Deployed Soldiers and Social Science Academics
(Part 2 of 5)
edited by Rob W. Kurz, Small Wars Journal
This is the second installment of a five-part series. Each article was co-authored by one Army soldier/civilian and one university professor/academic as part of a joint research project. This project and product responds to the Army's objectives regarding the integration of cultural social sciences into its training and operations.
Civil-Affairs Confronts the "Weapon of the Weak"
Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq
by Dr. Bartholomew Dean, First Lieutenant Charles K. Bartles and Sergeant First Class Timothy B. Berger
Civil-Affairs Confronts the "Weapon of the Weak" (Full PDF Article)
In the elaboration of this essay, the authors have born in mind the need to inform Soldiers, scholars, policy makers, and the broader public at large, about a non-lethal military tactic that responded to the threat of "weapons of the weak" in rural Iraq, namely improvised explosive devices, commonly called IED's. While we readily concede the inherent limitations of the anti-IED tactic described below, it is argued that anthropological insight is vital to understanding the nature of power, which is essential for formulating clear rules of engagement for civil-military operations (CMO). This point is of particular import given that significant sectors of the US public, as well as the international community, have persuasively brought into question the oversight and administration of security services in theaters of operation, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, which many believe to be woefully inadequate. Anthropology provides us with the best vantage point for studying military operations in peacekeeping and in times of war, chaos and great human suffering.
A civil-military, non-lethal approach to the threat of IED activity (pre- and post-detonation) is, we posit, a viable strategy to responding to the changing character of contemporary armed conflict, including the multifaceted nature of terror. By no means a panacea for dealing with all IED activity, the tactic outlined below does provide us with useful clues to the complexities of armed conflict, as well as an actual case study that manifests the challenges posed by the US military's lack of cultural and linguistic skills necessary to sustain an effective, long-term anti-IED campaign in Iraq.
Civil-Affairs Confronts the "Weapon of the Weak" (Full PDF Article)
