In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on January 4, 2009

No, I’m not going to the Carribean – I only wish!  I’m heading down to DC for a quick trip to meet up with some friends and colleagues there and to take part in a presentation with my friend, Rob Thornton.   Rob has been spearheading a case study looking at the US security force assistance in Mosul, and was kind enough to bring in both myself and John Fishel to write chapters for it (okay, mine is late…).

The heart of the case study is a series of interviews that, for myself at least, were real eye openers.  In particular, the interviews clearly illustrate just how badly US forces, and advisors in particular, need to have access to ethnographic skills and knowledge.

As I read through the interviews, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a serious paradox at the heart of advising.  Advising, in theory, is all about “development” in the sense of developing a local security force (either police, constabulary, or military) that is capable of creating and maintaining local “peace” (however that may be defined).  The problem comes with the actuality of advising and, in particular, with tasking people who are trained as combat troops to do so – a problem the Canadian Forces is well aware of, at least in the Peacekeeping context.

The Mosul Case Study does not provide answers so much as it provides an excellent data set that allows researchers to find questions regardless on ones position on the ethical correctness of advising missions.  In many ways, this is the type of research that I have been hoping the Human Terrain System would produce.

Category: COIN
Tags: JCISFA, Mosul Case Study, Security Force Advising