Toronto – Human Terrain is an absolutely fascinating look at the ever changing landscape of war. The documentary focuses on the latest US military efforts in the middle east and how they have had to change their strategies from standard war to that of “counter insurgency”. As everyone knows, the Americans have had a hard time preventing many deaths in the middle east due to the tactics used by the Taliban and other enemy forces. Upon realization at the futile tactics they have been using, the military adopts a more humanistic approach, leading to the human terrain program.
The Human Terrain program is a program which emphasizes on understanding cultural nuances of any enemy through the use of experts such as anthropologists and social scientists. This documentary looks at this program from all angles and perspectives. The film is broken down in a few parts. The first bit of the documentary takes us into a military base in Louisiana where the Human Terrain program is being implemented. The base is set up to replicate modern day Iraq and the military employs Arabs to basically play the roles of Arabs so that the soldiers can learn and get used what it’ll be like overseas. The second part of the documentary takes a look at the program from the academia side, as a host of experts in the form of professors and social scientists give their opinion on the program, some are supportive, many are not. The last part of the program focuses on one particular social scientist – Michael Bhatia, who went as a part of the human terrain program to Afghanistan. You can guess the result.
The documentary was quite riveting, my interest level was captured from the beginning and it never wandered. Perhaps it is because of the fact that we are still at war, or perhaps it is because the flow of information from the military regarding the situation in the middle east has been restrictive at best, this documentary has a very timely feeling to it. The people who were interviewed were all well spoken and many different points of views were presented, leaving this film to be quite the think piece as well as a topic for conversation.
Highly recommended.
Human Terrain screens on the following day:
Fri, May 07 9:45 pm – The ROM Theatre
Sat, May 08 4:30 pm – Innis Town Hall
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