Word: afghanistan
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...Since 2007, the Pentagon's Human Terrain System (HTS) has been placing social scientists in every Army combat brigade, regiment and Marine Corps regimental combat team. There are now more than 500 people employed by HTS, a number that is increasing rapidly. On the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, their job is to gather information and provide commanders with a greater understanding of the local population, reducing the need for lethal force by helping the Army determine the needs of the community, according to Steve Fondacaro, the project manager at HTS. Secretary of State Robert Gates has publicly praised...
...military's program is to continue its expansion in Afghanistan with the nation's top scholars, it may be facing an uphill battle. The AAA says the program violates its code of ethics - a sort of Hippocratic oath in which anthropologists vow to do no harm. Two years ago, the AAA condemned the HTS program, but this month's 72-page report goes into much greater detail about the potential for the military to misuse information that social scientists gather. Some anthropologists involved in the report say it's already happening. David Price, a professor of anthropology at St. Martin...
...highly motivated, ethical, critical anthropologists who are being discouraged from helping the program." HTS project manager Fondacaro admits that finding recruits with regional expertise is "very rare," but he argues that HTS is creating a population of social scientists with firsthand experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where none existed before...
...controversy comes at an awkward time, with Germany under increasing pressure to contribute more troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Despite doubts over the German mission in Afghanistan, on Dec. 3, the Bundestag voted to extend the mandate by another year, until 2010. There are now about 4,300 German soldiers in Afghanistan - most are based in the north of the country - and Germany is the third biggest troop contributor after the U.S. and Britain. But the U.S. is looking for a bigger commitment. "More German troops would be very welcome," Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy...
...Merkel has said she won't make a decision on deploying any more German troops until after the international conference on Afghanistan to be held in London on Jan. 28. But with Horst Seehofer - leader of her Christian Democrats' sister party and coalition partner, the Bavarian Christian Social Union - already signaling his opposition to boosting German forces, it's clear that the decision won't be easy...