GET 35% OFF YOUR FIRST YEAR!

Limited time - use promo code: SPRING35 at checkout

Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

Human Terrain

War & Peace • 1h 9m

Directed by James Der Derian, David Udris & Michael Udris • Documentary • 2010 • 84 minutes

Human Terrain is two stories in one. The first exposes a new Pentagon effort to enlist the best and the brightest in a struggle for hearts and minds. Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military initiates "Human Terrain Systems," a controversial program that seeks to make cultural awareness the centerpiece of the new counterinsurgency strategy. Designed to embed social scientists with combat troops, the program swiftly comes under attack as a misguided and unethical effort to gather intelligence and target enemies. 

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 in the Western Sahara, Balkans, East Timor and elsewhere, and winning a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford, Michael Bhatia returns to Brown University to take up a visiting fellowship. In the course of conducting research on military cultural awareness, he is recruited by the Human Terrain program and eventually embeds with the 82nd Airborne in eastern Afghanistan. On the way to mediate an intertribal dispute, Bhatia is killed when his humvee hits a roadside bomb.

Tags
21st century, 82nd airborne, afghanistan, alex wright, andrew kennedy, anthropology and archaeology, applied anthropology, barak salmoni, bing west, brian selmeski, bullfrog films, catherine lutz, christopher hitchens, counterinsugency, cultural awareness, doc, embedding, expository, fort leavenworth, frank tramano, fred kaplan, hearts and minds, history, hugh gusterson, human terrain, human terrain systems, humvee, intelligence gathering, iraq, iraq-afghan war, jackie lyden, james der derian, jarat chopra, jay hatton, keith brown, michael bhatia, michael ritz, middle east and north africa, mojave desert, montgomery mcfate, ovid, ovid_ca, patrick kline, pentagon, peter walz, philip gourevitch, quantico, richard holbrooke, roadside bomb, roberto gonzalez, s_0015, s_0263, s_0286, s_0351, s_0371, s_0624, social issues, social science, sociology, steve fondacaro, title_defgh, title_h, us military, war and peace, william mccallister, world regions

Up Next in War & Peace

  • Resistance is Life
    1:12:49
    Resistance is Life

    Resistance is Life

    Directed by Apo W. Bazidi • Documentary • 2017 • 73 minutes

    From a refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border, an 8-year-old girl named Evlin characterizes the resilience of her hometown of Kobane against ISIS militants. In the midst of the tragic war in Syria, Evlin's story provides hope.

  • The Rock
    1:26:08
    The Rock

    The Rock

    Directed by Raúl Santos • Documentary • 2011 • 70 minutes

    In 1969, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, closed the entrance to the British territory of Gibraltar, isolating 30,000 people without food, water, or telephone lines. In his words, “The Rock will fall like ripe fruit.” La Roca is an epic...

  • The Sixth Side of the Pentagon
    25:26
    The Sixth Side of the Pentagon

    The Sixth Side of the Pentagon

    Directed by Chris Marker & François Reichenbach • Documentary • 1967 • 26 minutes

    "If the five sides of the pentagon appear impregnable, attack the sixth side."— Zen proverb

    On October 21, 1967, over 100,000 protestors gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Mobilization to End the War in Vie...

×