In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social, Not Electronic

By Xeni Jardin at 5:50 pm Wednesday, Nov 28

Noah Shachtman has new piece out in Wired exploring the reported drop in violence in Iraq in recent months. He argues that this is the result of the US abandoning its somewhat techno-centric approach to prosecuting the war -- and focusing instead on Iraq's social, political, tribal, and cultural networks. Snip:

The war was launched, in part, on a premise that you could wipe out more bad guys with fewer troops, as long as those troops were networked together. Businesses like Wal-Mart made their supply chain more efficient through information technology; the military could do the same with its "kill chain," the theory of network-centric warfare went.

The idea -- first popularized in article published ten years ago, next month -- pretty much worked as advertised, for a while. The problem is, killing people more efficiently is one of the last things you need to do a counterinsurgency situation, like the one the U.S. is facing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, you need to take steps to reinforce civil society, rather than blowing it apart. And that takes an understanding of the society you're trying to build.

For the story, I scored a rare opportunity to spend time with a U.S. "psychological operations" team, getting into the heads of the people of Fallujah; hung out with an Army colonel who worked his tribal connections to bring stability to one of Iraq's roughest towns; spent time with the heads of a controversial program to embed anthropologists into combat units; and interviewed General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq.

Link. More out-takes from the reporting process will no doubt show up in Noah's blog posts at Danger Room.

Photo: shot by Todd Hido in Iraq for Wired. A tattered flag flies from a cell phone antenna.