Anthropology in Conflict: An Exchange

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Anthropology in Conflict: An Exchange

Editor’s note The new US Army counter-insurgency manual issued in December 2006 has stimulated a vigorous debate over the role of anthropologists as professionals, and anthropology as a discipline, in such operations. But counter-insurgency is just one example where anthropologists and the military might find themselves involved in ‘wars amongst the people’. Ethnic cleansing and sectarian conflict – the dark side of ethnic and cultural identity – throw up their own, if related, set of theoretical, ethical and practical challenges. Survival has invited some of the participants in the debate over counter-insurgency, and other scholars and practitioners, to discuss an anthropological perspective on ethnic and sectarian conflict and its implications for practice and policy. We take, as a starting point, the personal experiences of an anthropologically trained US Marine officer, Rye Barcott, in Bosnia, Fallujah and the Horn of Africa. Four anthropologists respond, and Barcott offers concluding remarks.

Marine Experiences and Anthropological Reflections Rye Barcott In 2000, the Human Rights Commission of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) decided to draft brief position papers outlining anthropological perspectives on several subjects. James Peacock, a member of the commission, was assigned the task of drafting the position paper on ethnic cleansing.1 He enlisted as joint authors Carrie Matthews, a graduate student in comparative literature at the University of North Carolina (UNC); Ellen Rye Barcott, the founder and president of Carolina for Kibera, served on active duty in the Marine Corps in Bosnia, the Horn of Africa and Iraq. Currently a graduate student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School, he is a Catherine B. Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow and a member of the Harvard University Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. Survival | vol. 50 no. 3 | June–July 2008 | pp. 127–162

DOI 10.1080/00396330802173149

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Messer, another member of the committee and senior analyst of humanrights issues; and me, then an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Since then, I founded Carolina for Kibera, a communitybased non-profit organisation that promotes ethnic reconciliation and youth leadership in Kenya, and served as a captain in the US Marine Corps in Bosnia, the Horn of Africa and Iraq. Our draft statement for the AAA grew out of the association’s Declaration on Human Rights adopted in June 1999. The declaration, inter alia, opposes suppression of diversity by powerful states or factions and denounces claims by such entities of superior cultural values, which may lead to ethnic cleansing (the attempt to create an ethnically homogenous land by removing people with distinct cultural identities). Our statement on ethnic cleansing notes that anthropology, as a discipline, can help combat ethnic cleansing through: prevention (through education, socialization for tolerance, and alertness to conditions favorable to ethnic strife); intervention (spot-lighting and monitoring cases and intervening to save lives and promote peace); and reconciliation (post-conflict healing and rebuilding or building interethnic linkages to break cycles of violence).

Anthropologists’ close contact with cultures and groups can lead them to identify flash points of emerging strife. They can contribute to diplomacy, especially at the local and community levels, where their fieldwork places them to work closely with relevant factions. They can contribute to healing processes, such as truth and reconciliation projects in Africa or similar actions in Guatemala and Argentina. Forensic anthropologists have exhumed and identified bodies of victims of violence; cultural anthropologists have aided in recovering human remains and in helping survivors come to terms with their traumatic memories. The statement we drafted in 2000 does not attempt to survey the literature on ethnic cleansing or to report what anthropologists have in fact done to address this issue. It rather characterises a perspective that reflects the distinctive and prevailing approaches of anthropology, including ethno-

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graphic fieldwork, ideals of holism, and dialectical reasoning. We submitted the statement to the AAA Committee on Human Rights and it was discussed, but so far as we know it has not been further used by anthropologists or military and government leaders. When we wrote the statement on ethnic cleansing in 2000, I was an undergraduate and a Marine Corps officer candidate. I was not an anthropologist, but I valued anthropology as a discipline that could help us better understand human nature and war. Assuming that much of my own imminent military career would be focused on intervening in places rife with ethnic conflict, I focused my studies on the Rwandan genocide. In my final year, I created and taught a course on Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide to other undergraduates. Afterwards, I set off for Kenya to learn from youth leaders in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, home to over 700,000 people, and a place that had seen significant violence among different ethnic and religious groups. During the final year of my undergraduate studies, I started a non-profit charity in Kibera. One week after returning from Kibera, I began basic Marine officer training in Quantico, Virginia. Days later came the terrorist attacks of 11 September. As my 220 fellow lieutenants and I watched the attacks unfold on TV in our barracks, we discussed what the events would mean for our futures. One member of my squad, an amicable evangelical Christian, viewed the attacks in a stark light. ‘This will create the next holy wars’, he said. ‘This is the clash of civilisations.’ Many of my Marine colleagues shrugged off his comment. But it made me think about just how easy it would be for many people to view such horrific events as an inevitable outcome of religious differences. My study of ethnic conflict gave me an appreciation of just how malleable collective identities can be, especially under the pressure of trauma and tragedy. Over the next five years, as both a Marine and volunteer non-profit executive, I witnessed the ravages and ruin of ethnic conflict in the Horn of Africa, Bosnia and Iraq. These experiences reinforced some of the central points we tried to develop in the statement on ethnic cleansing. More often than not, political and economic factors – not primarily religious difference – are deeply involved in instigating ethnic conflict. Yet, once ethnic conflict

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begins, collective identities often are manipulated in ways that intensify and prolong the violence. Therefore, early intervention in ethnic conflict is essential to preserve diversity and stability. Anthropologists and other experts who deeply understand and appreciate the subculture and ethnic groups of a country can help prevent conflict by identifying incipient ethnic tensions. Once collective ethnic violence begins, anthropologists can also advise political and military leaders and help them devise and monitor reconciliation efforts.

Reconciliation in Bosnia As a Marine and student of anthropology, I have come to understand the potential unintended consequences of intervening in ethnic conflicts, but am always more persuaded by the perils of delayed intervention. The Bosnian war lasted over three years before international intervention, compelled partly by ghastly images of concentration camps, helped bring it to an end. By the time of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, most areas of Bosnia had deteriorated into ethnically segregated enclaves that were hostile towards each other. The political forces that instigated the civil war in Bosnia had triumphed in purging regions of certain ethnic groups. The Dayton Accords established two separate entities: Serbs resided predominately in the Republic of Srpska, Croats and Bosniak Muslims in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. When I drove across Bosnia in 2003, it was easy to identify the Croat communities by the Croatian national flags that adorned cars, homes and stores. I spoke with many Bosnian Croats who still dreamed of having their communities annexed by Croatia. The Bosnian war is an example of how protracted ethnic violence makes ethnic identities more rigid and intolerant, and why efforts to reconcile and reintegrate ethnic groups often fail. That same year, while I was serving with NATO, I met with Dragan, a blunt, middle-aged policeman, to discuss security problems. Our first meeting took place in a hotel in Visegrad above the bridge that inspired Nobel Laureate Ivo Andric’s epic The Bridge on the Drina. At the outbreak

Protracted ethnic violence makes ethnic identities more rigid

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of the war, Serbs rounded up their Bosniak Muslim neighbours, herded them at gunpoint to the middle of the bridge, and executed them. ‘Before the war’, Dragan told me, ‘tourists came here. Now no one comes. You think we Serbs are animals, don’t you?’ After reminding myself that my loaded Beretta pistol was still tucked beneath my camouflage blouse, I responded, ‘I know you are an animal, because I have heard stories of your slivovitz [plum brandy].’ Dragan slapped the table and roared with laughter. Like many middle-aged Serb men in Bosnia, Dragan had fought and killed. He had lost loved ones in the war. Although he now had a stable job, a wife, children and some security, his memories stirred unrest. According to Dragan, no Bosniak Muslims had returned to settle in Visegrad. It was still spotted by heaps of moss-covered rubble that had been Muslim houses. Over half the town’s population was Muslim before the war. Now, only a pocket of Bosniak Muslims resided about 30km west, in Gorazde. In his most unguarded moments, Dragan spoke of his willingness to fight again. ‘Why do they need Gorazde?’, he asked rhetorically. ‘Sometimes wars are meant to be finished.’ Dragan believed he battled in a righteous, inevitable fight between civilisations on a fault line between the East and the West. During most of our meetings, he even used the phrase ‘clash of civilisations’. As I spoke with Serbs and Muslims, I saw how many Bosnians interpreted their history through their own ethnically coloured lens. Serbs like Dragan spoke about how the Austrians blew up parts of the Andric bridge during the First World War. Few Serbs ever mentioned the horror of the Serbian-led massacre of Muslims that had occurred on the bridge in 1992. Since I returned home from Bosnia, many Americans have asked me if war would break out again. Some believe conflict is inevitable. I frequently hear comments such as ‘don’t those people just hate each other? They have been killing each other for years.’ I question the concept of ‘primordial hatreds’ implicit in such comments. Culture is not static. It is not immutable. It can be transformed and made compatible with other cultures, although doing so might take many years. Andric’s Bridge on the Drina, for example, depicts decades of something beyond tolerance among Muslims, Christian Serbs, Sephardic Jews and the Roma people in Visegrad. These communities

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intermarried and stood with one another during the regular floods of the Drina in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus, central to the question of whether or not there will be more conflict in places like Bosnia is the issue of reconciliation. Anthropologists can play a crucial role in promoting reconciliation following ethnic violence. But could a man like Dragan ever reconcile his apparent hatred for Bosniak Muslims? Possibly, but the prospect is unlikely, given the context in which he has lived his life so far. Dragan returned to an ethnically exclusive town. He did not use computers or surf the Internet. He did not speak English, or any other language aside from Serbo-Croatian. He claimed to only read ‘Serbian’ books. Few, if any, forces existed to promote reconciliation or erase his hatred. Sadly, Dragan is not an anomaly. Within each of the main ethnic groups – Serb, Croat and Bosniak Muslim – I met similar middle-aged men who had fought during the war and returned to isolated, ethnically exclusive worlds where they could relive, rationalise and embellish their distorted histories. Although Dragan’s fatalistic view was an obstacle for Bosnia’s reintegration, it did not doom it. I left Bosnia believing that if an international force prevents conflict long enough for Dragan’s generation to die off, ethnic integration and the prospects for long-term stability may be possible. Younger Bosnians were often exposed to horrific tales of bloodletting, yet they also seemed very connected with the rest of the world, thanks in part to the Internet and to the international recognition that had resulted from the war. The young people with whom I spoke seemed more willing to travel and communicate across the ethnic boundaries that had become so pronounced in the years of violence.

Sectarian violence in Iraq Violence in Iraq is often characterised as sectarian, because it involves political, ethnic and religious components of identity. I witnessed what appeared to be examples of this while serving in Fallujah from September 2005 to March 2006. Fallujah sits within the ‘Sunni Triangle’; over 90% of the native population is Sunni by religion. There are also complex tribal, clan and other affiliations which US military personnel did not understand well during my tour there.

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On 22 February 2006, al-Qaeda operatives blew up the holy Shia alAskariyya Mosque in Samara. Within a week of this attack, the handful of Shia families residing in Fallujah began receiving death threats, often in the form of fliers posted at night on their doors. Then a Shia man was shot in the head and killed in broad daylight on the main thoroughfare in Fallujah. No one was apprehended for the attack. Most of the remaining Shia residents of Fallujah fled quickly afterward. Many of these Shia families resettled in the predominately Shia areas of eastern Baghdad. Meanwhile, we began to receive reports of Sunnis leaving Naser Wa Salaam, a small town of perhaps 10,000 residents 20km east of Fallujah that was one of the few Shia enclaves in the Sunni Triangle. The Sunni Triangle had in effect become ethnically cleansed, although it did not appear to be a centralised, coordinated effort. ‘We are preparing for the long war’, Sheikh Omar, a local cleric in Fallujah, remarked to me. ‘But it will not begin in full until you leave.’ I met with Sheikh Omar each week to discuss the fragile security situation in the city. Like many of the elites in Fallujah, Sheikh Omar served as a senior military officer under Saddam. In return for over 35 years’ service, he was given a nice flat in Fallujah in which to retire. Sheikh Omar maintained contacts with many of the insurgent groups, in large part for his own survival. Like so many Iraqis, he lived in a climate of deception. He was trying to play off one partisan group against another so that

The handful of Shia families in Fallujah began receiving death threats

he could eventually align himself with the winning side. He had a particular interest in accessing some of our lucrative service contracts for US bases in the area. This was his principal motive for meeting with me. But Sheikh Omar also rejected radical Islamic ideologies embraced by groups such as al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. He saw these radicalised groups as proxies of foreign powers inimical to Iraqi Sunni interests. Still, even though the al-Askariyya bombing had all the markings of an al-Qaeda attack, Sheikh Omar viewed it through a Sunni lens. ‘This was the work of Iran’, he concluded. ‘The Shi’ites are blowing up their own mosque to justify further subjugation of us Sunnis.’

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How did views towards Shia communities differ across Sunni subcultures? How did the world views of various Sunni sub-cultures differ? What did these groups value? These were just a few questions I would have liked to have asked an anthropologist with expertise on Sunni communities in Iraq when I was in Fallujah with Sheikh Omar and other community leaders. Anthropologists obviously need to have ethical concerns about doing work that may directly serve any government at the expense of nonviolent indigenous people. But anthropologists with expertise on Iraq and the Middle East can certainly enlighten the public debate. Objective analysis in Iraq from academia could help create a more balanced and accurate perspective for governments engaged in Iraq so that changes can be made to prevent a full-blown civil war. At the very least, it is important to understand the many different Iraqi perspectives on the war through voices like those of Sheikh Omar. As part of the counter-insurgency in Iraq, I knew we needed better understanding of local sub-cultures, tribal politics and history, not to mention a better understanding of the shifting Iraqi perspectives on the war. After all, a counter-insurgency is a battle for the support of the local population. If one does not have an adequate grasp of who that local population is and what motivates it, the counterinsurgency is fundamentally flawed.

Ethnic conflict in Kenya When I travelled n 2000 to Kibera in Kenya to learn about the ethnic violence that had erupted periodically, I rented a small, eight-by-eight-foot shack and lived in the slum for five weeks. There I befriended and interviewed many young men who had taken part in the violence. I was initially surprised by how little ethnic or religious animosity the youth in Kibera had toward one another, despite the history of periodic violence among groups. My neighbour Otieno, for example, was a 25-yearold msukuma mkokoteni – a casual day labourer who moves goods in a large wooden cart powered only by himself. It is one of the least desirable jobs in the slum. But Otieno had not finished grade school and spoke only rudimentary English. His options for employment were severely limited. Otieno was a Luo by ethnicity, and he was a devout Christian. When I first met him,

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he gave me a vigorous handshake and said in Swahili, ‘I have never seen a white guy living here. But if you are God-fearing, then we can be friends.’ Otieno had lived in Kibera for over eight years. Out of economic necessity, he shared a small mud room with three teenaged men. Each paid the equivalent of $2 per month in rent. No matter how desperate Otieno became in Kibera, he would never return to his ‘motherland’, a farm in western Kenya where he grew up. ‘There is nothing there’, he said. ‘There will always be more opportunity in Nairobi, even if I am starving.’ It took some time, but Otieno eventually spoke to me about the ethnic clashes of 1997. He was initially reluctant to participate in the strife. He did not know many of the Muslim Nubians who lived in the adjacent enclave just a thousand metres away, and he had no reason to hate them. Nevertheless, one night his friends called him to join a group of two dozen other Luo men. An older man spoke to the group in Luo. The man did not try to appeal to the group members’ ethnic pride or sense of duty. ‘He just told us to take these machetes’, Otieno recalled. ‘If we took the machetes, we also got 1,000 shillings [approximately US$13]. That’s a lot of money. None of us turned it down.’ According to Otieno, the man told the group to gather the next day at a local meeting point favoured by politicians in the Luo part of Kibera. The next morning, Otieno joined a mob of perhaps 30 Luo youth. A middle-aged Luo man who participated as a ‘youth’ in the local political party emerged from the group and established himself as the leader. ‘The leader said, “We must defend our land”’, Otieno recalled. ‘He told us that Nubian landlords wanted to charge Luos more rent.’ The group walked along the old British railroad track that divides the slum. They confronted a group of Nubian men near the only bridge over the railroad tracks, a place called Darajani massif. Many of the Luo men fled before fighting, but Otieno feared that he might have his money taken away from him if he ran away, so he stayed. The groups postured toward one another, shouting threats back and forth. Eventually, they clashed. Otieno ran toward the Nubian mob but slipped and fell as he approached. As he stood up, a man sliced him across the arm with a machete, leaving a deep gash across his right bicep. A friend helped evacuate him from the makeshift battleground. A few Nubian and

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Luo youth died that day. The next day, Kenyan police and paramilitary forces descended into the slum with tear gas and truncheons. The government forces kicked down doors, searched houses and tackled meandering youth. They temporarily ended the violence in Kibera, but they enraged many residents in the process. Stories of police theft, corruption and abuse abound in Kibera. Indeed, Otieno held more enmity toward the police than he did toward the Nubians he fought. He liked to tell a joke popular in Kibera: If you come across a thug and a policeman, choose the thug. The thug, after all, will just take your possessions. The policeman will take your money and possessions and then throw you in jail. As for the Nubians, Otieno summarised his views to me one night over chai: We fought them for money. That is all there is to it. I really have no problem with the Nubians. Even Muslims, I can respect, because they too are Godfearing. It’s people that have no God that I can never trust. If a politician came to me and offered me another 1,000 shillings to fight Nubians, or Kikuyus, or whoever, I hope I would turn it down. But, you know, that’s a lot of money. I really don’t know if I would.

In the decade between 1997 and the explosive violence following the December 2007 elections, two major episodes of ethnic conflict took place in Kibera, with dozens of residents killed. Both episodes occurred during election years and involved calls to reduce rents and establish land-tenure rights. The protests over rent hikes took on an ethnic character, as many of the landlords self-identified as Nubians while those who were renting and rioting were mostly Luos. Each episode lasted less than three days before government forces charged into Kibera and ended the violence by force. While the quick, heavy-handed response of the government did nothing to address the root cause of the violence, it prevented the ethnic divisions from growing. Although the 11 ‘villages’ in Kibera have unique ethnic compositions, Nubians, Luos, Kikuyus and other ethnic groups continued to intermarry and live together. Many commentators and observers (including myself)

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have at times characterised the violence in Kibera as ‘ethno-religious’. But this characterisation is in some ways misleading. Ethnic and religious differences have the potential to fuel conflict in Kibera, but the principal causes of violence have remained economic and political. These forces came to a head in the early months of 2008. Kenya struggled through the aftermath of a deeply flawed presidential election involving an incumbent president from the Kikuyu ethnic group, Mwai Kibaki, and a contender from the Luo ethnic group, Raila Odinga. Violence erupted in Kibera and other communities in Kenya where Luos and Kikuyus resided in close proximity. In Kibera, criminal opportunists joined groups of hundreds of disenfranchised, partisan young men. Large swathes of the slum were burned to the ground. Many Kikuyus were chased from their households. The westernmost villages in Kibera, where Carolina for Kibera’s youth centre and medical clinic are located, were essentially purged of Kikuyu families. Unlike previous episodes of violence, the government was itself in disarray and did not intervene to stop the bloodletting and ethnic cleansing. The longer Kenya suffered without a political settlement, the deeper the ethnic animosities became. While

Large swathes of the slum were burned to the ground

the vast majority of Kenyans in Kibera and beyond have tried to eschew the violence, the level of ethnic divisiveness in Kenya in January and February 2008 was unprecedented. As an organisation, Carolina for Kibera responded by providing emergency medical relief and broadcasting messages of peace and unity through radio, text messages and billboards. While I played some small role in the active debates, these efforts were primarily designed and implemented by Kibera residents. Carolina for Kibera also tries to emphasise to the public stories like that of Adoli, a Luo member of its sports programme. At great personal risk Adoli sheltered and protected a 14-year-old Kikuyu neighbour whose home was burned. Adoli recalled his courageous actions to me this way: ‘I knew I was risking my life. But if I did not protect my neighbour and something bad happened, it would haunt me for the rest of my life. In leadership, people take risks. Everything starts with us.’

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Using stories such as Adoli’s accomplishes multiple things, but not without some cost. Such stories help to clarify impacts of violence by personalising them, and such personalisation reflects the strengths of ethnography. Ethnography pulls the reader into an event or argument and forces that reader to care. This is evocation, a powerful potential outcome of ethnographic writing. The downside is that such stories teeter toward preciousness or journalistic cliché. Is this person, Adoli, a believable everyman, or truly an unusual individual who did an uncommonly kind thing? Can his story be accurate and compelling enough to convey the complexities of ethnic politicking? Organisations like Carolina for Kibera, as well as peace, community, cooperation and inclusion, happen through myriad contributions by individuals like Adoli. Those small and great acts become part of the discourse that fosters tolerance and reconciliation. I learned this form of participatory development by studying anthropology as well as serving in the military. Informed by each experience, our work in Kibera continues today. Provided it remains rooted in the community, it will continue for generations to come. *

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As a Marine officer, I often wished we had more Marines with exposure to cultural anthropology. I believe my rudimentary studies in the discipline as an undergraduate were vital to my modest success as both a Marine and the founder of a non-profit charity. During my first summer in Kibera, I used participant observation and two years studying Swahili to try to understand how young people lived in one of Africa’s largest slums and why they too often took part in violence. Although many Kibera residents are hostile to outsiders, people opened up to me and helped me understand their lives and communities. Last year, on one of my frequent return visits, my friend Otieno explained why he had been so candid with me: ‘You tried to speak our language, and you lived with us as we live each day.’ Anthropology and ethnography teach us to listen well, ask good questions, and develop a broad yet critical understanding of ethnic conflict.

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The world is rife with armed conflict. At the centre of most wars around the world is identity, especially as it is expressed by ethnicity and religion. In order to make the world a better, safer and more equitable place for all citizens, those of us blessed with the good fortune of being born in relatively affluent and peaceful Western nations have a role to play. We must not allow ethnic conflicts to continue unabated, turn a blind eye to opportunities to help prevent war, or instigate further turmoil through misguided military interventions. I am pleased to learn that in the last two years the US Marine Corps has added a basic ‘anthropological lens’ to many of its schools. At the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, for example, mid-level Marine Corps officers take a course in Culture and Interagency Operations. This course is a major part of the ten-month curriculum and consists of 34 case studies as well as language instruction in Arabic, French, Chinese or Korean. Perhaps now there is a good chance that my Marine colleague who saw a ‘clash of civilisations’ as he watched the events of 11 September play out on television in our barracks in Quantico is developing a ‘Marine Corps lens’ that recognises that the host-nation people are the so-called ‘centre of gravity’ in most modern military interventions, and these civilian populations must be protected and have confidence in their government for peace to prevail.

Notes 1

The statement is available as an annex to the online version of this article at http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/00396330802173180.

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Reflections and Questions James Peacock Two sets of questions are suggested by Rye Barcott’s account of his experiences with and reflections on ethnic conflict. Both entail juxtaposing his account with the summative AAA statement. The first set addresses perspective: what perspective is expressed by the Marine experience on the one hand and an anthropological statement on the other, and what is the relationship between the two? The second set addresses substance, or the essence of ethnic cleansing. The first asks about our viewpoints, the second about ‘the thing itself’. In both instances, Barcott’s experiences can prod our thinking, as it did his. There are many similarities between Barcott’s actions and the announced anthropological perspective. Except for the pistol nestled in his fatigues (and even that is sometimes present for some anthropologists in the field), he acts very anthropologically in Bosnia, Kibera and Iraq. We could substitute the word ‘anthropologist’ for Rye in his described experiences and the word ‘Marine’ in our summary statement without great damage or distortion; that is, in his roles as Marine or as community organiser in Kibera, he works and thinks quite anthropologically, as well as militarily and organisationally. While his mission is set by the Marines, his approach is influenced by anthropology.

Disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives The AAA statement represents a disciplinary perspective. How is it useful and not useful to focus on a single discipline, anthropology? From a military, diplomatic and humanitarian or simply human (e.g. victim’s) viewpoint, what are some possibilities and limitations of anthropological contributions? The holistic and cultural emphases seem most distinctive

James Peacock is Kenan Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A former president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), he is currently chairing an AAA committee to examine appropriate relations between anthropologists and the defence/intelligence community. In recent years he has participated in the New Century Scholars project on sectarian and ethnic conflict, resulting in a book, Identity Matters: Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict (2007).

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for anthropologists, compared, say, to economists, who focus on money, or political scientists, who focus on government. Lines blur, of course, as each discipline informs the other and each aspect influences the other. Cultural identity and poverty or secessionist politics interrelate. Hence, a perspective should be informed by a certain holism. So should practice. Barcott’s obviously is. He sees Dragan in his ethnic, religious, social, economic, political and military situation: in short, anthropologically. This may sound like simple common sense, but disciplinary training can broaden or narrow, support or undermine common sense in both perspective and practice. A World Bank economist tells how a certain measure proposed in Russia was rejected until an anthropologist talked to families to see how that measure would affect them; then this family context became part of the successful implementation, whereas an abstracted individualistic and legalistic approach had failed. Does every practice, then, require anthropology and an anthropologist? Not necessarily, for the work itself can teach a certain holism if one is open to it. Consider three examples of military officers who embraced this perspective. General Anthony Zinni, the former head of US Central Command, displayed anthropological awareness of culture during negotiations with Palestinians and Israelis in 2002. Crisostomo Bas, a major in the Phillipine army who is now a ‘peace fellow’, attempted to transform his military work with the Moro resistance in the southern Philippines into negotiation and reconstruction by studying at

Practitioners gravitate toward a kind of anthropological holism

our peace/conflict centre at the University of North Carolina. Lieutenant-Colonel A. Scott Madding, one of the founders of the US Special Forces, built in cultural understanding and language learning as part of the training.1 These examples suggest that practitioners gravitate toward a kind of anthropological holism. Though pressure for closure and results may push toward identifying and manipulating single factors, such as providing material aid or supporting a certain group or person, commonsensical wisdom and intuition teaches holism at least as background knowledge.

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Some highly regarded anthropologists were among the first to develop and use the concept of holism in their own work. ‘Seeing the native point of view’ was famously expressed as an anthropological tenet by Bronislaw Malinowski in characterising his pioneering fieldwork among the Trobriand Islanders during the First World War, and generations of fieldworkers support his point. During the Second World War, many anthropologists worked with the military to grasp the native viewpoint when the ‘native’ was the enemy – work termed ‘psychological warfare’. Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, which some Japanese credit with shaping US occupation policy, advised sustaining sacred symbols, including the emperor, as part of the transition to a new social order. In this history, one traces a movement from fieldwork, learning a native viewpoint through holistic participation, to application of those insights in military and administrative practice. In fact, fieldwork itself is also practice: it inevitably entails both learning and application. Virtually all fieldwork entails engagement. When I studied the Indonesian Muslim movement Muhammadiya in 1970, I was a participant observer in training camps for branch leaders, after which I was invited to speak at many branch gatherings. I offered a critique of the organisation, which may or may not have had impact but at least applied my research. A single discipline such as anthropology is obviously limited, even if it is ‘holistic’ in outlook, because it cannot include the many specialised branches of knowledge and experiences of practice. Anthropology can be refreshingly down-to-earth by focusing on behaviour instead of esoteric doctrine, as when E.E. Evans Pritchard tersely distinguished Muslims from Christians by saying that the first worship by removing their shoes and wearing their caps while the second keep on their shoes but remove their caps. Yet Islamologists and Christologists are needed for scriptural understanding. Similarly, field-hardened pragmatism can enrich and temper models ranging from economics and medicine to policy-administration training and bureaucratic practice. Yet seat-of-the-pants fieldworkers who become practitioners need training not only in other disciplines but also in policymaking and negotiation practice, ranging from simple rules such as ‘bring all parties to the table when crafting an agreement’ to yet craftier

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insights coming from psychoanalysis.2 Again, fieldwork, like practice, can temper doctrines. By shifting to a problem rather than a disciplinary perspective, we gain a focus on the problem, which naturally draws on a plurality of disciplines. This is obvious, but the effect is notable. Here is an example: I teach the core course for all entering students in a doctoral programme in anthropology, and I participate in a core course for all students in a master’s programme in our interdisciplinary peace centre. The two groups are approximately the same size, and the students are about the same age. The discipline group learns the first century of the discipline and gets involved in the personalities and conflicts of that history. The peace group is from varied disciplines and is focused on an issue, conflict, which they approach pragmatically, bringing to the table anything of relevance from their varied disciplines and disregarding the histories and conflict, including gossip, of each discipline. Comparing the two groups, I am impressed by both, but differently. The anthropologists absorb from the ethnographic approach a considerable sensitivity to diverse situations and perspectives (the heritage of their discipline) while the peace fellows bring much of that sensitivity and marry it to pragmatism, wedding themselves to no discipline but to what works to resolve conflict. What conceptual, logistical or ethical issues are implied by cooperation between a discipline or a set of disciplines with any active effort, military or diplomatic, educational or cultural, aimed at curtailing ethnic conflict? The ethics guidelines of the American Anthropological Association, a code approved in 1998, can be summed up as ‘do no harm’. ‘Do no harm’ implies ‘watch and learn, but do not interfere’. However, the association also has a human-rights statement, which can be summed up as ‘do good’. What if ethnicity A is destroying B: should one simply watch? If one engages, how? The ethics guidelines describe and prescribe various peaceful means. What about military action? What if the military are the peacekeepers and in keeping the peace they destroy aggressors or dissidents to save others? Since Vietnam, the stance of many anthropologists has been to avoid engagement or relationship with the military or intelligence, or even to condemn such engagement. Some argue, however, that if the military can work more effectively in peacekeeping with anthropological information (about local

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cultures, for example), it is more ethical to provide good information than to leave the peacekeepers with none or with bad information.3 Hence, ‘smart cards’ – pocket-sized cards – are used to summarise culturally relevant information for soldiers in the field. A few anthropologists are experimenting with such efforts at facilitating military work that is presumably aimed at peace.4

Ethnic cleansing Looking back, our statement seems to focus primarily on ethnicity as such. Perhaps we need to grasp better a range of aspects, from economic to religious, implicated in ethnic conflict. One might take more account of Paul Collier’s study of the role of economic resources,5 but also of ideational aspects and identity, notably sectarian identities. What is the difference between ‘sectarian’ and ‘ethnic’? For a start, ethnic tends to look backward, at origins and heritage, while sectarian looks forward, at destinies and possibilities.6 This distinction is crucial in assessing conflict. Dragan’s hatred of Muslims merges both, yet Islam or Christianity offer the opportunity to convert, where a purely ethnic heritage is given at birth. Otieno, a ‘devout Christian’, says to Barcott, ‘I have never seen a white guy living here. But if you are God-fearing, then we can be friends.’ Religious commonality seemingly trumps ethnic difference here. I found this true in my relations with Muhammadiya, even though we differed in both ethnicity and religion: they were Muslim and Indonesian, mostly Javanese; I was Christian and white. While the religious distinction was often noted by their asking if I truly believed in the Trinity (compared to Islamic monotheism), we shared an Abrahamic tradition and an ethical framework and practice that contrasted with the Hindu–Buddhist–animist perspective of much Javanese culture. By focusing on ‘ethnic’ alone, we trap ourselves into accepting as given and unchangeable existing divisions and identities, whereas if we expand our view to include sectarian or other visions of possibilities (including economic and entrepreneurial opportunities), we can work toward change. *

*

*

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Our statement was written before 11 September and the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Barcott’s experiences reflect these later developments. Juxtaposing these recent experiences reminds us to think historically. In the late nineteenth century, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje ended the 30-year Aceh war by focusing on Islamic leaders: a sectarian dimension. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Aceh secession has again been an issue in Indonesia, fuelled again by sectarian commitments. The British famously solved rebellion and insurgency in Malaya by supporting villages that denied insurgents support. Singapore seems to solve the problem by nurturing cross-sectarian and cross-ethnic identifications. In Iraq and Afghanistan, however, al-Qaeda as an external, international network inflames and supports internal ethnic and sectarian divides. If diminishing the deaths of local people is a goal, such experiences and insights remain relevant. Looking back a century and to the recent past, including Barcott’s experiences, reveals another gap in our statement: the influence of external agencies, whether diplomacy or terrorism or the military. As an anthropologist, I often wish we would emulate Marines in getting the job done. We actually

I often wish we would emulate Marines in getting the job done

do get really tough jobs done in fieldwork – that is, in research, discovery – but we become academic when facing the task of applying knowledge to situations of change. We often stop with perspectives, leaving action to the Marines. Facing an issue like ethnic cleansing, one must of course comprehend the situation and not rush in like a bull in a china shop. But we should also keep in mind that in more than a hundred years of anthropological fieldwork by perhaps a hundred thousand anthropologists in every corner of the world, often in volatile situations where the anthropologist is intimately involved yet a lone outsider frequently unprotected by military or civil forces or authorities, there have been only a few instances of anthropologists igniting conflict or being killed as a result of it. One might attribute this record to the go-slow process of fieldwork (one gradually gets to know one’s hosts rather than barging in, as newcomers occasionally

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have done). Juxtaposing our somewhat formal and cautious disciplinary perspective with Barcott’s compelling and immediate experience is a small step toward that end.

Notes Chalmer Archer, Jr, Green Berets in the Vanguard: Inside Special Forces, 1953–1963 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001). 2 Vamik Vokkan, Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). 3 Montgomery McFate, ‘Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relationship’, Military Review, March–April 2005, pp. 18–22. 4 Kerry Fosher, ‘Sources and Methods: Doing Anthropology About and In Security Organizations’, paper 1

presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Vancouver, BC, 2006. 5 Paul Collier, V.L. Elliott, Harvard Hegre, Anke Hoeffler, Marta ReynalQuerol and Nicholas Sambanis, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy; A World Bank Policy Research Report (Washington DC: World Bank, 2003). 6 See James L. Peacock, Patricia M. Thornton and Patrick B. Inman, Identity Matters: Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict (New York: Berghahn, 2007).

Anthropology and the White Man’s Burden Roberto J. González When the last Soviet tanks rumbled out of Afghanistan in February 1989, few in the United States expressed much concern about the country’s future stability. American politicians were too busy celebrating the victory of mujahadeen fighters who had received $3 billion in weapons and support from the CIA-backed Pakistani intelligence agency to rout the Soviets.

Roberto J. González is Associate Professor of Anthropology at San Jose State University. He is author of Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca (2001) and editor of Anthropologists in the Public Sphere: Speaking Out on War, Peace, and American Power (2004). His articles ‘Towards Mercenary Anthropology?’ and ‘Human Terrain: Past, Present, and Future Applications’ (both in Anthropology Today) critically examine anthropological collaboration in counter-insurgency work.

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Anthropologist Ashraf Ghani was among a handful of people who publicly spoke of the need to stabilise Afghanistan. Hours after the Soviet withdrawal, he implored the George H.W. Bush administration to stop shipping arms into the chaotic region. He warned of reports ‘from inside Afghanistan [that] also tell of Pakistani generals who have been urging resistance commanders to attack the cities, regardless of the bloodbath’, and of an imminent ‘slaughtering of civilians’. Ghani urged the UN to initiate reconstruction, noting that ‘aside from the nine years of Soviet occupation, Afghanistan can boast of nearly 300 years of recorded history of self-rule’.1 US and UN officials ignored Ghani’s prophetic words. Following a devastating civil war among mujahadeen factions (whose leaders occasionally appealed to ethnic identity and religion for support), the Taliban emerged triumphant. Rye Barcott suggests that anthropologists can play a role in ‘identifying incipient ethnic tensions’, and Ghani’s work dramatically confirms this. Many other examples exist. In the case of Bosnia, Barcott states that the idea of ‘primordial’ ethnic hatreds is flawed, a point made elsewhere by anthropologist Tone Bringa. Bringa notes that before the 1990s, many Bosnians accommodated differences in ways that ‘ranged from political mechanisms for ethnic power-sharing to ecumenical cooperation among religious leaders and simple practices in everyday life’.2 Such practices disappeared due to contingent historical events (not primordial hatreds): anti-communist revolt and counter-revolt, fear-mongering totalitarian nationalist leaders, and Yugoslavia’s destruction. In June 1991, anthropologist Robert Hayden diagnosed trouble in the former Yugoslavia, warning of ‘extremists who verge on fascism [and] are gaining strength’ and ‘rising hostility between increasingly authoritarian, nationalistic republican regimes’.3 He wrote a searing critique of US and European Community (EC) policies towards Bosnia a year later: ‘It was clear to all who knew anything about Yugoslavia that the recognition of an independent Bosnia in these circumstances would ignite a civil war ... any attempt to preserve Bosnia will lead to a longer, bloodier civil war’.4 Hayden’s work was informed by years of research in Yugoslavia and India

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– multi-ethnic and multi-religious states rife with tensions. Yet US and EC politicians ignored his prescient diagnosis. What are anthropologists to do in light of the official ignorance of policymakers? Barcott suggests that once ‘ethnic violence begins, anthropologists can also advise political and military leaders and help them devise and monitor reconciliation efforts’, but his own experiences in Bosnia are not encouraging. He concludes that if international forces wait for the older ‘generation to die off’, there might be a chance for peace when younger Bosnians come of age. This bleak scenario underscores the importance of conflict prevention, which might have been aided if politicians had listened to Hayden’s early warnings. Barcott notes that in Kenya, ‘ethnic and religious differences have the potential to fuel conflict in Kibera, but the principal causes of violence have remained economic and political’. This point has also been made by anthropologist Angelique Haugerud, who recounts how economic and political crises precipitated a ‘hardening of ethnic boundaries’ in recent months. Ethnic ‘hardening’ was a consequence, not a cause, of conflict. She describes ‘a tendency in media in the West to portray Africa as a place where tribal rivalries inevitably and almost naturally yield conflict and violence, and that is fairly misleading’.5 Anthropologists can help correct misconceptions, but can also perpetuate them if they accept flawed assumptions. Like many pundits, Barcott uses the term ‘sectarian violence in Iraq’, a euphemism that excises the violence inflicted by Coalition forces and excludes the role of the US-led occupation in creating conflict. It also denies the reality of civil war. In Basra, the recent outbreak of fighting between the Mahdi Army and US-backed Iraqi government forces pitted Arab Shi’ite against Arab Shi’ite. Sectarian or ethnic differences were insignificant. Nowhere does Barcott mention that conflict between Sunnis and Shi’ites emerged after the US-led invasion and occupation. According to Laith Kubba of the National Endowment for Democracy, ‘by and large the [Iraqi] people were moderates, and the religious element was a small element in their lives’ before 2003. Iraq’s Sunnis and Shi’ites frequently intermarried in the past, but Vali Nasr of the US Naval Postgraduate School notes that as

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militias began ethnically cleansing mixed neighborhoods, ‘the people who intermarried were the first to leave’.6 Military anthropologists did not help avert ‘sectarian violence’ when it erupted in Baghdad, Baquba and beyond. However, some social scientists reportedly played a key role in persuading General Petraeus to provide more than $32 million to Sunnis participating in the so-called ‘Anbar Awakening’ – a reckless undertaking that could subject the Iraqi government to future threat, or lead to greater conflict between Sunni and Shia militias.7 David Kilcullen refers to this as ‘balancing competing armed interest groups’, but it appears likely that such actions will spark more violence in the months ahead.8 In the meantime, the US Army’s Human Terrain System programme, which embeds social scientists with brigades in Iraq for counter-insurgency work, has recruited not a single anthropologist fluent in Arabic or with Middle East experience.9 According to Barcott, ‘anthropologists with expertise on Iraq and the Middle East can certainly enlighten the public debate’. Many have, including some of America’s most renowned Middle East anthropologists. Robert Fernea, who first conducted research in Iraq more than 50 years ago, warned that a prolonged US occupation there would likely lead to civil war.10 William Beeman (who has worked extensively in Iran) counseled against invading Iraq, noting that religious factors were likely to lengthen the war.11 Laura Nader explained why Arabs might view a US invasion with scepticism: ‘How little we know about the Arab world – do we really think there is no consequence of our double standard foreign policy?’12 Neither Fernea, nor Beeman, nor Nader were consulted by the George W. Bush administration or the Pentagon before the US-led invasion of Iraq. I am troubled that Barcott scarcely mentions ethical dilemmas that may accompany anthropological work for military campaigns. Is it ethical for anthropologists to participate in combat support or counter-insurgency on the battlefield? To collect intelligence? To design propaganda? In recent months the American Anthropological Association, the Association of Social Anthropologists and the Society for Applied Anthropology have vigorously debated the implications of anthropological work for military and intelligence agencies, but Barcott skirts these issues.

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The conclusion I find equally troubling. When Barcott calls upon ‘those of us blessed with the good fortune of being born in relatively affluent and peaceful Western nations’ to ‘make the world a better, safer and more equitable place’, he echoes the sentiments of nineteenth-century imperialists. This is the language of American exceptionalism, a latter-day

This is the language of American exceptionalism

version of the ‘white man’s burden’. A sober analysis of the consequences of US power and ‘humanitarian intervention’, particularly the danger of blowback, is largely absent, even when it is a contributing factor to ethnic or sectarian conflict, as in Iraq. In the end, modest suggestions are overshadowed by missionary zeal. Anthropology holds great promise for those seeking a more just world, but its practitioners are most likely

to succeed when they maintain an independent role (outside of the military and its contract firms) and when they communicate widely and publicly. It is by enlightening the general public, not political or military elites, that anthropologists might spark progressive change in democratic societies.

Notes 1

2

3

4

5

Ashraf Ghani, ‘Cut Off the Arms Flow and Let Afghans Unite’, Los Angeles Times, 15 February 1989. Tone Bringa, ‘Haunted by Imaginations of the Past’, in Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson, eds, Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 60–­82. Robert Hayden, ‘Yugoslavia’s Ruleor-Ruin Minorities Try to Go It Alone’, Baltimore Sun, 30 June 1991. Robert Hayden, ‘West Must Correct Its Mistakes in Yugoslavia’, Baltimore Sun, 16 August 1992. Angelique Haugerund, ‘Kenya: Spaces of Hope’, Open Democracy, 23 January 2008, http://www.opendemo-

cracy.net/article/democracy_power/ kenya_spaces_hope. 6 Laith Kubba and Vali Nasr, quoted in Lea Winerman, ‘Sunni–Shiite Power Struggle Driving Iraqi Violence’, PBS Online NewsHour, 9 January 2007, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ updates/middle_east/jan-june07/ sunni-shiite_01-09.html. 7 For example, Iraq Tribal Study was prepared in 2006 for General Petraeus by a team that included anthropologist Montgomery McFate: ‘Iraq’s tribal values are ripe for exploitation. According to an old Iraqi saying, “You cannot buy a tribe, but you can certainly rent one” ... Shaikhs have responded well to financial incentives’ (p. 7A-12).

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On the dangers of this approach, see Austin Long, ‘The Anbar Awakening’, Survival, vol. 50, no. 2, April–May 2008, pp. 67–94; Steven Simon, ‘The Price of the Surge’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, no. 3, May–June 2008, pp. 57–76. 8 David Kilcullen, ‘Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt’, Small Wars Journal Blog, 29 August 2007, http://smallwarsjournal. com/blog/2007/08/anatomy-of-a-tribalrevolt/. 9 Roberto González, ‘Human Terrain: Past, Present, and Future

Applications’, Anthropology Today, vol. 24, no. 1, February 2008, pp. 21–6. 10 Robert Fernea, ‘Why If We Don’t Leave Iraq Now We May Bring on a Civil War’, History News Network, 10 January 2005. 11 William Beeman, ‘Religious Zeal Makes “Short War” in Iraq Doubtful’, Pacific News Service, 19 March 2003. 12 Laura Nader, ‘Iraq and Democracy’, Anthropological Quarterly, Summer 2003, pp. 479–83.

The Perils of Forgetting History Nadje Al-Ali From my perspective informed by experience as a social anthropologist and women’s-rights activist, Rye Barcott’s reflections on ethnic and sectarian conflict appear problematic and dangerous. They are particularly disturbing because, at face value, he appears to say all the right things: the need to bring in closer understandings of cultures, groups of people, conflict and strategies for reconciliation. Although I do not doubt Barcott’s personal sincerity and sense of compassion, to my mind his essay reflects a wider problem of selective usage and application of anthropological concepts and knowledge without working through the rather tedious job of uncovering historical context and local specificities. Ethnic and sectarian conflicts in Kenya, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq have very different historical trajectories, root causes and strategies for reconciliation. What is generally called ‘ethnic’ or ‘sectarian’ conflict has often much more to do with regional and

Nadje Al-Ali is a social anthropologist of Iraqi-German origin, currently Director in Gender Studies at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London. Her publications include Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (Zed, 2007) and (with Nicola Pratt) What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation in Iraq (University of California Press, forthcoming). She is a founding member of Act Together: Women’s Action for Iraq (www.acttogether.org) and a member of Women in Black UK.

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international interests, the struggle over scarce resources, and political power games than with the rather fluid and broad categories of identity and culture. More disturbing to me, however, is his complicity as a member of the US military with the very mechanisms and policies that have contributed to the escalation of sectarian violence inside Iraq in addition to the worsening humanitarian crisis, the deaths of hundred thousands of Iraqis, a lack of proper reconstruction and a prodigious corruption scandal. Anthropology has become more and more interdisciplinary, recognising the need for historical depth, sociological attention to structures and institutions and the awareness of macro-political and economic developments. As an anthropologist of Iraqi-German origin who has carried out research in Iraq and on the Iraqi diaspora, in addition to fieldwork in Egypt, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jordan, the United States and the United Kingdom, I recognise the importance of these linkages, especially historical context. Although I was opposed to the US-led invasion of Iraq, I do not believe sectarian violence was inevitable after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Rather, political decisions taken by the United States in the course of the occupation have empowered ethnic and sectarian-based parties, helping to construct a de facto confessional political system and, ultimately, have fueled the growth of sectarian identifications amongst ordinary Iraqis and provoked sectarian conflict. I have argued elsewhere that the seeds of sectarianism and religious extremism were planted prior to the invasion by the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and within Iraqi diaspora communities abroad.1 After Saddam assumed the presidency in 1979, his divide-and-rule tactics increased polarisation of sectarian divisions inside Iraq. There is no doubt that Kurds and Shi‘ites bore the brunt of the atrocities committed by the regime, especially in the Anfal campaign in the 1980s, the deportations of Shi‘ites in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, and the brutal repression of uprisings in the north and south after the First Gulf War in 1991. Yet Sunni Arabs in political opposition parties and, increasingly, even within the Ba‘ath party were also subjected to arrest, torture and execution, as were members of minorities such as Chaldeans, Assyrians, Turkmen and Mandeans suspected to be involved in opposition groups.

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At the same time, the accounts of Iraqi women I have interviewed reveal that an urban middle-class identity, especially the more cosmopolitan Baghdadi identity, continued to subsume ethnic and religious differences even throughout the period of the sanctions. In other words, a middleclass Shia family in Baghdad had more in common with its Sunni Arab and Kurdish middle-class neighbours in mixed neighbourhoods than the impoverished Shi‘ites living in Madina al-Thawra (renamed Saddam City and now called Sadr City), or the majority of Shi‘ites in the south. Indeed, Iraqi middle-class families have frequently been multi-religious and multiethnic and mixed marriages amongst the urban middle classes were quite common. I have also shown that, rather than Iraqi culture, tradition or some primordial aspect of ‘the Iraqi mind’, it is the occupation that has systematically eroded the structures and institutions that could have helped contribute to national unity. Sectarian and communal sentiments and violence have been encouraged by policies that promote the fragmentation of Iraqi society and polity into ethnic and religious communities.2 An early example is the creation of the Iraqi Governing Council in 2003 by Paul Bremer, the US-appointed head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which started Iraq upon a path of de facto ‘Lebanonisation’ (the institutionalisation of sectarian quotas throughout the political system). The construction of a political system based on ethnic and sectarian quotas not only undermined the idea of universal citizenship but also helped establish religion and ethnicity as the primary sources of identification within the new Iraq and encouraged people to see the competition for political power and resources as a zerosum game between different ethnic/sectarian ‘communities’.3 The disbanding of the army, the privileging of militias linked to the sectarian Kurdish and Shia political parties and the political marginalisation of Sunni politicians also increased sectarian sentiments and contributed to providing a base for the insurgency. The list of failed policies is long: the large numbers of former exiles in the various governments since 2003, the continuing presence of US forces exempt from Iraqi command and US interference in the political process all boosted the anti-occupation, nationalist ideology of insurgent groups and Islamist militias such as Moqtada

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al-Sadr’s.4 Not only did the failures of the political process help fuel the conflict, the heavy-handed counter-insurgency measures of the US forces further alienated ordinary Iraqis and increased sympathy for those perpetrating the violence. Barcott mentions Fallujah, but he fails to put his own experience in context by addressing the killing of civilians and the creation of a humanitarian crisis in Fallujah and other towns and cities in the socalled ‘Sunni Triangle’, the attacks on the holy city of Najaf, where al-Sadr was based, the shocking revelations from Abu Ghraib and anger and frustration over the impunity and lack of accountability of coalition actions.5 Anthropologists throughout the world have strug-

Anthropologists have struggled to overcome the discipline’s uncomfortable legacy

gled over the past few decades to overcome the discipline’s uncomfortable legacy that links it with colonialism, warfare and espionage. Historically, it was not only in the context of the Middle East but also Africa and Asia that some anthropologists provided the ‘scientific’, ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’ data which provided justification for the ‘civilising mission’ that resulted in the colonisation of ‘backward’ and ‘barbaric’ peoples. From different starting points, feminist, postmodern and post-colonial thinkers have all pointed to the numerous ways scientific knowledge,

far from being reflective of reality and ‘the truth’, has frequently been more revealing of prevailing political and economic interests. These critical epistemologies have taught us to pay attention to the complex relationships between knowledge and power and the need to critically reflect on our specific research trajectories, objectives and the implications of our research in terms of oppressive power relations, whether they pertain to gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion or sexuality. Given anthropologists’ responsibilities towards the people we study, we need to profess our independence from governments, especially the military, while stressing our commitment to research ethics and professional standards. Those of us working as researchers in non-Western contexts, especially the Middle East, are already struggling with widespread suspicions that we are agents working for the CIA or other national or foreign secret services.

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These suspicions are rooted in concrete historical and present-day realities as well as in conspiracy theories. If, as a profession, we want to assure and build trust, transparency, openness and understanding, we need to distance ourselves from the state bodies and institutions that are implicated in the physical destruction and killing of the people we are studying. I agree with Barcott that ‘anthropologists with expertise on Iraq and the Middle East can certainly enlighten the public debate about Iraq’. However, those putting on anthropology hats while wearing uniforms and guns will make it extremely difficult for future generations of anthropologists to gain trust and credibility amongst large segments of the Iraqi population and the Middle East more widely. The repercussions for anthropologists and other social scientists will resonate far beyond the borders of those countries which have been targeted in the so-called ‘war on terror’. The idea that the involvement of anthropologists in military occupations such as Iraq will help to either combat insurgency or stop sectarian violence is naive at best and lacks an in-depth understanding of some of the root causes of the violence we have seen escalating over the past five years.

Notes Nadje Al-Ali, Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (London and New York: Zed Books, 2007). 2 Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt, What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation in Iraq (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, forthcoming). 3 Ibid. 1

Toby Dodge, Iraq’s Future: the Aftermath of Regime Change, Adelphi Paper 372 (Abindgon: Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2005), pp. 16–17. 5 Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments: the Occupation and its Legacy (London: Hurst & Company, 2006). 4

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Boundaries and Engagement Laura A. McNamara Anthropology periodically goes through phases of disciplinary upheaval and entrenchment, which is perhaps not so surprising in a field that merges science, the humanities and even art on occasion; and that claims the study of everything human as its domain, from biology to artefacts to culture. Anthropology by nature is one of the most diffuse and unruly disciplines in the academy.1 Cultural anthropology in particular is prone to boundary discussions: over what counts as anthropology and what does not; what is entailed in the culture concept and what is not; who is a legitimate ethnographer and who is not. What exactly those boundaries are protecting depends on the historical context in which the debates are occurring. Dell Hymes’s Reinventing Anthropology (1969) captured the political and intellectual ferment that precipitated cultural anthropology’s shift away from seeking general scientific knowledge about Man [sic], towards its current form as a largely descriptive, particularistic and reflexive endeavour with an explicit political orientation to critical liberalism.2 The boundary-marking behaviour that Hymes described in the introductory chapter spoke to concerns about maintaining legitimacy of anthropology as a science, a discipline Hymes describes as split into departmental feudal fiefdoms, yet with members ideologically committed to production of reliable, replicable, structured knowledge about humanity across four fields of inquiry. These days, our boundary debates are less centred around maintaining anthropology’s status as a science. Instead, our arguments often concern the discipline’s orientations toward institutions of power, as expressed through the positioning, employment and practices of its members. Often, these arguments carry political overtones that can be traced to the ferment so viscerally captured in Reinventing Anthropology. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, for example, as business schools enthusiastically appropriated the ‘culture concept’ as an instrument for effective Laura A. McNamara is an organisational anthropologist currently working at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. She is a member of the American Anthropological Association Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement of Anthropologists with US Security and Intelligence Communities.

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management, we debated whether anthropologists could ethically pursue proprietary research for multinational corporations, widely perceived among our peers as the institutional vanguards of market-based neocolonialism. While acknowledging anthropology’s long-standing commitments to passionate rationalism and Enlightenment humanism, Hymes and his contributors railed against the excesses of scientific colonialism, with William Willis characterising anthropology in blistering italics as ‘the social science that studies dominated colored peoples – and their ancestors – living outside the boundaries of modern white societies’.3 It is difficult to imagine Willis, Hymes or any of Reinventing Anthropology’s contributors signing up to train soldiers, consult with military officers or lend their expertise to the Department of Defense’s Human Terrain System; and I can imagine them troubled by Rye Barcott’s assertions that anthropology’s ethnographic sensibility has a place in the institutional culture of the US military. With the military’s newfound strategic and tactical interest in culture, and with the concomitant arrival of social scientists in Afghanistan and Iraq, the boundary arguments have become particularly intense. In journals and professional meetings and newsletters, in blogs and chat rooms and e-mail lists, anthropologists are openly

The boundary arguments have become particularly intense

and hotly debating the limitations of the discipline: what counts as anthropology, how politics and ethics intersect with research commitments, who should have control over anthropological knowledge, even the tools and methodologies of anthropology. As anthropologically trained lightning rods like David Kilcullen and Montgomery McFate argue for the ‘military utility of understanding adversary culture’, to ‘make a positive difference strategically, operationally, and tactically’,4 anthropologist critics such as Roberto González raise an alarm about the emergence of a ‘military– anthropology complex’ in which mercenary anthropologists provide cultural knowledge to be used as a weapon against insurgents.5 These debates quickly and loudly scale to polemical proportions, both in print and in public.6 At the recent 2007 meetings of the American Anthropological Association, audience members heckled former Human Terrain Team

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member Zenia Helberg, who bravely argued for the conflict-dampening potential of scholarship as she criticised the Army’s Human Terrain System for lack of preparation and planning.7 Meanwhile, people like Rye Barcott move quietly under the radar of both anthropology and the national media, tacking fluently back and forth among ethnography, activism and military service. Like McFate, Barcott argues that anthropology’s value lies in its ability to identify incipient conflict and points to a role for scholarship as a means of creating a ‘more balanced and accurate perspective for governments engaged in Iraq’. Yet latent in Barcott’s essay is a deeper and more nuanced critical perspective. Consider Barcott’s observations about 11 September, when one of his fellow Marines interpreted the terrorist attacks as the opening battle in a ‘clash of civilisations’. As Barcott explains, his exposure to anthropology enables him to think critically about discourses that portray ethnic and religiously based conflict as the inevitable result of immutable difference. Barcott’s training has sensitised him to the complexities of civil unrest, so that he is perhaps better able than his fellow Marines to identify some of the political and economic trends that point to incipient inter-ethnic violence – including, perhaps, the role of the United States in exacerbating those trends. Barcott’s essay hints at the possibilities for critical positioning that even an undergraduate anthropology training can enable. Much of the current uproar over anthropology’s engagements with the ‘national-security state’ treats the military and intelligence communities as ‘total institutions’ in which extreme rationalism and tight organisational control minimise individuality, agency and equivocating.8 We assume that anthropology might find only one expression in these institutions – for example, in violent and manipulative efforts to undermine insurgency and reinforce American hegemony. The problem, of course, is that no institution is completely total. Instead, every institution, even one as seemingly monolithic as the United States Department of Defense, is in unending process of being unmade and remade in the actions and discourse of the people who inhabit it. This includes people like Rye Barcott, whose essay reminds us not to mistake the individual for the institution. And Barcott is not unique. In writing about his work in the Sudan and Tanzania for a military audience, Christopher

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Varhola, a recent PhD from Catholic University and a major in the US Army Reserves, also attempts to illuminate the complexities of conflict, and in doing so is openly critical of the monolithic discourses that characterise much military thinking about ethnicity and culture.9 Both Varhola and Barcott demonstrate the possibilities for open critique, thoughtful reflection and action, fully in line with anthropology’s commitments to holism, humanism and rationalism. As Hymes pointed out over 30 years ago, anthropology trades in the knowledge of others, and this endeavour implies fundamental political, moral, ethical and social responsibilities, not just to the discipline, but to the people with whom we engage. Once again, our discipline is shifting and changing, with emerging points of articulation that are fuzzy, slippery, uncomfortable and not easy to characterise. Given the importance of this moment, for the discipline and for our democracy, there has never been a better time for anthropologists to do what we do best: close our mouths, open our minds, and listen.

Notes 1

2 3

4

5

Dell Hymes, ed., Reinventing Anthropology (New York: Random House, 1974 [1969]), pp. 3–79; George Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Hymes, Reinventing Anthropology. William S. Willis, Jr, ‘Skeletons in the Anthropological Closet’, in Hymes, Reinventing Anthropology, pp. 121–52. Montgomery McFate, ‘The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture’, Joint Forces Quarterly, no. 38, July 2005, pp. 42–8. Roberto González, ‘Towards Mercenary Anthropology?’,

Anthropology Today, vol. 23, no. 3, June 2007, pp. 14–19. 6 See, for example, Hugh Gusterson and David Price, ‘Spies in our Midst’, Anthropology News, vol. 46, no. 6, September 2005, pp. 39–40; Roberto González and David Price, ‘When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents’, Counterpunch, 28 September 2007; González, ‘Towards Mercenary Anthropology’; Montgomery McFate, ‘Building Bridges or Burning Heretics?’, Anthropology Today, vol. 23, no. 3, June 2007, p. 21. 7 Scott Jaschik, ‘Questions, Anger and Dissent on Ethics Study’, Inside Higher Ed, 30 November 2007, http://www. insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/30/ anthro.

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Stewart Clegg, ‘Why is Organization Theory so Ignorant? The Neglect of Total Institutions’, Journal of Management Inquiry, vol. 15, no.4, December 2006, pp. 426–9. 9 Christopher Varhola, ‘American Challenges in Post Conflict Iraq’, Foreign Policy Research Institute E-Notes, http://www.fpri.org/ enotes/20040527.americawar. varhola.iraqchallenges.html;

Christopher Varhola, ‘Cows, Korans and Kalashnikovs: The Multiple Dimensions of Conflict in the Nuba Mountains of Central Sudan’, Military Review, May–June 2007, pp. 46–55; Christopher Varhola and Laura Varhola, ‘Avoiding the Cookie Cutter Approach to Culture: Lessons Learned from Operations in East Africa’, Military Review, November–December 2006, pp. 73–8.

Response Rye Barcott I enjoyed reading the responses of Laura McNamara, Robert González, Nadje Al-Ali and my mentor and former Anthropology Professor James Peacock. Each of them raises important points with regard to the role that social scientists, particularly anthropologists, should play in helping to prevent, and to a lesser extent, intervene to end ethnic conflicts. Laura McNamara’s response was especially helpful in situating the current debates in a historical context. I agree with many of Nadje Al-Ali’s arguments regarding failed US policies and actions in Iraq. My hope is that some of these insights will inform future US actions to mitigate the damage in Iraq and throughout the region. Some of the Marines I served with also strongly objected to the way the United States handled the war in Iraq, but they recognised that they had an important duty on the ground to protect Iraqi civilians, often times at great risk to themselves. American military members will be more effective at protecting civilians and conducting effective military operations if they have a better understanding of the key lessons and culturally specific insights from anthropology and other social sciences. I believe González and Al-Ali are mistaken in some of their other criticisms of my essay. I am not an anthropologist, and I most certainly was not trying

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to tell anthropologists how to do their work, or for whom. My purpose is to explain how anthropology and other social sciences have helped me foster peace and understanding as a Marine Corps officer in Bosnia, East Africa and Iraq, and as a leader of a non-governmental organisation in Kenya that tries to reduce poverty, illness and inter-ethnic violence. Contrary to González’s assertion, I do recognise that social scientists who serve government and military organisations often face complex ethical issues about how they and their insights are being used. The ethical issues social scientists face may be less complex regarding efforts to prevent genocide and to stop it than in efforts to counter what may or may not be ‘insurgencies’ in places such as Iraq. González and Al-Ali seem to oppose social scientists being directly involved in any kind of military and governmental operation. I cannot help but wonder if they would object to anthropologists helping the US government prevent another attack on the Pentagon or at the memorial that is being erected at the former World Trade Center Towers in New York City. Moreover, contrary to González and Al-Ali, I think most social scientists are discerning enough to know how to avoid being co-opted by their employers. There are many examples of highly constructive engagement between social scientists and the US military. Consider, for example, the famous American Soldier studies of Paul Lazarsfeld, Robert Merton, and their many colleagues during and after the Second World War, or Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz’s report on cohesion in the German Wehrmacht.1 As González notes, the findings and warnings of social scientists are not always recognised by government institutions. Such was the case with anthropologist Gerald Hickey’s brilliant but neglected study Village in Vietnam.2 The US government’s past failures to heed useful social science should inform the presentation of future research, not discourage it. I would hope that social scientists and other scholars are courageous enough to communicate not just with the ‘general public’, as González recommends, but also with members of his ‘political and military elites’. As to his objection to my calling for us to ‘make the world a better, safer and more equitable place’ on the grounds that this ‘echoes the sentiments of nineteenth-century imperialists’, let me suggest that similar sentiments were echoed by Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Woodrow Wilson,

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Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr, Pope John Paul II and Nelson Mandela. If they were ‘imperialists’ in this regard, then I am honoured to echo them.

Notes 1

Robert Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld, eds, Studies in the Scope and Method of ‘The American Soldier’, (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1950); Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz, ‘Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht

in World War II’, Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 2, Summer 1948, pp. 280–315. 2 Gerald Hickey, Village in Vietnam (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964).