Anthro in the news 3/14/11

• Bedouin warriors not motley
Not just a “motley army of poorly armed civilian volunteers,” most of the Libyan opposition fighters are descendants of a long line of warriors. Philip Carl Salzman, professor of cultural anthropology at McGill University, makes this point in a letter to Canada’s National Post: “In the current uprising against the Gaddafi regime, we see a resurgence of the tribes and the reactivation of traditional Bedouin mobilization and martial values.”

• Rethinking tribal power in Libya
Another view, from Khalil Ali Al-Musmari, a retired professor of anthropology, says that foreign media have misrepresented tribal power in Libya. Educated, urban Libyans make their own decisions. In the desert outposts, however, tribes play an important role as villagers decide whom to fight.

• Another big drug from the San
Cultural anthropologist Sean Carey of Roehampton University published an article in the March issue of African Business about an anti-depressant herb known to the San people of southern Africa. The San prozac herb could be more financially successful than diet drug made from hoodia. Follow the money and hope the San get major financial rights and do a good job using the money for their own welfare.

• Last Neanderthals in Greece
Two sites in the Pindos Mountains, dated to between 50,000-35,000 years ago, contain hundreds of stone tools that may have been used by the last Neanderthals in Greece and perhaps Europe.

• Our southern African roots
An extensive genetic study of foraging populations of southern Africa supports the view that modern human origins lie in southern Africa. BBC news cites a co-author of the new study, Brenna Henn of Stanford University and Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London (not involved in the study). The paper appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Basques in Boise, Idaho
A DNA study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology reports on the loss of genetic diversity among Basques in Boise due to the founder effect (being descended from a small number of individuals).

• Bonobos: give peace a chance
More on our hippie relatives from Brian Hare of Duke University and Vanessa Woods. Hare and Woods report on our peaceful ancestors who now, sadly, live in the war-torn Congo. We humans should give them a chance.

• Darwin on the hand
Charles Darwin’s assertion that the human hand evolved as a result of tool is supported by experimental research. Stephen Lycett, senior lecturer in human evolution at Kent University, and Alastair Key, of the department of anthropology at Kent University, published their findings in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

• In memoriam
Mahmoud Rouh Alamini, a leading figure in establishing cultural anthropology in Iran, died on March 8 at the age of 82 years. He is the author of several books including Old Rites and Fests in Today Iran, Quest with a Lamp, Roots of Culture Studies, On Culture and Swear by Your Shakhe Nabat. He received a B.A. in social sciences in 1960 from the University of Tehran. He received a Ph.D. degree in 1968 from Sorbonne University.

Mainstreaming gender in the military to improve security and development

Guest post by Ally Pregulman

The United States’ perspective on gender in the military and the security sector as a whole is substantially different from how many other countries, particularly African countries, view their security. On January 19^th, the US Institute for Peace (USIP) held a panel on mainstreaming gender in the military and the security sector, which lead to a broader discussion of perceptions and reform of the security sector.

Alpha Company. Credit: Anneh632, Creative Commons, Flickr

According to Lt. Colonel Shannon Beebe, many Africans view their security in terms of human security: poverty alleviation, health, environmental shock / natural disasters, and reforms, instead of the traditional United States view of security as physical security: types of force and real threats. This perspective provides an opening for women to enter into the military; integrating gender in African militaries allows women to help with many of these alternate types of security concerns, including water and sanitation, health, and infrastructure.

The evolution of security perspectives stems from integrating women in the military. As the military becomes more gendered and diverse, it can focus more on issues of human security. In Senegal, studies show that having a president interested in gender issues helps move this issue forward. National strategies on equity and equality, cooperation with the Senegalese Ministry of Gender, and involving women in the process of integration all contributed to the success of mainstreaming gender in the military.

Panelists from the United States offered a different perspective. Although women participate in many roles of the armed forces in the United States, there are some areas, such as the Special Forces, that remain closed to women. Colonel David Walton, an instructor from the special warfare school, conceded that gender mainstreaming is not really taught to Special Forces trainees because of time constraints that require prioritizing the curriculum. Gender needs to be incorporated into the military from the ground up, in order to emphasize its importance and ensure its incorporation into every aspect of military training and daily life. All of the panelists echoed the sentiment that making gender a separate issue would be inefficient and ineffective.

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Nuclear news, nuclear fears and the role of science

Guest post by Barbara Rose Johnston

I received last week copies of two very different publications reporting on outcomes from the scientific assessment of life in a nuclear warzone. These studies consider, first, the health experience of resident populations living in areas contaminated by nuclear weapons fallout, and, second, the health of people as affected by the low-level radiation that accompanies modern warfare.

The first is a set of eight papers published in the August 2010 issue of the journal Health Physics and reflects conclusions from US-government sponsored science about radiation and cancer risks.

The second, a study conducted by an international and independent team of scientists published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, is about the health effects of war on the local population of Fallujah, Iraq.

Appropriate reading, since much news in the past few days has focused on the ceremonies surrounding the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the human suffering associated with nuclear war.

Nuclear worries and concerns have been a major feature in world news for years, but especially so in this first decade of a new century.

A review of today’s global headlines finds reports of fear and accusations over the development of a nuclear weapon in Iran, as well as fears of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory that lies between Pakistan and India. Fidel Castro’s first address in four years to the Cuban Parliament warns of an imminent nuclear war if the US follows through on its threat of retaliation against Iran for not abiding nuclear-arms sanctions.

There are also hopeful reports on political promises and the potential progress in the struggle to further abolish nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, there are also reports on the lack of progress – for example, the news that the US Senate has again delayed its hearing on a new START Treaty.

The nuclear news also includes “peaceful uses” of atomic energy. The US is reportedly finalizing a nuclear cooperation agreement with Vietnam that would allow enrichment. There are reports of numerous proposals or approved plans for new nuclear power plants in Germany, Egypt, the US, Canada, the Philippines, India, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the UK.

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To thee I sing: sweet land of oil spill

European colonists came to North America seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. They destroyed the very same for those who had lived here for centuries.

One person’s liberty often means someone else’s shackles. One group’s success often means another group is in ruins.

The boom and crackle of Independence Day fireworks in the United States are echoed in the gunfire in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan as outside forces vie for control of these strategic lands. Let freedom ring.

Allow me one more bit of gut gashing irony. In the 18th century, the American patriots fought hard to gain independence from the British. They succeeded.

What would those freedom fighters say about British Petroleum’s oil spill in the Gulf?

Image: “An American Flag on top of a fake oil derrick in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.” The derrick may be fake, but the questions the image raises are surely very real. Creative commons licensed Flickr content.

What lies beneath

Possibly trillions of dollars worth of mineral deposits lie untouched beneath the surface in Afghanistan. A recent New York Times report generated a flurry of discussion about whether this subterranean wealth would help Afghanistan and its people or prove to be a “resource curse” that instead brings more violence.

One thing is certain, if the minerals are to be mined, there will have to be substantial infrastructure development (asphalted roads) and security for the mining companies. I can just see Halliburton written all over this, and taxpayer dollars supporting the US military to protect business interests.

A less gloomy and much more informed view than mine comes from long-term expert on Afghanistan, Thomas Barfield, professor of cultural anthropology at Boston University.

Don’t let the sun catch you crying

Journalist and filmmaker Sebastian Junger says that he wanted to make you feel like you are actually there in a remote combat outpost in Afghanistan in Restrepo. He and his partner Tim Hetherington, succeeded. After the documentary’s powerful 90 minutes, people in the packed AFI theater in Silver Spring, Md., on Friday June 28 were in shock and awe and tears.

Junger (right) and Tim Hetherington (left). Creative Commons Licensed

Restrepo will remain embedded in my heart and mind for the rest of my life.

The film chronicles the daily lives, and sometimes deaths, of a small platoon of American soldiers tasked with pushing against Taliban control of the Korangal Valley. The soldiers, all men, are very young — 19 years old, many of them, pimply some of them, and proud to be serving their country in fighting “the enemy.” Also, over time, bored, thrilled, scared and sad.

Occasionally, the film provides footage of local villagers. They appear to be mostly scared by what is happening in their valley as they experience the counter-pressures of the Americans and the Taliban. But sometimes proud and dignified as male elders attempt to gain compensation for a cow who died as a result of entanglement with wire fencing surrounding the outpost.

The film brilliantly and effectively interweaves footage from the combat zone with tight-shot interviews with eight soldiers conducted in Italy four months after they had left Afghanistan. So one minute you are in the outpost Restrepo, named after a fallen comrade, with all the noise and smoke from artillery and helicopters. The next minute you are up close and personal listening as a young soldier quietly talks about what it was like to be in the combat zone and what it is like to be dealing with not being there. One says that he doesn’t want to go to sleep because of the nightmares. He has tried five different kinds of sleeping pills, but none works to allow him a peaceful night’s sleep.

Each of the eight men gets very close to tears.

An excellent panel discussion following the film was skillfully moderated by Lara Logan, chief foreign correspondent with CBS News, and included Sebastian Junger as well as one of the film participants, Major Dan Kearney, who made it possible for the film team to work with his combat team.

In the discussion, Sebastian Junger commented that the interviews really “make” the film. What you don’t see, he pointed out, is that the person interviewing the soldiers — Junger — is also fighting back the tears. Junger noted that soldiers cannot show emotion, especially in a combat zone. Instead, when death happens, especially the death of your buddy, you mourn for a minute or two and then get back out there and kill the enemy who took his life.

Once they leave combat, the men have to try to process all that they have been through in the previous 15 months. Many do not succeed in readjusting to civilian life. Junger hopes that the film will help with the re-integration process by promoting understanding of the challenges they face. He said that many of the men will end up going back into combat, leaving behind their wives who feel rejected. They go back, he thinks, because for many 19-year-old men in the United States civilian life does not offer a satisfying role, identity or sense of belonging. The combat zone does that in spades. Many soldiers, he says, become addicted to the male bonding, the brotherhood that is forged in the daily routine of a harsh life and possible death. It is an intoxicating form of solidarity, stronger than friendship, that trumps all differences and disagreements and provides an emotional security that overrides concerns about physical security.

Combat, says Junger, is a small, closed, male world. His film offers a peek through a keyhole into that world. Restrepo is an ethnographic film of the highest order. (Junger has a B.A. in cultural anthropology and it shows). Although Junger wasn’t with the troop for the entire 15 months — he visited five times — he and his camera were not obviously intrusive. But they must have created an extra layer of life and death?

In the question and answer period, no one asked Junger how he is dealing with re-entry to the civilian world. It can’t be easy for him, either. I believe I saw tears in his eyes at several points during the panel discussion.

Update: Tim Hetherington tragically was killed April 20th, 2011 while on assignment in Libia.

It takes an anthropologist

Diana Putman, a USAID health specialist working with the Pentagon’s Africa Command, spoke up about a poorly conceived idea of the State Department in concert with the US military. She spoke up all the way to the top of the chain of command, to the four-star head of Africa Command, General William “Kip” Ward.

Putman gave the General a brief pitch about the need to substantially revise a plan for US military involvement in providing short-term surgical or psychological treatment to women victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to instead constructing or rehabilitating buildings for use by NGOs who are already working with victims and who have the necessary linguistic and cultural skills to facilitate their work. The General agreed immediately.

On Thursday, Putman was one of three people by the US State Department with a “constructive dissent award.”

The story in the Washington Post never mentions the fact that Putnam is a cultural anthropologist. I figured she must be. I checked. She is: BA, MA and PhD, all from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

Thanks, Dr. Putnam, for speaking truth to generals.

Image: “The visit” from flickr user cyclopspr, licensed Creative Commons.

Blood ties: a father forsaken

Patricide, or the murder of one’s father, is often associated with political intrigue at high levels: a son seeks his father’s throne and doesn’t want to wait for his father’s natural death.

The reported murder of an Iraqi man by his son and a nephew because he worked for the U.S. military as a translator is a tragic case of how kinship ties, supposedly involving love and avoidance of harm, can be over-ridden by other powerful interests and motivations with deadly results.

If you use the two search terms “killing” and “father” in Google, you will find many entries for so-called honor killings in which a father kills a daughter for perceived transgressions such as pre-marital sex or marrying someone of the wrong caste or other kinship category. These murders are all too common and the murderers all too often go free.

In this case, a father was killed because he chose to work for the “wrong” people. An honor killing of a different sort, but just as dishonorable and heinous. A son and nephew are in custody. Another son is being pursued.

My deep condolences to the victim’s widow.

One of the most famous literary references to patricide is portrayed in Gustave Moreau’s Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864). Creative commons licensed.

Keeping our promises to children

In the words of Nicholas Kristof, “The late James P. Grant, a little known American aid worker who headed Unicef from 1980 to 1995 and launched the child survival revolution with vaccinations and diarrhea treatments, probably saved more lives than were destroyed by Hitler, Mao and Stalin combined.”

The legacy of this “little known American” was the focus of the James P. Grant Lecture at the George Washington University on March 23, a tribute to Grant 15 years after his death. Dr. Jon Rohde delivered the keynote lecture, entitled “An Unfinished Agenda for Children.” Rohde is a professor in the James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Bangladesh, and former representative of Unicef in New Delhi, from 1993 to 1997.

Rohde first offered highlights of Jim Grant’s work with Unicef: putting children on the political agenda of countries around the world, promoting a focused four-point program called GOBI (growth monitoring, oral rehydration therapy, breast feeding and immunization), pursuing universal reach to all children, initiating cease-fires in war-torn countries to allow a few days for immunization of children, and unrelenting energy in carrying forward his vision to put “children first.”

A subtext running through the speech was that UNICEF, since James Grant’s death, has failed to keep his vision alive. The United States, through its lack of support for the United Nations, has turned its back on the world’s children.
Today, we have new hope for a re-commitment to children with Unicef once again taking a strong position under the leadership of Tony Grant. What would James Grant say to Tony Lake as he assumes his new position? Here are Rohde’s thoughts about what he would emphasize:

1. Focus on the unfinished agenda: reach those who are left out in order to erase social disparities in child survival.
2. Keep resources focused on children rather than on particular diseases.
3. Restore UNICEF to what it was: get UNICEF staff out into the field rather than spending most of their time doing paperwork.
4. Defend the rights of children with the same energy as adult rights are defended.
5. Promote community participation to define activities that will respond to local threats and priorities.
6. Strengthen UNICEF’s support for education, especially of girls.
7. Build alliances among all partners to eliminate competition by taking children as the integrating catalyst.
8. Plan now for the next development decade to 2025.
9. Bridge political differences in the US so that Americans can speak in one compassionate voice.
10. End the stranglehold that the military and industrial partners have over our lives and redirect the vast resources now expended on war to keep our promises to children. Rohde commented that Grant typically steered clear of issues not within his mandate for children. “Children first” was one of his mantras. Yet he knew that putting children first was incompatible with a world in which the richest country continues to dedicate vast resources to war.

In closing, Rohde remarked: “Jim Grant saw through children the chance of peace and decency for everyone. Indeed, children are a valid aim in themselves, but even more so as a means to uncover the humanity in us all and bring about a better world in the process. This is the legacy he left us – the challenge lives on.”

Blogger’s note: In a side conversation with Dr. Rohde, I asked him, “How would the US deal with all the soldiers if they are not at war?” His answer: “They can get to work rebuilding America.” Imagine soldiers helping to build schools, providing security in poor neighborhoods so that children can come and go to school without fear, participating in social programs, and providing outreach to those on the social margins. A demilitarized military working for life not death, for child survival and humanity.

Image: “Return to Innocence,” from flickr user sytoha, licensed with Creative Commons.

A heresy is occurring in Australia

Guest post by Helen Caldicott

Ever since white men appeared 200 years ago on the shores of Sydney Harbour in their uniforms, with their guns and flags, the aboriginal people have been hunted, shot at and herded off cliffs and escarpments, and have had to drink from poisoned water holes.

Until very recently, aboriginal children were stolen from their parents by policemen under the direction of government and transported to “Christian” mission stations where they were taught English history, language and morality. Many were treated as slaves and sexually and physically abused. This horrifying history leads me to the current abuse and desecration of several aboriginal tribes inhabiting their land in the Northern Territory.

This land called Muckaty Station is conveniently located adjacent to the railway line, constructed recently by Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton, which bisects Australia connecting Darwin, a port in the north, to Adelaide a port in the south.

In its wisdom, the previous conservative Howard government allocated this site along with three others for a possible radioactive dump. At the time the opposition labor party strongly criticized the nomination of Muckaty, labeling the Howard government’s National Radioactive Waste Management Bill as sordid and draconian. At the same time, the Howard government offered $12 million to just two of the tribal elders, excluding all other members. However the new labor government under the act can still impose a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory against the wishes of the indigenous owners and the government of the NT.

Muckaty Station sits above an ancient aquifer which is used by both the aborigines for drinking water and white station owners to water their cattle. It also experiences large intermittent rainfalls during the year.

Not only does the government intend to bury Australia’s low and high level waste at this site, but there is a distinct possibility that waste from overseas – namely the United States – will be transported by ship and on the Halliburton line to Muckaty Station, thus making Australia one of the main radioactive waste dumps in the world.

The reason for this eventuality is that Howard signed a treaty with the American government called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership GNEP which stipulates that after Australia exports its large quantities of uranium to nuclear powered countries, the high-level radioactive waste would be re-imported to prevent lateral proliferation of nuclear weapons. Despite its previous promises, Labor has not vetoed the GNEP and there is a suspicion that a secret deal was negotiated under the aegis of the GNEP to relieve America of some of its deadly radioactive waste.

Long-lived carcinogenic isotopes will inevitably leak into underground water systems, bio-concentrate in food chains and over generations induce cancer, genetic disease and congenital deformities in humans, animals and plants. A dismal prospect indeed for Australia’s future.

Helen Caldicott is an advocate of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises. She has devoted the last 38 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction. Dr. Caldicott holds a medical degree from the University of Adelaide Medical School and was on the staff of Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, when she resigned to work full time on the prevention of nuclear war. While living in the United States, she co-founded the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the umbrella group, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She also founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament. The recipient of many awards and the subject of several films, she currently divides her time between Australia and the United States.

Image: “Northern Territory.” Creative commons licensed content from Flickr user dinaiz.