According to its own information, the Bundeswehr's psychological warfare "Center for Operative Information" located in Mayen (Rhineland Palatinate), has begun a recruitment campaign for "intercultural mission advisors" for deployment in Afghanistan. They are seeking Orientalists, historians and political scientists, but particularly "engineers, development aid personnel or journalists (...), who have lived for several years at the Hindu Kush."[1] As the German armed forces further explain, an academic training is desirable, but not the exclusive criteria for the applicant to be hired. "It will be decisive to convincingly exhibit a profound understanding of the social decision-making processes in the cultural landscape of the mission."[2]
Basis of Trust
In Afghanistan, the "intercultural mission advisors" (IEB) are under the direct command of the German combat commanders. They are required to support the commanders in "communication and interaction with the local population". It will first of all be necessary "to identify" and "analyze" the "local, ethnic, religious, political and other socio-cultural structures",[3] to lay the foundation for a "basis of trust" to German occupation forces, explains the "Center for Operative Information".[4] According to the Bundeswehr, these efforts are focused on obtaining "local disseminators" - for the most part, members of traditional elites, who, on the one hand, can be won over to spread the propaganda and, on the other, can serve as sources of information allowing a "situation assessment".[5] Colonel Cornelius Kliesing, who is in charge of the recruitment of IEBs at the "Center for Operative Information" summed up the key function of the "advisor": "A soldier can drive, radio and shoot. But with that he doesn't reach the Afghans."[6]
Networks and Disseminators
According to the armed forces, the IEB have to "pass on" the networks they have established and indigenous disseminators, they have recruited, to their successors before the end of their mission at the Hindu Kush.[7] Once the IEBs have returned to Germany, they are required to evaluate and archive the "insights obtained during the mission", to create a basis for supporting the "IEBs, now on mission." As was further explained by the "Center for Operative Information," each IEB obligates himself to "an exchange of information with other military and civilian authorities".[8] This suggests cooperation with intelligence services - especially since these are intensely seeking to recruit civilian experts with a "profound knowledge of the Islamic culture". (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[9])
Cultural Manual of Etiquette
Use of "intercultural advisors" has already become tradition in the Bundeswehr. By 2006, combat units for Afghanistan were being instructed with "Dimension Culture" educational exercises. The occupation troops deployed in Kosovo received early their "side pocket cultural manual of etiquette."[10] At the same time, the Bundeswehr Institute for Social Sciences (SoWi) is researching to what extent "Muslim soldiers" can be used as "linguistic and cultural mediators" in combat operations in "Muslim regions." (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[11])
Teaching Positions
Recruitment of the necessary specialized personnel is being facilitated by the fact that the Bundeswehr's "intercultural mission advisors" receive teaching positions at civilian universities. The ethnologist Monika Lanik taught a summer semester seminar at the University of Tubingen on the "NATO's Counter Insurgency Strategy" in Afghanistan.[12] Lanik, who holds the rank of Senior Government Advisor, currently works in the "geoinformation department" of the German Army. Prior to this function, she had been an "intercultural mission advisor" for the Bundeswehr's espionage "Center for Intelligence", until it was disbanded in 2007.
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