In con­ven­tion­al war­fare, cul­tur­al aware­ness ranks con­sid­er­ably low­er than supe­ri­or fire­pow­er. In uncon­ven­tion­al con­flicts, it’s the oppo­site side of the same coin. The U.S. mil­i­tary has ignored it three times in the last thir­ty years, with a vari­a­tion of the same neg­a­tive result each time.

But don’t take my word for it. Bak­tash Aha­di, who worked with U.S. Spe­cial forces for two years as a com­bat inter­preter wrote in the Wash­ing­ton Post: “…the front-line troops were giv­en zero train­ing in cul­tur­al lit­er­a­cy.” They left their sun­glass­es on when talk­ing to Afghan vil­lagers, “a clear indi­ca­tion of untrust­wor­thi­ness in a coun­try that val­ues eye con­tact.” They also some­times approached and spoke direct­ly to women in vil­lages, “vio­lat­ing one of rur­al Afghanistan’s strictest cul­tur­al norms.”

                                   KNOWLEDGE GONE TO WASTE

Before the U.S. Marines deployed in Soma­lia, I met an ex-British army offi­cer who had trained a Soma­li bat­tal­ion to fight for the British army in World War II. He spoke flu­ent Soma­li, had worked for the UN and knew the main war­lords personally.
I also inter­viewed an Amer­i­can-edu­cat­ed Soma­li pro­fes­sor who was an expert on the clan sys­tem, and the role and effects of the ubiq­ui­tous drug qat.
Both had offered to pass on their knowl­edge to incom­ing troops. The mil­i­tary expressed no interest.
The late, great CBS cor­re­spon­dent Bob Simon was on a ship with the Marines as they pre­pared to “storm the beach” at Mogadishu. He described the atmos­phere as being “pumped like it was Iwo Jima Two”. The Marines thought lights on the beach were “the ene­my”. In fact, they were attached to the cam­eras of U.S. and oth­er TV crews.

                                   SIGN LANGUAGE ILLITERACY

In Iraq, mil­i­tary con­voys barged their way through traf­fic. The last vehi­cle had a huge sign on the back which read (in Eng­lish and Ara­bic) vari­a­tions of: “Keep Back 100 Yards. Lethal Force Authorised”.
A sol­dier in a con­voy I was trav­el­ing with held up traf­fic at a cross­roads by rais­ing a clenched fist, mil­i­tary sign lan­guage for “Stop and Hold”.
In the Arab world, the polite way of doing that is fin­gers and thumb togeth­er, palm up, mean­ing; “Wait a minute, please”. A clenched fist sig­ni­fies aggres­sion. None of the troops knew that.
It was, an Iraqi trans­la­tor told me; “One of many things they do not under­stand about us.”

                                      THE WRONG MESSAGE

A mantra of the U.S. mil­i­tary is, under­stand­ably, “Force Pro­tec­tion”.
What Iraqis, Soma­lis and Afghans think about it hasn’t been test­ed in opin­ion polls. But in Afghanistan, just how seri­ous­ly the Amer­i­cans take it was made clear every time they went “out­side the wire”, mean­ing any­where beyond their secure base perimeters.
For­mer CBS News cam­era­man Nick Turn­er summed it up in an account he wrote after an “embed” with a patrol near Jalal­abad in 2012.

We left at dawn in four mas­sive MRAPS (mine resis­tant armoured per­son­al car­ri­ers) mus­tard coloured, the wheels as tall as me, a boat-shaped hull to deflect blasts, inch­es of steel, a wire net over­coat to deflect grenades, great hydraulic steel steps. It’s cramped inside; mys­te­ri­ous pan­els, air con­di­tion­ers, radio box­es, and every schoolboy’s dream, a joy­stick for the remote-con­trolled machine gun mount­ed on the roof tied to a cam­era for the oper­a­tor. (I may sound like I’m drool­ing over boys’ stuff, but I have to describe it to show the com­plete fail­ure of the NATO mis­sion).All this to pro­tect the sol­diers from the peo­ple they are try­ing to help.
As we left the bar­racks, we were joined by nine more even wilder machines — MRAPS with giant flails, robot­ic dig­gers and radio jam­mers to check for road­side bombs. Thir­teen $2‑million+ vehi­cles with 55 sol­diers to escort one doc­tor, two engi­neers, and a cam­era crew thir­ty miles to look at a wall being built with US tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. We drove a few miles along the main road towards Pak­istan and then on grav­el roads along euca­lyp­tus- lined canals, through almond groves and mas­sive onion and water­mel­on fields. It took us four and half hours, stop­ping to inves­ti­gate every scrap of rub­bish, stop every oncom­ing car or motor­bike, stop at every irri­ga­tion pipe.
The coun­try­side was crowd­ed, as it can be in Afghanistan, and the com­man­der barked at the gun­ner to zoom in on every child who stopped to stare.
The remote gun pans with the cam­era. Imag­ine how fright­en­ing that must be. In our iso­lat­ed steel box, with a dis­tant view through a slot­ted win­dow of inch thick glass we froze in the air con­di­tion­ing, I thought I would get hypother­mia, or die of thirst, (nowhere to pee so noth­ing to drink.).
Final­ly, we reached the one don­key vil­lage where a wall was being built around a col­laps­ing clin­ic, built in Tal­iban times in 2000. The clin­ic was shab­bi­ly run by the Min­istry of Health, the new wall was paid for by USAID. The army engi­neer huffed and puffed over the qual­i­ty of the mor­tar the builders were using, the doc­tor tried to get into the clin­ic only to be told it was shut for ‘ren­o­va­tion’. The local ‘doc­tor’ turned up, at least he was car­ry­ing a stetho­scope, but he was not very con­vinc­ing, espe­cial­ly as I lat­er found him doz­ing behind the counter in the vil­lage phar­ma­cy, the only shop with glass in the win­dow. Phar­ma­cist or doc­tor, he seemed ill-pre­pared for the questions.
No, he could not treat trau­ma. No, he could not deliv­er babies, but he could treat impeti­go with gen­tian vio­let. I filmed it all, scream­ing with inter­nal protest and despair at the pathet­ic and cost­ly farce that was unrolling before us; the well-mean­ing lieu­tenant colonel, almost fatal­ly sweat­ing in his nin­ja tur­tle shell body armour, the patro­n­is­ing engi­neer telling Afghans how to build walls in a coun­try that is noth­ing but walls.
But the worst was this awful bul­ly­ing con­voy of mon­strous vehi­cles. What mes­sage was being giv­en to the hun­dreds of vil­lagers we passed? They would all under­stand the mon­u­men­tal amount of mon­ey this whole oper­a­tion cost, sim­ply to look at a wall.
How many Afghans would stand in the dust of a pass­ing MRAP and believe that it was there for their good, and their own protection?
They all know that fol­low­ing along half a mile down the road is a Tal­iban in a pair of dusty san­dals and a tur­ban, sit­ting on a ten-year-old Chi­nese motor­bike, ten times as scary and ready and pre­pared to die for Afghanistan, the man who will final­ly decide if the clin­ic stays open and if a mid­wife will be allowed to work there, Amer­i­can wall or not. 

As Rud­yard Kipling wrote in his poem “The Bal­lad of East and West”:
OH, East is East, and West is West, and nev­er the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand present­ly at God’s great Judg­ment Seat;”

Cul­tur­al aware­ness won’t win a war…but lack of it will help lose one.

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