ANTHROPOLOGY IN WAR AND CONFLICT:

Insurgencies of the Vietnam and Indochina Conflicts Era

Alexei JD Gavriel, B.A. 30 MARCH 2008

During the era of conflicts in Vietnam and Indochina, government policies had evolved to recognize the requirement for anthropological insight likely due to the success of such during the Second World War. This era was also a time of experimentation with social projects and intelligence collection and processing techniques. Theatres of conflict were supported through clandestine research and field projects as well as academic research projects. The successes and failures of many of these experimental projects have led to grievous ethical concerns that has encouraged heated argument within the anthropology discipline proper. The intent of the this paper is to examine applied methods and use of ethnographic knowledge in insurgency operations and observe consequent ethical issues.

Daughty had the opportunity to shape the development of the US Agency for International Development (USAID or AID) and the US Peacecorps. 2 The US Army and Department of Defence (DOD) also recognized the value of anthropological incite into issues surrounding counterinsurgency. Anthropological contributions can best be divided into two categories Culture at a Distance referring to academic research conducted from afar on campuses and government think-tanks and Culture on the Ground referring to clandestine and field research activities.

CULTURE AT A DISTANCE
Culture at a Distance studies earned their credibility largely through the efforts of Benedict and others during WWII who contributed to Japanese cultural studies which provided actionable intelligence analysis for military officials and policy makers. By 1969 the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and DOD had 19 ongoing projects of their own in Thailand and an additional 16 external contracts. Stanford Research Institute conducted five major research projects in Thailand from 1962 to 1969 resulting in over 100 reports, thirty of which were produced by social scientists on the topic of counterinsurgency. 3 The Institute of Defence Analysis (IDA), created in 1955 for the purpose of coordinating war-related work with national universities, established the Academic
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ACADEMIC SUPPORT AND THE DEMAND FOR ETHNOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE IN COUNTER INSURGENCY OPERATIONS
The resulting success of anthropological involvement during the Second World War by revolutionary anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict affected an evolution in government policy. Between 1960 and 1975 the US government passed several laws requiring anthropological expertise to include the: Foreign Assistance Act (1961); Housing and Urban Development Act (1965); National Historical Preservation Act (1966); National Environmental Policy Act, and; Occupational Health and Safety Act (1974). 1 Under the Foreign Assistance Act (1961) anthropologists Henry F Dobyns and Paul L
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Pg 72. Gwynne, Margaret A. Applied Anthropology.

Pg 72. Gwynne, Margaret A. Applied Anthropology. 3 Pg 9. Jorgensen, Joseph. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. Page 1 of 7

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Advisory Council for Thailand (AACT) and the Thailand Study Group in 1967. This group comprised of government officials, and social and physical scientists. The social scientists, referred to as the SS Community, organized think-tanks known as Jason Summer Studies. The overall objective was to establish a collection system of indicators that could be interpreted to assess the social impact and effectiveness of preventative counterinsurgency measures. In order to accomplish this task a wide range of topics were researched and reported. One study produced entitled Counterinsurgency in Thailand: The Impact of Economic, Social, and Political Action Programs examined the role of these factors in building national unity and reducing vulnerability. The specimen of examination was not the villagers themselves but rather the villages as a whole. Comparisons were made between communities where insurgent pressures were countered by action programs and communities where no programs had been implicated. The group also sought to understand the aspects of communist propaganda and recruitment that incited credibility and examined the importance of local factors in the recruitment of Thai insurgents. 4 The Cross Cultural Survey at Yale University, established in the 1930s as a scientific tool, began to provide readily available information to US military and intelligence agencies. 5 The Carnegie Corporation, recognizing the databases potential, expanded it into the Human Relations Area Files of which both the US Army and CIA contributed yearly funding. 6 The Army eventually contracted the service for four million dollars to produce 62 unclassified handbooks on regional areas of interest. This service was later amalgamated
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under the Special Operations Research Office (SORO). 7 SORO was affiliated with American University, in Washington DC, and employed anthropologists and other social scientists to exam the human dimension of counterinsurgency operations. The organization employed out of the box analysis and research producing traditionally unconventional papers, by military standards, such as Witchcraft, Sorcery, Magic and Other Psychological Phenomenon and their Implications on Military and Paramilitary Operations in the Congo by James Price and Paul Joreidini. Research and Development (RAND) Corporation contributed through both academic and clandestine research. RAND released the study Limited War Patterns: Insurgency in South East Asia in July 1962, and another, Seminars on Development and Security in Thailand, in November 1969. Rand also conducted an inquiry into the certain effects of culture and social organization on internal security in Thailand. 8

CULTURE ON THE GROUND

Most clandestine and field research activity were amalgamated under the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development (CORDS) program responsible for all pacification efforts. 9 The United States Operations Mission (USOM) and USAID had produced 43 publications, through field based research, relating to Thailand security issues. From 1966 to 1969 USOM/USAID employed one American anthropologist and ten Thai research assistants. These research teams surveyed 22 villages in two provinces resulting in 46 reports on 10 counterinsurgency. Anthropologists,
Pg 10. Jorgensen, Joseph. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. 8 Pg 9. Jorgensen, Joseph. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. 9 Pg 4. Andrade, Dale. CORDS and Phoenix. 10 Pg 9. Jorgensen, Joseph. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand.
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Pg 3. Jorgensen, Joseph. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. 5 Pg 10. Jorgensen, Joseph. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. 6 Pg 17. Price, David. Interlopers and Invited Guests .

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engineers, and ordinance specialists were also hired for the counterinsurgency research program Project Agile. 11 The SS Community, of the AACT, helped create and support what became the Tribal Data Centre in Chiang Mai, Thailand. This centre intended to develop systems of collecting, coding, processing, storing, updating, checking, retrieving and publishing data concerning tribal people of Northern Thailand. Anthropologists and other social scientists were asked to populate tribal data cards that included information on village locations (including grid references), ethnic identities, migratory history, weapons, occupations of villagers, and identity of village leaders. 12 Project Camelot was developed by SORO in 1964. The director of ARPA, R.L. Sproul, introduced the need for the program in explaining warfare is largely controlled by the environment where it occurs and is affected by the social and anthropological characteristics of the people involved and the nature of the conflict. 13 The project aimed at developing a general social systems model that could allow the possibility to predict and influence aspects of social change in developing world nations. Anthropologists and other social scientists were hired to study conditions underlying social unrest in foreign countries. 14 The project had three main objectives: to develop procedures for assessing the potential for internal war within national societies; to identify actions a government may take to relieve conditions that may lead to war, and ; to devise a system to obtain essential elements of information that would be indicators for the above. The US government initially set its sights in Latin
Pg 2. Johnson, Eric M. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency in Thailand. 12 Pg 8. Jorgensen, Joseph. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. 13 Pg 35. McFate, Montgomery. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency. 14 Pg 71. Gwynne, Margaret A. Applied Anthropology.
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America where it hoped the project could be used to suppress oppression groups. A Norwegian sociologist, Johan Galtung, was invited to participate in the projects first project located in Chile. Galtung did not agree with aspects of the program and declined. He later informed colleagues about the program and its potential hazards and information on the programs military connection leaked to the Chilean argument. This led to a diplomatic protest in Chile and Project Camelot was cancelled soon after in 1965 without getting a chance to see any results. 15 Gerald Hickey began his experience in Vietnam as a University of Chicago graduate student where he wrote a classic ethnography entitled Village in Vietnam: An Ethnography of a Southern Vietnamese Lowland Village. He was soon after recruited by the RAND Corporation to produce a study funded by DARPA. Hickey was tasked to examine how highland tribes could be encouraged to support the South Vietnamese Government. Part of this research was in support of the Strategic Hamlet Program which sought to consolidate government authority in pacified areas through a defence system and reorganization at the village level 16 . He also carried on to produce additional research in the country and worked closely with Montagnard highland tribal groups who initiated an uprising in 1964 under the name of The United Front for the Struggle of Oppressed Races (FULRO). 17 Hickey passed his recommendations on to the US Government and US Army. He advised General William Westmorland, the senior commander of US forces in Vietnam, of the causes of rising ethno-nationalism in tribal areas and produced recommended courses of action. Based on a paper he had written entitled Accommodation in South Vietnam:
Pg 71. Gwynne, Margaret A. Applied Anthropology. 16 Pg 34. McFate, Montgomery. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency. 17 Pg 34. McFate, Montgomery. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency.
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the Key to Socio-political Solidarity, Hickey was able to recognize and report on how elements of Vietnamese culture could be used to establish peace and solidarity amongst the conflicting political, religious, and minority groups - all of which did not embrace communist ideology. Although there were bodies within military circles that embraced the need for anthropological analysis of issues in counterinsurgency, Hickey too often encountered difficulty finding an open ear within the US government and defence department. From the initial work with the RAND Corporation, he found much of the information of use to the US Military was frequently ignored by commanders who retained a conventional war-fighting approach. Some of his findings were outright not accepted by military leaders as they opposed popular ideology - mainly that the US Military could win the war through overwhelming force and attrition alone. 18 Major General Edward G. Lansdale, considered to have prevented a communist take over in the Philippines and later helped install Ngo Dinh Diem as the President of South Vietnam, was an advocate and executer of the use of applied military anthropology in counterinsurgency operations. His experience began in the Philippines during an insurgency against the Huk rebels. Lansdale researched local superstitions and analyzed how they could be used in what was then known as psywar. Through his research he uncovered the myth of the feared asuang vampire who dwelled in the forest. When they came across a Huk patrol, soldiers would abduct the last man, put two holes in his neck, drain him of his blood, and place him back on the trail. When the Huk patrol would return they would find their comrade and believe that he had been captured by the asuang. This spread fear among the Huk that they not only may be next but that perhaps the omens where against them. This caused the Huk to largely abandon the insurgency which potentially reduced the
Pg 34. McFate, Montgomery. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency.
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amount of casualties that could have occurred if the insurgency were to have continued. 19 Captain Charles Bohannen served with Lansdale in the Philippines during the 1950s. He had also served as an antiJapanese gorilla in New Guinea and the Philippines during WWII and remained afterward as a Counter-Intelligence officer for the Philippine government. Bohannen had completed advanced graduate work in anthropology. He advocated the use and understanding of local knowledge and total cultural immersion during operations and believed anthropological methods were integral to counterinsurgency operations. In 1959 Bohannen deployed to Columbia as a part of a secret US survey team to evaluate the ongoing insurgency in order to advise US and Columbian policy makers on effective courses of action. The survey team covered 23,000km of terrain while interviewing nearly 2000 civilians, government officials, and gorilla leaders. 20 The team established a three-volume report which outlined the history of the ongoing violence and the attributing socioeconomic conditions and provided advisement on potential social, civil, and military reforms. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Bohannen also operated in Laos and Vietnam where he commanded the Saigon Military Mission. He was an advocate of a light approach to counterinsurgency operations. In 1964 while in Vietnam, he produced a paper on how the use of totalitarian methods during counterinsurgency operations were potentially counterproductive to the desired end-state. 21 The conduct of population control measures such as mass arrests were more likely to have an overall negative impact by creating opposition to the government rather than improving the security situation. Although he found the military to be interested in such factors, they were rarely
Pg 31. McFate, Montgomery. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency. 20 Pg 33. McFate, Montgomery. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency. 21 Pg 33. McFate, Montgomery. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency.
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taken into consideration when conducting field operations. Everybody talks about civic action and psychological warfare, but little command emphasis is placed on it and it is not understood. The major emphasis remains on killing Viet Cong 22 .

the floor of the business meetings of the American Anthropological Association. 25 These accusations were in prejudice against the projects whether or not they improved the living condition and safety of the subject populations. Many of the programs initiated were successes, aided largely by anthropological input, while others serve as case examples of the misuse of ethnographic knowledge. MK-Delta and MK-Ultra were both CIA projects researching methods of mind control, brain washing, and coercive interrogation techniques. Many of the finding were published in the CIAs Kubark Counterintelligence Manual. 26 The project encompassed a multidisciplinary approach examining radiation, electro-shock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials. 27 The CIA funded many of their researchers through university grants and funding fronts set up as legitimate research institutes. 28 Anthropologists and other social scientists participated in the program through different means and levels of participation, some even unaware of their own participation. David Price, in the article Interlopers and Invited Guests separates them in to the categories of Witting-Direct, Witting-Indirect, Unwitting-Direct, and Unwitting-Indirect 29 which reflect the awareness of the level of contribution by various project participants. Participation under these headings ranged from field espionage activities, CIA contracted studies on Cross-cultural Models of Stress, and academic research contracted by the CIA
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ETHICAL ISSUES AND CONTROVERSIAL USES OF ETHNOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE

The issue of ethics during this era is a difficult issue to tackle as arguments exist on the extreme of each side of the spectrum. Ethnographic knowledge misused under projects such as Phoenix are praised for reducing casualties while anthropological involvement under CORDS which aided cross-cultural communication and reconciliation are criticized for simply being involved in an unpopular conflict. Documents regarding anthropological support to government counterinsurgency programs stolen from a University of California professors office by the Student Mobilization Committee to end the War in Vietnam (SMC) were published in a magazine dedicated to expose counterinsurgency research in Thailand, the Student Mobilizer, on April 2nd, 1974. 23 They were later forwarded to Wolf and Jorgensen of the AAA ethics committee. Many of the ethical arguments concerning the use of anthropology in war are complicated by outrageous tangents regarding premises of the conflicts creation or condemning all anthropologists working for the 24 establishment. The universities and colleges were sites of resistance to the war. The radical left pushed the liberal left off of the centre stage. In anthropology, those anthropologists who were guilty by virtue of having any association, however innocent, with the war were condemned by name on
Pg 34. McFate, Montgomery. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency. 23 Pg 1. Jorgensen, Joseph. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. 24 Pg 3. Bunting, Chris. Spy with my Science Eye.
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Pg 5. DAndrade, Roy. The Sad Story of Anthropology. 26 Pg 18. Price, David. The CIA and our Tortured Past. 27 Pg 9. Price, David. Human Ecology and Unwitting Anthropological Research fro the CIA. 28 Pg 10. Price, David. Human Ecology and Unwitting Anthropological Research fro the CIA. 29 Pg 16. Price, David. Interlopers and Invited Guests .

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front institution Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. Phoenix was an intelligence, military, and security program designed by the CIA and implemented under CORDS between 1967 and 1972. 30 The objective of Phoenix was to neutralize National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), or Viet Cong, infrastructure through means of deadly force, capture, or infiltration. The Phoenix program has been seen as both an assassination campaign and as a successful program that reduced unnecessary civilian casualties by using a rifle rather than shotgun approach to targeting insurgents ability to live and operate amongst the public. 31 South Vietnamese officials used local information 32 and worked with US advisors to neutralized 81,740 33 Viet Cong, 26,369 of which were killed. In 1967 the US government translated a classic ethnography of a Montagnard village in the central highlands of Vietnam, by French anthropologist George Condominas, entitled Nous Avons Manage la Foret. 34 The ethnography was later used as a part of Phoenix to target village leaders. Condominas was quoted his indignation for the use of his ethnography shortly after learning that Srae, a man whose marriage he describes in his book, had been tortured by a Special Forces member in the camp of Phii Ko. 35 In many cases, anthropologists were used merely for their collection capacity and not for their values. An anthropologist has certain ethical responsibilities towards the wellbeing and interests of the research population. Issues surround supplying raw data to organizations as the anthropologist
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can no longer control the use of that data once it leaves their hands. It is debatable whether or not it would be ethical to give raw data to the Thai Tribal Research Centre, for example, as the uses of such sensitive information thereafter can only be speculated. The anthropologist needs to avoid the use of the data for targeting or the use of that ethnographic knowledge against the study population. The ethics committee of the AAA attempted to implement safeguards by implementing rules such as the prohibition of anthropologists conducting secret research. Such actions are arbitrary as, in this example, classifying research and limiting distribution may be the only way to protect sources and control data. Other prohibitions however, such as the prohibition of ethnographic research being used as a cover for espionage, are effective in maintaining the reputation and safety of anthropologists working abroad.

CONCLUSION
Resulting from successes of the Second World War, the importance of anthropological incite in conflict, was applied again towards the insurgencies of Vietnam and Indochina. This was an era of experimentation that endured both successes and failures. Lessons learned from these failures can be used to develop effective programs that serve the purpose of resolving conflict and countering insurgency and that reflect all the appropriate ethical requirements. Alexei JD Gavriel, B.A. Gavriel.AJD@live.ca

Pg 22. Gonzales, Robert. Phoenix Reborn. Pg 2. Andrade, Dale. CORDS and Phoenix. 32 Pg 22. Gonzales, Robert. Phoenix Reborn. 33 Pg 7. Andrade, Dale. CORDS and Phoenix. 34 Pg 21. Price, David. Anthropology as lamppost? 35 Condominas, George. Ethics and Comfort. Quoted on Pg 21. Price, David. Anthropology as lamppost?

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2002

Interlopers and Invited Guests. Anthropology Today 18(6): 16-21.

WORKS CITED:
Andrade, Dale 2006 CORDS and Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future. Military Review, March-April 2006: 1-12. 2002 Present Dangers, Past Wars and Past Anthropologies. Anthropology Today 18(1): 3-5. Buying a Piece of Anthropology. Part 1: Human Ecology and Unwitting Anthropological Research for the CIA. Anthropology Today 23(3): 8-13. Buying a Piece of Anthropology. Part 2: The CIA and our Tortured Past . Anthropology Today 23(5): 17-22. Anthropology as Lamppost?. Anthropology Today 23(6): 20-21.

Bunting, Chris 2002

I Spy with my Science Eye. Times Higher Education Supplement, April 12, 2002.

2006

Condominas, George 1973 Ethics and Comfort. AAA Annual Report: 1-17. DAndrade, Roy 1999 The Sad Story of Anthropology:1950 1999. UCSD, unpublished. Ellis, Stephan 2007

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2007

The Sahara and the War on Terror. Anthropology Today 23(3): 21-22.

Gonzalez, Roberto J. 2007 Phoenix Reborn?. Anthropology Today 23(6): 21-22. Gwynne, Margaret A. 2003 The History of Applied Cultural Anthropology. Applied Anthropology: A Career Oriented Approach. Pp. 53-78. Boston: A B Longmen Publishing. Johnson, Eric M. 2007

Wolf, Eric R. and Jorgensen, Joseph G. 1970 A Special Supplement: Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. The New York Review of Books 15(9).

Anthropology, Colonialism, and Covert Operations. The Primate Diaries, October 8, 2007. Anthropology and Counterinsurgency in Thailand. The Primate Diaries, October 10, 2007. Anthropologists in the War Effort from Savages to Terrorists. The Primate Diaries, October 6, 2007.

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Jorgensen, Joseph 1970 A Special Supplement: Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. The New York Review of Books, 15(9): 11-34. McFate, Montgomery 2005 Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curios Relationship. Military Review March-April 2005: 24-38. McNamera, Laura A. 2007 Culture, Critique, and Credibility. Anthropology Today 23(3): 22-23. Price, David 2000

Anthropologists as Spies The Nation Vol. 271, Number 16, 24-27, November 20, 2000.

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