CULTURAL IGNORANCE

I caught this story on NPR's Morning Edition and it fit in nicely with a report in my local paper.

First, the NPR story:

The U.S. military's lack of understanding about Iraqi culture helped create the conditions for the insurgency that U.S. forces face there, according to a military adviser who has written a new book about the insurgency.

Between November 2003 and September 2005, professor Ahmed Hashim worked with U.S. troops in Iraq. His job was to try to understand the insurgents and what motivates them. His new book is called Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq.

Hashim lists about 20 groups of insurgents, including nationalists, former Baathists, tribal-based insurgents and religious extremists. The groups say they want the United States out of Iraq, and they reject the U.S.-backed government, but they don't agree on what they do want.

"If we were out of the picture, some of the insurgent groups could engage in bloodshed against one another because they have such different and disparate political views of the future of Iraq," Hashim says.

Hashim, who teaches at the Naval War College, says he was surprised by how little the U.S. military understands about the culture, or "human terrain," of Iraq. That includes "societal networks, relations between tribes and within tribes, kinship ties... what is it people are fighting for?"

NPR provided a brief excerpt from the book and these groups stuck out for me:

Popular Resistance for the Liberation of Iraq. Issued a call on 26 June 2003 to all in the Arab and Islamic worlds to come and attack the the insurgents’ way of warfare United States in Iraq.

Iraqi Resistance and Liberation Command. Appeared in late April 2003. It is secular and nationalist but has denied that it is an extension of the defunct regime.

Al ‘Awdah (The Return). Came to prominence in mid-June 2003. It is made up of former security-service members and Iraqi armed forces personnel organized into cells distributed throughout cities such as Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi.

Higher Command of the Mujahideen in Iraq. This is one of the most active resistance groups in Iraq. It is unclear whether it is largely religious or nationalist, or a front for Saddam’s defunct regime. The group first emerged on 15 April 2003, when it issued a communiqué that stated it had 8,000 mujahideen (holy warriors) within its ranks.

National Front for the Liberation of Iraq. ... It issued its first communiqués in April 2003, and claimed that it had tried to assassinate Ahmed Chalabi but only succeeded in killing some of his supporters in an attack in Najaf.


All these groups became active in the late Spring or Summer of '03, the time when Bremer and some generals were asking for more troops, to no avail.

Now, the local story:

Huachuca turns out sensitive soldiers
GIs are taught how to avoid offending Iraqi population
By Carol Ann Alaimo
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona Published: 04.30.2006

Sgt. 1st Class Isham Mitchell doesn't want to be known as a "rude American" in Iraq. The Army doesn't want that either. So the service is stepping up efforts to teach soldiers like him how to mind their manners around Muslims.

In Southern Arizona and elsewhere, troops are learning how to get along better with locals in Iraq and Afghanistan — or, at least, to avoid offending them out of cultural ignorance.

At least 12,000 soldiers have been trained in Arabic culture since 2003, and the Army recently expanded the offerings.

For soldiers like Mitchell, who has served two tours in Iraq, the training has been an eye-opener. "There were a lot of things I didn't know going over there the first time," said the 37-year-old intelligence analyst at Fort Huachuca, who soon will be teaching cultural awareness to other soldiers.

Little changes can make a big difference in how U.S. troops are perceived, he said.

For example, he's now careful to avoid making eye contact with Arab women and to speak only to men. And he makes it a point to accept offers of hospitality, such as a meal or a cup of tea, after learning that refusing such gestures is an extreme insult.

Sgt. 1st Class Brady Warren, another trainee, was shocked to learn that something as simple as setting one's dirty boots on an Arabic newspaper can be a source of umbrage. The reason: Many Arabic papers contain some mention of Allah, so fouling the paper is seen as dishonoring God.


I doubt that this will have much effect now that we've been there for over 3 years but I suppose it is worth the effort.