was a “peace-loving” man. Cheney appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to discuss Saddam’s imminent development of nuclear weapons. On FOX News Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell supported skepticism about weapons inspections. There were also attempts to connect Iraq to Al Qaeda. All these points culminated in President Bush’s 12 September speech to the UN General Assembly, which emphasized Iraq’s violation of UN resolutions. After Bush’s address to the UN, Congressional Democrats were ready to give the president the authorization he wanted to use force against Iraq. According to a New York Times editorial (2002) urging much more debate, Democratic acquiescence coalesced virtually overnight. Asked why, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle explained that as the President had now done much of what Democrats had requested (going to the UN and consulting Congress) the Democrats were now “reciprocating.” There was, to be sure, still sporadic opposition. Senators John Kerry and Edward Kennedy argued against war until all other options had been exhausted. Kennedy questioned whether Saddam really had the alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and further argued that an Iraq war would distract from the war on terrorism and destabilize the Middle East. Kerry, like many others, further argued against “going it alone.” Few argued that what the US proposed to do would be aggressive or illegal. Even Al Gore (2002), whose oppositional speech was widely considered hard-hitting, painstakingly defended the legality of a US attack. What instead concerned Gore were prudential considerations: that the US act with a broad coalition and that it develop a clear post-invasion plan. Yet, even within the elite circles of official Washington, some voices did raise moral and legal objections to war. Senator Robert Byrd (Democrat, WV) tirelessly argued that Congress was about to sell out its constitutional war powers to a president who was “changing the conventional understanding of ‘self-defense’” (2002). Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, OH) similarly denounced Bush’s war plans as illegal and immoral. Such principled arguments, however, remained marginal in official Washington. If anything, the case for a second war with Iraq should have been more difficult than the first for the White House to frame. The first Gulf War was prompted by an indisputable act of aggression by Iraq: invasion of Kuwait. The reasons for the second were far less clear-cut. Yet by August 2002, even before any significant debate in the public sphere, public opinion had already solidly aligned itself behind an invasion of Iraq. It was such strong public support for the President, whose stature was high after 11 September, that made the Democrats so timid about challenging the march to war. Thus, overall, in this context, any resistance to war in the press would be registered against dominant public opinion and in the absence of strong opposition among political elites. Although political conservatives might still expect strong media criticism in these circumstances, that expectation would not be entirely consistent with either the hegemony or the indexing models, or with Entman’s cascade model. 225
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Methods We examined opinion in six of the news publications generally considered elite (see, for example, Entman 2004; Mooney 2004): NYT, Post, CSM, WSJ, Time, and Newsweek written between 15 August and 15 October 2002 that contained the words “Iraq” and “war” somewhere in the full text. We coded op-eds at a micro- and a macrolevel of analysis. The macrolevel of a piece concerns the piece’s overall characteristics (van Dijk 1985). At this level, two features were coded. First, each piece’s overall argument was coded as broadly in favor of Bush’s approach to Iraq, opposed, neutral, or other. The other macrolevel feature coded was whether the overall argument was clearly and entirely moral in nature, as opposed to an entirely prudential argument, an argument that mixed moral and prudential concerns, or an argument that was morally ambiguous or indistinct. At the microlevel, following Entman (2004), pieces were coded for the presence or absence of 67 individual argumentative points, assertions, or assertion-types. These argumentative points were culled not only from the discourse in the elite press but also from beyond. One point of the study, after all, was to determine the nature of agendasetting, if any, in the elite press. That question requires asking not only which kinds of points are present in the discourse but also which are absent. Of the 67 argumentative points identified, 25 were points or arguments in favor of war, and 38 were points or arguments against. There were also four neutral-assertion types indicating such elements as textual reference to other op-eds or meta-commentary on the debate. In some cases, different argumentative points seem close but, in fact, represent the nuances of different idioms. Consider, for example, v8 (“It is an unprovoked, aggressive war”) and v34 (“It is an immoral and unjust war”). Although close, the two points are not identical. V8 expresses a legal point, whereas v34 expresses a moral evaluation with possible reference to Christian “just war theory.” To determine the interrater reliability of the categories used, two coders co-coded a sample of 50 pieces drawn randomly from the larger corpus. The interrater reliabilities for the individual argumentative points were uniformly high. Only two had reliabilities under 80 percent. All the other variables had reliabilities of 86 percent or more, most well above. Overall, the median number of arguments per piece was two; the median number of arguments opposing war was one, as was the median number of arguments supporting it. That an assertion appears in a piece does not mean that the piece as a whole endorses it. A piece in favor of war, for example, might make one assertion advancing that position but also counter two argumentative assertions against war, which would then necessarily also appear in the piece. Coding this way permits examination of which points were simply considered, even if not endorsed. Which pieces actually endorsed which arguments can generally be inferred by cross-tabulating micro- and macroarguments.
Results Table 19.1 indicates how op-ed arguments were distributed overall for or against war with Iraq. The first feature of the distribution to be noted (see Table 19.1a) is how overall and within each individual publication any strong preponderance of arguments 226
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Table 19.1 A A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: All op-eds
Pro-war
New York Times Washington Post Christian Science Monitor Wall Street Journal Time and Newsweek Total
Anti-war
%
(N)
%
16 37
(13) (43)
57 34
18
(5)
67
Neutral
(N)
Total
%
(N)
%
(N)
(46) (39)
27 29
(22) (34)
100 100
(81) (116)
32
(9)
50
(14)
100
(28)
(35)
4
(2)
29
(15)
100
(52)
20
(3)
47
(7)
33
(5)
100
(15)
34
(99)
36
(103)
30
(90)
100
(292)
for or against war is diminished by a substantial number of neutral pieces on the topic. A full 30 percent of the op-eds in the corpus neither approved nor disapproved of Bush’s approach to the war. As Table 19.1c indicates, with the exception of the Post, the distribution of arguments in each paper becomes more one-sided when neutral pieces are removed from consideration. Thus, considering only those pieces that took a definite position for or against war, 70 percent of the pieces in Time and Newsweek and 79 percent of the pieces in the NYT were against war. On the other side, 95 percent of the pieces in the WSJ were in favor. As would be expected, one-sidedness generally becomes more pronounced in editorials. Thus, considering again only those pieces that took a definite position on the war, all 17 of the editorials in the NYT were opposed, and all 17 of the editorials in the WSJ were in favor (see Table 19.1b). The Post’s editorials were split, reflecting ambivalence about Bush’s policy. The observed distributions in Table 19.1 begin to counter the two more extreme views of the elite media. Overall, among those op-eds that take a position, the distribution of arguments for and against war is almost even. Such a distribution is hardly the mark of a press that is decidedly liberal. Even excluding the WSJ, the numbers fail to support a charge that the elite press as a whole has a liberal bias. However, the distributions also counter Helen Thomas’ view that the elite press “lapped up everything the Pentagon and White House could dish out – no questions asked” (2006). With the exceptions of the WSJ and the Post, op-ed opinion was predominantly opposed to administration policy. The predominance of opposition over support for administration policy applies not only to the overall arguments of the pieces but also to the prevalence of micropoints considered. Seventeen different argumentative points against war were considered by at least 5 percent of the pieces. In contrast, only 10 argumentative points in favor of war received that much attention. The elite press, thus, cannot fairly be characterized as slavishly supportive of American foreign policy. On the other hand, as will become evident, there are definite limits to how severely the elite press will criticize the government. The argumentative points were generally diffuse. Only a few points were cited by 10 percent or more of the op-eds. Although there are more of them, the opposing points are more 227
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Table 19.1 B A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: Editorials only*
Pro-war
New York Times Washington Post Christian Science Monitor Wall Street Journal Total
Anti-war
Neutral
Total
%
(N)
%
(N)
%
(N)
%
(N)
0 28 9
(0) (5) (1)
85 39 36
(17) (7) (4)
15 33 55
(3) (6) (6)
100 100 100
(20) (18) (11)
68 31
(17) (22)
0 39
(0) (28)
32 30
(8) (21)
100 100
(25) (71)
Table 19.1 C A overall op-ed position on war by periodical: All op-eds with neutral removed
Pro-war
New York Times Washington Post Christian Science Monitor Wall Street Journal Time and Newsweek Total
Anti-war
Total
%
(N)
%
(N)
%
(N)
22 52 36 95 30 49
(13) (43) (5) (35) (3) (97)
78 48 64 5 70 51
(46) (39) (9) (2) (7) (102)
100 100 100 100 100 100
(58) (82) (14) (37) (10) (199)
*p < .001, **p = .02.
diffuse than the points supportive of administrative policy. Only three argumentative points opposed to administration policy are considered by 10 percent or more of the op-eds. In contrast, five argumentative points in support of administration policy were considered by at least 10 percent of op-eds: Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMDs (40 percent); his connection with terrorism (18 percent); the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime (18 percent); Saddam Hussein’s violation of UN resolutions (15 percent); and malevolence (12 percent). The most common supportive points are cited with greater frequency than points opposed, indicating a president’s ability to set the agenda for debate. True, some of the administration’s own major points received surprisingly little attention within the opinion pages. Yet the five most frequently cited supportive points all emanated from the administration first. Such points are not like other points. They need to be countered and must show up in pieces opposing administration policy as well as in pieces supporting it. Altogether, the effect of the president’s power to set the discussion is clear: it is the power to establish which points must be discussed by both sides, and it is simultaneously the power to ignore points raised by the opposing side. The difference in the frequencies with which certain points were raised is presented in Table 19.2. The WSJ’s commentary is uniformly preoccupied with points in favor of war: the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Saddam’s violation of UN resolutions, and the threat Saddam poses to the US and the world. The frequencies with which these points are cited in the WSJ are not only substantially higher than for the other publications, but they are also high absolutely. Opinion in Time and Newsweek also frequently cited the brutality of Saddam’s regime. What makes the opinion expressed in Time and Newsweek distinct is the 20 percent frequency with which the contrary point was cited: the war’s potential to destabilize the Middle East. At most, other publications cited that point only about half as frequently. 228
Note: *p = .05, **p = .01.
18
Neutral: Criticism of debates** 29
11
3
2
13 15 11
11
21
13 15
0 3
5 9
Washington Post (N = 116)
For: Brutal Saddam regime* Saddam violated UN resolutions* Saddam a threat*
Against: Illegal internationally* Create Middle East instability** Distraction from terrorism* Imperialism*
New York Times (N = 81)
Table 19.2 Distribution of arguments by periodical (as percentages)
12
18
33 27
2
10
10 4
Wall Street Journal (N = 52)
0
4
14 11
0
0
7 0
Christian Science Monitor (N = 28)
7
7
20 0
13
7
0 20
Time and Newsweek (N = 15)
19
9
18 15
5
12
4 5
Total (N = 292)
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Opinion in the NYT most distinctly raised the concern that war with Iraq would create a distraction from the war on terrorism. To a lesser extent, Post opinion also raised this concern as did opinion in the WSJ, but the latter raised the point only to argue against it. The opinion in the NYT and especially the Post are distinct because of the frequency of meta-critique: how often there was criticism of how the issues were being debated. Such criticism addressed individual parties to the debate and the nature of the debate as a whole. Considerable commentary, for example, urged against politicization of the debate, and the NYT especially continuously criticized the Democrats’ hesitance to debate at all. One last distinctive pattern that shows up in Table 19.3 is the total absence of any commentary in either the Post or the two news weeklies challenging the international legality of an attack on Iraq. Indeed, in the WSJ, international law is raised only to be dismissed (Casey and Rivkin 2002). In the NYT, too, one of the few pieces that raise the issue (Keller 2002) does so only to dismiss it. One of the others is purely informational on the response of the nation’s liberal religious leaders (Steinfels 2002). In the NYT, only one piece made its central focus the international illegality of the contemplated military action (Ackerman 2002). Table 19.3 indicates how opinion differs across the publications when we distinguish between unsigned editorials, which represent a publication’s official position, and signed pieces, representing the individual opinions of regular or guest columnists. There were no unsigned editorials for the news weeklies, and so they do not show up in Table 19.3A. Perhaps the first noticeable feature of Table 19.3A is the near absence of any of the listed pro arguments in the editorials of the WSJ. In particular, the WSJ editors alone never evidently found any of the administration’s assertions about Iraq needing further proof. The other discernible patterns concern the distinct preoccupations of the editors at the NYT and the Post. NYT editorials distinctly emphasized that the US possessed options other than war (an emphasis shared by the CSM) and that war with Iraq would be a distraction from the war on terrorism. For their part, Post editorials distinctly emphasized the need for support from allies. Table 19.3B presents the distinctive emphases of the signed opinion pieces across the different publications. Unsurprisingly, the WSJ takes a strong lead in mentions of Saddam Hussein’s brutality. The WSJ also leads in mentions of Iraq’s link with terrorism, although on this point, the emphasis is shared (albeit less strongly) by opinion in the CSM and the news weeklies. In fact, on Saddam’s link with terrorism, the NYT and the Post constitute the outliers with only 13 percent and 16 percent mentions of the point, respectively. Compared with the other publications, signed opinion in these two major newspapers likewise underemphasizes Saddam’s possession of WMDs. A final, striking pattern to be discerned in this table is the news weeklies’ distinct preoccupation with a lack of post-war plans. Whereas that concern shows up in 20 percent of the signed opinion pieces in the news weeklies, it hardly appears in the signed opinion of the others, and not at all in the WSJ. The data presented in Tables 19.2 and 19.3 indicate a diversity of opinion in the elite press. Certainly, there are major differences of opinion between the WSJ and the other elite publications. Even excluding the WSJ, different emphases remain across publications. In the end, the data fail to confirm either of the two more extreme views: that the press does little more than support American foreign policy or that it reflects a strongly liberal point of view. To an extent, the data support the indexing model. The dissenting points most frequently cited in the press do match the dominant points against war raised by elite politicians: that, for example, the US should exhaust other options, that it should not “go it alone.” 230
3
8
*p = .05, **p = .01, ***p = .001.
35
(98)
(61)
27
6 11
30 35
16 13
33 28
35 0
13 .15
(18)
(20)
A. Unsigned (N) Against: Facts not proven** Need support of allies** Have other options* Distraction from terrorism*** B. Signed (N) For: Brutality of regime* Connection with terrorist* WMDs* Against: Insufficient post-war plans*
Washington Post
New York Times
Argument
0
48
41 37
(27)
4 0
0 4
(25)
Wall Street Journal
13
56
19 25
(17)
18 0
27 9
(11)
20
60
20 27
6
38
19 18
14 12
– – (15)
22 9
Editorial totals
– –
–
Christian Science MonitorNewsweek and Time
Table 19.3 Distribution of arguments by periodical: editorials (as percentages; numbers in samples are in parentheses)
7
40
18 18
7 12
17 8
Overall total
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Was the elite press then just echoing elite political dissent as the indexing model alleges? Causal direction is difficult to determine from these data, further complicated because opinion in the elite press is interpenetrated by political elites. As noted earlier, 13 percent of the pieces in this corpus were written by politicians. What most counters the indexing model and supports Entman’s cascade model is that elite dissent was so desultory. In this period, the press repeatedly cajoled Congress and the political opposition to engage in more debate (e.g. NYT 2002; Post 2002), which hardly indicates a press merely expressive of elite dissent. On the contrary, in its effort to keep aflame a faltering opposition, press opinion was attempting some independence. Although the elite press was not echoing the political elite, it was nevertheless expressing much the same perspective. The range of acceptable debate was the same for both. In particular, for the politicians and the press, morality and legality were marginalized. To be sure, the press considered it prudent for the president to secure Congressional and UN support, but counseling prudence is different from affirming a legal necessity, and the word “support” is likewise different from “approval.” The elite press effectively gave the White House a pass on matters of legality. Equally neglected was any kind of moral criticism of the proposed policy. Throughout the elite press, only about 6 percent of the op-eds offered principled moral or legal arguments against war. Whereas no single moral or legal point against war is mentioned by even 10 percent of op-eds, three moral or legal points in favor of war are: the brutality of Saddam’s regime, Saddam’s violation of UN resolutions, and Saddam’s villainy. In aggregate, only 12 percent of op-eds mention at least one or another (but rarely more than one) of the moral points against war. In contrast, 36 percent of op-eds mention legal or moral points in favor of war. If the promotion of democracy were added, also frequently cited as a moral reason for war, then the frequency of mentions of legal or moral arguments for war rises to 39 percent. Such asymmetrical treatment of moral and legal points for and against war not only reinforces ideologically the impression that the US is not wrong, but also may even foster the impression that it is right.
Conclusion Against the hegemony model of the press the opinion pages of the elite press cannot be accused of blind support for administration policy in the months preceding the Congressional vote authorizing force against Iraq. Nor, given the feeble opposition of the Democratic leadership, can the press be accused as in the indexing model of merely echoing elite dissent. On the contrary, as Entman (2004) suggests, the elite press (aside from the WSJ) was, if anything, more consistently critical of the proposed attack than were the oppositional political elites. Yet, if the elite press offered a semi-independent channel of communication on foreign policy, it was, nevertheless, still a channel in which the range of respectable opinion was as narrow as the indexing model maintains. In particular, critical opinion in the elite press was predominantly of a prudential nature. Rarely was there moral or legal criticism of the proposed policy. Instead, as Critical Theory might put it, the elite press seemed to retreat from values rationality to an almost exclusive concern with instrumental reason. Yet this understates the problem, for the retreat was asymmetrical. Rather, there was more retreat from legal and moral self-criticism than legal and moral criticism of the other, who continued to be demonized in legal and moral terms. Political realism has 232
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called for the withdrawal of moral judgments on war to avoid a Manichean tendency of each nation to align itself with good and its enemies with evil. An evident effect of realist discourse observed here, however, is that the moral demonization of the enemy remains, almost unnoticed as such, while moral self-criticism is all but filtered out. Such an ideological result is precisely what realism seeks to avoid. Even apart from such moral asymmetry, it is troubling to see a retreat from moral language in the opinion pages of the elite press. Is it important that in its foreign affairs the US conduct itself in a legal and moral manner? If so, how will that happen without collective legal and moral deliberation? The sector of the public sphere represented by the opinion pages of the elite press presented little such deliberation. On the contrary, the near absence of legal and moral thinking in those pages helps reinforce the popular impression that, in foreign affairs, moral or legal issues are not legitimate concerns.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Nikolaev, A.G. and D.V. Porpora. (2007) “Talking war: how elite US newspaper editorials and opinions pieces debated the attack on Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 40(1):6–25.
References Ackerman, B. (2002) “The legality of using force,” New York Times, 21 September, p. 15. Alterman, E. (2003) What Liberal Media: The Truth about Bias in the News, New York: Basic Books. Bennett, L.W. (1990) “Toward a theory of press-state relations,” Journal of Communication, 40: 103–25. Byrd, R.C. (2002) “Congress must resist the rush to war,” The New York Times, 10 October, p. 39. Casey, L. and D.B. Rivkin, Jr. (2002) “War is not against the law,” Wall Street Journal, 25 September, p. A14. Eliasoph, N. (1998) Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Entman, R. (2004) Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gamson, W. (1996) Talking Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gore, A. (2002) “Iraq and the War on Terrorism,” address to the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco, September 2002. Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. ——(1989) The Social Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ——(1993) Justification and Application, Trans. Clarin P. Cronin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Herman, E. and N. Chomsky (2002) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon. Keller, B. (2002) “The loyal opposition,” The New York Times, 24 August, p. 13. Mermin, J. (1999) Debating War and Peace, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mooney, C. (2004) “The editorial pages and the case for war,” Columbia Journalism Review, 42: 28–33. The New York Times (2002) “The politics of war,” The New York Times, 20 September, p. 26. Parenti, M. (2001) Democracy for the Few, New York: Wadsworth. Steinfels, P. (2002) “Churches and ethicists loudly oppose the proposed war on Iraq, but deaf ears are many,” The New York Times, 28 September, p. 15. Thomas, H. (2006) “Lap dogs of the press,” The Nation, 27 March, p. 18–20. Van Dijk, T.A. (1985) Macrostructures, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Washington Post. (2002). “Spinning on Iraq,” Washington Post, 26 September, p. A32.
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20 Debating anti-war protests The microlevel discourse of social movement framing on a university listserv Mark Hedley and Sara A. Clark
On 19 March 2003, a campus peace organization (CPO) at a public university of approximately 13,000 students located in the mid-western US posted the following email announcement: CPO, a university-recognized organization, announces the intentions of its members to join the National Strike called for tomorrow, March 20, the day after the war on Iraq began. We will not go to work. We will not go to class. All are welcome to join us on the quad, in front of the library, in a vigil for peace and justice. This email was posted on the university’s faculty and staff listservs. It inspired a sometimes contentious electronic discussion comprised of approximately 120 separate messages posted by 67 different individuals over the course of 16 days. We treat this discussion as data and apply the sibling logics of frame and discourse analysis. Our data provide an excellent opportunity to contribute to the social movement framing literature because unlike previous researchers, we provide a text of microlevel framing processes related to the social movement against the war in Iraq. This text was produced through the voluntary participation of a self-selected group of individuals that included active opponents and supporters of the invasion as well as others who stated no position regarding the war.
The framing of social movement discourse Frames define how situations are constructed; they are “schemata of interpretation” (Goffman 1974: 21) that condition our perception of and involvement in social interaction. They are cognitive structures, which are triggered by environmental stimuli. 234
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Like Goffman, Snow and Benford (1992) recognize that frames, when triggered in the mind of an individual, may influence that individual’s behavior. The relationship between frame and behavior, however, is viewed in neither case as deterministic. Frames in both cases are viewed as potential influences on behavior, not as deterministic causes of behavior. Social movement framing processes are competitive. Opposing factions contest the relative legitimacy of movement goals and the status quo (McAdam et al. 1996) by engaging in processes of framing and counterframing as they seek to legitimate themselves and to de-legitimate others. They carefully distinguish their frames from opponents’ frames by establishing symbolic boundaries (Hunt et al. 1994). Since social movement frames exist in relation to each other, these schemata are flexible. They respond and adapt to interaction with others. Meaning generated within a given frame may be transformed by the recognition of particular cues or keys in the social environment (Goffman 1974: 45). In other words, keys change the subject from one topic to another related one. The keying and rekeying of frames also creates a layering effect, which Goffman refers to as “lamination” (Goffman 1974: 82). Laminations increase the complexity of its framing process partly because any transformation may elicit competing frames. One lamination may involve multiple framings of the same subject so lamination is not synonymous with frame. Contestation produces multiple alternative frames within a single lamination.
The discourse of social movement framing Given its focus on language and meaning, discourse analysis is perhaps less concerned than framing analysis with outcomes and more concerned with external factors that influence discourse. The external environment, often referred to as the discursive field (Wuthnow 1989), provides rules for language use, cultural values and beliefs, and norms for social interaction (Van Dijk 1997). The discursive field is rife with conflict. Language and meaning are recognized as social constructs generated through reflexive and often antagonistic social interaction. Under conditions of conflict, the desire to generate meaning implies the desire to undermine alternative meanings (Wetherell et al. 2001; Edwards and Potter 1992). Theoretically speaking, this complements the emphasis of framing analysis on how competing frames vie for positions of power and control in the discursive field. Relevant discourse may involve the use of preconstructed frames by social movement organizations for purposes of recruitment and mobilization (see Snow et al. 1986). These frames are initially constructed via discourse at the microlevel. Consequently, Fine suggests that social movements are “bundles” of microlevel narratives (1995: 128).
Methodology Our analysis of the discourse involved a multistage application of constant comparison (Altheide 1987) that involves the case-to-case comparison of every unit of analysis in a sample in an attempt to classify cases into categories based on theoretically relevant and emergent variables. In applying constant comparison, neither the complete list of relevant variables nor lists of relevant categories for each variable are determined in advance. Instead, variables and categories emerge as relevant with researchers’ exposure to data. 235
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We initially applied constant comparison in order to identify the central topics of the discourse. Two such topics emerged: (1) the US invasion of Iraq (and protests against it) and (2) the appropriateness of the discourse for its setting. We treated those postings that referenced both topics as relevant to both groupings. Next, we used constant comparison to identify frame laminations within each topic grouping. For the war topic, we identified an initial framing contest and two laminations. The initiating contest concerned the status of the strike announced by the CPO. Laminations included (1) the status of anti-war protests in general and (2) the legitimacy of the invasion of Iraq. For the second, we identified only one framing contest that concerned the quality of the discourse itself and whether it was appropriate to the listservs in question. Within each lamination, we identified individual postings according to their stance (pro vs con) on the relevant issue. Finally, we analyzed each posting to identify its justification for its stance and used constant comparison to generate lists of justifications (pro and con) regarding each lamination of the discourse. Again, we treated postings that referenced multiple laminations and/or justifications as relevant in multiple contexts. Finally, we used the methodology to identify competing propositions regarding the legitimacy of the strike proposed by the CPO, the legitimacy of anti-war protests in general, the legitimacy of the US invasion of Iraq, and the appropriateness of the related discourse to the faculty and staff listservs of the university.
Frame contestation: an initiating frame and three laminations The CPO’s announcement, provided on the first page of this chapter, initiated the discourse. In addition to the implied anti-war stance, it emphasized the legitimate status of the CPO as a “university recognized” organization. It also emphasized the collective and inclusive nature of the CPO and its proposed action by using the plurals “members,” “we,” and “us” and by stating that “all” are “welcome” to “join.” Further, this initiating frame attempted to align its specific purpose with the more general goals of attaining “peace” and “justice.” It represented the seriousness of this pursuit by referencing its action as a “vigil,” a somber and respectful form of collective action. The choice of words in the posting serves to link the action proposed with more universally recognized frames, or master frames (Snow and Benford 1992). The CPO’s announcement was posted on a Wednesday night. By the following Saturday morning, 15 postings were offered directly referring to the strike announcement. Twelve of the 15 revealed negative reactions to the strike. Derogatives such as “nonsense,” “destructive,” “worst,” “disservice,” “abdication,” “wrong,” “remiss,” and “misplaced” marked these postings. Disagreement with the strike fell along three dimensions. The most common dimension of criticism viewed the strike as running counter to students’ interests. Rather than canceling a class to protest the invasion, these criticisms suggested that students could be better served by discussing the invasion in class. By providing a safe place for such discussion, the classroom could serve to help students deal with the stress generated by the war. One posting emphasized the importance of such a place for international students. These criticisms viewed the classroom also as a place in which students could learn about the invasion from an informed teacher, an expert of sorts. The “callousness” of some students could be broken down, thereby improving their “citizenship.” One 236
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posting provided citations of literature that could be used to guide active class discussion; another even suggested holding an extra class session devoted to such discussion, rather than canceling an existing one. The second dimension of criticism viewed participation in the strike as contrary to the more general responsibilities of academia as a discipline. According to this criticism, the strike represented an act against the university. Since the university did not start the war, the strike was seen as misplaced aggression. In a slightly different vein, academia was also presented as transcending the mundane realm of world events. Academic pursuits, when viewed as “the very stuff of life,” should not be treated as “pastimes for leisure” that may be cancelled at the whim of an instructor. The third dimension of criticism was the least common and focused specifically on the invasion itself, equating the strike with a failure to “support our troops.” The author of one such posting reported having two sons in the military. Another reported serving in Vietnam and knowing what “misplaced dissent” can do. Only three of the 15 initial postings did not express clear disagreement with the action announced by the CPO. All three were responses to previously posted critical emails and served to counter each of the dimensions of criticism discussed above. Each expressed ambivalence towards the strike but support for participants. One viewed “civil discourse,” such as the strike, as a “hallmark of academia.” Another suggested that the participation by professors in the strike was potentially valuable to students as an expression of “international solidarity.” The third stated that one way to show support for student-soldiers is to do whatever is necessary to help them “graduate in May.” Anti-war protests Concurrent with the framing contest concerning the legitimacy of the strike, a second framing contest was initiated concerning the legitimacy of anti-war protests more generally. This contest arose as a reaction to the contention that support for the strike implied a failure to support the troops involved in the war, a contention that may be read as an effort in boundary framing (Hunt et al. 1994). In this discourse, the boundary did not take. This framing contest continued into the second week of the discourse. Although linked to the discussion of the strike specifically, these postings referred to protestors as an abstract group and made no specific references to the CPO. Seven of the nine postings in this section proposed that there exists no necessary contradiction between actively opposing the war in demonstrable ways and supporting the women and men ordered to participate in it. Only three of these expressed a personal opposition to the war. Others recognized that the troops in Iraq are simply following orders and therefore are not responsible for the war. One stated that the fact that soldiers are in Iraq “doesn’t mean that they want to be there.” Only two of these postings supported the proposition that anti-war protest is incompatible with the support of troops. The first provided a metaphor linking supporting troops to nurturing children, implying that neither can be effective if offered with ambiguity. The second added that any distinction between opposing the war and opposing the troops “almost certainly gets lost on our troops.” Both emphasized that the real issue at hand involved the perception of troops in the field; regardless of what a protester may think of those involved in waging the war, it is her/his actions that are meaningful from the point of view of the soldier. One posting directly rebutted this 237
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contention by emphasizing that the troops in question are adults who are members of a voluntary military and “mature enough to handle” the reality that foreign wars involve protests at home. After this brief email exchange, the discourse was quiet for a few days. This pause effectively eliminated the strike itself as a point of contention. However, the CPO did not cease in its active opposition to the war and posted a new announcement a few days later. This posting announced that the CPO’s weekly peace vigil would be held as scheduled and that the organization would also be involved in a larger peace rally in a nearby metropolitan area. The posting also announced the involvement of the organization in a campus-wide “Support Our Troops Volunteer Project,” stating that the organization’s disagreement was with “the policymakers who have sent our young people to war, not with those who have been ordered to fight.” This elaboration of the CPO’s framing may be read as an example of frame extension (Snow et al. 1986). In reaction to critics’ efforts at boundary framing regarding the issue of supporting the troops, protest supporters here attempt to deconstruct that boundary as invalid. Thereby, they attempt to extend their own frame into symbolic territory claimed by critics. Response to this posting was swift; the majority of responses were negative. About 20 additional postings visited the issue of anti-war protests without any mention of the strike. Over half of these were explicitly negative; most of these justified their anti-protest stance with arguments regarding troop morale. Some conditioned this proposition by stating that protests should end when war begins. Anecdotal stories regarding the experiences of veterans and family members supported these claims. A few postings rebutted this proposition using their own anecdotes, which showed that not all military personnel and families are opposed to anti-war protesting. A second dimension of anti-protest argument involved the failure of public demonstrations to clearly express and achieve objectives. One posting expressed skepticism regarding the ability of mass protest to “hasten the end of the war.” Given the assumption that the protests could not achieve their goals, another posting warned of the “selfrighteousness” of protesters. In response, an anti-war protester contended that one main goal of the protests was to “speak” for those dying in Iraq. The final criticism launched by those opposed to anti-war protests concerned the perceived tendency for protestors to break laws and disrupt social order. This criticism suggested that protests drew police attention away from “issues of necessity,” such as “homeland security.” In addition to defending against these criticisms, proponents provided one unique argument in support of anti-war protests. This concerned the constitutional rights of citizens of the US: rights to free speech and lawful assembly, both tenets of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, democratic freedoms that the US military protects. Therefore, according to these postings, it is not logical to support the use of our military to promote democratic freedom in Iraq while discouraging the same freedoms at home. The only rebuttal to this proposition came from one participant who called for “restraint” from protestors. The war in Iraq Participants offered opinions regarding the legitimacy of the war early on and throughout the discourse. Instead of providing a frame for their position on the war, however, most simply stated a position in order to help frame another argument. For example, one early 238
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posting stated that the author was a “dove” with respect to the war but could not support the strike announced by the CPO. Another stated support for the war as well as for the constitutional rights of protestors. Thus, stating one’s position regarding the war in Iraq served to amplify a frame regarding anti-war protest. An argument supporting antiwar protests may be taken more seriously when its author claims to be in support of the war; an argument criticizing such protests may be taken more seriously when its author reports being opposed to the war. In all, 25 postings explicitly referenced a position regarding the war. Posting 31 was the first to offer any framing of opposition to the war; it critiqued the war as the result of a “unilateral invasion.” Twelve other postings expressed similar opposition to the war, whereas only four expressed unambiguous support. Frame contestation around six topics dominated this lamination of the discourse. The first topic of contention concerned the alleged tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq as justification for regime change. Supporters and opponents of the war agreed that Hussein oppressed his people and threatened the international community. Both groups also agreed that regime change in Iraq would be positive. They disagreed, however, as to whether the perceived need for regime change justified US military actions. Opponents of the war viewed regime change in Iraq as a lower priority than pressing domestic issues. One posting suggested that the US should be more worried about protecting “democracy in our own country” than about imposing it on Iraq. The second concerned the perceived efficacy of the UN in dealing with countries that refuse to respect its protocols. Supporters of the war referred to the UN as weak and ineffective. One posting suggested that UN regulations were useless and that Iraq’s ability to maintain its weapons stockpiles proved this point. Another proposed that the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, should have made us all intolerant of Hussein’s defiance of UN regulations. Opponents of the war simply stated that the US should not have gone to war without the international support offered by the UN. The third topic concerned the degree to which the war with Iraq was deemed integral to the broader war against terrorism. Supporters invoked the Bush administration’s contention that no distinction should be made in the war on terror between terrorists and those who harbor them. Assuming that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq harbored terrorists, supporters viewed the US invasion of Iraq as integral to the war on terror. Opponents of the war were not willing to make such an assumption. Therefore, if the Bush administration was “truly interested in fighting Islamist terrorism” it should not be diverting public attention and straining military resources by waging war in Iraq. The fourth topic involved military preemption. In relation to the war on terror, the Bush administration’s position legitimized preemption as the most effective, if not the only, way to stop a significant terrorist threat. Interestingly, debate in this discourse regarding this position did not concern the legitimacy of the policy itself but the effectiveness of applying the policy to the situation in Iraq. Supporters of the war contended that a link existed between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and that Hussein’s regime may have had something to do with the 11 September terrorist attacks. Assuming that Hussein at least supported the attacks, supporters of the war found it likely that he would try something similar in the near future. Further, assuming that Iraq held stockpiles of biological, chemical, and possibly nuclear weapons, an attack backed by Iraq could prove much more devastating than what we had seen before. Therefore, rather than waiting for Iraq to “bash our nose … again,” we should strike first. Although opponents did not necessarily question the logic of this position, they did question whether or not 239
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overthrowing the Hussein regime in Iraq could successfully preempt future terrorist attacks. Clearly referencing the destruction by terrorists of the World Trade Center in New York City on 11 September, one posting argued that even a successful conclusion to the Iraq war would not guarantee that “our other towers will remain standing.” The final two topics involved in this framing contest concerned its cost. This included cost in terms of human lives, including civilian casualties, and cost in more strictly economic terms. Opponents of the war viewed such costs as too high to justify the war. In terms of human life, an early posting supported anti-war protestors by criticizing those who believe that they “should be silent about a war that is killing Americans and Iraqis alike.” Opponents of the war recognized the potential for masses of innocent bystanders to be killed and injured, positing that even one civilian casualty was one too many. In response, supporters of the war viewed death, including civilian casualties, as an unfortunate but unavoidable outcome of war. Further, they argued that US military strategies “demonstrate an extraordinary effort” to minimize such casualties evidenced the legitimacy of the US relative to Hussein’s regime. In terms of economic costs, both sides agreed that the Iraq war would be an expensive endeavor. Opponents argued that funds earmarked for Iraq could be better spent at home on “healthcare, education, and research.” Conversely, supporters asserted that Americans should be willing to sacrifice “a few soft drinks” or “a movie” to pay for the war. One supporter stated that the economic costs of the war were irrelevant; money made from Iraq’s oil industry would pay for the expenses incurred. The appropriateness of the discourse The elicitation of framing competition concerning anti-war protests in general and the legitimacy of the war in Iraq drew from the content of the CPO’s initial announcement. The context of the discourse, however, generated an additional framing competition concerning the appropriateness of the discourse itself for the listservs on which it took place. Critics here focused not only on the topic, but also on the tone and quality of the discourse. In terms of tone, critics commented negatively on the tendency of the discourse to generate anger and divisiveness in its use of “inflammatory” and “over the top” language as well as “personal attack and name calling.” Those who criticized the discourse with regard to its topic, however, were less careful about expressing a desire to exclude it from the listservs altogether. The first negative postings regarding the presence of the CPO’s announcements and the resulting discussion were the 30th and 35th. While siding with anti-protest arguments equating protests with failure to support US troops, they specifically identified the “public” nature of anti-war protests and the consequent media exposure afforded them as the mechanism through which protests actually make troops feel “discouraged” and provide a “devastating blow” to troop morale. The first direct call to censor the discourse from the listservs came on the 61st posting. On the 67th posting, a university representative wrote referring to the discourse as “fascinating” and “important,” and announced the establishment of a new listserv on which the discourse could proceed. While the CPO’s announcements could continue on the regular lists, any discussion of these announcements, anti-war protests more generally, or the legitimacy of the war in Iraq would have to move. As membership to the new list would be voluntary, no one would be exposed to it unless s/he chose to. 240
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The administration’s announcement made absolutely no mention whatsoever of democracy or freedom of speech. Rather, it focused solely on the official role of the listservs and the rules governing their use. Further, it sidestepped issues of censorship by providing an alternative venue for political expression. Intentionally or not, this announcement successfully framed the debate around the second critique. The legitimate question, according to the administration’s announcement, had nothing to do with the First Amendment and everything to do with the efficient running of a university. Figure 20.1 presents a framing process schema that encompasses the discourse in its entirety. The horizontal axis represents the unfolding of the discourse as a process from its inception with the CPO’s strike announcement to its termination by the university’s administration. The vertical axis represents the addition of laminations to the discourse upon the initial framing contest regarding the strike. The discourse involves three laminations layered upon the initial framing contest. The first concerns the legitimacy of antiwar protests, the second the legitimacy of the US invasion of Iraq, and the third the appropriateness of the discourse for the listservs that carried it. Each text box in the schema concerns a distinct framing contest located in the discourse. Within each text box, variable propositions for and against the issue in question are reported. The bracketed arrows mark the duration of particular framing contests from their first to final mention in the discourse. This represents the discourse as a process and reminds us that related framing contests do not occur independently of each other. They overlap. At any given time, multiple framing contests are under way. Any individual contribution to such a discourse may cover multiple laminations of the fundamental contest.
Figure 20.1 Framing schema of microlevel discourse
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In the discourse at hand, for example, all three laminations of the original contest are referenced within the first 20 postings. The first mention of anti-war protests in general occurs on the 6th posting. The first critical mention of the war itself occurs on the 10th, and the quality of the discourse is made relevant on the 16th. All three of these laminations were referenced during the period of the discourse in which the initiating framing contest still dominated. Further, these three laminations served to silence the initiating framing contest even though no consensus was achieved regarding the legitimacy of the strike announced by the CPO. A lamination is not completed until it comes to replace, at least temporarily, the previous frame as the focus of attention. It needs to be made salient enough to be taken on by multiple individuals. This discourse shows two different ways in which a necessary level of salience may be achieved. In terms of the laminations regarding anti-war protests in general and the US invasion of Iraq, the topics themselves proved relevant enough to the discussion of the strike to motivate multiple responses. We view these issues, then, as organic to the discourse, in that the participants viewed them as somehow connected to the initial point of contention. Be it rational, emotional, or of some other sort, the connection must be acknowledged by a sufficient number of others if a lamination is to organically take hold in an interactive discourse. Such a process, however, does not suffice when considering the final lamination. While the initial critique of the quality of the discourse did occur early on in the discourse and subsequent comments continued throughout, this lamination did not take hold until late in the discourse. The key that ultimately transformed the discourse from one debating war and anti-war protests proved to be the authoritative announcement from the representative of the university’s administration. The issue of pulling the discourse from the listservs simply did not have enough resonance to transform the discourse until it was supported by someone with the institutional power to impose such a transformation. The fact that the exercise of administrative power silenced the discourse supports the contention that social movement framing processes are essentially about power relations. According to Benford and Hunt’s dramaturgical approach “social movements can be described as dramas in which protagonists and antagonists compete to affect the audience’s interpretations of power relations” (1994: 39). In this case, the power advantage clearly goes to opponents of the discourse. By successfully “appropriating, managing and directing audiences and performances” (44), the administration demonstrated its legitimacy in defining the listserv as an inappropriate venue for political discourse.
Discussion Research presented here advances the literature as the result of a serious emphasis on social movement frames as the products of microlevel social interaction. By applying discourse analysis to an actual text of a microlevel framing process, we were able to explore the process in some detail. This detail allowed us to see keys, transformations, and laminations at work. When dealing with a specific event such as the CPO’s strike announcement, expressions of support or opposition may be justified situationally as well as ideologically. Therefore, the probability that one who opposes the specific event will also oppose all similar events is uncertain. Furthermore, this discourse suggests that even those who express opposition to a specific event and to an entire class of similar events may not respond accordingly to 242
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a yet more abstract lamination. At least one participant in the discourse expressed opposition to the strike and to anti-war protests in general but also expressed opposition to the war. At least one other supported anti-war protests, while supporting the war itself. In addition to framing the discourse in terms of laminations, this schema also summarizes important information regarding conflict. Attempts made to amplify (Snow et al. 1986) a given frame in order to increase its salience to an audience imply “frame dampening” as a response alternative aimed at canceling out the amplification (McFarland 2004: 1277). In this case, the initiating frame contest regarding the CPO’s strike announcement shows the reflexive relationship between frame amplification and frame dampening. As the CPO attempted to amplify the resonance of its framing of the strike by linking it to peace and justice master frames, critics used explicit pejoratives to dampen the frame. Since the legitimacy of a frame in a framing contest exists relative to competing frames, the contest involves a predictable pattern of amplification and dampening. A second example of such reflexivity involves the relationships between boundary framing (Hunt et al. 1994), frame extension (Snow et al. 1986), and frame contraction (McFarland 2004). Boundary framing involves attempts to clearly distinguish one’s own frame regarding some event or activity from that of an opponent. Frame extension and contraction represent efforts to move that boundary. By moving a boundary away from oneself and towards an opponent, frame extension serves to grow the ideological territory controlled by a given frame. Frame contraction, on the other hand, serves to shrink that territory. Since social movement supporters and opponents often seek to maximize the ideological territory they control, the motivation is to apply frame extension to one’s own frame and frame contraction to others. In this discourse, boundary framing was evidenced when opponents of the strike accused the CPO and other anti-war protestors of failing to support US troops in Iraq. This strategy triggered frame extension as a response alternative to supporters of anti-war protests and motivated them to justify the proposition that protests are directed at politicians and do not imply a lack of support for military troops. In turn, this attempt at frame extension triggered frame contraction as a response alternative to critics of anti-war protests who made further attempts to paint protestors as doing harm to troop morale. In sum, our focus has also allowed us to address several of the issues identified in Benford’s (1997) “insider’s critique” of the social movement framing perspective. The use of discourse analytical techniques on an actual text makes this a systematic empirical study and overcomes the static tendencies common to framing research. The production of the text by a self-selected group of individuals also addresses the tendency in the literature to ignore rank and file participants in social movement framing processes. Further, the recognition of laminations in the discourse acknowledges the complexity of framing processes as multilayered phenomena. Finally, the presence in the text of individual voices that, through social interaction, generate a whole that is not reducible to the sum of its parts strikes a balance between tendencies to reify social movements as things unaffected by human agency, on one hand, and to reduce social movements to actions of individuals on another.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Hedley, M. and Clark, S.A. (2007) “The microlevel discourse of social movement framing: debating antiwar protests on a university listserv,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 26–47. 243
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References Altheide, D. (1987) “Ethnographic content analysis,” Qualitative Sociology, 10: 65–77. Benford, R.D. (1997) “An insider’s critique of the social movement framing perspective,” Sociological Inquiry, 67: 409–30. Benford, R.D. and Hunt, S.A. (1994) “Dramaturgy and social movements: The social construction and communication of power,” Sociological Inquiry, 62: 36–55. Edwards, D. and Potter, J. (1992) Discursive Psychology, London: Sage. Fine, G.A. (1995) “Public narration and group culture: Discerning discourse in social movements,” in H. Johnston and B. Klandermans (eds) Social Movements and Culture, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 127–43. Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis, New York: Harper and Row. Hunt, S.A., Benford, R.D. and Snow, D.A. (1994) “Identity fields: Framing processes and the social construction of movement identities,” in E. Larana, H. Johnston, and J.R. Gusfield (eds) New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 185–208. McAdam, D., McCarthy, J.D. and Zald, M.N. (1996) “Opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes: Toward a synthetic, comparative perspective on social movements,” in D. McAdam, J.D. McCarthy, and M.N. Zald (eds) Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1–22. McFarland, D.A. (2004) “Resistance as a social drama: A study of change-oriented encounters,” American Journal of Sociology, 109: 1249–1318. Snow, D.A. and Benford, R.D. (1992) “Master frames and cycles of protest,” in B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi, and S. Tarrow (eds) Frontiers of Social Movement Theory, Greenwich, CT: JAI, 133–55. Snow, D.A., Rochford, Jr., E.B., Worden, S.K. and Benford, R.D. (1986) “Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and social movement participation,” American Sociological Review, 51: 546–81. Van Dijk, T.A. (1997) “The Study of Discourse,” in T.A. van Dijk (ed.) Discourse as Structure and Process, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1–34. Wetherell, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S.J. (2001) Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Wuthnow, R. (1989) Communities of Discourse: Ideology and social structure in the reformation, the enlightenment, and European socialism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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21 Making heroes An attributional perspective Gregory C. Gibson, Richard Hogan, John Stahura and Eugene Jackson
Between the terrorist attack of 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, heroism has received much mass media coverage and clearly warrants greater attention by scholars. Every day, many people put their lives on the line to save others or to uphold principles that are dear to them, but they are not always perceived as heroes. This research explores the social construction of heroism. We present the actions of three persons linked to the triggering events of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Todd Beamer, Army Private Jessica Lynch, and President George W. Bush), and ask how and to what extent they achieved the status of “hero” in the eyes of the general public. Data from a national telephone survey conducted in 2004 support our expectation that non-professionals (such as Todd Beamer) who place themselves in harm’s way, doing what is right under conditions when most people would fail to act, are, in the eyes of the general public, heroes. Even so, it seems that class, status, and partisanship shape judgment on who should be honored as heroes.
Defining heroism What qualifies as heroism ranges from short-term life-threatening acts to long-term, repeated acts of courage in standing up for principles, despite political or personal consequences, such as those that John F. Kennedy (1961) has immortalized. Students of altruism and prosocial behavior view heroism as the ultimate act of altruism: putting one’s life on the line to save the life of another (Gibson 2003; Oliner 2003). As an ideal type, “altruistic suicide,” particularly in its “voluntary” or “heroic” forms, is associated with military service (Durkheim 1951: 228, 240), in which heroes are uniformed professionals. Oliner (2003) includes these professional heroes, but only in exceptional events. Oliner (2003: 21–22) distinguishes three categories of heroes: (1) paid professionals (e.g. military, police, fire fighters) in one-time events of short duration, (2) unpaid non-professional people (civilians) in one-time events of short duration (e.g. Todd Beamer), and (3) unpaid non-professionals in events of long duration (e.g. rescuers of Jews in Nazi Germany). 245
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Yet we assert that people might be seen as heroes without risking life and limb. For many Americans, Abraham Lincoln (140 years after the end of the Civil War) is still considered a hero because (1) his life was threatened from the moment he took office to the time he was assassinated, and (2) he continued to press on with the Civil War in the face of military fiascos and staunch opposition (Holzer 2004). Thus, we can add to Oliner’s (2003) criteria the idea of “presumed courage”; that is, acts of heroism that, over time, culminate in great accomplishments, despite the objections of others, with no recognizable benefit to oneself. Heroism should, however, be limited to cases in which deeds exceed the typical response of persons in similar situations (Klapp 1954: 57). Insofar as heroes can reflect the values and moral exemplary ideals of a given society, they are often viewed as “moral beacons” (Porpora 1996: 210) or “the standard bearers of the ‘best’” (Schwartz 1969: 82). In addition, heroes can serve as role models for others by virtue of their status, honor, and reflection of cultural values. War heroes can be important sources of psychological gratification for societal members (Elkin 1955: 98), even if the heroic act was not an act of will. Jessica Lynch did not choose to be captured by the enemy. Nevertheless, we consider the possibility that Lynch could be considered a hero, even although she was, to a large extent, a victim. We define heroism broadly, as performing “exceptional acts of courage or bravery that might involve great risk – including ‘life and limb’” (e.g. Beamer and Lynch). We will include acts performed by professional (Lynch and Bush) and non-professional persons (Beamer). These can be acts of either short duration (Beamer) or long duration (Lynch and Bush), which are acts of will or volition (Beamer and Bush) or actions uncontrolled by victims of circumstance (Lynch). Although these hero criteria generally limit heroism to situations in which there might be risk to life and limb, we include Bush for consideration because, for some people, Bush has shown courage and bravery against individuals, organizations, and nations opposed to his stance on Iraq. Based on the literature, we suspect that more respondents will agree that Beamer is really a hero, compared with Lynch and Bush, because he (Beamer) was a non-professional who willingly risked life and limb in a short-term effort to save the lives of others. We also suspect that Bush will receive lower hero ratings since his actions did not pose great risk to his own life and limbs. Beyond confirming these expectations, the challenge is to determine how and why respondents might agree that any of these persons might be heroes.
Theoretical perspectives Role theory A role is a “social object,” which is socially constructed, and a “perspective,” which is adopted but then operates as an external constraint (Callero et al. 1987: 248). Roles are performed in a community setting that is also the repository of available roles and definitions of situations within which roles might be more or less appropriately performed (Goffman 1974). The “perspective” feature of roles entails the community standards or expectations for behavior in roles, which represent structural influences at the individual and the community levels. This aspect of roles helps actors organize perceptions, influence future actions in the community setting, and frame the social world (Callero et al. 1987). 246
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People evaluate a social actor’s action (role performance) against a standard of action deemed appropriate for the role. This evaluative component provides a normative or “should” perspective to role behavior by casting light on how a person “ought” to behave in a particular role (Thoits 1986: 259). In the social community, there is an implied link between self-identity, other-identity, and performance that appears to be situated in common or shared meanings among social actors (Burke and Reitzes 1981: 85). In this regard, researchers have posited the notion of “role consistency” or the degree of congruency between the role selected and one’s role performance (Burke and Reitzes 1981; Stets and Burke 1996). Since we view heroism as exceptional courage or bravery, the “normative” and the “consistent” are critical concepts. Role theory and structural symbolic interactionism can be usefully extended to take into account characteristics that one can identify with in another person. In the vignettes we pose, characteristics of the actor, including class, status, and party (Weber 1978) may be important reference group markers for the respondents (Merton 1957). When respondents identify with or match the characteristics of individuals in our vignettes, we believe that these characteristics become pertinent and influence how respondents formulate their judgment of hero status. This is, in fact, consistent with Weber’s discussion (1978, 932– 33) of how status communities honor their members. Only members of the same status community would honor the exemplary behavior of another member. Attribution theory People attempt to “trace back” to the causal factors for the behavior under their examination (Michener and DeLamater 1999). In this tracing back process, attribution theorists start with two primary causal “locations,” termed “causal locus” in relation to the behavior of an actor: (1) internal and (2) external (Eccles and Wigfield 2002). According to Howard and Levinson (1985: 192), an internal locus refers to the “ability, efforts, or intentions” of the behaving actor, whereas an external locus refers to “task-related factors, [or] luck.” Generally speaking, an internal locus presents the actor as causal agent, while an external locus views situational factors as the causal agent. Actions that generalize across social actors are termed “high consensus,” whereas action low in generalizability across social actors is termed “low consensus” (Brown 1986; Michener and DeLamater 1999). In her work on responsibility judgments, Hamilton (1978) argues for the inclusion of what a social actor does and what a social actor should have done. For judgment of causality, this implies a union of what an actor actually does (behavior) and a comparative normative structure: what an actor ought to do or should have done (Hamilton 1978: 316; Hamilton and Sanders 1981). As Hamilton argues, the sociological site or concept for comparisons of normative behaviors and expectations are “roles.” We can hypothesize how others attribute causal factors to behaviors and events. This is accomplished by determining the following: (1) locus (internal or external; actor or situation), (2) consensus (commonality among social actors; that is, something many or most social actors do, or the uniqueness of the action being confined to specific actors). The role performance expectations (“oughts” and “shoulds”) are compared with the actual behavior. Thus, Hamilton’s insights into the attribution process provide a viable bridge between the sociologically oriented structural symbolic interactionism, supplemented by role or reference group theory, and the psychologically oriented attribution theory. This is just the sort of bridge that we shall require in making sense of heroism in the minds of the general public. 247
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Hypotheses In Table 21.1, we present hypothesized conditions for the vignettes. In each vignette we propose to examine the presence of these conditions: (1) being “in harm’s way,” (2) being in a non-professional role, and (3) performing the actions of the potential hero’s own volition. We hypothesize: H1: Level of perceived risk to the potential hero is positively related to how strongly he or she is perceived to be a hero. H2: Non-professional status for a potential hero is positively related to how strongly he or she is perceived to be a hero. H3: The extent to which a potential hero is perceived to be acting on his or her own volition is positively related to how strongly he or she is perceived to be a hero. We focus on two attribution processes for the vignette conditions: (1) consensus or role-consistent conditions: what respondents report that they would do or most people would do in the same circumstance; and (2) normative role expectations, consisting of what the respondents report that people should do (normative measure). H4: Intensity of agreement with consensus measure 1 (“I would do”) is negatively related to how strongly he or she is perceived to be a hero. H5: Intensity of agreement with consensus measure 2 (“Most would do”) is negatively related to how strongly he or she is perceived to be a hero. H6: Intensity of agreement with the normative measure (“People should do”) is positively related to how strongly he or she is perceived to be a hero. We predict that aspects of respondents’ roles (class, status, and power) will significantly affect their judgment on whether persons in the vignettes are heroes.
Data Sampling and data collection All data were collected during the spring of 2004 through random digit dialing telephone interviews. The targeted population for the survey consisted of individuals 18 years of age and older, living in the 48 contiguous states comprising the continental US. The response rate was 21.1 percent and the cooperation rate was 46.2 percent. Table 21.1 Hypothesized conditions in vignettes
Potential hero Todd Beamer Jessica Lynch President George Bush
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In harm’s way
Non-professional role
Acted of own volition
√ √ –
√ – –
√ – √
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The sample was primarily white (85.9 percent), female (70.5 percent), with just over half (59.0 percent) of the respondents indicating at least some college education. Respondents are primarily conservative (70.5 percent), with approximately an equal percentage of Republicans (35.9 percent) and Democrats (35.3 percent). The median income category is $35,001–$50,000, whereas the mode is $50,001–$75,000. Following a Weberian model, we constructed three indices: “status,” “class,” and “party.” Race, gender, age, level of religiosity, and marital status comprise the “status” index. The “class” index consists of level of education, annual income, employment status (full-time or not), and occupational status (professional/managerial or not). The “party” index consists of two political scales used in the survey: (1) political orientation (conservative to liberal), and (2) political party (strongly Republican to strongly Democrat). Independent variables measure the attributional bases used by people in their judgments of heroism. Agreement with the statements: “I would do … ” or “Most people would do what (the person in the vignette) did” indicates the degree of consensus or role consistency (or external versus internal locus) attributed to the action posed in the vignettes. These variables are called consensus 1 (“I would”) and consensus 2 (“Most would”). Normative aspects of attribution theory are indicated by agreement with the statement: “People should do what [person in vignette] did.” The hero vignettes The three heroism vignettes were framed with the following: “In the wake of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been a lot of talk about heroism and what it means to be a hero. In the first group of questions, I’m going to describe several recent events and ask you to comment on the acts of heroism.” The first vignette concerned Beamer’s actions on American Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11: The first event was the crashing of American Airlines flight 93 in Pennsylvania reported to have been done by Todd Beamer and several other passengers to keep the terrorists from reaching their Washington, DC target. I would like for you to tell me how much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements. The second vignette was concerned with Lynch’s capture and subsequent rescue: In the recent war in Iraq, it was reported that Army Private Jessica Lynch was captured and tortured by Iraqi forces. Lynch was rescued by US forces and returned to the United States. Again, tell me how much you agree or disagree with the following statements about this event. The third vignette centered on President Bush and his decision to go to war with Iraq despite non-participation by the UN: The next events occurred when the United Nations decided not to participate in the recent war against Iraq. President George W. Bush decided to “go it alone” and attack Iraq with a small coalition of “willing nations.” Again, tell me how much you agree or disagree with the following statements. 249
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In each of the three vignettes, respondents were asked to respond to these four prompts: If the person in the vignette was a hero; If the respondent would do what the hero posed in the vignette did (consensus measure 1); If most people would do what the hero posed in the vignette did (consensus measure 2); If people should do what the person in the vignette did (normative measure).
Results and discussion Table 21.2 indicates strong support for the statement that “Todd Beamer was a hero.” The mean response attributing hero status (4.33) is between “agree” (4.0) and “strongly agree” (5.0). Even one standard deviation below the mean is closer to “agree” (4.0) than to “neither agree nor disagree” (3.0). Clearly, the respondents agreed overwhelmingly that Beamer is a hero. A comparable pattern of disagreement is evoked by the statement that “I would do” what Beamer did (consensus measure 1). Here the mean response (2.13) is “disagree” and a standard deviation above yields “neither agree nor disagree” (3.0). Respondents were less certain about what “most people would do” (consensus 2), reporting a mean response (3.34) of “neither agree nor disagree” within a standard deviation of either agreement or disagreement. There was more agreement on the normative issue (“people should do”), which elicited almost as much agreement as Beamer’s status as a hero.
Table 21.2 Means, standard deviations, and valid cases (N) for variables used in hero vignettes
Variable
Mean
Standard deviation
N
Todd Beamer vignette: Todd beamer is a hero I would do what Todd Beamer did Most people would do what Todd Beamer did People should do what Todd Beamer did
4.33 2.13 3.34 4.02
.719 .914 1.04 .804
171 157 171 171
Jessica Lynch vignette: Army Private Jessica Lynch is a hero I would do what Jessica Lynch did Most people would do what Jessica Lynch did People should do what Jessica Lynch did
3.39 3.46 3.30 3.47
1.03 .986 1.02 .973
165 156 158 159
George W. Bush vignette: President George W. Bush is a hero I would do what George W. Bush did Most people would do what George W. Bush did People should do what George W. Bush did
2.64 2.80 2.54 2.76
1.29 1.37 1.04 1.22
172 170 167 172
Scale: 5 = strongly agree; 4 = agree; 3 = neither agree nor disagree; 2 = disagree; and 1 = strongly disagree.
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In the Lynch vignette, respondents indicated that they were unsure as to her hero status (mean = 3.39, with one standard deviation [1.03] indicating either agreement or disagreement). There is similar uncertainty on the consensus and normative conditions, with mean ratings clustering just below 3.5 with standard deviations around 1. Compared to the Beamer ratings, the range of mean ratings is limited, but the standard deviation is fairly high, indicating more uncertainty on normative and consensus measures, as on her status as hero. This pattern continues for the Bush vignette, although the mean ratings are even lower, and the standard deviations even higher. Here, respondents all but disagree (mean = 2.64) as to Bush’s hero status, but the standard deviation is large (1.29), so that one standard deviation from the mean covers the range from strongly disagree (1.35) to agree (3.93). In the Bush vignette, this tendency to disagree continues through consensus and normative conditions. The higher mean hero ratings for Beamer and Lynch suggest support for hypotheses 1 and 2, but mixed results on hypothesis 3. The hypothesized vignette conditions, reported in Table 21.1, correspond to these three hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 predicts that, compared with Bush, hero rating for Beamer (t = –16.274; p < .001) and Lynch (t = –6.574; p < .001) will be significantly higher, since they were in harm’s way. Hypothesis 2 predicts that Beamer’s hero rating will be higher than that of Bush (t = –16.274; p < .001) or Lynch (t = –9.557; p < .001), since only Beamer was a non-professional (a civilian airline passenger). Hypothesis 3 predicts that Lynch will have a lower hero rating than Beamer (t = –9.557; p < .001) or Bush, since Lynch was not acting on her own volition (she was kidnapped). In this case (as noted above) the finding is contrary to prediction, since Bush received significantly lower hero ratings than Lynch (t = –6.574; p < .001). Within the limited comparison of these three vignettes, it is clear that respondents attribute a higher hero status to the potential hero who is in harm’s way and who is a nonprofessional. The effects of acting on of her/his own volition are mixed. We have elected to present only the bivariate correlations of particular interest. In the Beamer vignette, consensus condition 1 (“I would do”) is negatively correlated (-.350) with Beamer’s hero status (as predicted in hypothesis 4). Consensus 2 (“Most people would do”) is positively correlated (.274) with Beamer’s hero status (contrary to hypothesis 5) and the normative condition (“People should do”) is positively correlated (.521) with Beamer’s hero status (as predicted in hypothesis 6). In addition, educated, married, white, high-status persons gave Beamer higher hero ratings. In the Lynch vignette, consensus condition 1 (“I would”: .495) and 2 (“Most would”: .173), and the normative condition (“People should”: .533) are positively correlated with Lynch’s hero status. Also, female, single, low-income, lower-class respondents scored Lynch higher on hero status. Bush’s hero status is positively correlated with both consensus conditions (“I would do”: .817 and “Most people would do”: .531) and the normative condition (“People should do”: 781). White, conservative, Republicans score Bush higher on heroism. Thus, we find limited support for the hypothesized effects of consensus conditions, but strong support for normative effects. Hypothesis 4 (“I would do” – negative correlation with heroism) is supported only for the Beamer vignette. For Lynch and Bush, respondents reporting that they would do likewise reported higher heroism ratings. Hypothesis 5 (“Most would do” – negative correlation with heroism) is uniformly opposite of the prediction. On all three vignettes, respondents reporting that most people would do likewise offered higher heroism ratings. Only the hypothesized normative effect (“People 251
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should do”) was consistently observed. On all three vignettes, persons agreeing that people should do likewise offered higher heroism ratings. Beyond the hypothesized normative effects, we also found significant effects of class, status, or party identification, with higher status associated with heroism for the Beamer vignette, lower class associated with heroism for Lynch, and Republican/conservative partisanship associated with heroism for Bush. Table 21.3 presents the net effects of these variables when used to predict heroism in multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models (estimated separately for each vignette). Model 1 includes only the attribution conditions: consensus 1 (“I would do”), consensus 2 (“Most would do”), and the normative (“People should do”) condition. Each of the three vignettes produced a significant F value indicative of the model’s predicative strength. The Beamer vignette model explains 32.7 percent of the variance, the Lynch vignette model explains 33.5 percent, and the Bush vignette model explains 69.7 percent of the variance. Variance inflation factors (VIF) for all three vignettes were well below the multicollinearity “benchmark” of 10.0 proposed by Neter et al. (1996). Consensus condition 2 (“Most people would do”) was not significant for any of the three vignettes. Apparently, the bivariate relations are spurious and disappear after controlling for consensus 1 (“I would do”) and the normative condition (“People should”). Therefore, no measurable support is found for hypothesis 5. Consensus 1 (“I would do what [person in the vignette] did”) and the normative condition (“People should do what [person in vignette] did”) remain significant in all three vignettes, and the pattern of relations mirrors the bivariate correlations. In the Beamer vignette, “I would do what Todd Beamer did,” produced a negative coefficient Table 21.3 Unstandardized regression coefficients (and standard error) from attribution conditions and indices, regressed on hero status
Variable
Model 1 Beamer
Attribution condition: Consensus 1 Consensus 2 Normative
–.186* (.060) .024 (.053) .408* (.061)
Lynch .345* (.096) –.035 (.074) .354* (.092)
Model 2 Bush .504* (.076) .036 (.070) .333* (.090)
Indices: Status Class Party Statistics: F r2
25.594* .327 (.595)
24.163* .335 (.855)
122.434* .697 (.720)
Beamer
Lynch
Bush
–.077 (.058) .043 (.051) .325* (.063)
.339* (.096) –.037 (.075) .423* (.094)
.502* (.079) .085 (.073) .266* (.095)
.080* (.028) .011 (.017) .033 (.032)
–.057 (.043) –.055* (.025) .021 (.050)
.009 (.036) .049* (.021) –.126* (.044)
8.359* .269 (.545)
16.138* .427 (.816)
61.237* .717 (.714)
*p < .05 All variance inflation factors (VIF) are well under benchmark set by Neter et al. (1996).
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of -.186, providing additional support for hypothesis 4. The normative measure in the Beamer vignette, “People should do what Todd Beamer did,” produced a positive coefficient of .408, providing support for hypothesis 6. In the Lynch vignette (model 1, Table 21.3), both consensus 1 and the normative condition yield significant positive coefficients (.345 for “I would do what Jessica Lynch did” and .354 for “People should do what Jessica Lynch did”). Contrary to hypothesis 4, consensus 1 yields a positive effect in the Lynch vignette. Respondents who agreed that they would do what Lynch did also agreed that she was a hero. The same pattern of results obtains in the Bush vignette, in which consensus 1 and the normative condition yield significant positive coefficients. “I would do what George W. Bush did,” produced a coefficient of .504, whereas “People should do what George W. Bush did,” produced a coefficient of .333. Once again, unlike the Beamer vignette, support is shown for hypothesis 6 but not hypothesis 4. In model 2 (Table 21.3), status, party, and class indices are added to the equation. The consensus 1 variable (“I would do what Todd Beamer did”) is reduced to insignificance with inclusion of the status, party, and class, although only the status effect is significant (b = .080). In the Lynch vignette consensus condition 1 (“I would do what Jessica Lynch did”) and the normative condition (“People should do what Jessica Lynch did”) remain significant, with the unstandardized coefficient for the normative condition (“People should do what Jessica Lynch did”) increasing from .354 to .423. Class is the only significant index in model 2 for the Lynch vignette (b = -.055). In the Bush vignette, consensus and normative effects remain significant and the class (b = .049) and party (b = -.126) indices are significant. Attributing hero status Perhaps it is the combined effects of being non-professional, in harm’s way, and acting on one’s own volition that distinguish Beamer as a real hero. Lynch was not acting on her own volition but she was in harm’s way and, like Bush, was a professional. In any case, she received, on average, higher hero ratings than Bush, although significantly lower than Beamer. If we limit our attention to the Beamer vignette, we find considerable support for our hypotheses. Respondents who rated Beamer highest on heroism reported that they would not do what he did (hypothesis 4: consensus 1 condition) but that he did what people ought to do (hypothesis 6: normative condition). Here respondents are attributing hero status to conditions of individuality and uniqueness, buttressing our prediction that heroic acts are rare and normative. This signals support for Porpora’s (1996: 210) position that heroes exemplify cultural and moral ideals of a society (“moral beacons”), as well as Schwartz’s (1969: 82) notion of heroes being “the standard bearers of the ‘best’” because their actions are at once rare but also reflective of exemplary moral/value orientation (what people should do). By virtue of being “the standard bearers of the best” and being rare, attributed hero status appears to be reserved for those unique individuals who do what most of us do not want to do or do not feel we could do, but what we should do if we strictly adhere to societal normative role expectations. Contrary to expectations and the Beamer vignette, in the Lynch and Bush vignettes, respondents who agreed that these actors were heroes also reported that they (consensus 1: “I would”) would do likewise. They also reported that people should do what Bush/ Lynch did, suggesting that there was no moral dilemma here. Lynch and Bush were doing 253
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their jobs (according to these respondents), and doing what they should do in the same circumstances. Thus, in these cases, there is no exceptional valor or courage involved. These findings might lend support to the claim that the highest level of heroism does not include the routine action of uniformed and professional actors. This is, of course, the position adopted some time ago by the Carnegie Foundation in their consideration of hero award status, because their standard of heroism (along with most of our respondents) requires actions that are rare and normative, not simply normative. Models 2 and 3: role identification Our findings suggest that role identification effects may be at work in how our respondents attribute hero status. Whereas our findings point to Beamer as a hero largely across role components, attribution of hero status for Lynch and Bush appears to be a different story. Bush and Lynch appear to be heroes for Republicans, with Republicans apparently identifying with the consensus conditions and the normative condition for Bush, irrespective of political orientation (e.g. conservative or liberal). For Lynch, hero status appears to be a story of importance for single, lower-income females, whereas for Bush, hero status attribution appears to reflect the role or status identification of white, Republican, lower-income respondents. With education negatively related to consensus condition 2 (“Most people would do”) in the Bush vignette, the war appears to be less popular among highly educated as well as high-income respondents. Hence, the attribution of hero status for Lynch and particularly for Bush might be the results of party identification effects. Here the judgment says little or nothing about Lynch or Bush as individuals or even within their roles as Army Private or Commander in Chief. The critical issue is support for the invasion of Iraq, and the basis for that judgment is essentially partisan. We would surmise, given the results of the 2004 presidential election, which was clearly bifurcated (either Democrat or Republican, and absent a middle ground), that the significant effects of political party mirror the nature of the political atmosphere in the US and thereby indicate the viability of our proposed extension of role theory, in which identification with the actor’s class, status, or party shapes the attribution of heroism.
Conclusion Attributed hero status is clearly higher in situations in which a potential hero is viewed as being in harm’s way, risking life and limb (Beamer and Lynch). Second, attributed hero status is also higher for the potential hero in the non-professional role (Beamer) versus those in a professional role (Lynch and Bush). Third, mixed support is found for situations of self-initiated action (“own volition”). Here the range of conditions in the three vignettes limits us. Comparing Lynch’s case with a non-professional kidnap victim or a soldier who was killed rather than captured might help us to disentangle these effects and might be a fruitful area for future research. Future researchers may find that one or another of the vignette conditions may serve as a “master condition,” exerting control over the other conditions, or its absence may render other conditions moot. This may have been at work in the present study given the influence of non-professional over professional in attributed hero status; that is, the role of non-professional may be a master condition for these vignettes. 254
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Examination of role expectations (Hamilton 1978) produced several points of interest for present and future scholars of heroism. First, respondents who thought Beamer was a hero would not do what he did but would do what Lynch and Bush did. Second, for Beamer, the combination of a negative consensus condition 1 (did what I would not have done) and a positive normative condition (did what people should do) indicates just how extraordinary (individualistic) and rare a hero’s behavior can be. In the Lynch and Bush vignettes, respondents who thought that Lynch and Bush were heroes would do what Lynch and Bush did and thought that they both did what they should do. The positive direction of normative condition 1 in the Lynch and Bush vignettes points to the non-extraordinary nature of their actions, especially when compared with Beamer’s, by dismissing individuality in their situations and stressing role salience. The testing of social structural markers comprising Weber’s class, status, and power indicates the viability of extending “self-other” focus of role theory. This viability was suggested in the significant finding related to the demographics of race, income, and political party. Here the salience of race, class, and party was found to be critical in the framing of war, heroes, and villains. Our work here encourages future scholars of heroism, role theory, and attribution theory (especially those in the tradition of Hamilton and Sanders 1981) to formulate and test different permutations of these theoretical traditions.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Gibson, G.C., Hogan, R., Stahura, J., and Jackson, E. (2007) “The making of heroes: An attributional perspective,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 72–97.
References Brown, R. (1986) “The layman as intuitive scientist,” In R. Brown (ed.) Social Psychology, 2nd edn, New York: The Free Press. Burke, P.J. and Reitzes, D.C. (1981) “The link between identity and role performance,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 44: 8–92. Callero, P.L., Howard, J.A. and Piliavin, J.A. (1987) “Helping behavior as role behavior: Disclosing social structure and history in the analysis of prosocial action,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 50: 247–56. Durkheim, E. (1951) Suicide. Trans. J.A. Spaulding and G. Simpson. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Eccles, J.S. and Wigfield, A. (2002) “Motivational beliefs, values, and goals,” Annual Review of Psychology, 53: 109–32. Elkin, F. (1955) “Popular hero symbols and audience gratifications,” The Journal of Educational Sociology, 29: 97–107. Gibson, G.C. (2003) “Carnegie heroes: A social exchange theory examination,” unpublished thesis, Humboldt State University. Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, New York: Harper Colophon. Hamilton, V.L. (1978) “Who is responsible? Toward a social psychology of responsibility attribution,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 42: 316–28. Hamilton, V.L. and Sanders, J. (1981) “The effect of roles and deeds on responsibility judgments: The normative structure of wrongdoing,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 44: 237–54.
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Holzer, H. (2004) “2004 heroes of history lecture: Abraham Lincoln, American hero,” Online. Available http://www.wethepeople.gov/heroes/holzerlecture.html (accessed on 11 June 2006). Howard, J.A. and Levinson, R. (1985) “The overdue courtship of attribution and labeling,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 48: 191–202. Kennedy, J.F. (1961) Profiles in Courage, New York: Harper. Klapp, O.E. (1954) “Heroes, villains, and fools, as agents of social control,” American Sociological Review, 19: 56–62. Merton, R. (1957) Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Michener, H.A. and DeLamater, J.D. (1999) Social Psychology, 4th edn, New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Neter, J., Kutner, M.H., Nachtsheim, C.J. and Wasserman, W. (1996) Applied Linear Statistical Models, New York: McGraw-Hill. Oliner, S.P. (2003) Do Unto Others: Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Porpora, D.V. (1996) “Personal heroes, religion, and transcendental metanarratives,” Sociological Forum, 11: 209–29. Schwartz, S. (1969) “The idea of the hero,” The English Journal, 58: 82–86. Stets, J.E. and Burke, P.J. (1996) “Gender, control, and interaction,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 59: 193–220. Thoits, P.A. (1986) “Multiple identities: Examining gender and marital status differences in distress,” American Sociological Review, 51: 259–72. Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society, G. Roth and C. Wittich (eds), Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press.
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22 Making the Muslim enemy The social construction of the enemy in the war on terror Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills
Introduction War demands an enemy. The object of war is to defeat the enemy; in total war, all sectors of society are called upon to participate in that defeat. But who is this enemy? War requires an obsession with the idea of the enemy, yet, despite this obsession, communities tend to avoid deep or sustained thought on the subject, gleaning their ideas from headlines, sound-bites, pop-culture representations, and other forms of truncated information. Communities often resist thinking too deeply about the enemy because to do so might reduce their necessary sense of moral clarity; wartime images of the enemy, in propaganda and popular culture, are therefore typically simplified and reduced. In the face of a foreign enemy who remains largely alien, unknown, or mysterious, a society will collectively construct an image, fabrication, or representation of the enemy that serves its own martial purposes. The kinds of language, metaphors, and imagery through which governments, military, and communication media consistently speak of the enemy constitute a coherent discourse, a framework through which the enemy might be understood. This discourse may emphasize the enemy’s incomprehensibility, or his inhuman, demonic, indistinguishable, or bestial nature. This discourse may then be used to create emotions, direct choices, and animate collective action. In times of war, propaganda can expertly mobilize the image of the constructed enemy to serve the needs of national governments in generating a rationale and momentum for war. Using strategies subtle and overt, propaganda deploys the image of the constructed enemy much as a government deploys its troops. Critics of the war on terror assert that the American public has been manipulated and deceived by a “covert disinformation campaign” orchestrated by professional public relations consultants who “spin” the war and government messages to the public (Rampton and Stauber 2003). Spin is typically carried out in the name of the public good as a way of offering clarity. For example, in October 2001 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that “we need to do a better job to make sure that people are not confused as to what this [war] is about” (quoted in Solomon 2001). Then-President Bush 257
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echoed this when, on 24 May 2005, he noted, “See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda” (quoted in Schuh 2006). Propaganda thus becomes the fuel that feeds the machinery of war, generating the public support that is one of war’s most essential requirements. The frames through which individuals and societies see the world are often built from the language that propaganda offers, and that communication media, in recirculating it, ratify. Support for war is more powerful when it is emotional or visceral than when it is logical or intellectual. Likewise, the war on terror depends for support more on public “feeling” than public “knowing.” In particular, public feeling collects and crystallizes around the figure of the enemy. This intensifies a sense of national hostility that can be discursively produced and effectively marshaled by overt propaganda and by news media. The effectiveness of both is evident in the amount of misunderstanding and outright error that has informed discussion of the war on terror. When, in January 2002, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain sponsored an opinion poll, it reported that although two-thirds of the respondents claimed they had a good grasp of the issues surrounding the war, “closer questioning revealed large gaps in that knowledge,” including serious errors of fact. For example, fully half of those surveyed thought that one or more of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqi when, in reality, none of the terrorists was an Iraqi citizen (Rampton and Stauber 2003). The survey’s results suggest that the more accurate information people possessed about events surrounding the war, the less likely they were to assume a militaristic stance. Survey authors noted that “Those who show themselves to be most knowledgeable about the Iraq situation are significantly less likely to support military action” (Rampton and Stauber 2003). When news media, like propaganda, not only fail to provide complex, contextualized, or nuanced analysis but actively suppress, overlook, or distort information, they join other social processes in producing a constructed, caricatured, and usually culturally (or socially) marked enemy, a figure of immense consequence to both sides in a conflict, as well as to international observers. This chapter examines some implications of the construction of the enemy within the public discourse of the war on terror, focusing on how the Muslim “enemy” has been produced and then generalized from the specific actors and planners of the 9/11 attacks to entire groups marked by their perceived “otherness” as antagonists. When the enemyOther is constructed as oppositionally different from “us,” especially when that difference takes the essential form of non-humanity (as in the dehumanizing animal and disease metaphors that predominate in the war on terror), national policies, military strategies, and public attitudes and behavior may be significantly shaped and influenced in ways that demand critical attention.
Constructing the Muslim enemy When war demands an enemy, societies help to construct one through their discursive representations. These representations work in two ways: first, by drawing upon existing ideological predispositions, rhetoric, and stereotypes to filter and shape how information is presented; second, by strengthening and tacitly endorsing such frames by uncritically using and reinvigorating them. In this way, prevalent, latent, or even dormant stereotypes may be resurrected by governments for martial or propagandistic purposes, legitimated by news media, adopted by the general populace, and reinstigated by cultural 258
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producers through new forms of expression that repeatedly recirculate old images. This dynamic process accounts in part for the consistency of certain representations of Arabs, Arab-Americans, and Muslims across official government speeches, news media discourse, and popular film and television. For example, in almost a century of Hollywood movies, the portrayal of the Arab as a treacherous, half-mad religious zealot or political terrorist has remained essentially unchanged (Shaheen 2001); this portrayal is almost indistinguishable from that offered by news media during the war on terror. As a result, media coverage of the events of 11 September and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is critically shaped by preexisting Islamophobic frames. A coherent set of journalistic narratives appears to have emerged regarding “Muslim terrorism,” narratives that reinforce stereotypes of murderous Muslims and advance limited, often inaccurate, information about Islam (Karim 2003: 10). Edward Said argues that the image of Islam in Western communication media is laden “not only [with] patent inaccuracy but also expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism, cultural and even racial hatred” (Said 1997: li). While these depictions have intensified and become increasingly one-dimensional during the war on terror, they are not specific to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but are embedded in larger cultural contexts and broader imperial endeavors, as Said’s work on Orientalism has suggested. In this way “the politics surrounding the war on terror” did not so much generate new views of Muslims as they made existing views more salient, activating or “priming” them to become “significant factor[s] in attitudes toward this war” (Sides and Gross 2009: 28). These views are evident in public opinion polls indicating that, just as familiar stereotypes depict Muslims as violent and untrustworthy, “large pluralities and even majorities of Americans” describe them as “violent” and “untrustworthy”; these assumptions are “associated at a statistically significant level with four different preferences: increased spending for the war on terror, increased spending on defense, decreased spending on foreign aid, and a willingness to sacrifice civil liberties for security” (Sides and Gross 2009: 21). In this way, public sentiment about the enemy, reinforced by the “oppositional imagery of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’” (Train 2002: 340), influences collective and individual receptivity to political positions and policies. The discourse of fundamental and oppositional difference that informs public discussion of the war on terror produces “two essentialized and distinct categories: the United States … known as ‘us,’ versus ‘the Arabs’ … known as ‘the enemy’” (Train 2002: 338). The state of enmity is thus seen as something that derives from identity, whether racial or religious, rather than from historical or political circumstances. Elizabeth Poole observes that, in Western representations, anti-Western violence is “seen to evolve out of something inherent in the [Muslim] religion” (Poole 2002: 4). As several studies have documented, after the events of 9/11, North American news media intensified their depictions of prevailing stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims. The news media’s dominant narrative, according to McChesney, portrays “a benevolent, democratic and peace-loving nation brutally attacked by insane evil terrorists who hate the United States for its freedoms.” Its chief message is that the US “must immediately increase its military and covert forces” in order to “root out the global terrorist cancer” (McChesney 2002: 43), with terrorism and Islam itself described as a “cancer” or “virus.” As this metaphor suggests, one of the key features of North American and European mass media coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on terror in general is the patterned and systematic dehumanization of Muslims. The construction of the enemy as a dehumanized Other is more than a representational strategy performed by public officials or communications media; its results can be global 259
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in reach and consequence. Said’s work lays much of the groundwork for current analyses of media fabrication of the enemy-Other; it argues that the colonial and imperial projects depend on the way we characterize those we see as oppositionally different from ourselves. Over time, these characterizations are systematized and grouped into an organized body of thought, a repertoire of word and image so often repeated that it comes to seem like objective knowledge. As Said argues, Orientalism, the distorting lens created by this process, offers a framework through which the West examines what it perceives as the foreign or alien, consistently figuring the East as the West’s inverse: barbaric to its civilized, superstitious to its rational, backward to its progressive, medieval to its modern. In addition, whereas Western citizens are defined by their essential uniqueness and individuality, those of the East are constructed in metaphoric terms that emphasize their indistinguishability; the language of Western mass media discourse typically emphasizes indistinguishable mass over singularity when it represents the East. The use of tropes of undifferentiability as a way to reduce enemy humanity is common in wartime propaganda. In the notorious Nazi film The Eternal Jew, images of hordes of teeming rats swarm across a map of Europe; in Frank Capra’s World War II American film Know Your Enemy: Japan, images of regimented Japanese soldiers are intercut with factory scenes of the stamping out of identical metal ingots. Like the war on terror’s dominant metaphor of terrorism and Islam itself as a disease, these propagandistic images rely on mass and aggregation to intensify threat and justify response: seeing the enemy-Other as an indistinguishable mass is an essential strategy in the process of fabricating the enemy, especially since our technologies now allow us to kill so efficiently and indiscriminately. If a weapon cannot distinguish between a combatant and a civilian target then, to live with our actions, we must train ourselves not to distinguish either: we must become as indiscriminate as our bombs. This is part of a larger set of existing assumptions about Arab and Muslim identities; as a result of these assumptions, diverse groups of people are misunderstood as an undifferentiated “them” (Hasso 2007: 25). In times of conflict, when construction of the Other conflates with construction of the enemy, this process intensifies. The process of defining the enemy and defining the Other are “clearly similar processes” that can “lead to devastating outcomes” (Peek 2004). Although the adjectives and images used in fabricating the enemy may alter, there are common metaphors of destructive difference that remain remarkably constant. Historical analysis of the enemy image reveals that perceptions of the enemy tend to mirror each other; that is, each side attributes the same virtues to itself and the same vices to the enemy. In each case, “we” are trustworthy, peace-loving, honorable, and humanitarian; “they” are treacherous, warlike, and cruel. In 1942, when Germany and Japan were enemies of the US, the top primary adjectives used by Americans in opinion surveys to describe them included “warlike,” “treacherous,” “cruel.” None of these words appeared among the five describing the Soviets, who at that time were American allies. In 1966, however, when the Soviet Union had become a threat, among the primary adjectives describing the Soviets were “warlike” and “treacherous.” These adjectives were also applied to the enemy Chinese, but had disappeared from the lists applied to the Germans and Japanese, who by then were US allies (Frank and Melville 1988: 200). Fabrication of the enemy as an innately evil, oppositional figure confirms the nation in its sense of its own identity. As David Kennedy observes, “while it may not be true that Americans needed an enemy image in order to define themselves, when they were compelled to construct the portrait of an enemy they did in fact reveal their sense of themselves” (Kennedy 1997: 355). 260
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The binarized image of the enemy as eternal opposite is not only dangerous for the stability of international relations but leads to serious consequences for the national domestic life. Frank and Melville suggest that this happens because the hysteria about the outer threat is often used as justification for secrecy and suspicion, covert actions, policies creating “mobilized” societies, artificial national unity, “witch hunts,” and policies suppressing dissent. … By projecting the blame for these on the enemy, each side protects its own self-esteem from the realization that it has been unable to solve its own problems. (Frank and Melville 1988: 203) Enemy construction has a long history. The war on terror was initially influentially framed as a new crusade or a holy war, a framing that illustrates how far back Western notions of the “heathen” East are rooted. George Bush made this framing explicit in a speech on 16 September 2001 warning Americans that “this crusade, this war on terrorism, is gonna take a while” (quoted in Ford 2001). The term evokes images of a spiritual war originating not with governments but with God. The crusades of the eleventh century also used this strategy, calling soldiers to a war of divine liberation; historians now see such rhetoric as cover for a more pragmatic conquest. The dominant perception of the relationship between Islam and the West, as Qureshi and Sells (2003) note, has been one of a vast, unending, inevitable struggle. Propaganda presents the struggle as an unavoidable and unyielding battle between two monolithic powers, a “clash of civilizations.” The phrase, coined by Bernard Lewis (1990), articulates a particular way of understanding East–West conflict: for Lewis, Muslims exist historically and inevitably in a state of conflict with Judeo-Christian civilization. Samuel P. Huntington (1993) expanded and popularized this theory, arguing that cultural and religious identities will overtake political allegiances as the main source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. Critics point out the dangers of this model: it locks both East and West into a state of irresolvable conflict by asserting that Muslims have existed fundamentally and irreparably in a state of conflict with Judeo-Christian civilization, giving the conflict “a certain historical inevitability” (quoted in Siddiqui 2002). The inevitability of conflict has also been explicitly linked by some religious leaders to a fundamental clash of religions, even deities. Lieutenant-General William Boykin, for example, created controversy when he spoke at Christian churches and religious events in the wake of 9/11 wearing his military uniform and insignia. Boykin told his listeners the US would prevail over Muslim countries: “I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” Boykin also referred to America’s “spiritual enemy,” who, he claimed, “will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus … [what] we’re in is a spiritual battle” (Boykin cited in Scahill 2009). In this characterization, the “historical inevitability” of East–West, Christian–Muslim conflict is figured in terms that are overtly transcendent and eternal; the long-standing construction of the Muslim world as intractably inimical thus risks locking both sides into rigid monolithic positions. The antagonistic characterization of Muslims as fundamentally alien has been recirculated through news media, political speech, and popular culture. Arabs feature in popular film and television almost solely in the role of zealots, fanatics, or terrorists. News broadcasts repeatedly show scenes emphasizing this zealotry; moderate voices from Islam are overlooked in favor of repeated images of extremity. Newspaper headlines echo this framing of the struggle in epic terms: “Praise to Allah – dancing with joy, the warrior 261
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race of fanatics born to detest the West,” reads one such headline (cited in Allen 2001). Examples of this stereotype “have been prolifically emblazoned across front pages and … across our screens” since 9/11 (Allen 2001). The influence of such images has permeated most forums of public discussion. For example, in an interview on 14 November 2006 with Keith Ellison, the first-ever Muslim-American Congressman, CNN host Glenn Beck told Ellison: “I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’ I am not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way” (Duvvuru 2009). News media both echo and reinforce language derived from public government speech. For example, New York Republican Congressman Peter King referred to American Muslims as the “enemy living amongst us”; Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk claimed: “I’m okay with discrimination against young Arab males from terrorist-producing states.” Texas Congressman Sam Johnson told an audience of veterans that he advised Bush to nuke Syria, and Colorado Congressman and one-time candidate for the Republican nomination for President Tom Tancredo advocated wiping out Mecca in response to terrorist attacks. Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger stated on CNN immediately after 9/11 that “There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing” (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting 2001). Such political speech seems to reflect one of the central tenets of enemy construction, the assumption that the enemy is homogenous and indistinguishable, united in being “like” each other just as they are united in being “unlike” us. The torture and prisoner abuse made notorious by the Abu Ghraib photographs, as many commentators have observed, are significant not only in their intent to “demean, debase, and control” Arab prisoners, but in the extent to which they reveal that these dehumanizing practices “are premised on and produced through the prism of Arab and Muslim central difference” from the West (Hasso 2007: 24). The Abu Ghraib photos depicting leashed or crawling prisoners find a verbal corollary in the animalistic metaphors common to Western journalism during the war on terror. These images are not only remarkably prevalent but, upon examination, also reveal themselves to be strikingly coherent, even systematic. An analysis of news media representations of Muslims during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals a repertoire of dehumanizing language that is consistent and patterned. Verbs and nouns commonly associated with animal behaviors dominate newspaper headlines and articles addressing the wars, to the extent that they have been almost irresistibly framed as part of the “hunt” for terrorists, in which human prey evade capture by “scurrying” like rats or insects (Steuter and Wills 2008). Perhaps most disturbing, this conflation of the enemy with lower-order animals and vermin has, as news media analysis indicates, broadened from terrorists as individual perpetrators to all Arabs, even all Muslims. The consequences of these representations are more than merely rhetorical, setting the stage for racist backlash, prisoner abuse, and even genocide.
Backlash against Muslims at home One of the most significant aspects of the construction of the Muslim enemy as dehumanized animal or vermin is that it concretizes the tendency to see the constructed enemy indiscriminately; in other words, just as an exterminator does not distinguish 262
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between individual insects or vermin, so American response to the constructed enemy need not distinguish between individual agents or individual subjects. The image of the Arab enemy encompasses all Arabs; the image of the Muslim enemy encompasses all Muslims, whether abroad or at home. Domestically, this has resulted in violence and backlash against Arab-Americans: “innocent individuals who supposedly ‘look’ like ‘The Enemy’ (whatever that means in the American imagination) but are American citizens might have experienced being ostracized, discriminated against, and having lost their civil liberties as a result of their racialized identity, rather than by the virtue of their own personal politics, actions (or inaction) and identifications” (Train 2002: 341). As Train observes, although initially “‘[T]he Enemy’ was singled out as Osama bin Laden, his image nonetheless signified and personified an entire racialized community. Osama bin Laden’s image was not simply his own, but symbolized all Arabs in the American imagination. Rather than being seen as an individual with his own particular political agenda, he was produced as the representative of all Arabs” (Train 2002: 338). Constructing the Arab or Muslim enemy as homogenous and indiscriminate ignores data that suggest that, although predominately Muslim countries show a broad spectrum of attitudes towards violence and terrorism, a significant majority believe that terrorist attacks are “never justified” (Ballen 2007). Domestically, however, dominant media images tend to ignore this moderate Muslim majority and continue to conflate “Arab” and “Muslim” with “terrorist;” the resultant backlash can be most clearly detected in the rise of hate crimes against immigrants and North Americans of Middle Eastern origin. According to a Zogby Survey, 75 percent of American Muslims reported that they or someone they knew have been subject to harassment and discrimination since 9/11 (Mujahid 2004). The European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia documented many counts of verbal abuse blaming all Muslims for the attacks, as well as women having their hijab torn from their heads, and male and female Muslims assaulted (Allen and Nielsen 2002). Anti-Muslim feeling in the US, far from cooling since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, has edged higher, polls suggest. In 2007, 35 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of Muslims, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, up significantly from 29 percent in 2002. The same survey shows an increase in the number of people who say Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence: 45 percent in 2007 versus 25 percent in 2002, although that figure has fluctuated over time (cited in Sacirbey 2007). Significantly, this image of essential and oppositional difference may be exploited with the intent to sway opinion: in 2008, for example, during US presidential elections, 28 million copies of a DVD titled Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West, featuring comparisons between Islam and Nazism, were distributed in key “swing” or battleground states (Duvvuru 2009). Paralleling this is the increased use of racial profiling against people who appear Muslim, supported in the minds of the public and governments by years of media stereotyping that continually linked Islam and the Middle East to terrorism. The 9/11 attacks reinforced and furthered these views, solidifying the connection of Middle Eastern violence, terrorism, and religious fanaticism. Civil rights lawyer Alia Malek describes watching “brown” Americans, anxious about reprisals, “rushing to affirm their allegiance and their American-ness,” apologizing for the tragedy “as if we share the blame” (Malek 2001). This anxiety is “not just collective hysteria,” says Malek, referencing a Boston Globe survey that revealed “almost half of all Americans think Arabs in this country should carry special identification cards,” and an Associated Press poll that showed onethird of Americans surveyed “support the creation of internment camps” (Malek 2001). 263
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Inflamed political rhetoric often invites such views. Former US Senator Rick Santorum, for example, told an audience of university students that “radical Islam is as dangerous a threat to the US as Nazi Germany to Britain in 1940,” and warned of “Islamic fascists” who want to conquer the world (quoted in Chen 2007). The widespread discourse of infiltration and infestation cements such fears. The media’s emphasis on “sleepers,” or terrorist plants living an unremarkable American life until “activated,” is one aspect of the infiltration trope. Malek describes another aspect: days after 9/11, buses in Washington, DC ran Washington Mutual ads with a picture of a Middle Eastern man and the caption, “Worry About Your New Neighbors, Not About Your Loan.” These messages made clear, says Malek, that the “Arab enemies among us” might seem civilized, “but in the end their ultimate allegiance is our destruction” (Malek 2001). Political leaders used the 9/11 attacks to justify a number of illegal and unconstitutional practices: the arrest of immigrants based on Arab stereotyping; the detention and abuse of Arab and Muslim Americans; search and seizure of American citizens without due cause; and prohibited travel based on racial profiling. The Council on AmericanIslamic Relations’ 2005 report, “Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States,” notes that of the 1,552 incidents of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination, and harassment documented in 2004, nearly 25 percent were unwarranted arrests and police searches, compared with only 7 percent in the previous year (cited in Lobe 2005). In March 2008, a UN report said that US law enforcement is guilty of discrimination in its use of racial profiling to target Arabs and Muslims. The report urged the US administration to “review the definition of racial discrimination used in the federal and state legislation and in court practice” (Duvvuru 2009).
Bringing our stereotypes to war The notion that the Muslim enemy, whether an American citizen or not, is homogenized in its enmity towards Democracy and the West, and that thus any Muslim is potentially a terrorist, has serious repercussions in the theater of war as well as on the domestic front. In the “Winter Soldier” testimony regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former armed forces personnel describe military tactics and human rights abuses that were tacitly or openly supported by this assumption. The American use of UN-proscribed weapons such as white phosphorus and cluster bombs, which cause high civilian death counts, reveals the consequences of constructing an enemy as conglomerate rather than individual. Former Marine Jason Lemieux, who served three deployments in Iraq, said that the blurring of enemy soldiers with civilians was promoted by military commanders: “I was explicitly told by my command that I could shoot anyone who came closer to me than I felt comfortable with, if that person did not immediately move when I told them to do so. Keeping in mind that I don’t speak Arabic”; Lemieux added that in an April 2004 battle, his Company Commander also declared any Iraqi on the streets to be an “enemy combatant” (quoted in Shore 2008). The widespread use in the military of derogatory terms like “hadji” or “haji” suggests that racism is pervasive in the military (Wills and Steuter 2009). There are soldiers in the military who are active members of white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and identifying and “rooting out extremists is difficult because racism pervades the military, according to soldiers. They say troops throughout the Middle East use derogatory terms like ‘hajji’ or ‘sand nigger’ to define Arab insurgents and often the Arab population itself” (Kennard 2009). 264
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This blurring of the line between enemy civilian and combatant, reflected in terms like “hadji” that elide the two, is also found in the speech of media commentators and columnists back home. In a column entitled “Enemy ‘civilian casualties’ ok by me,” Ben Shapiro says he is “getting really sick of people who whine about ‘civilian casualties.’ Maybe I’m a hard-hearted guy, but when I see in the newspapers that civilians in Afghanistan or the West Bank were killed by American or Israeli troops, I don’t really care. In fact, I would rather that the good guys use the Air Force to kill the bad guys, even if that means some civilians get killed along the way. One American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian” (Shapiro 2002). Shapiro criticizes the term noncombatant as misleading, criticizing The New York Times and other papers as “disingenuous” for calling Afghan non-combatants “civilians,” because, in doing so, they suggest that all civilians are somehow the same. Shapiro is clear that, to him, Afghan and American civilians are not at all equal: “American civilians are people who go about their daily lives without providing cover for terrorists or giving them money. Afghan civilians are not. … Frankly, it doesn’t matter to me if some of their ‘civilians’ get killed for involvement with the enemy” (Shapiro 2002). By this logic, Afghans can never be truly citizens nor can they be non-combatants, because they are fundamentally always “involved with the enemy.” They are always guilty, always the same, therefore always fair game. As Joshua Holland notes, “Only a populace that thinks all Arabs are the same could be convinced that it was possible to avenge Osama Bin Laden’s attack – carried out mostly by Saudis and Egyptians – by invading Iraq” (Holland 2008).
Conclusion Propaganda rejects consideration of a conflict’s more nuanced political, social, and cultural contexts as working against the clarity it promises. It implies that we already know everything we need to know about the enemy in order to act. Instead of information, it offers us information’s seductive substitutes: hysteria, indignation, rage, and fear. These qualities are useful to the communication media, because they grab attention and make for sensational television. They are useful to governments, because they allow citizens to be manipulated by carefully selected experts whose task is to enlist the public in approving their policies and powers. In wartime, passion trumps reason, and misplaced passion drives us forward where reason might urge reflection, care, measured speech, and measured action. Fabricating an enemy is thus a social process with profound consequences. When the enemy is not immediately apparent, a society must provide one in order to generate a rationale and impetus for war, justifying the money and resources diverted to the military and away from other national needs. As a social process, making an enemy begins with governments and is crystallized in expertly managed PR campaigns, furthered by a news media no longer able to perform its necessary work of objective investigation, and absorbed and continued by a public deprived of the full, complex picture, too harried by propaganda-fed anxieties and restrictive metaphoric frames to do its own key, citizenly job of critical thought.
References Allen, C. (2001) “Islamophobia in the media since 9/11,”Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism UK (FAIRUK). Online. Available http://www.fairuk.org/intro.htm (accessed 29 September).
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Allen, C. and Nielsen, J.S. (2002) “Summary report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001,” European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, Vienna, Austria. Ballen, K. (2007) “The myth of Muslim support for terror,” Christian Science Monitor, 23 February: 9. Chen, I. (2007) “Forget the war on terror,” Brown Alumni magazine, May/June. Duvvuru, K. (2009) “‘Your name is common’: Racial profiling in the US 22 August 2009.” Online. Available http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/626/40/ (accessed 30 August 2009). Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (2001) “Media march to war,” press release, 17 September 2001, Online. Available http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1853 (accessed 30 August 2009). Ford, P. (2001) “Europe cringes at Bush ‘crusade’ against terrorists,” Christian Science Monitor, 19 September. Frank, J.D. and Melville, A.Y. (1988) “The image of the enemy and the process of change,” in A.A. Gromyko and M.E. Hellman (eds) Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking, Beyond War Foundation, Online. Available http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/frank.pdf (accessed 30 August 2009). Hasso, F. (2007) “Cultural knowledge and the violence of imperialism: Revisiting the Arab mind,” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, 7: 24–42. Holland, J. (2008) “Iraq Vets: ‘Racist Endemic, Comes from the top of the Command Chair’,” Altenet, March 17. Available http://www.alternet.org/world/79865. Huntington, S.P. (1993) “The clash of civilizations?”Foreign Affairs, 72(3): 22–49. Karim, K.H. (2003) Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence, Montreal: Black Rose Books. Kennard M. (2009) “‘I hate Arabs more than anybody’: Desperate army recruits Neo-Nazis,” 17 June 2009, Online. Available http://www.alternet.org/world/140686/%22i_hate_arabs_more_than_anyb ody%22:_desperate_army_recruits_neo-nazis/ (accessed 30 August 2009). Kennedy, D.M. (1997) “Culture wars,” in R. Fiebig von Hase and U. Lehmkuhl (eds), Enemy Images in American History, Providence: Berghahn: 339–57. Lewis, B. (1990) “The roots of Muslim rage,” The Atlantic Monthly, 266: 47–60. Lobe, J. (2005) “Fear of Islam on the rise – Muslim group,” Online. Available http://www.lewrockwell.com/ips/lobe210.html (accessed 30 August 2009). McChesney, R. (2002) “The US news media and World War III,” Journalism, 3: 14–21. Malek, A. (2001) “Beware thy neighbor?” John Hopkins Magazine, November, Online. Available http:// www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/1101web/ruminate.html (accessed 30 August 2009). Mujahid, A.M. (2004) “Demonization of Muslims caused the Iraq abuse,” Sound Vision. Online. Available http://www.soundvision.com/info/peace/demonization.asp (accessed 30 August 2009). Peek, L. (2004) “Constructing the enemy during times of crisis: America after 9/11,” Divide: Journal of Writing and Ideas, 1: 26–30. Poole, E. (2002) Reporting Islam: Media Representations of British Muslims, London: I. B. Tauris Press. Qureshi, E. and Sells, M.A. (eds) (2003) in The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, New York: Columbia University Press: 3. Rampton, S. and Stauber, J. (2003) “How to sell a war,” In These Times, 8 April. Online. Available http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/how_to_sell_a_war/. (accessed 30 August 2009). Sacirbey, O. (2007) “Does US tolerate anti-Muslim speech?” Christian Science Monitor, 4 December 2007. Said, E. (1997) Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, New York: Vintage Books. Scahill, J. (2009) “Caught on tape: Military officials at Bagram urge U.S. soldiers to evangelize in Afghanistan,” Online. Available http://www.alternet.org/blogs/waroniraq/139686/caught_on_tape: _military_officials_at_bagram_urge_u.s._soldiers_to_evangelize_in_afghanistan/ (accessed 30 August 2009). Schuh, T. (2006) “Racism and religious desecration as US policy: Islamophobia, a retrospective,” Online. Available http://www.counterpunch.org/schuch05062006.html (accessed 30 August 2009). Shaheen, J. (2001) Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishing Group. Shapiro, B. (2002) “Civilian casualties OK by me,” Online. Available http://townhall.com/columnists/ BenShapiro/2002/07/25/enemy_civilian_casualties_ok_by_me (accessed 30 August 2009).
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Shore, M. (2008) “Winter soldiers expose chilling lies of the Bush regime,” Online. Available http:// www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/organizers-mainmenu-223/steering-committee-mainmenu-276/ 4625-winter-soldiers-expose-chilling-lies- (accessed 30 August 2009). Siddiqui, H. (2002) “Four telltale themes: anti-Muslim bigotry ‘spreading like wildfire’,” Online. Available http://scholarofthehouse.stores.yahoo.net/fourtorstar1.html (accessed 30 August 2009). Sides, J. and Gross, K. (2009) “Stereotypes of Muslims and support for the war on terror,” Online. Available http://home.gwu.edu/~jsides/muslims.pdf (accessed 30 August 2009). Solomon, N. (2001) “War needs good public relations,” Online. Available http://www.fair.org/index. php?page=2156 (accessed 1 May 2009). Steuter, E. and Wills, D. (2008) At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda and Racism in the War on Terror, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Train, K.A. (2002) “As long as it’s not in my backyard: September 11th and other apocalyptic events,” Journal of Mundane Behavior, 3: 336–49, Online. Available http://mundanebehavior.org/issues/v3n3/ train3–3.htm (accessed 30 August 2009). Wills, D. and Steuter, E. (2009) “The soldier as hunter: pursuit, prey and display in the war on terror,” Journal of War and Culture Studies, 2: 195–210.
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Part IV The war back home: families and young people on the home front
23 Greedy media Army families, embedded reporting, and war in Iraq Morten G. Ender, Kathleen M. Campbell, Toya J. Davis and Patrick R. Michaelis
The “digital age” provides a new context in which to study families (Wartella and Jennings 2001). Information technology and mass media have significantly affected military families (Ender 2005). The impact is most acute during military deployments, especially during war (Ender and Segal 1996). Communication media may challenge military sociologists to reconsider fundamental ideas about military families during deployments.
Theoretical framework We adopt Segal’s (1986, 1989) application of “greedy institutions” to military families as the theoretical framework, as have most social scientists for the past 20 years. Building on Kanter’s (1977) earlier and more general agenda-setting work and family analysis, which posited the inextricable link between work and family life, Segal outlined the range of demands on military family life. Focusing primarily on spouses and soldiers, she linked four crucial levels of analysis: institutional; organizational and structural; interpersonal; and individual. Segal applies Coser’s (1974) more general “greedy institutions” conceptualization to the demands of military family life in which the military and the family expect the soldiers’ relatively total devotion. In the military, two societal institutions (the family and the military) intersect and make significant demands on the service member. Soldiers are normatively restricted, with significant social controls on their lives, especially during wartime deployments. Family devotion and loyalty are normative as well. In many cases conflict arises as the soldier tries to maintain fidelity and allegiance to both; thus, greediness on the part of both institutions has remained acute, especially during times of war. Present-day communication and mass media have become ubiquitous conduits that may foster expanded greediness beyond even the immediate military family. The availability of mass and communication media have generated new opportunities and new demands. 271
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In wartime, soldiers’ separation from the family for the deployment and the risk of injury or death place major demands on the military family. However, does the greediness completely wane for family members during the deployment? Do family members have expectations and needs for contact and support during the deployment? What role does mass media perform in this process? Research on Army families confirms Segal’s theoretical model, concluding that greediness continues during military deployments (Booth et al. 2007). We ask whether the greediness of the two institutions (military and family) is expanded by a third greedy institution (the mass media; specifically, the role of television coverage), and we examine its role as a catalyst for increased use of other communication media. We hold that the definition of a military family and its circle of others expands and contracts with the degree of war coverage. There appears to be a direct relationship between increased media coverage and the expansion of the military family. Soldiers, military families, and communication Communication media use and consumption of mass media among soldiers has a long research tradition (see Applewhite and Segal 1990; Ender 1995, 1998; Ender and Segal 1996). Groups of soldiers and family members vary in their access to and use of single sources of communication such as email (Ender 1997) or telephones (Schumm et al. 1999) when a variety of communication media is available (Ender and Segal 1998). More recently, soldiers and US Army spouses have varied in the range of uses for communicating specific kinds of information; telephones and email rank as the most popular for all communication activities (Ender 2005; Schumm et al. 2004). Few recent sociological studies have provided insights about the nexus of mass media, soldiers, and military families. Despite an early emphasis on studying media and the military there is now a lacuna in the literature. Thirty-year-old studies in Israel found that civilian women greatly increased their use of communication and mass media devices and experienced more stress during times of war compared with peacetime (Cohen and Dotan 1976), but that television fulfilled their media-related needs in time of war (Dotan and Cohen 1976). A more recent study captured the attitudes of a small sample of spouses of Army soldiers reporting support for embedded reporting, with just over half finding the reports informative, but too general ( Johnson 2003). New qualitative research has gauged military spouses’ past use of and satisfaction with mass media during a military deployment, finding that live media coverage of journalists embedded with soldiers created undue stress on family members (Caliber Associates 2006). However, real-time deployment research is insufficient; most is based on retrospective analysis. We fill this gap by reviewing the unfolding literature on embedded reporters in war and presenting an empirical analysis of mass media use. We have adopted a grounded theoretical approach, which allows for an inductive analysis, in which the salient themes emerge from the data and are then linked to larger theoretical perspectives (Strauss and Corbin 1998). We focus on mass media during the deployment in general followed by thematic experiences of the military family.
Background The war against Iraq began at 5:30 a.m., Baghdad, Iraq time, and 9:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on 19 March 2003. By 1 May 2003, from aboard the deck of the USS 272
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Abraham Lincoln, President Bush declared the major combat operations in Iraq to be over. At this writing, US and coalition forces remain in Iraq, with just more than 2,865 US soldiers killed and thousands more wounded (and reported on) daily and globally in the mass media for more than 3 years. Embedded war reporting Embedded reporting from a war zone is not new; but real-time, extended coverage is (Cooper 2003). During previous American wars, reporters roamed the battlefield unimpeded, although censorship was normal. By the Vietnam War, censorship restrictions lifted as reporters roamed and reported relatively freely. Beginning with the US invasions of Grenada and Panama, forward reporter access became greatly restricted with limited censorship (Cooper 2003). The first Gulf War saw a precursor to embeds, with escort pools attached to fighting units (Kellner 1992; Mowlana et al. 1992; Paul and Kim 2004). In Somalia and Haiti, the international press arrived before the American forces and reported with relatively significant access. By the invasion of Iraq in 2003, 1,500–1,600 unilateral reporters were covering the war outside Iraq (Laurence 2003) and 600–700 American and international reporters were serving as “embedded press”: “they traveled with the troops … they saw what soldiers saw, were under fire when troops were and endured the same hardships” (Paul and Kim 2004: 1). Research comparing 2003 television reports of either embeds or unilaterals found the former to be more “jingoistic” (Aday et al. 2005) and, except for FOX News, also found the major American networks and Al Jazeera to be relatively balanced in reporting war-related stories. By 1 May 2003, the US military lifted the formal embedding of reporters. All indications are that embedded reporting will continue in the future (Cooper 2003; O’Neil and Rosenthal 2003; Paul and Kim 2004). What does live media coverage mean for military families? Military families have an obvious vested interest in the mass media emanating from the embedded reporters. For example, family members can follow the dispatches of a reporter embedded with their soldiers’ unit. No recent studies have examined the role of live television in the real-time experience of these groups. We began our study of these families with some core knowledge of issues associated with Army families, but we also explore frontier knowledge associated with mass media use. The serendipitous discovery is the new saliency of mass media in the lives of wives and others in and around the Army community.
Methods Sample We visited a large military installation in the southeastern United States for a 3-day period from 30 March to 1 April 2003: the height of the US and coalition forces ground war in Iraq. The military post is typical of the largest military posts in the US. It is a fairly self-contained community with work and residences on the post. The spouses we interviewed (N = 23) came from a larger surveyed group (N = 62) who were married to soldiers and were the most forward deployed when the war began. We focused on a specific combat unit with approximately 600 soldiers. Most of them had initially deployed to a staging area near the Iraqi border in early January of 2003. Soon after, they engaged in direct combat with Iraqi forces. 273
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Most of the wives in our survey are white (79 percent), typical of a combat arms unit, and the majority have children (70 percent). They differ from most Army spouses in general and spouses at this post specifically as one-third have husbands oriented toward Army careers with 10 or more years in service and ranked from midlevel non-commissioned officer (NCO) and higher. Officers and warrant officers comprise 27 percent of the sample. The wives were slightly older, with ages ranging from 18 to 50 years, with 33 percent over 30; almost 80 percent have at least some college education. We were purposeful in seeking a representative sample of the unit in terms of ethnicity, husband’s rank, and age. There were 55 children in these families, with a few more expected during the deployment. There were several families without children, but the average number of children per family was 2.4, above the national average of 1.7. These children ranged in age from several months to 19 years of age, with most 5 years and under. In all other respects, the interview group looks like the survey group. Procedures [A detailed description of informed consent and IRB procedures, as well as a detailed description of research procedures was removed.] Measures The interview protocol was semistructured and fairly open-ended. It covered three phases: the family’s life before the deployment, during the present deployment, and the remainder of the husband’s Army career. Probes and more depth were solicited from the heart of the interview (consistent with grounded theory) involving the present deployment. Open-ended questions were asked about communication in general, television use, family issues, support services such as community, church, Army services, schools, etc. The data analysis of the interviews followed methods described by Strauss and Corbin (1998) and Creswell (1997). The validity of the coding strategy and categories was enhanced by using a team approach that is highly supported in the qualitative literature (Richie et al. 1997) and has been used successfully with other military populations (Dolan and Ender 2008).
Findings We explore military family experiences when a spouse or family member is engaged in military service in a combat environment. We thought that live television might intervene and contribute to the experiences of spouses and family members, but were unsure how and with whom. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) represents the first combat situation reported live, and continuously with embedded reporters, on television and these mass media appear to connect with the institutions of military work and the family. Mass media uses During the first 2 weeks of OIF, mass media coverage was extensive, continuous, and played a prominent role in the lives of soldiers, military units, their families, the military community, the nation, and the world. By mass media, we refer primarily to live 274
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television coverage of the war from embedded reporters, but this can also include daily print media and the Internet. The 24-hour news services such as CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and others carried the war live. Family members closely monitored their soldiers on television via the CNN reporter embedded and traveling with their husbands’ unit. All of the wives we surveyed watched television news coverage of the war. Time viewed ranged from 15 minutes per day to 24 hours with the television coverage on while they slept. The mean viewing time was approximately 6 hours per day. Thirty percent of wives taped the television news, ranging from 30 minutes per day to taping all day. The modal taping time was 2 hours. More than half (57 percent) allowed their children to view the television news coverage. CNN and FOX News Channel had the most viewers, but CNN dominated. Many wives listed multiple stations but only a single CNN reporter was embedded with their husbands’ unit. Three patterns of live television viewing emerged that we labeled “compulsive,” “controlled,” and “constrained.” “Compulsive viewers” watched television coverage of the unit 6 hours per day or more. Roughly one-third (n = 7) of wives fell into this category. They monitored the news for more than one hour at a time, viewed at any hour of the day and night, and in some cases slept with the news on, waking periodically during the night to monitor reports. One wife told us: “I watched TV all day even though I knew it was not good for me … I felt anxious about things when not watching – then I’d go on-line and monitor.” Another shared, “There are certain things like if I hear ***** *****’s voice [reporter embedded with husband’s unit]. I will be like, hey, my husband’s unit is on … I wake up when I hear his voice – like every hour.” In contrast, one wife commented that a friend seemed relatively unaffected. In comparison, “controlled viewers” made a conscious and systematic attempt to monitor news coverage of the war using a prescribed formula: for example, one half hour in the morning, one half hour in the afternoon, and 30 minutes to a few hours in the evening, watching only at specific times and usually for only 1–4 hours per day. This accounted for almost two-thirds (n = 13) of the wives. A wife explained: I didn’t realize the TV coverage would be everyday. I saw the captain on TV and my first thought is that I know he must be safe. Then I felt pride, they must be good if the news chose them. So I wake up everyday and turn on the TV. Finally, we identified a third group that we designated as “constrained viewers.” This group represents roughly 10 percent (n = 3) of our interviews. They indicated that they refrained from any television coverage. One wife said: “I don’t watch TV at all, I get too upset. I don’t want to use the computer or Internet because it might block his call. I get information from other people.” A female soldier, non-deployable because of pregnancy, had a two-sided perspective, as both soldier and wife. She asserted: I try not to watch [TV] … it would drive me crazy. I have mixed feelings about the embedded reporters. The media needs to be careful about what they say. … I wouldn’t want to find out something happened to my husband from TV. This is a huge fear for most wives. The coverage is ok but I would prefer if it were not live. They go into details that scare me. 275
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Most wives confided that they watched extensive coverage (meeting our definitions of “controlled” and “compulsive viewers”) although by day 10 of OIF, only a minority remained in the latter category. In addition, Family Readiness Group (FRG) leaders soon recommended to wives that they greatly limit their viewing, essentially adopting our “controlled” or “constrained viewer” strategies. As one wife confided, “I think the coverage is good so that I can know what is going on. I watched the news a lot the first week. It caused my blood pressure to raise and I started to get sick. I went to the hospital.” Another wife shared: … I didn’t sleep that Thursday night. I stayed up watching TV. I taped the news all day Friday. … I had all this taped news. I started backing off after that. Now I watch in the morning to see if there is anything new and then right before bed. Another wife related: I have mixed feelings about the embedded reporters. It is good to see what the conditions are like but sometimes it is bad to see. Reporters shouldn’t say anyone is killed, a POW, or MIA until afterwards. … During the first week, I watched 8–10 hours per day – I wasn’t living – just watching. Now I watch 4 to 6 hours and watch the last half hour before going to bed. … The television coverage of the war was pervasive throughout the military community on and off the military installation. Many common community areas on the military installation such as the Post Exchange (PX) food court, the Red Cross office, numerous office environments on post including the Army Community Service Center, the Casualty Affairs office, and military dayrooms were tuned continuously to the war. In addition, off-post restaurants that were popular among soldiers and families had continual coverage of the war. A lieutenant’s wife commented: My mom … wanted to stop at Applebee’s. … I saw on one of the televisions that the soldier had been killed. I got up, stood next to the salad bar, and watched the TV. I started to flip-out … we had to go home. Finally, many wives commented that there was some concern about media exploitation. In an attempt to gain access to the “human interest story” of the war, media outlets were increasingly contacting family members directly to coordinate interviews rather than using the on-post Public Affairs Office sources. This was most difficult for those living off-post as reporters from media at international, national, and local levels frequented a popular café immediately outside the back-gate of the Army post and had easier access to military families. A wife protested: The media definitely needs to tone down by CNN coming here to Fort *****. I feel like they exploit the wives that are left behind – “oh, well what does your husband do? What does your husband say?” I am like, “look, can I just do an interview and tell my husband that I love him, I don’t really want to answer any questions or nothing, I just want to tell him that I love him.” I think that they exploit the situation to the point that it is almost sickening. 276
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Expanded definition of the Army family Parents, in-laws, adult children, fiancées, girlfriends, and other extended kin, including friends in the community, demanded information concerning their soldiers, especially during and immediately after the war was featured on the televised news. Frequently, these people did not live on or near the post. Their initial information was primarily from the television. They would then email or telephone spouses living on-post and request information updates and clarifications. One wife said, “I only got three hours sleep because everyone was calling me – like his family was calling me, they were like – ‘did you see him?’” Another wife mentioned her unit’s experience with a host of others. She said: “[We and the] troops were hearing from people that we had never heard from or hadn’t heard from since high school … ” Another wife stressed: I didn’t even know they were on TV and my dad, who gets up at some ungodly hour in the morning, like 3:30 a.m. or something, said that he had seen my husband’s unit, and so I turned it on CNN then and they were on. I called my husband’s mom just to let her know and then she called her mom and her sister and then they started calling me … they called just to see if I was watching it and to find out. They don’t really know a lot just because they don’t live here and so I was explaining to everyone of them. … Finally, a wife provided insight to her viewing habits that connected her to the push and pull of the media and extended family. She said: When they first declared war, I watched all day, everyday, for five days. Then I realized that, okay, like my mother-in-law watches it all day, everyday too and she has like, no idea about the military or anything and she would call me and say, “I don’t understand this, what is going on?” I have stopped watching it. It is very hard. I do fear I am going to be watching and I will see his tank, or whatever he is riding, blow-up and I don’t want to find out that way. But then, when I don’t watch it, she calls me and she says, “oh, I saw his profile, he was eating.” I’m like, “damn it! I didn’t see it, I didn’t see it.”
Army wives Consistent with research on military spouses of previous deployments, the roles of wives expanded to include increased responsibilities in the FRG as well as assuming the roles their husbands held in the family before deployment. Wives developed new skills (or called on skills acquired during previous deployments) in managing yard-work, family finances, expanded parenting roles, etc. Some wives reported extreme difficulties in these role expansions; others reported receiving or giving informal support to other families. For example, one wife helped with shopping for a wife with three children who lived in a rural area and could not drive. This same wife helped her new protégée to learn to drive, thus helping her to learn a new skill. In one dramatic case among our interviewees, an Army wife of a deployed soldier with two children of her own (aged 10 and 12 years) had become the legal guardian for the 10-month old daughter of a dual military couple, both deployed with her husband’s unit. 277
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We find a notable change with OIF: the expansion of roles found in previous deployments but increasingly beyond the space of the immediate military community to a host of other people who become significant because of initial television coverage and communication media access. One wife felt she lacked agency in her expanded role because of her husband’s access to her and the many duties she was involved in: I feel like I have a million and one things to do every day and half of the stuff has to deal with him and his job and they [the Army] won’t give the leeway to do it. I feel like my husband is going to come back and be like, “Honey, why didn’t you take care of this, this, and this?” And I’m going to be like, “I couldn’t.” Another wife of a senior NCO noted to us that some of the younger wives are “devastated” by the deployment, news coverage, and the attention it brings and “they are new to this and don’t know how it works.” She feels responsibility for the younger wives and sends emails to wives and families who are far away from the post, more often when there is news coverage. Another shared that she attributes her strength to being pregnant, which they discovered 3 days before her husband deployed. Her husband is excited about their baby and asks questions when he writes and she shares information about the pregnancy. She says, “I have to be strong for the baby … I think that if I wasn’t pregnant, I would probably be very depressed.” Military children We had informal interactions and interview contact with 23 families of deployed soldiers. There were 55 children in these families, with more expected during the deployment. Most research on military families assumes “as go the parents, so go the children” as little research has been conducted on military children (see Booth et al. 2007; Ender 2002, 2006). Our research is limited to findings for the children based on reports from their mothers. We found varied direct and indirect reactions to the deployment on the part of children that differed, in some cases, markedly. Some children coped very well. One mother with four young children said: Earlier, they just went through that helpless, almost a depression phase. Now they are acting out some. Not all of them. My daughter is not. She is like the social butterfly, he is gone, and she could care less. She is six and she knows she gets to go to Disneyland when the war is over and that is all she’s worried about right now. Other children were not doing so well. One mom said: You are not going to tell me that my two year old does not understand that their daddy is fighting and I am going to look them in the face and tell them … you are a liar, he does. My two year old sits there and looks at the TV. He may not know what the word fight means, but he knew what hurt meant. He understands. He stood there in tears, “Daddy.” Mothers reported that they observed personality changes in their children and in some as young as 2 years of age. Other observations of mothers within and between children in military families included isolation, antisocial behavior, attempts at harming themselves, 278
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and the assumption of adult roles such as caretaking. These behaviors are fairly consistent with previous research on deployments (Ender 2006; Pincus et al. 2001; Smith 1998). The mothers conveyed that the schools in the community supported children whose parents had deployed. In many cases, the schools exceptionalized the status of children of deployed parents. One middle school allowed the students to establish a “support board” on which children could post pictures of their deployed parents. Schools that highlighted the deployment and the specific children affected were said by mothers to have helped their children cope best. Many of the mothers reported using “controlled viewer” strategies with their children. However, many wives reported that their adolescents insisted on watching more coverage than the younger children. For example, an Army mother of teenagers said she would prefer if they did a wrap-up instead of live coverage. Her son watches compulsively and she needs to explain what is going on. Discussions in school about the war helped and her husband provided some anticipatory socialization, informing their son that there would be live coverage and how to process it.
Discussion and conclusion Military family demands, adjustment, and live media coverage of forward deployed soldiers are linked. The initial purpose of this study was to provide an in-depth examination of military family experiences during the height of the US-led invasion of Iraq in early 2003. Few studies have captured the qualitative experience of military families during combat. Further, little is understood regarding the connections between soldiers, units, families, the larger society, and the ubiquitous relationship with mass media such as live television and the internet during a war. Clearly, the technology is available and now many wars are fought on the battlefield and projected live into the home-fronts. The immediacy facilitated by the technology, for both soldiers and their families, appears acute. Mass media (in particular, live televised war with reporters and camera crews embedded in military units) have significant support from the military and the public. There is a perception that the public desires and consumes information about the war. We found that one audience (the military family and its significant others) has an intense and calculated relationship with such media because it increases the social presence of the absent soldier. We are careful here not to overstate our findings. The sample is small. Career Army wives are overrepresented in the sample. The research was conducted early in the unit’s deployment, forcing caution in generalizing to the broader experiences of military spouses during war and lengthy deployments. We do not know about wives who left the community during the deployment. Further, we found an overwhelming negative impact of mass media on military families using our study design, but we suspect there are more positive impacts worth exploring. However, the qualitative study dimension does provide some depth of understanding at three important levels: individual, community, and the institutional. At the individual level, findings reported here identify how Army families might experience and adjust to live televised reporting of their soldiers from the front lines of combat. The major finding is that family demands and coping link to the new and unique condition of live media coverage of troops engaged in combat. During OIF, families, friends, and others around the world could view soldiers on live television via embedded reporters traveling with the troops. We identified three patterns of wives’ television viewing: “compulsive,” “controlled,” and “constrained.” Most of the wives 279
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settled into controlled viewing through informal self- and reference-group regulatory strategies. Yet a minority had more extreme reactions to the coverage. Many wives were able to adapt readily to this new deployment situation, whereas others experienced difficulty in achieving some level of normalcy. Some evidence here suggests that military children showed similar patterns and had a wide range of reactions to the deployment and subsequent live media coverage. Some children coped well, others less so. Generally, mothers controlled their children’s viewing of war coverage, although, especially with adolescents, they were not always successful. More research is needed to understand the impact of real-time war coverage and military children and adolescent reactions. At the community level, another important finding is that spouse roles expand and contract in this new media-rich environment of combat coverage. Spouses may take on additional caretaking and information-processing roles for extended family, friends, and those significant in the lives of single soldiers. Some spouses felt obliged to appear in front of cameras and reporters. These spontaneous voluntary media appearances may come to represent military wives of all deployed soldiers across the nation in the minds of some viewers. Our findings from wives suggest that, during war, the military nuclear family interacts far beyond its peacetime boundaries as other people become electronically invested and interested in the experience of soldiers, want to “support the troops,” and seek information about their well-being. In this sense, extended family and others contribute to the greediness of the military family and the range of others significant to the soldier are brought into the social milieu of the military community directly involved in the war. Finally, the findings point toward mass media as a greedy institution when it intersects with the military and the family. Clearly, mass media fulfill basic social needs such as reporting events at local, national, and global levels and gathering and disseminating information vital to public interests. Scholars have previously identified the macrolevel role of live, 24-hour television coverage having an impact on foreign policy, i.e. the “CNN effect” (Livingston 1997). In the pursuit of the story in wartime, as our study shows, the reporters and the war news they produce become greedy by placing significant demands on soldiers and families. Future research should continue to explore the themes identified here with a larger group of military family members, in different types of missions, and across different cycles of the deployment, clarifying further the scope of the intersection of the military, the media, and the family.
Note The material in this chapter was adapted from: Ender, M.G., Campbell, K.M., Davis, T. J. and Michaelis, P.R. (2007) “Greedy media: Army families, embedded reporting, and war in Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 40(1): 48–71.
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Booth, B.H., Segal, M.W. and Bell, D. B. with Martin, J.A. Ender, M.G., Rohall, D.E. and Nelson, J. (2007) What We Know About Army Families: 2007 Update, Fairfax, VA: ICF International. Prepared for U.S. Army Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command. Caliber Associates (2006) Qualitative Follow-Up to the 2004/2005 Survey of Army Families V: Focus Group Findings from Installation Visits, Fairfax, VA: Caliber. Cohen, A.A. and Dotan, J. (1976) “Communication in the family as a function of stress during war and peace,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 38: 141–48. Cooper, S.D. (2003) “Press controls in wartime: The legal, historical, and institutional context,” American Communication Journal. Online. Available http://www.acjournal.org/holdings/vol6/iss4/articles/ cooper.htm (accessed 14 June 2006). Coser, L.A. (1974) Greedy Institutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment, New York: Free Press. Creswell, J.W. (1997) Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Dolan, C.A. and Ender, M.G. (2008) “The coping paradox: Work, stress, and coping in the Army,” Military Psychology, 20: 151–69. Dotan, J. and Cohen, A.A. (1976) “Mass media use in the family during war and peace,” Communication Research, 3: 393–402. Ender, M.G. (1995) “G.I. phone home: The use of telecommunications by the soldiers of Operation Just Cause,” Armed Forces & Society, 21: 335–334. ——(1997) “E-mail to Somalia: New communication media between home and war fronts,” in J.E. Behar (ed.) Mapping Cyberspace: Social Research on the Electronic Frontier, Oakdale, NY: Dowling College Press, 27–52. ——(1998) “The postmodern military: Soldiering, new media, and the post-Cold War,” Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict, (1997–98 Annual Edition): 50–58. ——(2002) Military Brats and Other Global Nomads: Growing-Up in Organization Families, Westport, CT: Praeger. ——(2005) “Divergences in traditional and new communication media use among army families,” in E. Ouellet (ed.) New Directions in Military Sociology, Whitby, Ontario, Canada: de Sitter Publications. ——(2006) “Voices from the backseat: Growing up in military families,” in C.A. Castro, A.B. Adler, and T.W. Britt (eds), Military Life: The Psychology of Serving in Peace and Combat (Volume 3: The Military Family), Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 138–66. Ender, M.G. and Segal, D.R. (1996) “V(E)-mail to the Foxhole: isolation, (tele)communication, and forward deployed soldiers,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 24: 83–104. ——(1998) “Cyber-Soldiering: Race, class, gender and new media use in the military,” in B. Ebo (ed.), Cyberghetto or Cybertopia: race, class, and gender on the Internet, Westport CT: Praeger Publishers, 65–8. Johnson, G. (2003) “An analysis of the attitudes and opinions toward embedded media reporting during Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Unpublished thesis, Central Michigan University. Kanter, R.M. (1977) Work and Family in the United States: A Critical Review and Agenda for Research, New York: Russell Sage. Kellner, D. (1992) The Persian Gulf TV War, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Laurence, J. (2003) “Embedding: A military view,” Columbia Journalism Review. Online. Available http://archives.cjr.org/year/03/2/webspecial.asp (accessed 14 June 2006). Livingston, S. (1997) Clarifying the CNN Effect: An Examination of Media Effects According to Type of Military Intervention, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Online. Available http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/Research_Publications/Papers/Research_Papers/ R18.pdf (accessed 19 June 2006). Mowlana, H., Gerbner, G. and Schiller, H.I. (eds) (1992) Triumph of the Image: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf – A Global Perspective, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. O’Neil, E. and Rosenthal, J. (2003) Media and the Military: Lessons Learned from the Iraq War, Conference Summary. New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 2 June 2003. Paul, C. and Kim, J.J. (2004) Reporters on the Battlefield: The Embedded Press System in Historical Context, Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
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Pincus, S.H., House, R., Christenson, J. and Adler, L. (2001) “The emotional cycle of deployment: A military family perspective,” US Army Medical Department Journal, (April–June): 15–23. Richie, B.S., Fassinger, R.E., Linn, S.G., Johnson, J., Prosser, J. and Robinson, S. (1997) “Persistence, connection, and passion: a qualitative study of the career development of highly achieving African American – Black and White women,” Journal of Counseling Psychology, 44: 133–48. Schumm, W.R., Bell, D.B., Ender, M.G. and Rice, R.E. (2004) “Expectations, use, and evaluations of communications media among deployed peacekeepers,” Armed Forces & Society, 30: 649–62. Schumm, W.R., Bell, D.B., Scott, B. and Ender, M.G. (1999) “The Desert FAX: Calling home from Somalia,” Armed Forces & Society, 25: 509–21. Segal, M.W. (1986) “The military and the family as greedy institutions,” Armed Forces & Society, 13: 9–38. ——(1989) “The nature of work and family linkages: A theoretical perspective,” in G.L. Bowen and D. K. Orthner (eds) The Organization Family: work and family in the US military, New York: Praeger. Smith, F. (1998) “Behind the lines: lives of loss,” Journal for a Just and Caring Education, 4: 253–83. Strauss, A.L. and Corbin, J. (1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 2nd edn, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Wartella, E. and Jennings, N. (2001) “New members of the family: The digital revolution at home,” The Journal of Family Communication, 1: 59–69.
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24 Military child well-being in the face of multiple deployments Rachel Lipari, Anna Winters, Kenneth Matos, Jason Smith and Lindsay Rock
Although members of the military are the ones who serve in harm’s way, deployments affect all members of a military family, including children. Statistics indicate that “more than 2 million US children have been affected directly by a parent’s military wartime deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan” (Chartrand et al. 2008: 1). In addition, deployments disrupt family routines, and experiencing even one deployment cycle (i.e. pre-deployment preparation, deployment, and post-deployment reunion) can create tremendous emotional upheaval within military families (Kelley 2002). Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the longest military operations since the Vietnam War, have resulted in members of the military being deployed more than once, some as many as four or five times, since 2001. With the operational tempo of these wars, military families have faced a steady cycle of deployments and reunions, which may affect military child well-being in a manner that differs from previous wars. As Rohall et al. (1999) note, the increase in deployments and family separations in recent decades has created a situation where “families must always be prepared to manage family life without the presence of at least one spouse” (50). Although little is known about how children react to deployments, it is inevitable that the experience changes the lives of military children and may be inherently taxing upon their well-being. Most research on the impact of multiple deployments examines the effect on military members who voluntarily joined the military knowing that deployments are a likely component of military service. Hosek et al. (2006) indicates that the effects of deployments are non-linear, with military members experiencing more stress from later deployments than earlier deployments. For military members, deployments can be positive experiences as they offer opportunities for the members to apply their skills. The experience of the first few deployments is therefore less stressful than later experiences when continuing demand on their resources can prove overwhelming. In effect, the amount of stress that each experience imparts to a member is somewhat greater than the preceding experience. Our model builds on Hosek et al.’s (2006) basic assumption that the effects of deployment experiences are not strictly additive, but rather that the impact of each deployment is affected by the experiences that precede it. While military members are 283
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eventually overwhelmed by continuing deployment experiences, we hypothesize military children would have the opposite reaction: initially reacting poorly to parental deployments (e.g. presenting more examples of problematic behaviors) but eventually developing strategies to cope with parental absences. As a result, there would also be a nonlinear relationship between the number of deployments and child well-being outcomes, with the negative impact of parental deployments decreasing with each experience. Research on the impact of deployments on children have found that they suffer emotional, behavioral, sex-role, and health problems that manifest as changes in academic performance, personality changes, and parent conflicts. Younger children, especially those 6 years and under, appear to cope least well whereas parents perceive their oldest adolescent children as best able to cope with deployments (Booth et al. 2007: 91). Because of the demographics of the military, much of the research on the impact of parental deployments has focused on the father’s absence. Although the loss of the father figure in the family because of deployments is similar to that of families with incarcerated or divorced fathers (MacDermid et al. 2005), deployments differ in that they add a component of heightened risk because military members may engage in armed combat. Reactions of children to the deployments of fathers include behavioral problems, emotional distress, depression, difficulties in school work as well as in relations to peers and family members, and suicidal threats (Hobfoll et al. 1991; Levai et al. 1994). Kelley (1994a, b) found that children whose fathers were deployed during the Persian Gulf War showed no reductions in internalizing and externalizing behaviors, “suggesting that these children may have been particularly susceptible to stressful separations” (Kelley 1994b: 172). Research that has examined the effect of absent mothers (resulting from military deployments) on children has found similar results: greater susceptibility to anxiety and sadness (Kelley 2002). Research also indicates that there may be gender and age differences in how military children react to deployments and separations. Elder’s (1998) life course research has shown that “the developmental impact of a life transition or event is contingent on when it occurs in a person’s life” (961). Hence we expect that children’s adaptation to a deployment would be related to their age during the deployment. Jensen et al. (1996) noted that boys and younger children appeared to be the most susceptible to deployment effects. In a study of admissions to psychiatric hospitals during the Persian Gulf Crisis of 1990–91, among children with a father deployed in the Persian Gulf, three times as many boys as girls were admitted to psychiatric hospitals (Levai et al. 1994). According to Hillenbrand (1976), with a father absent, the eldest sons perceived their mother as the dominant parent, while they took on the fatherly role. Younger male siblings who could not take on the fatherly role were less likely to react positively, seeking more aggressive methods of recognition. Clinicians’ guides to helping military children cope with deployments note that preschoolers (e.g. 3–5 years) may respond to deployments with regressive behaviors, such as clinginess and separation anxiety, whereas school-age children (e.g. 6–12 years) respond by showing irritability, aggression, whininess, or worry. Teenagers often exhibit rebelliousness and, like school-age children, they also often become irritable and have anxiety over their parent’s safety (National Center for PTSD 2004: 85). Although adults reflecting back on growing up in the military have cited geographic mobility and constraining behavioral norms as more stressful than parental separation (Ender 2002) this does not preclude deployments as a significant contributor to child stress. This may be especially true for military children since 2001, whose parents have experienced multiple deployments. Frequency of deployment may interact with other 284
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stressors, creating unique effects. For example, a frequently deployed parent might be especially rigorous in enforcing behavioral norms to ensure that they are followed while the parent is absent. Children who lose the active presence of a parent face significant challenges and stress, including feelings of isolation and anxiety, although most military children negotiate these challenges successfully (National Center for PTSD and US Department of Defense 2004). Families that do not react well to deployments often have additional strains, such as preexisting psychological conditions or a history of abuse, which are accentuated by the deployment cycle (Lincoln et al. 2008). Spouses who remain at home, however, can minimize the negative impact of the deployment on the children in the family. Frank et al. (1981) suggest that communication with the absent parent and talking about the deployed parent can help children cope with the separation. The ability of the parent at home to manage their own feelings affects how their children will react to the deployment, as they may communicate their stress to their children (Pivar 2009). The non-deployed parents can also minimize deployment-related stress if they maintain close relationships with their children, establish a stable routine that maintains family traditions, and monitor children’s exposure to news coverage of the war while keeping communication lines open (National Center for PTSD 2004). Adding additional empirical support to these suggestions, exposure to media coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom had a negative impact on wives and children, especially pre-adolescents, of deployed Army members, although the effect of the exposure varied across children within the same family (Ender et al. 2007). Even before the global war on terror, military members were required to fulfill more objectives than before the end of the Cold War. One result is that members and their families must separate more often (Rohall et al. 1999). Although separations and deployments had once been relatively predictable occurrences, Lincoln et al. (2008) note that the length of military deployments has become uncertain as military members face frequent deployment extensions with the likelihood of multiple deployments in a short time span. The study of the impact that multiple deployments have on children, ages 2 to 18 years, of military members is vital to maintaining the family unit, especially because children are less likely to speak about or be aware of their problems (Hobfoll et al. 1991).
Method Participants and procedure This study uses data from the 2008 Active Duty Spouse Survey (2008 ADSS), conducted by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC 2008) to assess the impact of deployments on the families of active duty members. This large-scale survey was conducted between 14 March and 4 August 2008. The target population for the 2008 ADSS consisted of spouses of active duty members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard,1 excluding National Guard and Reserve members.2 All spouses in the target population were married to military members who (1) had at least 6 months of service at the time the questionnaire was first fielded and (2) were below the level of admiral or general. In addition, for the respondent to be eligible, they must have indicated at the time of the survey that they were currently married to an active duty member.3 The 2008 ADSS used single-stage, non-proportional stratified random sampling procedures.4 285
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Completed surveys were received from 9,016 eligible respondents, providing an overall weighted response rate of 28 percent. Of these, 398 spouses (8 percent male and 92 percent female) reported that their husband or wife had been deployed at least once within the last 3 years and that they had at least one child between the ages of 2 and 18 years old living at home during their spouse’s deployment. These spouses were asked questions about how well their children were coping with the member’s deployment. Measures For all responses, spouses were asked to focus their answers on the child most affected by the member’s deployments. The dependent variable in the model is a scale representing the types of problem behaviors often exhibited by children during deployments (e.g. decline in academic performance, problem behavior at home). Drawn from previous research, several independent variables were included in the model (e.g. child age and child gender). Problem behavior scale The problem behavior scale was developed by DMDC with input from interviews with military spouses and subject matter experts in the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Military Community & Family Policy office. Each survey respondent was asked to indicate whether the child most affected by the member’s deployments had experienced an increase, decrease, or no change in behaviors or expressed attitudes of distress or anger. A “not applicable” option was available for those children for whom the item was inappropriate (e.g. a preschool child cannot have problems at school). To be included in the analysis, respondents had to respond (with any response option other than “not applicable”) to all 11 of the items. Five of the items represented negative behaviors or attitudes for which increases indicate poorer coping with the member’s deployment (e.g. problem behavior at school). These items were coded so that indicating an increase in the behavior received a value of 1. The remaining six items represented positive behaviors or attitudes for which increases indicate better coping with the member’s deployment (e.g. level of independence). These items were coded so that indicating a decrease in the behavior was given a value of 1. The values for each behavior were then summed to form a problem behavior scale. Scores ranged from 0 to 11. The average score for our sample was 2.17. The average scores differed by the number of deployments a child had experienced, with those who experienced one deployment having an average score of 1.70, two deployments having an average score of 2.91, and three deployments an average score of 1.60. Age of the child The age of the child most affected by the member’s deployments was provided by the spouse. For this study, the ages of the children were limited to 2–18 years old because the measures of the behavioral changes in children were not applicable to those under the age of 2 years. The average age of the child most affected was 6.4 years. Child age varied slightly by the number of deployments the child had experienced (one deployment, average age of 6.06; two deployments, average age of 6.3; three deployments, average age of 7.19). Research has not established a clear link between a child’s age and a parent’s choice to leave the military. Booth et al. (2007: 5) note that an inability to balance the demands of work and family is a major factor in the decision to leave the 286
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military. Responsibility for children at developmental stages calling for a high degree of parental involvement could influence a member’s perception of their success in balancing these two domains and their choice to stay in the military. In addition, older children are more likely to have parents who have been in the military longer and may have reached a natural end to their military careers, independent from their status as parents. Gender of the child The gender of the child most affected by the member’s deployments was provided by the spouse. Both genders were almost equally represented, with 49 percent of the children being male and 51 percent being female. The gender of the child in this analysis did not differ between those whose parent had experienced either one or two deployments; however, girls were slightly more likely than boys to have a parent who experienced three deployments. Perceived stress scale To evaluate stress levels, spouses were asked about their emotional experiences/reactions in the month before taking the survey. The scale measure consists of four items from the perceived stress scale (Cohen and Williamson 1988). For the purposes of this analysis, items b and c were reverse-coded. The items are scored 0 to 4. Scores are reported as a single figure, which is the sum of the individual scores (range 0 to 16). Higher scores indicate greater perceived stress. The average perceived stress scale score was 5.75 (Cronbach’s alpha = .77). The average stress scores differed by the number of deployments a spouse had experienced, with those who experienced one deployment having an average score of 5.48, two deployments having an average score of 6.10, and three deployments an average score of 5.93. Connection with deployed parent Spouses were asked to rate how well their child stayed connected with the deployed parent during deployment separations. Responses were based on a 5-point scale, ranging from very poorly to very well. The majority of spouses (69 percent) indicated that their child stayed well connected with the deployed parent, whereas 13 percent said they were poorly connected. Children who had experienced just one deployment were more likely to be well connected to the deployed parent (74 percent), whereas those who had experienced two or three deployments were less likely to be well connected (both 67 percent). It may be that parent–child relationships can remain well connected through a single deployment, but that with repeated deployments, lines of communication deteriorate either because the relationship has weakened or the children have adapted to their parent’s absences and become less invested in frequent contact. Number of deployments The number of times the military member was deployed over the 3 years before the survey administration was measured by spouse self-report. Deployments were defined as periods away from home because of military duties for 30 days or more. As a result, reported deployments ranged from 0 to 36. Approximately 96 percent of the overall sample reported three or fewer deployments. Only 17 individuals in the overall sample 287
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reported experiencing more than three deployments, and these respondents were excluded from the analysis as outliers. The average number of deployments experienced by those in our sub-sample was 1.65, with 47 percent having experienced only one deployment, 42 percent having experienced two deployments, and 11 percent having experienced three deployments. Respondents were not asked about their children’s wellbeing if they had not experienced any parental deployments in the past 3 years. Analytic strategy The study uses correlation analysis and polynomial regression. The data were modeled using the polynomial regression procedures (PROC GLM) in SAS 9.1. As previously noted, our study includes an analysis of a non-linear relationship between number of deployments and measures of reactions to deployment, suspecting that early deployments would have a more negative impact on children’s well-being than later deployments.
Results Correlations for all study variables are presented in Table 24.1. Older children were more likely to be connected with their deployed parent, but they also scored higher, on average, on the problem behavior scale. Parental stress was negatively related to connection with the deployed parents, whereas it was positively correlated with the experience of problems. Those children whose parent had higher perceived stress scale scores were less connected with the deployed parent and had higher problem behavior scale scores. A stronger connection with the deployed parent was related to a lower problem behavior score. Deployments were not significantly correlated linearly with any of the child outcomes or with parental stress level. We hypothesized that deployments would have a non-linear, quadratic relationship with children’s behavioral problems. Higher problem behavior scale scores were expected to be associated with lower numbers of deployments. Children experiencing their first few deployments were expected to be unprepared for the new experience and to be Table 24.1 Weighted means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables
1. Child age 2. Child gender 3. Perceived stress scale 4. Connection with deployed parent 5. Problem behavior scale 6. Number of deployments
Mean
Standard deviation
1
2
3
– 0.06 –0.06
– –0.01
–
6.40 0.51 5.75
44.04 4.83 30.46
3.81
10.47
0.16** 0.01
2.17
22.76
0.18* –0.09
0.39*** –0.36***
1.65
6.46
0.08
0.08
0.07
–0.20***
4
5
6
–
–0.01
– 0.10
–
Unweighted N ranges from 138 to 398. Child gender was coded as 0 = male and 1 = female. Connected with deployed parent coded as 1 = very poorly, 2 = poorly, 3 = neither well nor poorly, 4 = well, and 5 = very well. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
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more likely to act out because they did not yet have strategies for coping with their parent’s deployment. However, children experiencing multiple deployments over the 3 years would have the opportunity to develop constructive coping strategies and adapt to the stresses of having a deployed parent. As a result, at some point, the relationship between deployments and problems would reverse direction, and increasing deployments would be associated with lower problem behavior scale scores. We expected these relationships to be significant even when controlling for child age and gender as well as the parent’s stress level and perception of the child’s connection with the deployed parent. We found that deployments did have a non-linear, quadratic relationship with problem behavior scale scores (Table 24.2). As can be seen in Figure 24.1, the relationship between deployments and problem behavior scores is best represented by a curved line on which the first increase in deployments (from 1 to 2) is associated with higher problem behavior scores (B = 4.42, p < .01), and the second increase in deployments (from 2 to 3) is associated with lower problem behavior scores (B = –1.10, p < .01). In other words, children who had experienced one deployment displayed an average of 3.8 problem behaviors. The average number of problem behaviors increased to 4.9 for those experiencing two deployments, whereas those experiencing 3 deployments displayed an average of 3.8 problem behaviors. The non-linear relationship remained significant even when controlling for the other variables in the model. The non-linear nature of this relationship is the reason why the correlation between the number of deployments and the exhibition of problem behaviors was small and non-significant (r = 0.10). In addition, we found that several of the control variables had a main effect on the problem behavior scale scores. Child age (B = 0.11, p < .05) and parent’s perceived stress (B = 0.19, p < .01) were both positively associated with problem behavior scale scores such that older children and those with more stressed parents presented more behavioral problems. Connection with the deployed parent (B = -0.99, p < .01) was negatively associated with the problem behavior scale scores such that children who were able to maintain closer ties to the deployed parent displayed fewer behavioral problems. However, no significant relationship was found between gender of the child and problem behavior scale scores (B = –0.18, p = .62).
Discussion The unique historical context of the participation of the US in two large-scale operations for close to a decade has afforded an opportunity to study the impact of multiple deployments on military child well-being. The regression analysis indicates that military Table 24.2 Problem behavior regressed on deployments and other variables
Intercept Deployments Deployments squared Child age Child gender Perceived stress scale Connection with deployed parent
B
Standard error
t
.44 4.42 –1.10 .11 –.18 .19 –.99
1.63 1.45 .38 .04 .36 .06 .24
.27 3.04** –2.85* 2.59* –.49 3.27** –4.18**
*p < .05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. ***Overall model F value = 10.59
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Figure 24.1 Number of deployments by problem behavior scale scores
children are negatively affected by deployments, but as suspected, the relationship is not strictly linear. Military children exhibit an increase in problem behaviors following a parent’s first or second deployment. By the time the third deployment occurs, military children appear to have less problematic behavior, likely as a result of the development of coping strategies that enable them to adapt to the deployment cycle. In our preliminary descriptive statistics it was already apparent that the number of deployments was related to child well-being. We hypothesized that the number of problem behaviors a child exhibits as a result of deployment would increase after the first deployment, but subsequent deployments would be associated with fewer problem behaviors. The descriptive statistics provide support for this hypothesis on the impact of multiple deployments. However, the descriptive statistics also highlight the lack of variance in our dependent variable. This was not unexpected, because many military families take pride in their resiliency and often remain positive about their military experiences even when they are experiencing distress. Our dependent variable also did not assess the frequency or severity of problem behavior, which might have fostered more variance in the measure. To compensate for the lack of variance in our measure, we replicated our analysis using a single-item measure asking spouses to assess how well their children have coped with deployments overall using a 5-point scale, ranging from very poorly to very well. In our sample, 61 percent of spouses indicated their child was doing well, whereas 17 percent thought their child was doing poorly. When this singleitem measure is substituted for the problem behavior scale, we find results are similar to the model presented here. 290
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Previous research on the impact of deployments on children indicated that child wellbeing during deployments was less if children were able to remain connected to their deployed parent, and if the parent at home was able to keep their own stress levels low. The significant main effects of these variables reinforce the existing literature on this topic. In addition, the regression results support the notion that children who have experienced three deployments exhibit fewer problem behaviors than those who are experiencing their first or second deployments. However, the lack of a significant effect of gender could be a result of the small sample size. Our results suggest that older children display more problem behaviors than younger ones, contradicting other research suggesting that older children fare better than younger ones when a parent is deployed (Booth et al. 2007: 91). However, our measure was a count of problem behaviors rather than more common measures of overall emotional state (e.g. stress). It may be that adolescents, with their greater freedoms and responsibilities, have more opportunities to act out their emotional difficulties than younger children, resulting in higher scores. Parents may also be less likely to perceive problem behaviors as related to a deployment in younger children who are still learning basic selfcontrol skills than in adolescents who are expected to have greater control of their behavior. There are several inherent limitations in this study. First, we do not have a measure of child well-being before experiencing their first deployment. Although the question was specifically worded to have respondents chronicle behavior changes in response to deployments, it would strengthen the study to have a predeployment assessment. Second, although the number of children experiencing more than one deployment is substantial, we did not have many who had experienced more than three deployments. This makes it impossible to test whether the impact of multiple deployments continues to have an inverted “U” shape. Most significantly, the argument that children adapt to multiple deployments is difficult to test, because the parents of children who are truly unable to cope with deployments may exit the military or change military specialties to avoid future deployments. Third, families in which children are unable to adapt to deployments may choose to divorce, which would make those spouses ineligible for the survey. Fourth, the character of deployments differs for members of different Services. For example, Army members are more likely to have lengthy deployments to combat zones, whereas Air Force members are less likely to be deployed. Therefore, the effects of deployments on children are likely to be different depending on the Service of their parent. Because of the small sample size of this current study, Service differences could not be addressed, but it is recommended that future research explore the possibility of differential experiences of children based on Service. However, the data from this study provide a new opportunity to analyze the impact of deployments on an understudied population: military children. Continued research on the effects of multiple deployments with this population is recommended. This study offers a number of suggestions for future research. Studies examining the effects of deployments on different children in the same family may highlight particular aspects of the deployment experience that foster or reduce stress. Research should also be conducted looking at how increases in the ease of long-distance communications influence a child’s ability to stay in touch with a deployed parent and how that affects their experience of the deployment. Researchers should examine gender difference in greater depth, taking into account the sex of the child and the military parent within the context of continually evolving behavioral norms for men and women. 291
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Notes 1 Spouses of Coast Guard members were not included in these analyses because of the reduced likelihood of Coast Guard members being deployed. 2 Spouses of National Guard and Reserve members were not included in the sample because most National Guard and Reserve members maintain civilian jobs and lives in addition to their military duties, often in locations far from their military duty stations. This can lead to National Guard and Reserve spouses having a harder time accessing military deployment support networks and producing a different set of deployment experiences from active duty spouses. 3 An active duty member married to another active duty member would be eligible for the survey depending on their spouse’s status as an active duty member, not their own. 4 In stratified random sampling, all members of a population are categorized into homogeneous groups. For example, spouses might be grouped by the gender and service of their husband or wife (e.g. spouses of all male Army personnel in one group, spouses of all female Navy personnel in another). Within each group, spouses of active duty members are chosen at random. Small groups are oversampled in comparison to their proportion of the population so there will be enough responses from small groups to analyze. Weights are used so that groups are correctly represented in the analyses.
References Booth, B. H., Segal, M. W. and Bell, D. B. with Martin, J. A. Ender, M. G. and Nelson, J. (2007) What We Know About Army Families: 2007 Update, Fairfax, VA: ICF International. Chartrand, M. M., Frank, D. A., White, L. F. and Shope, T. R. (2008) “Effect of parents’ wartime deployment on the behavior of young children in military families,” Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, 162: 1009–14. Cohen, S. and Williamson, G. (1988) “Perceived stress in a probability sample of the US,” in S. Spacapam and S. Oskamp (eds), The Social Psychology of Health: Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psychology, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) (2008) 2008 Active Duty Spouse Survey: Administration, Datasets, and Codebook. Arlington, VA: Defense Manpower Data Center. Elder, G. H. (1998) “The life course and human development,” in W. Damon, W. Roy and R. M. Lerner (eds), Handbook of Child Psychology: Theoretical Models of Human Development, 5th edn, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 939–91. Ender, M. G. (2002) “Beyond adolescence: The experiences of adult children of military parents,” in M. G. Ender (ed.), Military Brats and Other Global Nomads: Growing Up in Organization Families. Westport and London: Praeger, 83–100. Ender, M. G., Campbell, K. M., Davis, T. J. and Michaelis, P. R. (2007) “Greedy media: army families, embedded reporting, and war in Iraq,” Sociological Focus, 40: 48–71. Frank, M., Shanfield, S. and Evans, H. (1981) “The in-and-out parent: Strategies for managing re-entry stress,” Military Medicine, 146: 846–49. Hillenbrand, E. D. (1976) “Father absence in military families,” The Family Coordinator, 25: 451–58. Hobfoll, S. E., Spielberger, C. D., Breznitz, S., Figley, C., Folkman, S., Lepper-Green, B. et al. (1991) “War-related stress: Addressing the stress of war and other traumatic events,” American Psychologist, 46: 848–55. Hosek, J., Kavanagh, J. and Miller, L. (2006) How Deployments Affect Service Members, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Jensen, P. S., Martin, D. and Watanabe, H. (1996) “Children’s response to parental separation during Operation Desert Storm,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 35: 433–41. Kelley, M. L. (1994a) “The effects of military-induced separation on family factors and child behavior,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 64: 103–11. ——(1994b) “Military-induced separation in relation to maternal adjustment and children’s behaviors,” Military Psychology, 6: 163–76.
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——(2002) “The effects of deployment of traditional and nontraditional military families: navy mothers and their children,” in M. G. Ender (ed.), Military Brats and Other Global Nomads: Growing Up in Organization Families, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 3–23. Levai, M., Kaplan, S., Daly, K. and McIntosh, G. (1994) “The effect of the Persian Gulf Crisis on the psychiatric hospitalization of navy children and adolescents,” Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 24: 245–54. Lincoln, A., Swift, E. and Shorteno-Fraser, M. (2008) “Psychological adjustment and treatment of children and families with parents deployed in military combat,” Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64: 984–92. MacDermid, S., Schwarz, R., Faber, A., Adkins, J., Mishkind, M. and Weiss, H. M. (2005). “Military fathers on the front lines” in W. Marsiglio, K. Roy, and G. L. Fox (eds), Situated Fathering: A Focus on Physical and Social Spaces (pp. 209–31). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. National Center for PTSD and US Department of Defense (2004) Iraq War Clinician Guide, 2nd edn, Washington, DC: Department of Veteran Affairs. Pivar, I. (2009) “Talking to children about going to war,” National Center for PTSD FactSheet, Washington, DC. National Center for PTSD. Rohall, D. E., Segal, M. W. and Segal, D. R. (1999) “Examining the importance of organizational supports on family adjustment to army life a period of increasing separation,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 27: 49–65.
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25 American undergraduate attitudes toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Trends and variations1 Morten G. Ender, David E. Rohall and Michael D. Matthews
Introduction Public support for America’s war efforts has become a conventional part of American life since the Vietnam War. Since then, pollsters have regularly asked the average American to indicate his or her support for a particular conflict and have examined the conditions of that support. Such data have been collected about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing varied support by social group and over time. Initially, just before the Iraq War in 2003, public support for the wars was strong. A dramatic decrease in support began in May of 2004, when polls started showing less than half of Americans believed that it was worth going to war in Iraq (Everts and Isernia 2005), with support varying by social group. Twenty-nine percent of African-Americans supported the invasion of Iraq, for instance, compared with 78 percent of Whites (Jones 2003). These differences continued after the war began (Newport et al. 2007). Similarly, Republicans and people who are in the military show greater support for the war than Democrats and civilians (Rohall and Ender 2007; Rohall et al. 2006). This chapter presents trends in attitudes toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq using data from a survey of young people initiated in 2002. We address these two questions: Have young people’s attitudes shown a decline in war support similar to that found found in the general public? Do young people from different backgrounds (e.g. race and military affiliation) also show such declines? Trends in war support over time A number of theories have been developed to help understand how and why people support some conflicts more than others and why support changes over time. One major perspective is related to war casualties: it is generally believed that war support is related to the number of casualties that war produces. The more soldiers who are killed in the conflict, the lower the support for it (see Burk 1999 and Mueller 1973). Feaver and others have also argued that war support is a function of the belief about the justness of a 294
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war and its success: those wars deemed just and successful will receive more public support than wars that do not appear just or successful. One could argue that the Vietnam War was believed to be less just and successful than, say, World War II, hence leading people to have a better opinion of the latter even though it produced more American casualties in a shorter period of time. These perspectives are important in a number of ways for understanding support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although both wars have not been “won” in the sense that US troops are still involved in hostile conflict in each country, the Afghanistan War up until this writing is certainly seen as more just compared with the Iraq War; Osama bin Laden but not Saddam Hussein was linked directly to 9/11. In addition, information about the “justness” of each war changed dramatically over time. In 2004, the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq reached 1,000 (see Ender 2009 for demographics of fatalities up to 2007). Weapons of mass destruction, a major justification for the war by the Bush administration, were not found. In addition, the 9/11 Commission (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks 2004) report showed no Iraq/Al Qaeda link; information about the Abu Ghraib scandal began to appear. The Iraq War was producing more casualties and revealing itself to be less just over time than the Afghanistan War. The war in Afghanistan, at this writing, however, has the appearance of becoming less winnable. The most extensive review of public opinion about the war in Iraq appeared in the summer 2005 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ). In their POQ article, Everts and Isernia (2005) reviewed polls from almost every major news source, going back to the late 1990s, in which Americans were asked their opinions about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Their analysis generally showed strong support for the war before and just after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although support did go up just after the invasion, most polls showed a return to the same levels of prewar support. Going into 2003, depending on the wording of the question, as many as two out of three Americans believed that it was worth going to war. By mid-April of 2003, 60 percent of Americans believed that the war was going very well. In May of 2004, public opinion toward the war began to sour. At that point, polls began to show that less than half of Americans believed that it was worth going to war (Everts and Isernia 2005). As of March 2007, almost 60 percent of Americans claimed that the war was a mistake (Newport et al. 2007). These numbers remained steady going into 2008 and 2009 (between 55 and 60 percent). These trends are shown dynamically in Figure 25.1 based on information provided by Gallup (2009a). It appears that the end of June and early July 2004 is when the majority of Americans switched from supporting the war effort. At that point, no less than 58 percent of Americans believed that it was not a mistake to send troops into Iraq. Thereafter, the number dropped below 50 percent and stayed that way into early 2009. In 2008, 60 percent of Americans claimed that they would like to see a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq ( Jones 2008). Almost as many Americans (59 percent) reported that they believed that it was a mistake to send troops into Iraq. It is clear that the average American believes that the Iraq invasion was a mistake on the part of the Bush administration and hence, troops should be withdrawn. Variations in war attitudes by social groups Researchers have also examined the impact of individuals’ core values in their assessment of war support (see Berinsky and Druckman 2007). War support, under this schema, may 295
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Figure 25.1 Percentage of Americans supporting Iraq War, 2003–09
reflect general war trends (number of casualties, perception of its justness, and its success) and also the individuals’ identity. For instance, some people may believe that war is a legitimate means of foreign policy (hawks) or not (doves). These personal values may influence war attitudes above and beyond the conditions of a particular war. This perspective is particularly useful for understanding trends in war support among different groups in society. For instance, research has shown that civilian opinions about military spending, enlistment in the military, and overall assessments of the American military vary across race and other background characteristics (see Leal 2005). We know comparatively little about variations in opinion regarding the invasion of Afghanistan; however, support for that invasion appears to be relatively more positive and stable than attitudes toward the Iraq War (Carroll 2004). Therefore, we focus most of our attention on attitudes toward the American involvement in Iraq that began in 2003 and offer attitudes toward Afghanistan as a comparison. (It is notable that at this writing the war in Afghanistan has escalated [Lubin 2008]. It is of interest to monitor whether US public attitudes toward the war change or remain stable over time.) Support for the war has been found to vary among different demographic groups but little is known about how it has changed over time for these groups. However, it is clear that there has been very little support among African-Americans before and during operations. Twenty-nine percent of African-Americans supported the invasion of Iraq compared with 78 percent of Whites ( Jones 2003). These differences continued after the war began (Newport et al. 2007). Of course, these differences may simply reflect different ideologies. The majority of Whites identify themselves with the Republican Party, whereas African-Americans are more likely to associate themselves with the Democratic Party (Carroll 2004; Erikson et al. 1991). These ideological distinctions are important because ideology is one of the strongest predictors of war support, with Republicans reporting much more support for the war in Iraq than Democrats (Jones 2003, 2008; Moore 2002; Rohall and Ender 2007). African-Americans have had a unique relationship with the American armed services over the last century (Moskos and Butler 1996). Since 1973, African-American representation in the AVF has been markedly high among the enlisted ranks. Since the advent of the AVF they have been overrepresented in the armed services compared with their representation in the larger society (Segal and Segal 2004). On the other hand, their 296
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enlistment numbers have been declining since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This trend applies especially in the Army and the Marines (the services responsible for much of the ground combat components of the services) (US Government Accountability Office 2005). Whereas their numbers are currently more in line with their proportional representation in the larger society, previous representation suggested a tradition of service and patriotism, providing the African-American community with a major path toward career development not found in the civilian economy (Segal and Segal 2004). However, they were highly likely to be sent to fight and die in wars such as Korea and Vietnam and a number of stories of deep racism in the services followed during the Cold War (Moskos and Butler 1996). Hence, some African-Americans may notice similar racial imbalances and abuses in the current conflict in Iraq and, with greater alternatives in the civilian sector, make them less likely to support American war efforts en masse. Surprisingly, we know comparatively little about public opinion toward the war among military personnel. However, there are reasons to believe that service members would be both more supportive of the war than civilians and that there would be little variation among different racial groups within the services. First, military service is voluntary in the US. Hence, if the military represents a relatively conservative, male workplace, only those people most open to these ideological perspectives are likely to self-select and become members of the armed forces. Alternatively, soldiers may become socialized during training and, as a product of traditional military culture, come to believe war is a good thing and that violence is legitimate. However produced, these distinctions suggest that there may be a military–civilian culture “gap,” with military personnel either coming from different backgrounds or being socialized, after joining the armed forces, as more masculine and conservative than their civilian peers (Hammill et al. 1995). Studies of cadet attitudes during previous wars bear this out. In a comprehensive review of the empirical attitudinal literature during the Vietnam War, Moskos (1976) showed that young people’s attitudes move to the left the further one was from the military. Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets were noted to be less militaristic than cadets at service academies, but more so than their non-ROTC undergraduate peers. Further, and more recently, service academy cadets were noted to share specific orientations including an interest in the military, a desire for adventure, and a wish to serve one’s country (Caforio 2003). Also, service academy cadets tend to come from military families, families in which at least one parent had served in the armed services, suggesting there may be a perpetuation of a separate military attitude among service men and women. Bachman et al. (2000) show that a military affiliation can affect attitudes, at least those related to defense matters, and that such attitudes result from a mix of self-selection and socialization. They compared male responses to surveys just before high-school graduation and again 1 or 2 years later. As a result, differences between time 1 and 2 can be attributed to socialization. Although all students showed strong support for the military, students entering the military were somewhat more supportive of greater military spending and greater military influence in the US, among other topics. These differences largely reflect selection effects; they existed before entering the academy. However, attitudes among the cadets became more conservative over time, suggesting a socialization effect. Using the data for this study, Rohall et al. (2006) showed that there was more support for the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq among military-affiliated students than civilians. However, much like trends found among civilian samples, men and ideological 297
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conservatives showed greater support for the war than women and liberals. More importantly, these data reflect only one point in time. The current study examines the intersection of time and social category on attitudes toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hypotheses If war support in general has declined since the beginning of the war in Iraq we suspect that similar changes would be reflected in our sample of young people, at least for the Iraq conflict. However, we also predict that changes will be greatest among those groups with the lowest levels of support since the inception of the war, namely, minorities and Democrats. Such large-scale beliefs will not change (certainly not more positively!) in the span of the war. However, this attitudinal shift should be present in both conflicts.
Methods Data for this analysis are based on a survey of college students from a diverse sample of colleges and universities starting in November of 2002. At the time of the initial survey, the US had already sent troops into Afghanistan in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 but had not yet invaded Iraq. Data collection from different cohorts continued after the invasion of Iraq. Students were administered surveys in introductory-level sociology, psychology, and political science classes or ROTC classrooms. Many students, depending on the institutional review board procedures at their university, received extra credit in their courses for participating in the survey. The principal investigators or instructors who followed the written instructions of the principal investigators administered the surveys. In the latter situation, faculty were mailed the surveys and returned them via mail. Students were provided with an informed consent form and proceeded to complete the survey. Most students completed the surveys in 40 minutes. Sample A total of 3,057 students surveyed between November 2002 and May 2007 are included for analysis in this study. They represent a convenience sample from 28 different higher education institutions in the US and include 1,192 civilians, 664 ROTC cadets, and 1,201 US military academy cadets. The civilian schools include civilian undergraduates and ROTC programs located across the country including California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington. Academy students come from the US Military Academy at West Point (n = 972) and the US Air Force Academy (n = 229). Most survey participants are in their first year (51 percent); and 73 percent had 2 years of schooling or less. It is important to note that these are not panel survey data; these data come from different samples of individuals each semester. In most cases, the schools being surveyed also changed (except for the military academy cadets). Hence, we cannot assess whether opinions of particular people change over time nor can we be certain the findings reflect 298
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changes specific to the population being studied rather than trends in public opinion in general, as with any longitudinal studies relying on cross-sectional data. Measures Our criterion variables include students’ attitudes toward sending US troops into Afghanistan and Iraq. The US had already sent troops into Afghanistan at the time of the initial surveys but not Iraq. Later cohorts had seen both interventions. We asked: “Did you favor or oppose the US invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks?” “Do you currently favor or oppose military action, including the use of ground troops, in Iraq?” Responses were 1 “Favor” and 2 “Oppose” but were recoded into dummy variables (0 = oppose, 1 = favor). The primary predictor variables include the year of the survey and the racial, military, and political affiliation of the respondents. Although we initially measured 10 different racial categories, these were narrowed into five groupings because some of the initial percentages were low (e.g., 13 respondents indicated “East Asian” as their race or ethnicity). Analysis shows that our sample is highly skewed with regard to race. About 3 percent of the sample are African-American (n = 141) and another 5 percent Latino (n = 158). However, a full 77 percent are White (n = 2,326). Five percent report being of Asian descent (n = 151) and 245 report being of mixed or other descent (n = 245). Analyses compare responses to our war support items by race employing a dummy variable for Whites and non-Whites. Military affiliation refers to students’ status relative to any military organization. In this study, students can have no military affiliation (civilian), be involved in an ROTC program, or study at military academies in the US. Our analysis contrasts civilians with military affiliates (1,192 civilians = 0; 1,865 ROTC/Military Academy cadets = 1) using a dummy variable. Political affiliation was measured by party self-identification. Two-thirds of the total reported their political orientation as either Republican or Democrat (67 percent) and a significant number reported “Other” or “No Political Affiliation.” All cadets are more likely to report being Republican (57 percent) and the civilian respondents are more likely to report being Democrat (72 percent). We collapsed all Democrats and other political groups into a single category because preliminary analysis (not shown) showed attitudes among all “other” groups to be more reflective of the opinions of Democrats than Republicans. This resulted in a sample of 43 percent Republican and 57 percent Democrat or another party identification. Analysis plan The primary goal of this study is to examine the direct and interactive effects of time and social status on attitudes toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. First, we examine overall trends in response to these wars. Second, we compare responses over time to determine change in attitudes by group. Finally, we test for the direct and interactive effects of time and status on war attitudes. 299
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Results Our first set of analyses examines support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over time. Although data were collected every semester, we combined the results by year. Much like the civilian trends, we found that the greatest support for both wars in 2003 followed by a drop-off in 2004 (Table 25.1). Support for both wars picked up again in 2005, from 83 percent to 87 percent in Afghanistan and 49 percent to 70 percent for Iraq, although support dropped to just 59 percent in 2007. It is important to note that these findings show more support (by as much as 5 to 10 percentage points) for the war in Iraq than most civilian polls in 2007. However, they do reflect the relatively strong support for the war in Afghanistan among all groups. Public opinion toward the war in Afghanistan went down when Iraq War support went down, although it always remained relatively high (over 80 percent). As of 2007, support for Afghanistan was above 2002 levels. Iraq war support never regained its pre-2004 support. We generally predicted a decline in support for the Iraq War among all groups but a much greater change among minorities because of their relatively weak support initially. For instance, Figure 25.2 shows the relative support for the wars by groups included in this study. Whites, Republicans, and military affiliates (cadets) had stronger support for both war efforts than non-Whites, Democrats or other political affiliations, and civilians. Support for Afghanistan was especially high for the former groups, always above 90 percent. Support for Iraq was also relatively high for Whites, Republicans, and military affiliates but it does not approach the levels that we see for the Afghanistan conflict. Support for the Afghanistan War was very positive among non-Whites, Democrats, and civilians. However, the story is different for the Iraq War. The aggregated data reveal that less than 50 percent of Democrats and others and about 57 percent of non-Whites showed support for the Iraq War effort. However, the 2007 figures show less than 50 percent of all groups, including non-Whites, reported support for the war in Iraq. Whereas current data show major gaps in the levels of support for the war in Iraq, our data show that some of these gaps developed over time. There was relatively strong support for both wars about the time that they started (94–95 percent for Afghanistan and 79–83 percent for Iraq) (Table 25.2), followed by a dip in support for both wars among all groups in 2004, but the drop was greater for non-Whites compared with Whites. For instance, non-White support for Afghanistan went from 95 percent to 73 percent and 79 percent to just 40 percent for the Iraq War between 2003 and 2004 (a 39-point drop). However, Whites’ support for Afghanistan went from 94 percent to 86 percent, an 8-point drop. Similarly, Whites’ support for the Iraq War went from 83 Table 25.1 American undergraduate support for war in Iraq, 2002–07
Afghanistan
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Total
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Iraq
% oppose (n)
% support (n)
% oppose (n)
% support (n)
8.1 (22) 5.5 (24) 17.4 (125) 12.9 (37) 7.6 (59) 4.6 (9) 10.3 (276)
91.9 (251) 94.5 (413) 82.6 (592) 87.1 (250) 92.4 (722) 95.4 (186) 89.7 (2,414)
22.8 (55) 17.5 (71) 50.6 (360) 30.1 (83) 30.2 (225) 41.4 (77) 33.9 (871)
77.2 (186) 82.5 (335) 49.4 (352) 69.9 (193) 69.8 (521) 58.6 (109) 66.1 (1,696)
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Figure 25.2 Percentage of American undergraduates supporting Afghanistan and Iraq Wars by race, ideology, and military affiliation Table 25.2 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by race, 2002–07
Afghanistan % non-White support (n) 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Total
89.5 (51) 94.9 (74) 72.9 (132) 86.0 (49) 91.6 (141) 93.6 (44) 85.5 (491)
Iraq % White support (n) 93.0 (199) 94.4 (339) 85.8 (453) 87.9 (196) 92.7 (573) 95.9 (142) 91.0 (1,902)
% non-White support (n) 81.1 (43) 78.7 (59) 40.3 (73) 56.7 (34) 61.3 (95) 43.5 (20) 56.8 (324)
% White support (n) 76.3 (142) 83.4 (276) 53.1 (276) 74.5 (155) 72.3 (421) 63.6 (89) 69.1 (1,359)
percent to 53 percent in the same time period, a smaller drop compared with nonWhites. Support among all groups went back up again for both conflicts after 2004 and stabilized for both groups regarding Afghanistan but not Iraq. Neither group approached the prewar support there had been for Iraq, although Whites’ attitudes appear to have rebounded more than non-Whites. The great support among Whites and smaller drop in support over time may reflect the large numbers of military-affiliates in our sample who are disproportionately White and conservative. Table 25.3 reveals the great divide among political parties regarding these conflicts. Among Democrats and those with similar party affiliations (not Republicans), we see relatively strong support for the conflict in Afghanistan in 2003 (89 percent) that drops in 2004 (72 percent) and creeps back up again in 2006 and 2007 to its initial level. Similarly, a majority of Republicans supported both conflicts. However, the overwhelming support for the war in Afghanistan was a staggering 99 percent in 2003 and does not drop throughout the conflict. Support for the war in Iraq, however, dropped among Republicans between 2003 and 2004 (94 to 88 percent). Although Iraq War support went up to 89 percent in 2006, it dropped back 78 percent in 2007. These analyses suggest that there is an intersection of time and social categories, that year of survey and type of respondent affects war support. Our next set of analyses 301
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examines changes in attitudes toward these wars by military affiliation. Here we see patterns similar to those found among conservatives and liberals regarding Afghanistan but not Iraq. Military affiliates’ opinions toward the Afghanistan War seem relatively strong throughout, with a small loss of support in 2004 and a subsequent rebound in support (Table 25.4). However, we see dramatic changes in opinion towards Iraq among civilian undergraduates between 2003 and 2004: a decrease from 75 to 25 percent supporting the invasion. Support went back up into the 45 to 50 percent range but back down to 27 percent in 2007. Among those in the ROTC programs or academy cadets, support for the Iraq War did not decrease until 2006 (from 83 to 80 percent) and again in 2007 when it dived to just 66 percent. Military affiliates clearly have more stable and positive attitudes towards these conflicts than their civilian counterparts. Our final set of analyses examines the direct and interactive effects of time and status in war support. We focus on responses to the Iraq War because the initial analyses showed more variation across time and status in war support compared with the Afghanistan War. For this analysis, we needed to create some additional dummy variables whereby a one (1) represents civilians, Democrats and other political groups, and African-Americans. The year of the survey was divided into two groups: those people who responded before 2004 (0) and those who responded in 2004 and thereafter (1). Interaction terms were introduced to assess the relative effects of different statuses across time. Table 25.3 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by political ideology, 2002–07
Afghanistan
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Total
Iraq
% Democrat and others’ support (n)
% Republican support (n)
% Democrat and others’ support (n)
% Republican support (n)
88.3 (143) 89.3 (184) 72.1 (312) 75.2 (106) 83.6 (270) 91.0 (81) 80.9 (1,096)
98.1 (106) 99.1 (229) 98.9 (274) 98.6 (141) 98.9 (449) 99.1 (105) 98.9 (1,304)
67.6 (94) 69.3 (131) 26.9 (119) 46.8 (65) 44.7 (142) 37.5 (33) 44.4 (584)
91.0 (91) 94.4 (203) 87.9 (232) 93.3 (126) 89.1 (377) 77.6 (76) 89.5 (1,105)
Table 25.4 American undergraduate support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by military affiliation, 2002–07
Afghanistan
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Total
302
Iraq
% civilian (n)
% military (n)
% civilian (n)
% military (n)
82.8 (77) 91.1 (123) 72.4 (288) 75.0 (84) 80.0 (184) 90.3 (28) 78.5 (784)
96.7 (174) 96.0 (290) 95.3 (304) 94.9 (166) 97.6 (538) 96.3 (158) 96.4 (1,630)
63.3 (50) 75.0 (93) 24.5 (102) 48.6 (52) 46.1 (101) 26.5 (9) 41.5 (407)
84.0 (136) 85.8 (242) 84.7 (250) 83.4 (141) 79.7 (420) 65.8 (100) 81.2 (1,289)
U ND ER G R AD U AT E A T T I T UD ES T O W A R D T HE W A R S I N I RA Q A N D A FG H A N I S T AN
Initial analysis (not shown) support our initial findings: being a civilian, Democrat, and African-American is associated with significant reduction in support for the Iraq War compared with military affiliates, Republicans, and Whites, even when the year of the survey is controlled for. Additional analysis (Table 25.5) reveals that there was an interaction of time and status in predicting war support. First, being a civilian and Democrat is associated with lower war support, even after controlling for the direct and interactive effects of time. However, the year of the survey, by itself, did not predict war support. Rather, being a civilian, and to a lesser degree Democrat, becomes particularly salient in 2004 and after. It seems that 2004 was a watershed period for these groups. It also explains the relatively strong support the Iraq War received when the war started among all Americans (including the majority of Democrats in the US House of Representatives and Senate) followed by loss of support among some groups. The regression analyses support much of the earlier findings from the descriptive statistics. Specifically, we saw the strongest declines in support for the war in Iraq among civilians and Democrats in 2004, and that support never rebounded. Alternatively, military affiliates and Republicans showed a relatively modest decline in support for this war after 2004 and it stayed relatively strong thereafter.
Discussion Overall, American undergraduates at civilian and military schools show some of the same public-opinion dynamics found in the general population. Most of our sample supported the Afghanistan conflict more than the Iraq War. Support for both wars went down in 2004 and back up again in 2005, although not to their 2003 levels in most cases. The findings reported here reflect findings in the general public that showed a decline in war support in 2004, especially in Iraq. Among our undergraduates, regardless of military affiliation, support did go down among Whites and conservatives but not so much as the other groups in our study. Table 25.5 Logistic regression results for American undergraduate support for Iraq War by status and time
B Military affiliation –.508 (1 = Civilian) Political party –1.727 (1 = Democrat) Race (1 = –.112 African-American) Year (1 = 2004 –.007 and after) Year*military –1.306 affiliation Year*political –.573 party Year*race –.239 Constant 2.768
Standard error Wald
Degrees of freedom
Significance
Exp(B)
.231
4.824
1
.028
.602
.263
43.051
1
.000
.178
.276
.165
1
.684
.894
.274
.001
1
.979
.993
.262
24.821
1
.000
.271
.295
3.787
1
.052
.564
.310 .242
.596 131.341
1 1
.440 .000
.787 15.925
303
M O RT E N G. E ND ER , D A V I D E . R O HA L L , AN D M I C H A E L D . M AT T H E W S
It is clear from the data reported here that the loss of support for the war in Iraq, and to some degree Afghanistan, does not come from political conservatives but liberals, as we had predicted. We saw a great decrease in support among minorities too. Whatever support existed among minorities and Democrats before the conflicts was almost totally lost after 2004 and showed less of a rebound than found among their White and Republican counterparts. Military affiliates showed an amazing consistency in their views of these wars. This analysis suggests that elements of social identity theory may be at play here: if the war and conflict is part of your identity, then you will likely continue to support an unpopular war, relative to your civilian peers. These data provide some insights into the changing ways young people in America think about these conflicts. These data also show some limited support for the hypotheses that war support is a function of casualties (see Mueller 1973), the belief that the war is just and success is possible, and one’s core values (see Berinsky and Druckman 2007). There are fewer American casualties in the Afghanistan conflict than Iraq. Although both wars have not been “won” in the sense that US troops are still involved in hostile conflict in each country, the Afghanistan War is certainly seen more positively than Iraq (Gallup 2009b). However, our data also show that Republicans and military affiliates are more supportive (and sustain more consistent levels of support) in both conflicts. These findings may simply reflect an aspect of their core values: defense of the nation when called upon; hawks versus doves. Future research should attempt to close the gap between research examining war support in the larger population and identity research. How strongly do people identify with specific background characteristics such as political ideology? Perhaps people who identify more strongly with Republican ideologies report different levels of support than moderate Republicans. Similarly, perhaps Republicans who more closely identify themselves as hawks think differently than the rest of the people in their party. It is clear that at least some part of this political identity is associated with consistent support for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
Notes 1 Portions of this research are funded by a Faculty Research Grant through West Point, the US Military Academy and the US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, The authors wish to thank Lené Baxter for her research assistance on this portion of the project. Contact information for the authors at either
[email protected] or
[email protected]. The views of the authors are their own and do not purport to reflect the position of the US Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
References Bachman, J.G., Freedman-Doan, P., Segal, D.R. and O’Malley, P.M. (2000) “Distinctive military attitudes among US enlistees, 1976–97: Self-selection versus socialization,” Armed Forces & Society, 26: 561–86. Berinsky, A.J. and Druckman, J.N. (2007) “Public opinion research and support for the Iraq war,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 71: 126–44. Burk, J. (1999) “Public support for peacekeeping in Lebanon and Somalia: Assessing the casualties hypothesis,” Political Science Quarterly, 114: 53–78. Caforio, G. (2003) “Military officer education,” in G. Caforio (ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, pp. 255–78, New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
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Carroll, J. (2004) Iraq Support Split along Racial Lines. Online. Available http://www.gallup.com/poll/ 13012/Iraq-Support-Split-Along-Racial-Lines.aspx (accessed 18 December 2009). ——(2007) Slim Majority Supports Anti-Terrorism Action in Afghanistan, Pakistan Public continues to support military efforts in Afghanistan. Online. Available http://www.gallup.com/poll/28333/Slim-MajoritySupports-AntiTerrorism-Action-Afghanistan-Pakistan.aspx (accessed 18 December 2009). Ender, M. G. (2009) American Soldiers in Iraq: McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals? London and New York: Routledge. Erikson, R.S., Luttbeg, N.R. and Tedin, K.L. (1991) American Public Opinion, 4th edn, New York: Macmillan. Everts, P. and Isernia, P. (2005) “Poll trends: The war in Iraq.” Public Opinion Quarterly, 44: 264–322. The Gallup Organization (2009a) Iraq. Online. Available http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/iraq.aspx (accessed 20 May 2009). ——(2009b) Afghanistan. Online. Available http://www.gallup.com/poll/116233/Afghanistan.aspx (accessed 17 June 2009). Hammill, J., Segal, D.R. and Segal, M.W. (1995) “Self-selection and parental socioeconomic status as determinants of the values of west point cadets,” Armed Forces & Society, 22: 103–15. Jones, J.M. (2003) Blacks Show Biggest Decline in Support for War Compared with 1991. Online. Available http://www.gallup.com/poll/8122/Blacks-Show-Biggest-Decline-Support-War-Compared-1991. aspx (accessed 18 December 2009). ——(2008) Iraq War Attitudes Politically Polarized. Online. Available http://www.gallup.com/poll/ 106309/Iraq-War-Attitudes-Politically-Polarized.aspx (accessed 18 December 2009). Leal, D.L. (2005) “American public opinion toward the military: Differences by race, gender, and class?” Armed Forces & Society, 32: 123–38. Lubin, A. (2008) “The War Escalates in Afghanistan,” Today in the Military. 8 September. Online. Available http://www.military.com/forums/0,15240,175112,00.html (accessed 14 January 2009). Moore, D.W. (2002) Gender Gap Varies on Support for War. Online. Available http://www.gallup.com/ poll/7243/gender-gap-varies-support-war.aspx (accessed 12 February 2010). Moskos, C.C. (1976) “The Military,” Annual Review of Sociology, 2: 55–77. Moskos, C.C. and Butler, J.S. (1996) Be All That You Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way, New York: Twentieth Century Fund. Mueller, J. (1973) War, Presidents, and Public Opinion, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (2004) The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Newport, F., Jones, J.M. and Carroll, J. (2007) Gallup Poll Review: Key Points about Public Opinion on Iraq. Online. Available http://www.gallup.com/poll/28390/Gallup-Poll-Review-Key-PointsAbout-Public-Opinion-Iraq.aspx (accessed 18 December 2009). Rohall, D.E., Ender, M.G. and Matthews, M.D. (2006) “The role of military affiliation, gender, and political ideology in the favoring of war in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Armed Forces and Society, 33: 59–77. Rohall, D.E. and Ender, M.G. (2007) “Race, gender, and class: Attitudes toward the war in Iraq and President Bush among military personnel,” Race, Gender, & Class, 14: 99–116. Segal, D.R. and Segal, M.W. (2004) America’s Military Population, Population Bulletin December. Online. Available http://www.prb.org/Articles/2005/AmericasMilitaryPopulation.aspx (accessed 14 January 2009). United States Government Accountability Office (2005) Military Personnel: Reporting Additional Service Member Demographics Could Enhance Congressional Oversight. Washington, DC.
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Index
ABC News 123, 160, 216 Abdel-Khalek, A.M. 175 Abdullah, Z. 115, 116 USS Abraham Lincoln 272–73 Abrams, Creighton 11 Abrams, E. and Bacevich, A.J. 11 Abu Ghraib, abuse in 2, 78–86, 262, 295; American Psychological Association (APA) 78, 81; army’s understanding of 83–85; authority, absence in 80; bad apple explanations 79, 82–83; causal chains 84; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 82; counterinsurgency and 34; enemy prisoners of war (EPWs) 81; global war on terror (GWOT) and 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94; Guantanamo, treatment of detainees at 80; guard-to-prisoner ratios 81–82; GWOT and 85; insurgency, moral and ethical dimensions of 80; insurgency in Iraq, power of situation 85–86; Milgram obedience experiment 78, 79–80; obedience and conformity to role expectations 86; Obedience to Authority (Milgram, S.) 79–80; Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) 85, 86; Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) 86; parable of, issues represented by 78–79; prisoners in, nature of 81–82; social conditions in Abu Ghraib 82, 83–84; social science, role of 86; Stanford Prison Study 78, 80–83, 84; Taguba Report (2004) 84–85 Abu-Rayya, H.M. 179 accountability, contractors and 139–40 Accountability Office (US) 141, 297 Active Duty Spouse Survey (DMDC, 2008) 285 Aday, S. et al. 273 adolescents in Iraq, study on 174–84; Arab adolescence and 176–77; attitudes and issues 179; Baghdad (summer 2004) 176–77; characteristics of sample 178; concerns 179;
306
conflict-related events, psychological reactions to 175–76; correlations 180; data collection 177–78; discussion and conclusions 182–84; explanatory frameworks 174–76; measures 178–79; methods of study 177–79; multiple regressions 182; perceived threat 178–79; results of study 179–82; self-esteem 178; selfesteem, mortality threats and 175; Social Identity Theory 174–75 Afghanistan 1, 2, 3; Afghan Government (GoA) 22, 23, 24, 25; Afghan National Army (ANA), comment on behavior of 51; Afghan National Police (ANP) 152; Afghan National Police (ANP), establishment of 117; Afghan Transitional Administration 116; geographic regions of 154; intermilitary relationships xx– xxi; ongoing conflict in xx; operational space in xx–xxi; Pakistan and Afghan crisis 200–209; police as targets in 118–19; policing reform and Taliban resurgence 114–21; service in, recruitment and retention of volunteer forces 9–10; see also irregular war in Afghanistan; narratives from Afghanistan African-Americans, relationship with armed forces 296–97 AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) 164 Ailes, Roger 216 Al Jazeera TV 273 Al Qaeda 3, 4, 295; contacts with Taliban 200– 201, 202–3, 208; irregular war in Afghanistan 20, 21, 22, 25, 26; members in Pakistan, arrests of 204; policing Afghanistan 116; policing post-war Iraq 107; psychological operations evaluation in OEF 149, 151; safe havens in FATA 209; and terrorist networks in Iraq 71, 76 Alberts, S. 118 Ali, T. 208
INDEX
all-volunteer forces (AVFs): challenges for 10; development of 10–11, 15; problems of operating 16; support among African Americans 296–97 Allbritton, C. 111 Allen, C. 262 Allen, C. and Nielsen, J.S. 263 Alvarez, L. 95 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 94 American Psychological Association (APA) 78, 81 The American Soldier (Stouffer, S.) 88, 89 The American Way of War (Weigley, R.) 21, 29 Amos, James 15 Andrews, T.G. et al. 150, 152 anomie as “normalness,” interpretation of 88–89, 92–93, 95 anti-war protest, debate on 234–43; anti-war protests 237–38; appropriateness of discourse 240–42; campus peace organization (CPO) 234, 236–37, 238, 239, 240–41, 242, 243, 244; constant comparison, identification of frame laminations 236; dimensions of criticism 236–37; discourse of social movement framing 235; discussion 242–43; First Amendment to Bill of Rights 238; frame contestation 236–42; initiating frame 236; methodology of study 235–36; micro-level discourse, framing schema 241; misplaced aggression 237; misplaced dissent 237; schemata of interpretation 234–35; social movement framing processes 234–35; war in Iraq 238–39 Applewhite, L. and Segal, D.R. 272 Arab adolescence 176–77 armed conflict and health 163–71; acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) 164; children, effects of war on 165; cholera 165– 66; civil life, disruption of 163; Defense Department (US) 170; disease, destructive effects of 164; disruptions of armed conflict 163; extreme violence, far-reaching effects of 163; health issues, focus of relief programs 171; indirect health consequences of war 164– 65; indirect health effects 163, 171; looting 167; medical staff as terrorist targets 168–69; physical infrastructure, destruction of 166–68; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 164; public health infrastructure, depletion of 168– 69; Red Crescent 169; remedial activity 169– 70; sewage systems, damage to 168; Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) 170; studies on indirect health effects 164–65; supply chains, armed interference with 167; UN Children’s Emergency Fund (INICEF) 169; UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) 168; UN Humanitarian Situation Report (2008) 169; UN Population Division 168–69; war and burden of disease
164; water supplies, damage to 167–68; World Council of Health Worker Organizations 171; World Health Organization (WHO) 163, 165, 166, 169 Armstrong, D. 192 army commanders in Pakistan, attacks on 205–6 Army Community Service Center 276 Army Field Manual 91 Aselage, J. and Eisenberger, R. 57, 59 Ashford, M.W. and Huet-Vaughn, Y. 164 Asia Foundation 160 Asian tsunami 135 asymmetric conflict, US history of 20 Attanayake, V. et al. 3 al-Attash, Khalid 204 attributional theory 247 Augelli, E. and Murphy, C. 195 authority, absence in Abu Ghraib 80 autocratic regimes, policing in 104 Avant, D. 41 Avoiding Politics (Eliasoph, N.) 223 Ba’ath Regime in Iraq: residues of 111; statism of 194; sympathizers of Saddam from former 107 Bacevich, A.J. 10, 15, 16 Bachman, J.G. et al. 13, 297 bad apple explanations of Abu Ghraib 79, 82–83 Baghdad, adolescents in (summer 2004) 176–77 Baghdad Canal Massacre (2007) 88, 90, 91, 94, 95 Baghdad Police College 106 Baker, L. 111 Ballen, K. 263 Balochistan 203–4 Barakat, S. et al. 125, 132 Baran, P.A. and Sweezy, P.M. 191 Barno, D. 27 Barstow, D. and Stein, R. 216 Basoglu, M. et al. 164 Bayley, D.H. 104, 109, 110, 120, 121 Beamer, vignette on Todd 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255 Beck, Glenn 262 Beck, Ulrich 211, 212 Begovac, I. et al. 175, 176 Belknap, M. 216 Ben-Ari, E. 44, 46, 48, 51 Bender, B. 9, 12 Bender, E. 107 Benini, A. and Ross, A. 129, 134 Benini, Aldo 2, 125–35 Bergen, P. 25 Bergesen, A.J. and Lizardo, O. 212 Berglund, N. 118 Berinsky, A.J. and Druckman, J.N. 295–96, 304 best practices on counterinsurgency, superficial consensus about 39–40
307
INDEX
Bhutto, Benazir 208 Bicksler, B.A. and Nolan, L.G. 12, 13 Biderman, A.D. 94 bin Laden, Osama 21, 116, 200, 201, 206, 216, 263, 265, 295; and terrorist networks in Iraq 71 binarized image of enemy 261 Binkin, M. and Kaufmann, W.W. 11 Binnendijk, H. and Cronin, P.M. 143, 144 Bird, C. 152 Blackwater USA 139–40, 209 Block, F. 215 Boaz, C. 217 Boggs, C. 190 Booth, B.H. et al. 11, 15, 272, 278, 284, 286, 291 de Borchgrave, A. 118 Border Police in Afghanistan 117 Borders, R. 24, 30 Borger, J. 105 Bosnia 20, 96, 109, 151; UN Protective Force (UNPROFOR) in 96 Boston Globe 263 Bowen, S. 139 Bowman, T. 13 Boykin, Lieutenant-General William 261 Bremer, P. 142 Brenneis, D. 44, 45, 46 Briggs, C. 44, 45, 46 British Broadcastion Corporation (BBC) 217 Brodeur, J.-P. 104 Brown, K. and Lutz, C. 49 Bruner, J.S. 79 Buncombe, A. 216 Bunton, R. and Wills, J. 164 Burk, J. 294 Burke, J. 11, 25 Burns, J.F. 119 Bush, President G.W. (and administration of) 20, 21, 25, 108, 143, 197, 207, 257–58, 261, 262 Caforio, G. 297 Calabrese, A. 214 Caldwell, R.A. and Mestrovic, S. 90 Caldwell, Ryan Ashley 2, 84, 88–98 Calhoun, C. 145 Caliber Associates 272 Campbell, D.T. and Stanley, J. 152 Campbell, Kathleen M. 4, 271–80 campus peace organization (CPO) 234, 236–37, 238, 239, 240–41, 242, 243, 244 Canadians: engagement in Afghanistan 44; soldiers’ stories and morality 48–53; see also narratives from Afghanistan Cancian, M. 138 Canwest News Service 118 capture of Saddam Hussein 68–76; Al Qaeda and terrorist networks 71, 76; application of
308
social network theory 70–71, 75; bin Laden, Osama and terrorist networks 71; capture of Saddam, hard work and intelligence leading to 72–73; clan organizations 72; cliques, concept of 74–75; GWOT and 69, 70–71; idealtypical bureaucracy 68; insurgent warfare 68–69; Intelligence Preparation of the battlefield (IPB) 71; interpersonal relations, sociological components of 70; kinship identities 72; lessons from research 76; linking Saddam’s network 73–74; network analysis and explanation 71, 73–75; network identification 71–72, 75–76; Operation Red Dawn 68; patriarchal leadership 72; patterns or forms, imposition of 70; realism of Saddam 72–73; revolutionary war, Mao’s perspective on 69; social groups 70; social network 68; social network perspective 70; specification of Saddam’s network 71–72, 75–76; state failure, insurgency and 69; terrorist networks 71; transitivity, concept of 74; trust relationships 74; The Web of Group Affiliations (Simmel, G.) 70 Carballo, M. et al. 175 Carden, M.J. 15 Carlton-Ford, S. et al. 164 Carlton-Ford, Steven 1–4, 165, 174–84 Carothers, T 22, 30 Carroll, J. 296 Carter, J. 11 casualties, war support as function of 304 Casualty Affairs Office 276 causal chains in Abu Ghraib 84 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 27–28 Central Asia, problem of 28 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): and Abu Ghraib, abuse in 82; CIA-ISI joint operations in Pakistan 204; in Pakistan 200, 202; policing post-war Iraq 106 Central Problems (Giddens, A.) 213 Cha, A.E. 106 Chambers, J.W. 11 Chamie, J. 168 Chandrasekaran, R. 103, 108 Charrad, M.M. 72 Chartrand, M.M. et al. 283 Chen, I. 264 Cheney, R. 120, 206 Chiarelli, Peter W. 15, 16 Chiarelli, P.W. and Michaelis, P.R. 65, 66, 167, 170, 177, 182 children: age differences in children’s reactions to parental deployments 284, 291; anxiety, feelings on parental deployments 285; connections with deployed parents 287; of deployed parents, exceptionalization of status of 279; effects of deployments overseas on
INDEX
284; effects of war on 165; gender differences in children’s reactions to parental deployments 284; impact of multiple parental deployments on 283; isolation, feelings on parental deployments of 285; media in digital age, military children and 278–79; personality changes in 278–79; separations, frequency for 285 China, People’s Republic of 138 Chivers, C.J. 118, 119 cholera 165–66 Christian Science Monitor 222, 226, 230, 231 Civil Order Police in Afghanistan 117 Civilian Police Advisory Training Team 106 Civilian Response Corps (CRC) 143 civilians 1–2, 3; citizen soldiers 11; civilian agencies in battle situations 137; and combatants, brurring of lines between 265; exclusion of civilians from battlefields 145; life of, war and disruption of 163; military and civilian corporations, wall of separation between 197–98 clan organizations in Iraq 72 Clark, Sara A. 3, 234–43 Clausewitz, Karl von xix Cliff, J. and Noormahomed, A.R. 164 Clinton, H. 208 cliques, concept of 74–75 CNN News 262, 275, 276, 277, 280; mass media as risk-management in “war on terror” 217 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): contractors and non-military personnel 142; globalization and invasion of Iraq 194; humanitarian information, management in Iraq of 127 Cockburn, P. 167, 168 Cody, Richard A. 9 coercion and counterinsurgency 36–37 Cohen, A. and O’Driscoll, G. 194 Cohen, A.A. and Dotan, J. 272 Cohen, E. et al. 32, 39 Cohen, E.A. 11, 41 Cohen, S. and Williamson, G. 287 cohesion, contractors and 140–41 Coker, C. 212 Coll, S. 200 Collins, J. 23 combat operations in Iraq, memories of 56–66; adaptation to mission shift 62; expectationreality gaps 62, 65; family needs 62–64; Family Readiness Group (FRG) 63; findings of study 58–64; full spectrum warfare 65–66; homecoming 64; ideological currency theory (ICT) 57, 59, 64; improvised explosive devices (IEDs) 61; material incentives for joining military 58–59; military action, reasons for 59–
60; mission shift 60–62; 9/11 attacks on US, reason for joining military 59; organizational outcomes 65; organizational support theory (OST) 57, 59–60, 64; personal needs 62–64; pre-employment experiences and expectations 58; Project Enduring Memory (PEM) 57; psychological contract theory (PCT) 57, 59, 64, 65; psychological contracts and military units 56–57; reasons for joining military 58– 59; rewards for service 65; role conflict, mission shift and 62; Saddam Hussein as reason for action 60; SNAFU (Situation Normal, All F***** Up) 65; social exchange theory 57; social exchange theory (SET) 57; Soldier Readiness Program (SRP) 63; study discussion 64–66; study sample and methods 57; urban guerrilla warfare 61 Combined Forces Afghanistan (CFC-A) 27 Commando Solo 158 Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations (US) 140, 141 communication: and mass media today 271; media among soldiers 272; persuasive message communication process, stages of 154–56; soldiers and 272 comparative narrative analysis 47–48 compulsive viewing of TV News 275, 276, 279–80 conflict-related events, psychological reactions to 175–76 Congressional Research Service Report, Pakistan (2004) 28 Conley, Charles 2, 125–35 constrained viewing of TV News 275, 276, 279–80 Contracting Oversight, Senate Sub-Committee on 141–42 contractors and non-military personnel 137–46; accountability 139–40; Accountability Office (US) 141; Blackwater USA 139–40; boundaries of other agencies, military respect for 146; China, People’s Republic of, companies from 138; civilian agencies in battle situations 137; Civilian Response Corps (CRC) 143; Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) 142; cohesion 140–41; Commission on Army Acquisition and Program management in Expeditionary Operations (US) 140, 141; Contracting Oversight, Senate SubCommittee on 141–42; credibility 140–41; Defense Department (US) 143; exclusion of civilians from battlefields 145; government agencies in full spectrum environment 142–44; Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) 139–40; legal jurisdiction, issue of 140; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 137,
309
INDEX
144–45; Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) 138, 139, 143; outsourcing reconstruction 139; political benefits of using contractors 138; post-Cold War humanitarian spaces 144–45; professional relation with civilian agencies 146; rapidity of deployment of 139; Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq, Office of (US) 142; reform, tentative steps towards 141–42; temporary duty status (TDY) 143; transparency 139–40; violence, use of 145 controlled viewing of TV News 275, 276, 279–80 Cooke, P. 91 Cooper, S.D. 273 Coser, L.A. 3, 218, 271 Council on American-Islamic Relations 264 Counter Narcotics Police in Afghanistan 117 Counter Terrorism Police in Afghanistan 117 counterinsurgency: Aby Ghraib, abuses in 34; assimilation of lessons of 40–41; best practices, superficial consensus about 39–40; central theoretical issues 33–40; classic counterinsurgency thinking 34; coercion 36– 37; control over security 38–40; culture shift needed to deal with 26–27, 29; death squads, control over 39; demands of 34; democratization and 35–36, 38; difficult and poorly understood 32; El Salvador, case of 35– 36; grievance addressing 35; guerrillas and population, separation between 37; hearts and minds, struggle for 34–36; intellectual engagement with 40; intelligence issues 34; Iraq, invasion of 34; Iraq National Army, creation of 39; kinetic “iron fist” approach 33–34; learning lessons of 32–41; legitimacy of foreigners 36; material improvements, key to winning (US view) 35; military mind-set 41; militias, control over 38–39; organizational cultures 41; overstretch 41; political struggle 37–38; population control 36–37; principles of 39–40; representative government 35–36; selfdefense forces 36, 37, 39; self-defense forces, organization of 39; social network analysis in 68–76; social science knowledge, lack of 34; time-consuming nature of 32 Counterinsurgency Manual 26 Cox, R. 190 Crabtree, S. 11 Crane, C. 22 Crane, M. 145 credibility, contractors and 140–41 Creswell, J.W. 274 Criminal Investigation Division in Afghanistan 117 Criminal Investigative Division (CID) agents in Iraq 95 Crisp, J. 93 Cupp, O. Shawn 2, 137–46
310
Cushman, T. and Mestrovic, S. 96 Daily Telegraph, London 224 Dakins, M.E. 132 Dandeker, Christopher xix–xxiii Danner, M. 91 Dao, J. 13 Darfur (Sudan) 135 data collection: adolescents in Iraq, study on 177–78; hero making, attributional study 248– 50; humanitarian information, management in Iraq of 129 Davis, Toya J. 4, 271–80 death squads in Iraq, control over 39 Defense Department (US) 285; armed conflict and health 170; contractors and non-military personnel 143; policing Afghanistan 117; policing post-war Iraq 107; volunteer forces, recruitment and retention of 12, 13 Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) 285, 286 Defense Policy Guidance (DPG, 1992) 192 Deflem, M. and Sutphin, S. 115, 116, 118, 119, 120 Deflem, Mathieu 2, 103–11, 114–21 dehumanized Other, construction of enemy as 259–60 Del Vecchio, B. 117 democratic policing 114, 120–21; guidelines for 104 democratization, counterinsurgency and 35–36, 38 Dempsey, L. 13 deployments to war zones: appraisal of continual nature of 9; effects on family members 283; pace and length of 14; relationship with behavior scale scores 289–90; relationship with child well-being 290–91 Deutsche Welle 118 Dillow, C. 118 DiNenna, D. 93 Direct Ground Combat Assignment Rule (1994) 13 discussions: adolescents in Iraq, study on 182–84; anti-war protest, debate on 242–43; hero making, attributional study 250–54; media in digital age 279–80; military children, wellbeing in face of multiple deployments 289–91; undergraduate attitudes towards wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, study of 303–4 disease, destructive effects of 164 dissent, risk of 215 Docquier, F. et al. 168 Dolan, C.A. and Ender, M.G. 274 Donahue, Joseph M. 2, 125–35 Dotan, J. and Cohen, A.A. 272 Doughty, R. 41 Dower, J.W. 3
INDEX
Drainville, A.C. 195 Dunkerley, J. 37 Dunn, E.W. et al. 218 Durkheim, Emile 92, 93, 94; empirical connections to Durkheimian thought, global war on terror (GWOT) and 90; perspective on global war on terror (GWOT) 88–89, 95; perspective on global war on terror (GWOT), interpretation of 89–90, 95–96 Duvvuru, K. 262, 263, 264 Dwairy, M. 179 Dyer, O. 167, 168 Dyncorp Inc.: in Afghanistan 121; in post-war Iraq 109 Dyregrov, A. et al. 176 Eagleburger, Secretary Lawrence 262 East-West, Christian-Muslim conflict, inevitability of 261 economic draft 12 Egan, Daniel 3, 189–98 Eisenberger, R. et al. 57 El Guindi, T. et al. 134 El Salvador, counterinsurgency in 35–36 Elbedour, S. 176 Elder, G.H. 284 Ellison, Congressman Keith 262 Elsea, J.K. et al. 140 embedded war reporting 273 Emergency Mine Action Survey (EMAS) 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135 Ender, M.G. and Segal, D.R. 271, 272 Ender, M.G. et al. 285 Ender, Morten G. 1–4, 12, 14, 56, 174–84, 271–80, 284, 294–304 enemy, demand for 257, 258–59 enemy construction, history of 261 enemy prisoners of war (EPWs) 81 England, L. 93 enlistment age 12 Erikson, R.S. et al. 296 Estonia xx ethnic cleansing, Iraqi-on-Iraqi 91 EUPOL Afghanistan 117 Everts, P. and Isernia, P. 294, 295 Ewans, M. 115 expectation-reality gaps 62, 65 exploitation by media in digital age 276 Fainaru, S. 108 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) 216, 217, 262 Falger, P.R. et al. 164 Family Readiness Group (FRG): combat operations in Iraq, memories of 63; media in digital age 276, 277 Farmer, B. 119
Farooqui, Amjad Hussain 206 Fay Report (2004) 93 Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan 25, 26, 28, 202, 203, 205, 206–7, 208, 209 Feith, D.J. 143 Fenner, L.M. 143 Finer, J. 109 First Amendment to Bill of Rights 238 Fishback, I. 84 Fiske, S.T. et al. 78 Fontenot, G. et al. 139 Ford, P. 261 Fosler, G.D. 212 Foster, J.B. 189, 192 FOX News 273, 275; mass media as riskmanagement 216 FOX News Sunday 225 Francis, D. and Hester, S. 47 Frank, J.D. and Melville, A.Y. 260, 261 Frank, M. et al. 285 Franks, Tim 216 Franks, Tommy (General) 142 Freedman, L. xix, xx Freeman, M. 175 Friedman, H.A. 149, 150, 151 Friedman, T.L. 189 full spectrum environment, government agencies in 142–44 full spectrum warfare 65–66 functionalist perspective on GWOT 92–93 Gailani, Ahmed Khalfan 204 Gall, C. et al. 93 Gallup poll data 11, 295, 304 Galpin, R. 111 Garamone, J. 14, 119 Garfield, R.M. et al. 164 Garner, J. 142 Garrett, P. and Baquedano-López, P. 45, 46 Gates, R. 141, 207 Gates, Robert M. 9, 13, 14 Gates Commission 10, 13 Gavira, M. 139 Geneva Conventions 91, 92 Germain, R.D. and Kenny, M. 195 Ghobarah, H.A. et al. 163, 165 Gibson, Gregory C. 3, 245–55 Giddens, Anthony 211, 212, 218; ideological power and agency 213–14 Gill, S. 196 Gill, S. and Law, D. 195 Giustozzi, A. 205 Glaser, B. 57 Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. 57 Glenn, D. xix global capital accumulation 191
311
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global capitalism 189–90 global sovereignty 190 global surveillance xxi global systems theory 190 global war on terror (GWOT) 88–98; Abu Ghraib, abuse in 85, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94; American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 94; The American Soldier (Stouffer, S.) 88, 89; anomie as “normalness,” interpretation of 88– 89, 92–93, 95; Army Field Manual 91; Baghdad Canal Massacre (2007) 88, 90, 91, 94, 95; capture of Saddam Hussein 69, 70–71; combat veterans, combat stress and 89–90; Criminal Investigative Division (CID) 95; derangement in empirical data 90–92; Durkheim’s perspective 88–89, 95; Durkheim’s perspective, interpretation of 89– 90, 95–96; empirical connections to Durkheimian thought 90; ethnic cleansing, Iraqi-on-Iraqi 91; Fay Report (2004) 93; functionalist perspective 92–93; Geneva Conventions 91, 92; Guantanamo, treatment of detainees at 94; improvised explosive devices (IEDs) 90, 91; Iraqi Veterans Against the War 88; Levin-McCain Report (2008) 94; Machiavellian interrogation techniques 95; mass media as risk-management in 211–19; Men Against Fire (Marshall, S.L.A.) 88, 89; Military Intelligence (MI) training 92; Military Police (MP) training 92; needs of soldiers, provision of 88, 96; Operation Iron Triangle (2006) 88, 93, 94, 95; perception of derangement as “normalness,” consequences of 92–94, 95–96; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 88, 90, 91, 92, 96; recruitment of new troops in conditions of 11–13, 15–16; rules of engagement (RoE), unlawful nature of 88, 90, 91–92, 96; Rumsfeld Doctrine 91– 92, 95; social scientific findings, derangement in misuse of 94–95, 95–96; social solidarity of soldiers 89; standard operation procedures (SOP) 91; UN Protective Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia 96; unit affiliations, changes in 91 globalization and invasion of Iraq 189–98; Ba’ath Party statism 194; Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) 194; consent, coercion and 197; Defense Policy Guidance (DPG, 1992) 192; global capital accumulation 191; global capitalism 189–90; global sovereignty 190; global systems theory 190; Gramscian materialism 195; hegemonic power 190–91; Hobbesian state 195–96; intercapitalist rivalry 194; internationalization of the state 190–91, 195, 197; Iraqi oilfield development 193–94; militarism and capitalism 191–92, 197–98; military and civilian corporations, wall of
312
separation between 197–98; nation-state, marginalization of 189–90; National Security Strategy (White House, 2002) 193; neoliberalism and Iraq 192–94; noeliberalism 189; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 23–24, 28, 192, 193; political transnational practices 190; post-Fordist production 190; Project for the New American Century (PNAC) 192–93; Rebuilding America’s Defenses (PNAC, 2000) 192; Space Command 193; transnational historical materialism 190–91; transnational historical materialism, reconsideration of 194– 97; Vietnam War 196 GlobalSecurity.org 1 goal displacement 128–29 Gold, S. 84 Goldman, E. and Eliason, L. 41 Goodwin, J. 35 Gowing, T. 51 Graham, H. 14 Gramsci, Antonio 190, 196, 197; materialism of 195 Grare, F. 200 greedy institutions 271 Gremier, R. 202 Grenada 273 Griffith, James E. 3, 149–61 Grossman, D. 89 Guantanamo, treatment of detainees at 80, 94 guard-to-prisoner ratios in Abu Ghraib 81–82 Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. 44, 45, 47, 53 guerrillas and population, separation between 37 Gul, A. 119 Gulf War (1991) 127, 151, 165, 166, 171, 224, 225, 273, 284 Gunaratna, R. 26 Gurfein, M.I. and Janowitz, M. 152 Hacaoglu, S. 166 Haiti 273; psychological operations in 151 Hammes, T.X. 32, 69, 85 Hammill, J. et al. 297 Hanneman, R.A. and Riddle, M. 75 Haqqani, H. 203, 206 Harbom, L. and Wallersteen, P. 2 Hardt, M. and Negri, A. 190, 197 Harvey, D. 193 Harvey, F. and Schoomaker, P. 83 Hasso, F. 260, 262 al-Hawsawi, Mustafa 204 Hayat, Ashan Saleem 205 hearts and minds, struggle for 34–36 Hedley, Mark 3, 234–43 hegemonic power 190–91 Heimer, C.A. 125 Held, D. 196
INDEX
Henderson, S. 73 Heng, Y. 212, 214 Herman, E.S. and Chomsky, N. 215 Hernandorena, C. 25 hero making, attributional study 245–55; attribution of hero status 253–54; attributional theory 247; conclusion 254–55; data 248–50; defining heroism 245–46; hero vignettes 249– 50, 251–53; hypotheses 248; independent variables 249; Jessica Lynch, vignette on 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255; limitations on heroism 246; moral beacons, heroes as 253; results and discussion 250–54; role identification 254; role performance 247; role theory 246–47; sampling and data collection 248–49; structural symbolic interactionism 247; theoretical perspectives 246–47; Todd Beamer, vignette on 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255 Hersh, S.M. 106 Herz, M.F. 150, 152 Hill, J. 164 Hillenbrand, E.D. 284 Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. 190 Hobbesian state 195–96 Hobfoll, S.E. et al. 284, 285 Hoffman, D. 51 Hoffman, G.F. xxiii Hogan, Richard 3, 245–55 Hogg, M.A. 174, 175 Holbrooke, R. 28 Holden Reid, B. xx Holland, Joshua 265 homecoming 64 Hosek, L. et al. 283–84 Hosin, A. and Cairns, E. 176 Housego, K. 103 Hovland, C.I. et al. 154 Howard, Professor Sir Michael xx Hu, L. and Bentler, P.M. 156 human interest stories 276 humanitarian information, management in Iraq of 125–35; Coalition Provisional Authority 127; critical issues 131–32; data collection 129; design modification 128–29; Emergency Mine Action Survey (EMAS) 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135; goal displacement 128–29; humanitarian information landscape 126–27; humanitarian preparations for announced war 126; information needs in post-conflict situations 125–26; Iran-Iraq War 127; landscape change 131; learning cycles 134; Mines Advisory Group (MAG) 130–31; negotiated information order 128; Oil-forFood Program (OFFP) 131, 134–35; places and data 129; politics of designing a form 128, 129; politics of information coordination 134–
35; Public Distribution System 127; Rapid Assessment Process (RAP) 126, 127, 128–29, 133, 134; Rapid Assessment Process (RAP), un-rapid nature of 127; Regional Mine Action Center (RMAC) 131; rural bias, urban assessment tools and 133–34; speed, expectation of 130–31; UN Development Group (UNDG) 128; UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) 130–31; UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) 126, 127, 128; UN Office of the Human Coordinator for Iraq (UNOHCI) 128; UN World Food Program 127; USAID 128; value of information 132–33; Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) 130 Humanitarian Information Centers (HICs) 126, 127, 128–29, 133, 134, 135 Huntington, Samuel P. 261 Hussain, Z. 201, 205 Hussein, Saddam 2, 56, 60, 104, 105, 107, 108, 295; as reason for action in Iraq 60; toppling statue of 211; see also capture of Saddam Hussein Iacopino, V. and Waldman, R.J. 164 ideals: ideal speech situation 223; ideal-typical bureaucracy 68; moral soldier performance 46 ideological currency theory (ICT) 57, 59, 64 immigrants, recruitment of 12 Imperial Hubris 26 improvised explosive devices (IEDs): combat operations in Iraq, memories of 61; global war on terror (GWOT) 90, 91 information: distortion of 258; information campaigns 3; justness, change in information about 295; needs in post-conflict situations 125–26; negotiated information order 128 Inglehart, R. et al. 176, 177, 182 insurgency: insurgent warfare 68–69; moral and ethical dimensions of 80; policing post-war situation in Iraq 107, 110; power of situation in Iraq 85–86; see also counterinsurgency intelligence issues in counterinsurgency 34 Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) 71 Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in Pakistan 200, 202, 203, 208 intercapitalist rivalry 194 internally displaced persons (IDPs), problem of 206 International Conference on Afghanistan, Geneva (2002) 117 International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program 106 International Crisis Group (ICG) 202 International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, US Bureau of 117 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan xx, 23–24, 27
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internationalization of the state 190–91, 195, 197 interpersonal relations, sociological components of 70 Iran-Iraq War 127 Iraq 1, 2, 3; adolescents in 174–84; Anbar Awakening in 4; cholera in 163–71; combat operations in, memories of 56–66; counterinsurgency in, lessons from 32–41; establishment of Iraqi Police Service 105–6, 108–9; humanitarian information, management of 125–35; Interim Government of 106; intermilitary relationships xx–xxi; invasion and absence of policing 105; invasion of 273, 279; invasion of, counterinsurgency and 34; Iraq Body Count (IBC) 107–8, 119; National Army, creation of 39; newspaper debates on US attack on 222–33; oilfield development in 193–94; ongoing conflict in xx; operational space in xx–xxi; police in, targeting of 107–8, 110–11; policing post-war Iraq 103–11; pre-war policing of 105, 111; service in, recruitment and retention of volunteer forces 9–10; see also Abu Ghraib, abuse in; capture of Saddam Hussein; globalization and invasion of Iraq Iraqi Veterans Against the War 88 irregular war in Afghanistan 20–30; Afghan Government (GoA) 22, 23, 24, 25; Al Qaeda 20, 21, 22, 25, 26; The American Way of War (Weigley, R.) 21, 29; asymmetric conflict, US history of 20; Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 27–28; Central Asia, problem of 28; combat and stabilization, importance of concurrence in 22–23; Combined Forces Afghanistan (CFC-A) 27; Congressional Research Service Report, Pakistan (2004) 28; counterinsurgency, culture shift needed to deal with 26–27, 29; Counterinsurgency Manual 26; fighting right enemy right way 20–21; Imperial Hubris 26; International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) 23–24, 27; malleable approach to reconstruction 24; non-governmental humanitarian agencies (NGHAs) 24; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 23–24, 28; Northern Alliance 22; Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) 21–22, 23–24; Pakistan, influence on Afghan security 25–26, 28; Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) 23–25, 27–28, 29; reconstruction mission, reluctant US lead in 23–25, 29; Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR) 26–28; stabilization effort, dealing with 21–22, 22–23; Taliban 20, 21, 22, 24, 25–26, 28; US in, who fights and how? 21– 23, 29; USAID 24; USDA (US Department of Agriculture) 24
314
Irwin, Anne 44–54 Isaacson, Walter 216–17 Islam: image in Western media 259; struggle with West 261 Islamophobic 259 Israel 272; Defence Forces, role of storytelling for 46 Jackson, Eugene 3, 245–55 Jackson, M. 53 Jalal, A. 202 Jamiat Ulama Islam 204 Jensen, P.S. et al. 284 John, W. 202 Johnson, C.A. 212 Johnson, Congressman Sam 262 Johnson, D. 41 Johnson, G. 272 Johnson, L.B. 11 Johnson, R. 203 Johnson, T. 217 Johnstone, B. 45, 46 Jones, J. 25 Jones, J.L. and Pickering, T. 24 Jones, J.M. 294, 295, 296 Jones, O. 200 Jones, S.G. et al. 105, 106 Jordan, A.A. et al. 144 Jowett, G.S. and O’Donnell, V. 150, 151, 152 justness, change in information about 295 Kalyvas, S. 33 Kanter, R.M. 271 Karim, K.H. 259 Karpinski, J. 94 Karsh, E. and Rautsi, I. 72 Karzai, Hamid 22, 116, 203 Kelley, M.L. 283, 284 Kellner, Douglas 216–17, 273 Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) 139–40 Kelty, R. 141 Kennard, M. 264 Kennedy, David 260 Kent, R. 133 Kepel, G. 205, 208 Keren, M. 44 Kerkvliet, B. 35 Khalid, Sheikh Mohammad 204 al-Khalil, S. 194 Khalilzad, Z. 27 Khan, Amanullah 115 Khan, Daoud 115 Khan, M.A. 212 Khan, N. 119 Kharif, O. 127 Kidwell, D. 138 Kier, E. 41
INDEX
Kiesling, E. 41 Kilburn, M.R. and Asch, B.J. 12 kinetic “iron fist” approach in counterinsurgency 33–34 King, Congressman Peter 262 King, D. and Dilley, M. 125 kinship identities in Iraq 72 Kirk, Congressman Mark 262 Kish, L. 160 Klare, M. 193 Kleykamp, M.A. 12, 13 knowledge gaps 258 Korean War 11, 13, 44, 94, 150, 197, 297; psychological operations in 152 Kosovo 125, 151 Kramer, A.E. 169 Kratovac, K. 167 Al-Krenawi, A. et al. 176 Ku Klux Klan (KKK) 264 Krulak, General C.C. xxii Kuypers, J.A. 211 Lamb, C. 115, 116 Lardner, R. 139 Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer (CNN) 225 Latham Jr., William C. 2, 137–46 Laurence, J. 273 Leal, D.L. 296 learning: learning cycles 134; lessons of counterinsurgency 32–41 legal jurisdiction, issue of 140 legitimacy: of foreigners 36; morality and 52–53; of war 296 Legro, J. 41 Lemieux, Jason 264 Lenin, V.I. 191 Levai, M. et al. 284 Levin, C. and McCain, J. 94 Levin-McCain Report (2008) 94 Levine, S. 205 Levitt, R. 138 Levy, B.S. and Sidel, V.W. 164 Lewis, Bernard 261 Li, Q. and Wen, M. 165 Liberia 135, 153 al-Libi, Ibn al-Sheikh 204 Liddell-Hart, B.H. 150 Lincoln, A. et al. 285 Lind, W. 56 Lind, W. et al. 56 Linde, C. 45, 48 Lindemann, M. 16 Lipari, Rachel 4, 283–92 live media coverage, TV News and 272, 273, 275 Livingston, S. 280 Lobe, J. 264
Loeb, V. 73 looting 166–67, 172 Los Angeles Times 217 Lubin, A. 296 Lubold, G. 12, 15, 142, 143 Luttrell, W. 47, 48 Luxemburg, R. 191 Lynch, vignette on Jessica 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255 McArthur, D. 21 McCallister, W.S. 69, 71, 72, 75 McCarthy, R. 119 McChesney, R. 259 McChrystal, S.A. 209 McCone, David R. 2, 56–66 MacDermid, S. et al. 284 MacGinty, R. 126 Mcguire, W.J. 154 Machiavellian interrogation techniques 95 McKeeby, D.I. 107, 111 McNeill, D. 205 McNerney, M. 24, 27 Mahaffy, K.A. 178 Mahnken, T. 41 Mahnken, T.G. and Kearney, T.A. xix Maier, T.W. 115, 116 Malek, Alia 263–64 Maley, W. 200 Malik, I.H. 204 Maloney, S.M. 24 Manning, P.K. 104 manpower strategies 15–16 Mao Tse-tung 69 Margasak, L. 139 Markey, D. 28 Markusen, A. and Yudken, J. 197 Marshall, S.L.A. 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95 Marshall, S.L.A. et al. 56, 64 Martin, A. and Petro, P. 211 Marx, K. and Engels, F. 191 Marx, Karl 191 mass media as risk-management in “war on terror” 211–19; Central Problems (Giddens, A.) 213; CNN News 217; content of mass media reporting 217–18; cross-cultural analysis 217– 18; dissent, risk of 215; FOX News 216; future research 219; Giddens/Blair approach to risk management 215; ideological power and agency, Giddens and 213–14; Los Angeles Times 217; mass media in risk society, Giddens and 212–13; media analysis 216–19; media and state, relationship between 211; 9/11, mass media and military after 217; Project for Excellence in Journalism 217; relationships 216–17; risk management model 214–15; role of mass media 211; social system functions
315
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215; societal risk, mass media and 211; synthesis 218–19; “Thatcher”/Strategic approach to risk management 214–15; WHBQ Memphis 216 mass media in digital age 3, 274–76; media analysis 216–19 Mastroianni, George R. 2, 56–66, 78–87 material improvements, key to winning (US view) 35 material incentives for joining military 58–59 Matos, Kenneth 4, 283–92 Matthews, Michael D. 4, 294–304 Maurer, K. 137 Maxfield, B.D. 12, 13 Mayer, J. 94 measures: adolescents in Iraq, study on 178–79; media in digital age 274; military children, well-being in face of multiple deployments 286–88; undergraduate attitudes towards wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, study of 299 media in digital age 271–80; agency in spouse’s expanded role, lack of 278; Army Community Service Center 276; army family, expanded definition of 277; army wives 277–78; background to study 272–73; Casualty Affairs office 276; children of deployed parents, exceptionalization of status of 279; communication and mass media today 271; communication media among soldiers 272; compulsive viewing 275, 276, 279–80; constrained viewing 275, 276, 279–80; controlled viewing 275, 276, 279–80; discussion and conclusion 279–80; embedded war reporting 273; exploitation 276; family devotion and loyalty 271; Family Readiness Group (FRG) 276, 277; findings of study 274–79; greedy institutions 271; human interest stories 276; live media coverage 272, 273, 275; mass media uses 274–76; measures 274; methods used in study 273–74; military children 278–79; military families, communication and 272; military families, major demands on 272; personality changes in children 278–79; pervasive nature of TV coverage 276; Post Exchange (PX) food court 276; procedures 274; Public Affairs Office 276; Red Cross office 276; sample studied 273–74; soldiers and communication 272; theoretical framework for study 271–72 medical staff as terrorist targets 168–69 Mehsud, Baitullah 207, 208, 209 Melman, S. 197, 198 Men Against Fire (Marshall, S.L.A.) 88, 89 Mental Health Advisory Team 158 mental health toll on volunteer troops 14 Merle, R. 16, 109 Merton, R.K. 88
316
Messick, Shawn 2, 125–35 Mestrovic, S. 88, 90 Mestrovic, S. and Brown, H.M. 90 Mestrovic, S. and Caldwell, R.A. 88 Mestrovic, S. and Glassner, B. 90 Mestrovic, Stjepan G. 2, 88–98 methods for studies: adolescents in Iraq, study on 177–79; anti-war protest, debate on 235–36; media in digital age 273–74; military children, well-being in face of multiple deployments 285–88; narratives from Afghanistan 47–48; newspaper debates on US attack on Iraq 226; undergraduate attitudes towards wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, study of 298–99 Metz, S. 35, 39 Michaelis, Patrick R. 4, 271–80 Milbank, D. 120 Miles, D. 12, 14 Milgram, S. 84; obedience experiment 78, 79–80 militarism and capitalism 191–92, 197–98 military anthropology 44–45 military children, well-being in face of multiple deployments 283–92; Active Duty Spouse Survey (DMDC, 2008) 285; age differences in children’s reactions 284, 291; age of children studied 286–87; analytic strategy 288; anxiety, feelings of 285; children, effects of deployments on 284; connection with deployed parent 287; control variables 289; deployments, effects on family members of 283; deployments, relationship with behavior scale scores 289–90; deployments, relationship with child well-being 290–91; discussion 289– 91; gender differences in children’s reactions 284; gender of children studied 287; impact of multiple deployments 283; isolation, feelings of 285; limitations of study 291; measures used in study 286–88; method of study 285–88; military demographics 284; military operations, longest since Vietnam 283; number of deployments 287–88; participants in study, procedures and 285–86; perceived stress scale 287; preceding experiences, impacts of 283–84; problem behavior scale 286; results of study 288–89; separations, frequency of 285; spouses at home, alleviating impact of deployments 285; stress, deployments’ contribution to 284–85; suggestions for future research 291 military draft registration system 11 military families: agency in spouse’s expanded role, lack of 278; army family, expanded definition of 277; army wives 277–78; communication and media in digital age 272; family devotion and loyalty 271; family needs 62–64; family stress, volunteer forces and 14; homecoming 64; major demands on 272;
INDEX
spouses at home, alleviating impact of deployments 285; stress, deployments’ contribution to 284–85 Military Intelligence (MI) training 92 military mind-set, counterinsurgency and 41 military operations, role of storytelling in 46 military personnel, public opinion among 297 Military Police (MP) training 92 militias, control over 38–39 Miller, C.T. 2 Miller, G. 94 Mines Advisory Group (MAG) 130–31 Mir, A. 203, 207 misplaced dissent and aggression 237 mission shift: adaptation to 62; combat operations in Iraq, memories of 60–62; role conflict and 62 Moeller, S. 217 Mohammed, F. and Conway, P. 115 Mollica, R.F. et al. 176 Moodie, M. 137 Moore, D.W. 296 Moore, S. 107 morality: beacons of, heroes as 253; moral behavior, soldiers’ endorsement of 49–50; narratives from Afghanistan 46–47, 52–53 Morris, M. 32 Moskos, C.C. 10, 11, 12, 64, 297 Moskos, C.C. and Butler, J.S. 296, 297 Moskos, C.C. and Wood, F.R. 11 Moskos, C.C. et al. 2 Moss, M. 111 Moss, M. and Rohde, D. 105, 109 Motlagh, J. 119 Mowlana, H. et al. 273 MSNBC 275 Mueller, J. 294, 304 Mujahid, A.M. 263 Mujahideen groups 200 Mullen, Mike 9, 14 Munczek, D.S. and Tuber, S. 176 Murdoch, Rupert 216 Murdock, C.A. et al. 27 Murray, C.J.L. et al. 163, 164, 165 Murray, T. 117 Murray, W. and Millett, A. 41 Murthy, R.S. and Lakshminarayana, R. 164 Musallam, M.A. 72 Musharaf, President and General 201, 202, 205, 207 Musheno, M. and Ross, S.M. 11 “Muslim terrorism,” journalistic narratives of 259 Nagl, J.A. 36, 68, 69 Al-Naimi, Zuhair 105 narrative ethnography 45–47
narratives from Afghanistan 44–54; Afghan National Army (ANA), comment on behavior of 51; bodily desires and feelings, need for control over 51–52; Canadian engagement in Afghanistan 44; Canadian soldiers’ stories and morality 48–53; comparative narrative analysis 47–48; ideal, moral soldier performance 46; Israeli Defence Forces, role of storytelling for 46; laughter and non-critical narration 50–51; legitimacy and morality 52–53; methods 47– 48; military anthropology 44–45; military operations, role of storytelling in 46; moral behavior, endorsement of 49–50; morality 46– 47, 52–53; narrative analysis 45–47; narrative ethnography approach 45, 47; narrative generation, context of 45–46; personal experience narratives 45; portrayal of others 48–50, 53; professionalism, themes of 51; selfportrayal 50–52, 53; silences and erasures 47; social conventions and morality 46; social situation of stories 45; social situation of storytelling 44–45; stories and narratives 45– 46; storytelling approach to cultural studies 44–45, 53; study outline 47–48 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 72 Nation 224 nation-state, marginalization of 189–90 National Center for PTSD 284–85 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks 295 National Security Strategy (White House, 2002) 193 national service or conscription, choice of AVF over 10–11 Nawaz, S. 206 needs of soldiers, provision of 88, 96 neoliberalism 192–94 network analysis 71, 73–75 network identification 71–72, 75–76 New Statesman 212–13 New York Times 265; newspaper debates on US attack on Iraq 222, 225, 226, 227, 230, 231, 232 Newport, F. et al. 294, 295, 296 newspaper debates on US attack on Iraq 222–33; arguments, distribution by periodical 229; Avoiding Politics (Eliasoph, N.) 223; Christian Science Monitor 222, 226, 230, 231; conclusion 232–33; content of press debates 224–25; Daily Telegraph, London 224; FOX News Sunday 225; ideal speech situation 223; Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer (CNN) 225; methods of analysis 226; Nation 224; New York Times 222, 225, 226, 227, 230, 231, 232; Newsweek 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231; op-ed positions on war 223–24, 227–28; “preemptive” attack 222; press arguments, narrowness of agenda 222–23; press independence, democracy and
317
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224; public debate, variety of forms of 222; public sphere, press and hegemony 223–24; results of analysis 226–32; systematic distortion 223; Talking Politics (Gamson, W.) 223; Time 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231; Wall Street Journal 222, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232; Washington Post 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232 Newsweek 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231 Nikolaev, Alexander G. 3, 222–33 9/11 attacks on US 3, 261; illegal and unconstitutional practices, justification by 264; mass media and military after 217; media stereotypes, portrayal after 259; reason for joining military 59; reliance on AVF forces in wake of 11; Taliban and 201–3; terrorist nationalities and “otherness” of antagonists 258 Nixon, President Richard 10 noeliberalism 189 non-conventional warfare 1–2 non-governmental humanitarian agencies (NGHAs) 24 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 2; contractors and non-military personnel 137, 144–45 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 23–24, 28, 44, 52, 118, 137, 192, 193, 209 Northern Alliance: irregular war in Afghanistan 22; policing Afghanistan 116 Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) 203, 207 Obama, President Barack 10, 12, 28, 118 Obedience to Authority (Milgram, S.) 79–80 Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West (DVD) 263 occupation, policing of 105–7, 110–11 O’Hanlon, M.E. 10, 12, 21 Oil-for-Food Program (OFFP) 131, 134–35 Omar, Mullah 20, 200, 201, 202, 206 O’Neill, E. and Rosenthal, J. 273 op-ed positions on war 223–24, 227–28 Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF): Abu Ghraib abuse and 85, 86; irregular war in Afghanistan 21–22, 23–24; policing Afghanistan 116; psychological operations evaluation 149–61 Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) 274–76, 278, 279–80, 285; Abu Ghraib, abuse in 86; contractors and non-military personnel 138, 139, 143; see also Iraq Operation Iron Triangle (2006) 88, 93, 94, 95 Operation Red Dawn 68 oppositional imagery 259 organizational cultures 41 organizational outcomes 65 organizational support theory (OST) 57, 59–60, 64
318
Orkzai, General 207 outsourcing reconstruction 139 overstretch 41 Oyserman, D. 176 Paardekooper, B. et al. 176 pacification of society, police and 108–10 Pakistan 3, 4; Afghan crisis and 200–209; Al Qaeda, arrests of members 204; Al Qaeda, contacts with Taliban 200–201, 202–3, 208; Al Qaeda, safe havens in FATA 209; army commanders in, attacks on 205–6; Balochistan 203–4; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 200, 202; CIA-ISI joint operations in 204; FATA, new war theater 202, 203, 205, 206– 7; future for 208–9; influence on Afghan security 25–26, 28; Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) 200, 202, 203, 208; internally displaced persons (IDPs), problem of 206; International Crisis Group (ICG) 202; Jamiat Ulama Islam 204; Mujahideen groups 200; murder of Wall Street Journal man Daniel Pearl 205; 9/11, Taliban and 201–3; Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) 203, 207; post-American attack scenario 203–4; Taliban, emergence of 200–201, 202–3; Taliban regrouping 203–4, 208; war within and outside for 204–6 Palmer, E.L. 153 Panama 273; psychological operations in 151 Parker, A.M. 144 Parsons, T. 93 patriarchal leadership 72 Paul, C. and Kim, J.J. 273 Pavilonis, Brigid Myers 2, 20–30 Pearl, D. 205 Pearl, murder in Pakistan of Daniel 205 Peek, L. 260 Pengelly, Ryan D. 44–54 Perito, R.M. 23, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 120 Perkins, D. 142 personal experience narratives 45 personal needs of soldiers 62–64 Pew Research Center 263 Phau, M. et al. 218 physical infrastructure, destruction of 166–68 Pieper, Christopher M. 3, 211–19 Pierri, R. 212 Pincus, S.H. et al. 279 Pivar, I. 285 policing Afghanistan 114–21; Afghan National Police (ANP), establishment of 117; Afghan police as targets 118–19; Afghan Transitional Administration 116; Al Qaeda 116; Border Police 117; Civil Order Police 117; Counter Narcotics Police 117; Counter Terrorism Police 117; Criminal Investigation Division 117; Defense Department (US) 117;
INDEX
democracy and police 120–21; democratic policing 114; Dyncorp Inc. 121; EUPOL Afghanistan 117; International Conference on Afghanistan, Geneva (2002) 117; International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, US Bureau of 117; Iraq Body Count (IBC) 119; Northern Alliance 116; Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) 116; police and normalization of society 120–21; police as primary institution, importance of 120; police institutions, development of 114; policing autocracy 115–16; post-invasion police reform 116–18; religious police 116; Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) 117; sharia law 116; Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 115; Special Operations (US) 120; Taliban insurgency 114–15; Taliban overthrow 120; Taliban rule 115–16 policing post-war Iraq 103–11; Al Qaeda 107; autocratic regimes, policing in 104; Ba’athist regime, residues of 111; Ba’athist sympathizers of Saddam 107; Baghdad Police College 106; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 106; Civilian Police Advisory Training Team 106; Defense Department (US) 107; democratic policing, guidelines for 104; Dyncorp Inc. 109; establishment of Iraqi Police Service 105–6, 108–9; insurgency in Iraq 107, 110; Interim Government of Iraq 106; International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program 106; invasion and absence of policing 105; Iraq, pre-war policing of 105, 111; Iraq Body Count (IBC) 107–8; Iraqi police, targeting of 107–8, 110–11; occupation, policing of 105–7, 110–11; pacification of society, police and 108–10; police reform, ongoing challenge 106–7, 109; society, policing of 104, 110; state, policing of 104, 110; violence in Iraqi society 103 politics: benefits of using contractors 138; counterinsurgency and political struggle 37–38; of designing a form 128, 129; of information coordination 134–35; political ideology, support for war in terns of 299, 302, 304; rhetoric of, inflammation of 264; transnational practices 190 Poole, Daniel 3, 163–71 Poole, E. 259 population control 36–37 Porpora, Douglas V. 3, 222–33 portrayals: of Arabs in media 259; of others in narratives from Afghanistan 48–50, 53; selfportrayal in narratives from Afghanistan 50–52, 53 Posen, B. 41 Post-9/11 GI Bill 15 Post Exchange (PX) food court 276 post-Fordist production 190
post-invasion police reform in Afghanistan 116–18 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): armed conflict and health 164; global war on terror (GWOT) 88, 90, 91, 92, 96 Powell, N.J. 117 “preemptive” attack 222 press arguments, narrowness of agenda 222–23 press independence, democracy and 224 Preston, J. 12 principles of counterinsurgency 39–40 Prinzing, F. 164 prisoners in Abu Ghraib, nature of 81–82 problem behavior scale 286 professionalism, themes of 51 Project Enduring Memory (PEM) 57 Project for Excellence in Journalism 217 Project for the New American Century (PNAC) 192–93 propaganda 257–58, 265 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) 23–25, 27–28, 29 psychological contract theory (PCT) 59, 64, 65; military units and psychological contracts 56–57 psychological operations evaluation in OEF: ABC News 160; Afghan National Police (ANP) 152; Al Qaeda 149, 151; Asia Foundation 160; Bosnia 151; Commando Solo 158; defining psychological operations 149–50, 160–61; effectiveness of psychological operations, determination of 152–53; geographic regions of Afghanistan 154; Haiti 151; Korean War 152; Kosovo 151; lessons for future evaluation studies 158–60; Mental Health Advisory Team 158; Panama 151; past uses of psychological operations 150–51; persuasive message communication process, stages of 154–56; psychological operations 151–52; psychological operations, design to evaluate 153–56, 160–61; psychological operations, evaluation results 156–58, 161; Radio Malamut 151, 156, 157–58, 159; Somalia 151; Special Operations Media System-B (SOMS-B) 158; structural equation modeling (SEM) 153, 154–55, 156–58, 160; Sulh (weekly newspaper) 151–52, 156, 157, 159; Taliban 149, 151; target populations, broadening of 150; Vietnam War 150–51; World War II 152 Psychological Operations Group (POG) 149–50, 153 Public Affairs Office 276 public debate, variety of forms of 222 Public Distribution System 127 public health infrastructure, depletion of 168–69
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public opinion: changes over time 295; manipulation of 257–58 Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ) 295 public sphere, press and hegemony 223–24 Pyszczynski, T. et al. 175 Qouta, S. et al. 176 Quigley, S.L. 14 Qureshi, E. and Sells, M.A. 261 Race, J. 35 racial profiling, use of 263 Radio Malamut 151, 156, 157–58, 159 Raghavan, S. and White, J. 140 Rai, M. 105 Rampton, S. and Stauber, J. 257, 258 Ramzi, Ibn al-Sahibh 204 Rana, M.A. 208 Rapid Assessment Process (RAP) 126, 127, 128– 29, 133, 134; un-rapid nature of 127 Rapport, N. 44, 45, 47 Rapport, N. and Overing, J. 45 Rashid, A. 201, 202, 203 Ravi, N. 218 Reagan, President Ronald 11 Rebuilding America’s Defenses (PNAC, 2000) 192 Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq, Office of (US) 142 reconstruction mission in Afghanistan, reluctant US lead in 23–25, 29 Red Crescent 169 Red Cross 276 Redmon, J. 103 Reed, Brian J. 2, 68–76 Reed, George E. 2, 78–87 Regional Mine Action Center (RMAC) 131 Reimann, K. 2 religious police 116 representative government, counterinsurgency and 35–36 Reserve and National Guard, reliance on 11 Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets 297, 298, 299, 302 rest and retraining, need for 15 results of studies: adolescents in Iraq, study on 179–82; hero making, attributional study 250– 54; military children, well-being in face of multiple deployments 288–89; newspaper debates on US attack on Iraq 226–32; undergraduate attitudes towards wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, study of 300–303 retention issues 13–15, 16 Reuters 103 revolutionary war, Mao’s perspective on 69 rewards for service 65 Reza, A. et al. 177 Rhoades, L. and Eisenberger, R. 57
320
Rice, Condoleezza 216, 225 Richie, B.S. et al. 274 Ricks, T.E. 10 risk management: Giddens/Blair approach to 215; model of 214–15; “Thatcher”/Strategic approach to 214–15 Ritzer, G. 70 Roberts, L. et al. 176, 177 Robinson, W. 196 Rock, Lindsay 4, 283–92 Rogers, P. 115 Rohall, David E. 4, 294–304 Rohall, D.E. and Ender, M.G. 294, 296 Rohall, D.E, et al. 11 Rohall, D.E. et al. 283, 285, 294, 297–98 Rohde, D. 117, 119 role conflict, mission shift and 62 role identification 254 role performance 247 role theory 246–47 Ronfeldt, D. and Arquilla, J. 71, 72 Roosevelt, President Franklin D. 22 Rosaldo, R. 44, 45, 46 Rosen, S. 41 Rosenberg, M. 178 Roshdieh, S. et al. 175 Ross, Susan M. 9–16 Rostker, B. 10 Rousseau, D. 57, 58 Roxborough, Ian 2, 32–41, 108 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) 117 Rubin, A.J. and Kramer, A.E. 140 Rubin, B. and Rashid, A. 28 Rubin, B.R. 203 rules of engagement (RoE) 88, 90, 91–92, 96 Rumsfeld, Donald 22, 257 Rumsfeld Doctrine 91–92, 95 Runion, M.L. 115 rural bias, urban assessment tools and 133–34 Sacirbey, O. 263 Sack, W.H. et al. 176 Said, Edward 259, 260 Saleem, Sheikh Ahmed 204 Samuels, M. 41 Sanchez, R.S. 142 Sanders, B. 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53 Santorum, Senator Rick 264 Sassoon, Showstack 190, 195 Saunders, D. 117 Scahill, J. 261 Scales, R. 145 Schatz, Roland 217 Schechter, D. 217 Schmitt, E. 85 Schuh, T. 258 Schumaker, R.E. and Lomax, R.G. 153, 156
INDEX
Schumm, W.R. et al. 272 Schwartz, M. 1, 138 Schwartz, T.P. and Marsh, R.M. 89 Scott, Wilbur J. 2, 56–66 Sedra, M. 24, 117 Segal, D. and Segal, M.W. 64 Segal, David R. 2, 10, 11, 68–76 Segal, D.R. and Segal, M.W. 11, 12, 13, 296, 297 Segal, M.W. 271, 272 Selective Service 11 self-defense forces: counterinsurgency and 36, 37; organization of 39 self-esteem: adolescents in Iraq, study on 178; mortality threats and 175 Selznick, P. 76 Sepp, K. 32, 39 sewage systems, damage to 168 Shachtman, N. xix Shadid, A. 103 Shah, A. 138 Shah, Mohammed Zahir 115 Shah, T. 119 Shah, T. and Gall, C. 119 Shaheen, J. 259 Shaikh, I. 131 Shaikh, Riaz Ahmed 3, 200–209 Shanker, T. 13, 150 Shannon, R. 25 Shapiro, B. 265 sharia law 116 Sharma, S.R. 201 Shaw, J.A. 175 Shaw, M. xxi Shils, E.A. and Janowitz, M. 152 Shore, M. 264 Siddiqui, H. 261 Sides, J. and Gross, K. 259 Simmel, G. 69, 70 Singer, P. 138, 139, 140 Singer, P.W. 109 Sklair, L. 190, 197 Smallman-Raynor, M. and Cliff, A.D. 164 Smith, F. 279 Smith, General Sir R. xx Smith, Jason 4, 283–92 Smith, P. et al. 175, 176 Smith, R. 144 SNAFU (Situation Normal, All F***** Up) 65 social conditions in Abu Ghraib 82, 83–84 social construction of enemy in “war on terror” 257–65; anti-Muslim feeling in US 263; antiWestern violence, Western representations of 259; backlash against Muslims at home 262– 64; binarized image of enemy 261; civilian and combatant, brurring of lines between 265; constructing the Muslim enemy 258–62, 265; dehumanized Other, construction of enemy as
259–60; East-West, Christian-Muslim conflict, inevitability of 261; enemy, demand for 257, 258–59; epic terms, media portrayal of struggle in 261–62; history of enemy construction 261; information, distortion of 258; Islam, image in Western media 259; Islam, struggle with West 261; Islamophobia 259; knowledge gaps 258; metaphors of destructive difference 260; misunderstandings of “war on terror” 258; “Muslim terrorism,” journalistic narratives of 259; oppositional imagery 259; political rhetoric, inflammation of 264; portrayals of Arabs in media 259; propaganda 257–58, 265; public, manipulation of 257–58; racial profiling, use of 263; stereotypes 264–65; threat intensification 260; wartime images of enemy 257; Western individuality, Eastern indistinguishability 260, 262, 263 social conventions and morality 46 social exchange theory (SET) 57 social groups in Iraq 70 Social Identity Theory 174–75 social movement framing: discourse of 235; processes of 234–35 social networks: analysis in counterinsurgency of 68–76; capture of Saddam Hussein 68, 70; social network theory 70–71, 75 social science knowledge, lack of 34 social scientific findings, derangement in misuse of 94–95, 95–96 social situation of storytelling 44–45 social solidarity of soldiers 89 social system functions 215 societal risk, mass media and 211 society, policing of 104, 110 Soldier Readiness Program (SRP) 63 Solomon, N. 257 Somalia 273; psychological operations in 151 Sorley, L. 11, 37 Soviet Union 196, 260; Ba’ath Party respect for 194; collapse of 192; Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 3, 115, 200; withdrawal from Afghanistan 200, 209 Space Command 193 Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) 170 Special Operations Media System-B (SOMS-B) 158 Special Operations (US) in Afghanistan 120 Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR) 26–28 stabilization effort in Afghanistan, dealing with 21–22, 22–23 Stahura, John 3, 245–55 standard operation procedures (SOP) 91 Stanford Prison Study 78, 80–83, 84
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Stanley, W. 109 Starnes, Colonel G.T. 216 Staub, E. 78, 86 Steger, M.B. 189 Stephenson, M.T. et al. 153 stereotypes 264–65 Stern, S. 367 Steuter, E. and Wills, D. 262 Steuter, Erin 3, 257–65 Stoll, D. 37 storytelling and narratives 44–45, 53 Stouffer, S. 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95 Stouffer, S et al. 56, 64 Strasser, S. 91, 93 Strauss, A. 57 Strauss, A.L. and Corbin, J. 272, 274 Strömbäck, J. and Dimitrio, D.V. 218 structural equation modeling (SEM) 153, 154– 55, 156–58, 160 structural symbolic interactionism 247 Stubbs, R. 36 Sulh (weekly newspaper) 151–52, 156, 157, 159 supply chains, armed interference with 167 support for war in US (2003–9) 296 Sutphin, Suzanne 2, 103–11 synthesis 218–19 systematic distortion 223 Tabatabai, Ahoo 3, 174–84 Tabb, W.K. 189 Taguba Report (2004) 84–85, 87 Tajfel, H. and Turner, J.C. 175 Tajfel, H. et al. 175 Taliban 3, 4; emergence in Pakistan of 200–201, 202–3; insurgency in Afghanistan 114–15; irregular war in Afghanistan 20, 21, 22, 24, 25–26, 28; overthrow in Afghanistan 120; psychological operations evaluation in OEF 149, 151; regrouping in Afghanistan and Pakistan 203–4, 208; rule in Afghanistan 115–16 Talielian, T. and Jaycox, L.H. 1 Talking Politics (Gamson, W.) 223 Teeple, G. 189, 190, 197 temporary duty status (TDY) 143 terrorist networks 71 Thabet, A.A.M. and Vostanis, P. 176 Thabet, A.A.M. et al. 175 Thomas, E. 89 Thompson, J. and Bunderson, J.S. 57 Thompson, S.K. 133 threat intensification and social construction of enemy 260 Time 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231 Tolvanen, E. and Jylha, M. 45, 46 Tosti, P. 110 Train, K.A. 259, 263 transitivity, concept of 74
322
transnational historical materialism: globalization and invasion of Iraq 190–91; reconsideration of 194–97 transparency 139–40 trust relationships 74 Tyson, Scott 12, 13, 14 undergraduate attitudes towards wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, study of 294–304; AfricanAmericans, relationship with armed forces 296–97; all-volunteer force (AVF), support among African Americans 296–97; analysis plan 299; casualties, war support as function of 304; changes in public opinion over time 295; criterion variables 299; demographic groups, differences in support among 296; discussion 303–4; hypotheses 298; justness, change in information about 295; legitimacy of war 296; measures 299; methods 298–99; military affiliation, support for war by 297–98, 299, 302, 304; military personnel, public opinion among 297; political ideology, support for war by 299, 302, 304; predictor variables 299; Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ) 295; Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets 297, 298, 299, 302; results 300–303; sample 298– 99; support for war (2003–9) 296; trends over time in war support 294–95; variations in war attitudes by social groups 295–98 United Nations 264; Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) 169; Development Group (UNDG) 128; High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) 168; Humanitarian Situation Report (2008) 169; Office for Project Services (UNOPS) 130–31; Office for the Cooprdination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) 126, 127, 128; Office of the Human Coordinator for Iraq (UNOHCI) 128; Population Division 168–69; Protective Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia 96; World Food Program 127 United States: in Afghanistan, who fights and how? 21–23, 29; anti-Muslim feeling in 263; backlash against Muslims in 262–64; Census 10; Department of Agriculture (USDA) 24; fighting right enemy right way in Afghanistan 20–21; foreign policy rethink, need for 16; home front 3–4; International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, US Bureau of 117; key role in Iraq and Afghanistan xx; material improvements, key to winning (US view) 35; support for war (2003–9) 296; USAID 24, 128 urban guerrilla warfare 61 Vaishnav, M. 22 Valasek, T. 23
INDEX
Valenciano, M. et al. 167, 169 value of information (VoI) 132–33 Van Baarda, T.A. 144 van der Pijl, K. 195 Van der Schriek, D. 205 Vanden Brook, T. 13 Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) 130 Vietnam War 86, 196, 273; psychological operations in 150–51 violence: extreme violence, far-reaching effects of 163; in Iraqi society 103; use by contractors and non-military personnel 145 volunteer forces, recruitment and retention of 2, 9–16; all-volunteer force (AVF), development of 10–11, 15; all-volunteer force (AVF), problems of operating 16; challenges for allvolunteer forces (AVFs) 10; citizen soldiers 11; Defense Department (US) 12, 13; demographic shift 13; deployments, pace and length of 14; Direct Combat Assignment Rule (1994) 13; economic draft 12; enlistment age 12; family stress 14; foreign policy rethink, need for 16; Gates Commission 10, 13; global war on terror (GWOT), recruitment of new troops in conditions of 11–13, 15–16; immigrants, recruitment of 12; manpower strategies 15–16; mental health toll on troops 14; military deployments disruptions of 14–15; military draft registration system 11; national service or conscription, choice of AVF over 10–11; 9/11 attacks on US, reliance on AVF forces in wake of 11; Post-9/11 GI Bill 15; Reserve and National Guard, reliance on 11; rest and retraining, need for 15; retention issues 13–15, 16; Selective Service 11; service in Iraq and Afghanistan 9–10; troop deployments, appraisal of continual nature of 9; wartime decline in recruitment 12; workfamily balance 14–15; youth propensity to serve, reduction in 13 Waisova, S. 144, 145 Wall Street Journal 222, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232 Wallace, Lieutenant General 142 Wardick, A. 117 warfare: asymmetric conflict, US history of 20; and burden of disease 164; Clausewitz on objectives xix; combat and stabilization, importance of concurrence in 22–23; combat veterans, combat stress and 89–90; decline in volunteer recruitment during 12; full spectrum warfare 65–66; future of military xxii–xxiii; global theater of xxi–xxii; images of enemy during 257; indirect health consequences of 163, 164–65, 171; insurgent
warfare 68–69; in Iraq, anti-war protest, debate on 238–39; just cause in xix; military action, reasons for 59–60; non-conventional warfare 1–2; within and outside for Pakistan 204–6; sociological concerns with xx; as temporary condition xix; trends over time in war support 294–95; variations in war attitudes by social groups 295–98; “wars among the people” xxi Wartella, E. and Jennings, N. 271 Washington Post 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232 Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. 68, 74 water supplies, damage to 167–68 Watson, G. 47 Watts, D.J. 74 The Web of Group Affiliations (Simmel, G.) 70 Weber, Max 68, 104, 110 Weigley, R. 21 Weiss, L. 190 Weissenstein, M. 119 Wellman, B. 73 Werner, C. and Schermelleh-Engel, K. 153 West: anti-Western violence, Western representations of 259; East-West, Christian-Muslim conflict, inevitability of 261; individuality in, Eastern indistinguishability and 260, 262, 263; Islam, image in Western media 259; Islam, struggle with 261 Westing, A.H. 164 WHBQ Memphis 216 White, J. 94 Whittaker, J.O. 151, 152 Wilder, A. 117 Williams, P.L. 137, 204 Wills, D. and Steuter, E. 264 Wills, Deborah 3, 257–65 Wilson, President 150 Winters, Anna 4, 283–92 Winton, H. 41 Winton, H. and Mets, D. 41 Witherell, C. and Edwards, C.P. 46 Wong, L. 56 Wooten, E.M. 13 work-family balance 14–15 World Council of Health Worker Organizations 171 World Health Organization (WHO) 163, 165, 166, 169 World War I 11, 40, 150, 164 World War II 11, 20, 40, 56, 79, 89, 150, 164, 197, 260, 295; psychological operations in 152 Wright, D.P. and Reese, T.R. 138, 139, 142
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Xe Worldwide (formerly Blackwater) 209 De Young, K. 10 Zagorin, A. 94 Zamost, S. 88 Zarocostas, J. 168 Zavis, A. 111
324
al-Zawahiri, Ayman 201, 204 Zimbardo, P. 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 86 Zimbardo, P. et al. 78 Zogby Survey 263 Zoroya, G. 12, 95 Zubaydah, Abu 204 Zweig, M. 12
