From the MIME-NET information section on YouTube:

'Human Terrain' is two stories in one. The first exposes the U.S. effort to enlist the best and the brightest of American universities in a struggle for the hearts and minds of its enemies. Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military adopts a controversial new program, 'Human Terrain Systems', to make cultural awareness a key element of its counterinsurgency strategy. Designed to embed social scientists with combat troops, the program swiftly comes under attack by academic critics who consider it misguided and unethical to gather intelligence and target potential enemies for the military. Gaining rare access to wargames in the Mojave Desert and training exercises at Quantico and Fort Leavenworth, 'Human Terrain' takes the viewer into the heart of the war machine and the shadowy collaboration between American academics and the armed services.

The other story is about a brilliant young scholar who leaves the university to join a Human Terrain team. After working as a humanitarian activist and winning a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford, Michael Bhatia returned to Brown University to conduct research on military cultural awareness. A year later, he left to embed as a Human Terrain member with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan. On May 7, 2008, en route to mediate an intertribal dispute, his humvee hit a roadside bomb and Bhatia was killed along with two other soldiers.

Asking what happens when war becomes academic and academics go to war, the two stories merge in tragedy.

Karzai Urges West to Buy Off the Taliban - The Times

Afghan Parliamentary Elections Postponed - The Times

Afghanistan Delays Parliamentary Elections - Associated Press

Foot on Bomb, Marine Defies a Taliban Trap - New York Times

Two U.S. Soldiers Are Among 17 Afghan Deaths - New York Times

Roadside Bomb Kills Two U.S. Troops - Associated Press

Australian Weekend Warriors Facing Front Line in Afghanistan - The Australian

Gates Sees Fallout From Troubled Ties With Pakistan - New York Times

Militant Ambush Sparks Pakistan Gunfight - Associated Press

Militants Kill Six Pakistanis for Alleged Spying - Associated Press

More Guile Needed in the Afghan Game - The Times opinion

Iraq

Biden: U.S. Will Appeal Blackwater Case Dismissal - New York Times

Justice Department to Appeal Blackwater Dismissal - Washington Post

British Man Held for Fraud in Iraq Bomb Detectors - New York Times

Road back to Baghdad - Washington Post opinion

Haiti

More Than 150,000 Have Been Buried, Haiti Says - New York Times

Death Toll Growing at Port-au-Prince's Hotel Montana - Washington Post

With Plastic and Cardboard, Haitians Build - Christian Science Monitor

Haitians Tackle Aftermath Alone - The Times

What To Do About Haiti - Los Angeles Times editorial

American Capabilities and Vulnerabilities - Washington Times opinion

The Long War

Indian Hijack Plot Caused New U.K. Terror Alert - The Times

Bin Laden Takes Responsibility for Christmas Bomb Attempt - Los Angeles Times

'Bin Laden' Claims Christmas Day Bomb Plot - The Times

Details Emerge in Arrest of Christmas Day Bomb Suspect - Associated Press

Terrorists Take a Calculated Risk - Los Angeles Times opinion

Terror Warning: From Daft to Perplexing - The Times opinion

Islam's War Against Others - Washington Times opinion

Africa

Somali Pirates Will Die Before Releasing U.K. Couple - The Times

Americas

Venezuela: Tens of Thousands Protest Chavez's Rule - Associated Press

Venezuelan Cable Television Channel Taken Off Air - The Times

Cable Providers Dump Anti-Chávez TV Channel - Associated Press

Asia Pacific

In Japan, U.S. Losing Diplomatic Ground to China - New York Times

Future of Okinawa Base Strains Alliance - Washington Post

N. Korea Accuses Seoul of 'Open Declaration of War' - The Times

Middle East

Israel Poised to Challenge a U.N. Report on Gaza - New York Times

Topics include:

1) The U.S. military should keep a low profile in Haiti,

2) With China in mind, Gates deepens the U.S. defense relationship with India.

The U.S. military should keep a low profile in Haiti

The U.S. military is now carrying out a wide-ranging relief mission in Haiti in response to the dreadful Jan. 12 earthquake that virtually destroyed Port-au-Prince and other built-up areas in the country. Because it has the manpower, ships, airplanes, organization, and the budget to rapidly move equipment, supplies, and people to anywhere in the world, it is no surprise that the Pentagon's is the first phone that rings whenever such a natural disaster strikes. Recent large-scale relief missions after the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia and the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan brought acclaim to the U.S. military and the U.S. government. U.S. policy officials struggling for the moral high ground were happy to pocket the "soft power" benefits of these relief missions.

The disaster in Haiti provides another opportunity for the Pentagon to show the world the humanitarian advantages of its logistical power. All five of the military services are contributing to the effort and the Pentagon has created a webpage to collect all of its Haiti stories, photos, and links. But be careful, counsels Gary Anderson, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and veteran of relief missions in Bangladesh and Somalia. In two essays written for Small Wars Journal, Anderson advises the U.S. military in Haiti to work only in support of the host government, to let the United Nations and non-governmental aid groups take the lead, and to generally take as low a profile as possible. Try to do too much, he warns, and the military relief effort will risk squandering any goodwill it might gain.

Based on its previous experiences with disaster relief, the U.S. military now has written doctrine on how to establish a headquarters staff for coordinating a relief effort. In his first essay, Anderson recommends tossing this plan into the bin. He argues that it is essential that the United States be seen supporting the existing Haitian government and ministries, no matter how feeble they may be. Anderson believes that standing up a large by-the-book civil-military operations center would appear to many outsiders as a de facto U.S. takeover of the country. Some foreign officials have already accused the United States of planning just that. Instead, the U.S. should adapt to Haiti's circumstances and improvise staffing solutions that support the Haitian government.

In his second essay, Anderson continues to recommend a supporting role for the U.S. military. The U.S. should use sea-basing in order to keep the number of U.S. military personnel ashore as low as possible. The U.S. should let the Haitian police and U.N. peacekeepers take responsibility for security. To the greatest extent possible, NGO personnel, and not U.S. soldiers, should handle aid distribution to the victims.

Is the U.S. government following Anderson's advice? For the most part, the answer seems yes. The U.S. is sea-basing its operations on an aircraft carrier, an amphibious assault ship, and a hospital ship and is using helicopters and landing craft for movement. The U.S. Agency for International Development's recent press briefings and fact sheets stress the lead roles of the Haitian government, the United Nations and NGOs in the relief effort.

After a fitful start, the U.S. military's relief operations in Haiti are still far short of what the disaster requires. But they are gaining momentum and will appear more successful every day. Just don't get carried away by that success, warns Anderson.

With China in mind, Gates deepens the U.S. defense relationship with India

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates completed a two-day visit to New Delhi with a mission of deepening the defense relationship between the United States and India. During a press conference after the meetings, Gates explained the latest accords under discussion: an agreement on communication interoperability and encryption; an agreement on geospatial data sharing (useful for navigation and targeting); and an agreement on logistics support. The highly technical nature of these deals is a good indication that the two countries are serious about developing an effective combined military capability.

Gates was not reluctant to mention the primary motivation for the increased military cooperation, as this exchange from the press conference shows:

Q: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your discussions with India on China, whether there is a joint cyber threat that both India and the U.S. face from elements within China, and what you see as India's role in sort of a counterweight to China in Asia.

GATES: We didn't talk about China at length. We did talk in more generic terms about a common interest in security of the Indian Ocean and security of the global commons, and the global commons meaning the air, sea, space, and if you're talking about the internet, the ether, I suppose.

There was a discussion about China's military modernization program and what it meant and what the intentions of that military buildup were.

Gates went on to renew his plea to his Chinese counterparts for more bilateral discussions about strategic issues and China's military modernization plans. The U.S. and Indian governments are deepening their military cooperation in response to their perception of rapidly expanding Chinese air, naval, and strategic capabilities. With his statements during the press conference, Gates is indicating that the increased U.S.-India military cooperation is both prudent preparation and a signal to China's leadership to start talking more about security issues.

Gates must be hoping to indicate to the Chinese that they cannot win an air and naval arms race in the region; the U.S. will meet every increase in Chinese capabilities with increased sharing of U.S. military technology with India and with increased cooperation with other allies in the region such as Japan, Australian, and Singapore.

Gates must be hoping to show China that an arms race is pointless and wasteful. The way to avoid a race is through dialogue, which Gates has repeatedly called for. China has not been very forthcoming on military diplomacy. Gates must be wondering how many more military cooperation agreements with India it will take to change some minds in Beijing.

Over the last 3 decades, dramatic labor market changes and well-intentioned but uninformed policies have created significant officer talent flight. Poor retention engenders substantial risk for the Army as it directly affects accessions, development, and employment of talent. The Army cannot make thoughtful policy decisions if its officer talent pipeline continues to leak at current rates. Since the Army cannot insulate itself from labor market forces as it tries to retain talent, the retention component of its officer strategy must rest upon sound market principles. It must be continuously resourced, executed, measured, and adjusted across time and budget cycles. Absent these steps, systemic policy, and decisionmaking failures will continue to confound Army efforts to create a talent-focused officer corps strategy.

More at the Strategic Studies Institute.

The Obama administration offered cautious support for the Afghan government's new outreach effort to the Taliban, expressing hope that lower level militants would reconcile with Kabul even if senior leaders continued fighting. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at the start of an official visit to India, told reporters that the U.S. welcomed Afghan President Hamid Karzai's new efforts to persuade Taliban militants to lay down their weapons in exchange for jobs, education and security guarantees for themselves and their families. Mr. Gates said that he believed such reconciliation efforts would ultimately be "critical" to ending the long and increasingly bloody Afghan war.

But the defense chief cautioned that top Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar would be unlikely to participate in peace talks with the Afghan central government unless the U.S. and its allies reclaimed the battlefield momentum in Afghanistan. "I'd be very surprised to see a reconciliation with Mullah Omar," Mr. Gates told reporters during the flight here. "It's our view that until the Taliban leadership sees a change in the momentum and begins to see that they are not going to win, the likelihood of reconciliation at senior levels is not terribly great." The comments came just two days after the Karzai government said it was finalizing a major new initiative aimed at convincing large numbers of Taliban fighters to renounce violence and agree to work with - or at least tolerate - the Afghan central government...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. Aid Workers Find Few Trained Afghan Partners - Keith B. Richburg. Washington Post.

Alongside the thousands of additional U.S. troops, civilian aid workers are surging into Afghanistan to help refurbish schools, open rural health clinics, build irrigation systems, vaccinate livestock and provide fertilizer to farmers. But like their military counterparts, the civilian technicians are finding the lack of trained Afghan partners their most difficult challenge. The problem is particularly acute in the remote rural areas, where the Afghan government's presence is virtually nonexistent. "We're trying to create a centralized government where there's no history of it," said Lindy Cameron, the British head of the multinational provincial reconstruction team in Helmand. "The biggest challenge is the capacity of the Afghan government."

The point was illustrated during a recent day trip to Helmand by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was in Afghanistan to see how USDA expertise and technical assistance could help farmers boost production in the country's leading agricultural province. Vilsack learned how U.S. aid and agricultural officials had vaccinated more than a million animals, provided seed and fertilizer to 10,000 farmers and distributed thousands of tons of feed for livestock. But when he traveled to Nawa, bringing along Helmand's governor and the agriculture minister from Kabul, he also came face to face with the Afghan government's limitations. Only two Agriculture Ministry officials were working here, and neither lived in the district. They had no office, no equipment, no cellphone - not even a bicycle...

More at The Washington Post.

New Wave of Warlords Bedevils U.S. - Matthew Rosenberg, Wall Street Journal.

In his teen years, Sirajuddin Haqqani was known among friends as a dandy. He cared more about the look of his thick black hair than the battles his father, a mujahideen warlord in the 1980s, was waging with Russia for control of Afghanistan. The younger Mr. Haqqani is still a stylish sort, say those who know him. But now, approaching middle age and ensconced as the battlefield leader of his father's militant army, he has become ruthless in his own pursuit of an Afghanistan free from foreign influence. This time the enemy is the U.S. and its allies.

From outposts along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, his Haqqani network is waging a campaign that has made the Afghan insurgency deadlier. He has widened the use of suicide attacks, which became a Taliban mainstay only in the past few years. U.S. officials believe his forces carried out the dramatic Monday gun, grenade and suicide-bomb attack in Kabul on Afghan government ministries and a luxury hotel. The assault claimed five victims plus seven attackers. Mr. Haqqani also aided the Dec. 30 attack by an al Qaeda operative that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency agents and contractors at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan, say militant commanders. And he orchestrated last year's assault on a United Nations guesthouse that killed five U.N. staffers, along with other attacks in the capital...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

... If anyone or any organization/agency conducts an objective critique of this nation's military strategy, advice, influence and actions/inactions over the past five decades, this recommendation by General Taylor reference the Joint Chiefs of Staff might assume significant relevance. Let there be no confusion; in this paper I am discussing actions and organizational structure at the highest levels and not the actions of those in the field. Our troops, unit leaders, and our military families have responded, and continue to respond, to our nation's requirements with such courage, stamina, and professional abilities that have exceeded all historical standards of selfless service to this nation. Their assigned mission(s) have been accomplished beyond any measure that could reasonably be expected during this past decade of fighting a somewhat different type of warfare with difficult limitations, and against forces without nation state affiliation. Readers are advised also that the points raised and the questions poised are not done so to attack personally those in position of authority at the time but to bring to the surface issues that could possibly provide better and safer operations for the future, for the benefit of those in the field.

The operational relationships between the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and our growing organization of combatant commands, deemed necessary to carry out the operational aspects of our national strategy, needs serious study. In the implementation of our national strategy this past decade, one must ask what was the advice of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and the responsible combatant commander when it was decided to only use Special Forces and CIA teams with the warlords and tribal leaders in Afghanistan to defeat the Al Qaeda and Taliban, without the support of conventional forces to at least block the egress routes, to kill or capture the enemy irregular forces, and prevent their escape to Pakistan. The Special Forces, CIA and Afghanistan forces accomplished their missions extremely well, but one of the first principles taught irregular forces is, "when victory is not possible -- live to fight another day". They did and they are! ...

More at Veterans of Special Forces.

It was the spring of 2003, and Capt. Jim Gant and his Special Forces team had just fought their way out of an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan's Konar province when they heard there was trouble in the nearby village of Mangwel. There, Gant had a conversation with a tribal chief - a chance encounter that would redefine his mission in Afghanistan and that, more than six years later, could help salvage the faltering U.S. war effort...

... In recent months, Gant, now a major, has won praise at the highest levels for his effort to radically deepen the U.S. military's involvement with Afghan tribes -- and is being sent back to Afghanistan to do just that. His 45-page paper, "One Tribe at a Time," published online last fall and circulating widely within the U.S. military, the Pentagon and Congress, lays out a strategy focused on empowering Afghanistan's ancient tribal system. Gant believes that with the central government still weak and corrupt, the tribes are the only enduring source of local authority and security in the country.

"We will be totally unable to protect the 'civilians' in the rural areas of Afghanistan until we partner with the tribes for the long haul," Gant wrote. A decorated war veteran and Pashto speaker with multiple tours in Afghanistan, Gant had been assigned by the Army to deploy to Iraq in November. But with senior military and civilian leaders - including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command - expressing support for Gant's views, he was ordered instead to return to Afghanistan later this year to work on tribal issues...

More at The Washington Post.

With a curriculum that glorifies violence in the name of Islam and ignores basic history, science and math, Pakistan's public education system has become a major barrier to U.S. efforts to defeat extremist groups here, U.S. and Pakistani officials say. Western officials tend to blame Islamic schools, known as madrassas, for their role as feeders to militant groups, but Pakistani education experts say the root of the problem is the public schools in a nation in which half of adults cannot sign their own name. The United States is hoping an infusion of cash - part of a $7.5 billion civilian aid package - will begin to change that, and in the process alter the widespread perception that Washington's only interest in Pakistan is in bolstering its military.

But according to education reform advocates here, any effort to improve the system faces the reality of intense institutional pressure to keep the schools exactly the way they are. They say that for different reasons, the most powerful forces in Pakistan, including the army, the religious establishment and the feudal landlords who dominate civilian politics, have worked against improving an education system that for decades has been in marked decline...

More at The Washington Post.

In the weeks ahead, the Center for Defense Studies will be producing a series of backgrounders on the U.S. military's relief mission in Haiti. To view the first of these "Issue Alerts," which outlines the U.S. forces deployed the Haiti and the unexpected challenges they may face there, click here.

More at CDS.