Resumen de Human terrain

Brent Cunningham

• Cunningham interviews Vanessa Gezari, journalist, about how she uncovered a story that embodies the tragic arc of US involvement in Afghanistan. Vanessa Gezari's new book, The Tender Soldier, tells the story of the Human Terrain System, a controversial effort by the Pentagon to use teams of civilian anthropologists and other social scientists to gather cultural intelligence in Afghanistan and Iraq. The program was developed to give soldiers a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the countries where they were fighting and the people who live there. Gezari's book also is the story of Paula Loyd, one of HTS' most gifted field-team members, who was killed by an Afghan man named Abdul Salam in Maiwand, in southern Afghanistan, and of Don Ayala, a former Army Ranger who shot Salam dead in the chaotic minutes following the attack.