In Afghanistan, Avoiding Violent Misunderstandings Among Troops

Our colleague Rod Nordland writes that a multilayered misunderstanding at a news briefing in Afghanistan on Thursday laid bare just how wide the cultural gulf still is between Afghan and foreign troops ? so wide, even now, that Western manners are what often spark bloody conflict. As the briefing began, Mr. Nordland reports,

An Afghan journalist, Azizullah Foroghi, complained that an American soldier had pointed a weapon at him while he was setting up his camera at the Thursday briefing. ?I believe if that had happened to an Afghan soldier instead of me, he would have reacted to it,? Mr. Foroghi said, in Dari.

This very briefing was to address how NATO is trying to address so-called green-on-blue attacks by Afghan security forces against NATO troops. These have been frequent enough ? 15 American and foreign solders were killed in the past month ? that in late August, the United States military shut down some training programs run by Special Operations forces. At the briefing, Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, who is deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO-led military coalition is known, announced that the allies had agreed on joint counterintelligence teams, as well as joint post-attack assessments and ?direct input from Afghan Army religious and cultural affairs advisers? to improve cultural sensitivity. General Bradshaw also reiterated the coalition?s findings that most insider attacks were the result of personal disputes arising from misunderstandings.

Mr. Nordland writes that perceived personal slights ? usually committed by unknowing, and thus to Afghans, insultingly uncouth Westerners ? are what Afghan soldiers have ?reacted? to, as the cameraman Mr. Foroghi intimated, the kind of thing that was going on, it seemed, right in the briefing room. Mr. Nordland writes that three of Mr. Foroghi?s Afghan colleagues

said they had seen him jostling for position with an American Army sergeant, a camerawoman for the military. In the jostling, they said, he became inappropriately close to the woman ? [a] taboo in Afghan culture.

?The whole argument was over the camera, where to place it, and she was telling me to keep it away from her camera,? Mr. Foroghi objected, saying he did not get too close to her. ?I am not a person who would do such a disgraceful act.?

The camerawoman herself was apparently more worried about her weapon than any possible sexual harassment, according to an account provided by the ISAF director of public affairs, Col. Thomas W. Collins, who insisted that no one had pointed a gun at the Afghan journalist. ?The guy kept bumping into her and she said, ?Watch it, the gun is loaded,? ? he said, adding that she unshouldered it to keep it out of reach. ?Somehow he took offense and said she pointed it at him, and I don?t know where that came from,? Colonel Collins said.

Mr. Nordland adds that for Afghans, pointing a gun at someone, loaded or not, is considered a grave insult (something even most nonmilitary people can probably understand.) But guns are not always involved in these disputes. He writes that Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan military, who was also at the briefing, said his soldiers would also get increased cultural sensitivity training, and

waved a booklet that he said was being distributed to the Afghan Army in an effort to persuade Afghans to be understanding about foreigners? peculiarities.

Titled ?A Brochure for Comprehending the Cultures of the Coalition Forces,? the 28-page leaflet noted that 5,000 copies had been printed. Although the Afghan Army has 195,000 soldiers now, most are illiterate.

The brochure warned that coalition soldiers considered it normal to share pictures of their wives and daughters with friends and comrades, while Afghans would consider it taboo to show off their female relatives. Coalition soldiers might well walk in front of someone who was praying without realizing it, or put their feet up on a table or desk and point them at people in the room ? all acts that are not intended as the insult they seem, the booklet said.

?As you know, Afghans in the presence of others do not blow their noses,? the brochure warned. ?This practice is very common in the culture of coalition countries. If a member of the coalition forces blows his nose in your presence, please don?t consider this an offense or an insult.?

At least?this briefing ended without incident. Read the whole article here.

Source: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/in-afghanistan-avoiding-violent-misunderstandings-among-troops/

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