By the time that a society realises that it is the target of cognitive warfare, that psychological actions and messaging has long been in place, quietly working to undermine the foundations of that society.

Iranian Regime's Psychopathology of Control via the Intentional Inducement of Trauma Our research over the past 10+ years into the Iranian regime illustrated that it is obsessed with the psychosocial control over its own population and over the populations of its surrounding Arab neighbours. Regardless of the directions of Iranian elections in any given electoral cycle, the deciding issue is always the dogma that   “ Human beings are inherently sinful and must be carefully guarded and/or controlled by  [Shi’a]  Islamic jurisprudence .”  After a decade of studying the Shi’a pedagogy of victimisation-control-guardianship-oppression, its logic does not follow normal political rationale of human governance. The Judaeo-Christian-Muslim intellectual concept of human-kind’s struggle between good and evil has been malformed to create a structural argument for absolute repression of human agency. To say this differently, the regime works to coopt one segment of the population to actively work against and suppress all other segments of the population, providing them with intellectual and emotional reasoning (however weak) for their success at the expense of others.   We found a regime (Islamic clergy and its protective IRGC and Quds Force) that operates with a psychological pathology of victimization against metaphysical enemies that plays out against fantasies of end-of-the-world ideas of its role in the world. This makes the Regime and its defenders extraordinarily dangerous because they are operating in a half reality – half fantasy decision making process. Our research for UK, US, and NATO governments suggests that this irrationality of pathological thought and decision making create behavioural patterns by the IRGC and Islamic theocracy that appear rational only in the context of a pathology of victimization. Victim pathology is a form of psychosocial trauma that is intentionally inflicted to create specific psychological ideas that result in predictable and useful behaviours.  Such pathology constantly seeks recognition of the individual and collective victimhood, and in the case of the IRGC and Theocracy, that victimhood establishes a psychological righteousness of suffering that allows for the most aggressive of responses to even the slightest provocations. We created the graphic aid in   figure   1 to assist NATO allies in understanding how the Iranian regime is able to sustain itself in the face of extreme sanctions and the unrelenting resistance of their own population segments. The model depicted here is derived from data collected from the Iranian population segments over the past several years. Generally, this pathology would be a normal psychological response to trauma. Experiencing trauma tends to “shatter our assumptions” about the world as a just and moral place. Recognition of one’s victimhood is a normal response to trauma and can help re-establish a person’s confidence in their perception of the world as a fair and just place to live. In the case of Iran’s theocracy and its IRGC/Quds Force, the pathology has morphed into ideas that the world is not and will never be, a just and moral place, and everyone in it who is against ‘them’ (theocracy) is an enemy and should be punished until they repent. Again, a very dangerous psychological group construction. Over the past 40 years, the regime’s efforts have deformed and malformed the Iranian society into a monstrous version of human life that is filled with dread, hopelessness, helplessness, and a willingness to self-sacrifice in the faint hope of a better life for the next generations. The next several sections describe the phenomenological lived realities of the Iranian population under this malformed reality of Iranian Shi’a theocracy. All real power is held by the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah) who is nominally appointed by the 86-member Assembly of (Shi’a) Experts, who themselves are drawn from three overlapping but closed political parties. The oldest, founded in 1961 by the first Ayatollah Khomeini, controls the other two. As the graphic aid in  Figure 2  illustrates, the three authorized political organizations in Iran are mirror images of each other, with slight variations in governing practices.  While slight, these ideological variations were thought to create differences in the number of lives lost to torture, execution, imprisonment, and overall oppression. Ultimately, however, the most progressive or regressive tendencies or decisions are acquiesced to or overturned by the Ayatollah who reigns with absolute authority. The Ayatollah controls all major policy decisions either directly or through a network of groups appointed by him. He oversees the military and has the power to remove the president. He appoints six of the twelve members of the Guardian Council who determine eligibility for running for any elected office. Iranian law makes it a crime to disagree with, attempt to supervise, or refuse directions of, the Ayatollah. This authoritarian national governing structure is protected, and its decisions are enforced by, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp or IRGC. While the country has a police force and regular military, in practice they are under that tight control of the IRGC and do not play an independent role in internal security for the regime. The Commander of the IRGC (Internal defence and control) and the IRGC Quds Force (external expansion) both reports directly to the Ayatollah and are subject only to their own internal supervision. The IRGC’s principal purpose is the control of the Iranian resources and population groups as part of their protection of the theocracy. The IRGC and its Quds Force are not accountable to the Iranian president or Majles (parliament). They and the Ministry of Intelligence (Ettala’at) report only to the Supreme Leader. The offices of the Ayatollah, the IRGC, and Ettala’at, constitute a ‘government-within-government’ and a ‘closed economy’ that hides in plain sight under cover of Bonyads (non-profit foundations).  This closed economy self-funds the operations of the Ayatollah, the IRGC and Ettala’at.  The single most expensive portion of the IRGC’s budget is its Quds Force, once led by Major General Qasim Soleimani, killed by a missile strike ordered by US President Trump. The IRGC’s Quds Force, in their role as the external arm of the Ayatollah, accounts for potentially as much as 35% of IRGC revenues spent building, training, organising, and directing five separate organised military-political organisations across the Levant, Arabian Peninsula, and southwest Asia. The Ettala’at spends the majority of its classified budget hunting down threats to the regime and assassinates them, including current or former citizens domestically and abroad. Iran has assassinated dozens of its enemies across four continents — in Asia, Europe, North America and South America — over the four decades since the 1979 revolution.   “Terrorism is an important instrument of Iranian foreign policy, used both to promote national interests and to export the regime’s revolutionary ideals…”   The import of this reality is that regardless of the number of lives it costs the Iranian government, there is no possibility of change from within,   absent a collapse of the Theocratic Regime . This absolute power is achieved only by the effective control over the population & resources to include wealth creation and distribution. Both are required for the Ayatollah and his Quds Force to build the Shi’a Crescent that surrounds Shi’a Iran’s ultimate competitor – Sunni Arab’s influence over the Muslim world. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the regime in Tehran has been forging a psychosocial-political "land bridge" that surrounds the Arab centre of Islam – Saudi Arabia. This encirclement connects Iran through Shi’a minorities & majorities in Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen. This is what MENA scholars refer to as the   “Shia Crescent”   illustrated in   figure   3.   Iran leads the global Shi’a Islamic community, but that ummah only comprises just 10 percent of the world's Muslim population, against the remaining 90 percent Sunni led by Saudi Arabia. The centre of the universe for the 100 billion or so Muslims is Arab controlled Mecca and Medina, which the Saudi Arab Kingdom holds in safekeeping. Because society, politics, law, and religion are so closely fused in Islam, the political state that controls Islam, wields outsized influence over all Islam.  The import of this is to establish the clear focus and purpose of the Ayatollah and IRGC’s regime and the lengths to which this structure will go to maintain its control over its population and resources. The graphics in   figure   4 strips away the sheer amount of precious financial and national resources the regime spends and allows us to more accurately estimate the regime’s current and future trajectory. The clerical structures, the resource extraction, and the Revolutionary Guards operations are all protected by a man from the Iranian shadows, Esmail Khatib, Ayatollah Khamanei’s former office security chief. For the past 43 years, Khatib has been linked to the deaths of clerics, intelligence agents, and guards who posed threats to the reign of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his heir. Khatib has worked closely with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence unit. At the end of the day, these are the men in Iran who matter. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ;iŶ Faƌsi: ͚Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Eslami-e IƌaŶ͛Ϳ Iran's elite military force responsible for protecting the Islamic regime from internal and external threats. The IRGC's role is enshrined in the constitution, and it answers only to Iran's supreme leader, endowing it with an enormous range of legal, political and religious powers. The IRGC itself is a somewhat decentralized system, with ten regional headquarters, defending the regime against both high-intensity warfare and low-intensity internal challenges such as insurgency. The IRGC Intelligence Service has largely taken over domestic security, though Ministry of Intelligence shares responsibilities for actively preventing internal unrest. Iran’s regular military forces are mostly conscripts who are not trusted by the regime to turn against them, confining them to bases and only arming them for parades and ceremonies. Iran: a Parastate Kleptocracy. The Supreme Leader Appoints and Controls Board Chairs and Chief Executives. Bonyads operate as giant private monopolies that guarantee cash flows into the office of the Supreme Leader and funds his priorities. The   Bonyad -e Mostazafen va Janbazan (Foundation for the Oppressed and Disabled) for example, employs 200,000 Iranian employees and shares management with the IRGC. This tax-free entity “controls 20% of the country’s production of textiles, 40% of soft drinks, two-thirds of all glass products and a dominant share also in tiles, chemicals, tires, foodstuffs.” Yet another significant bonyad, the Martyr's Foundation (Bonyad-e-Shahid), continues to be subject to U.S. sanctions under Executive Order 13224 for alleged funding of groups that conduct acts of international terrorism. Iran’s Bonyads employ as many as 5,000,000 Iranians and control as much as 20% of Iran’s GDP. One prominent   bonyad  is EIKO or Setad, (Headquarters for Executing Imam Khomeini's Order) and is run by the office of the Supreme Leader. Formed with assets taken over after the Shah fell, EIKO controls or holds stakes in at least 70 Iranian companies across the spectrum of Iranian industry, with assets of nearly $100 billion. In October 2016, Iran's Oil Ministry awarded $2.2 billion in contracts to an EIKO subsidiary under Iran's new model of energy sector development called the Iran Petroleum Contract. Before his appointment as Chief Justice by Khamenei, Raisi served as the Supreme Leader’s chief executive officer of the multi-billion USD valued Astan Quds Razavi Foundation, whose primary purpose is the manage the Imam Reza Shrine. Since the revolution the   Astan-e-Qods   bonyad has grown from a "modest concern" into a conglomerate employing 19,000 people and running auto plants, agricultural businesses, and many other enterprises.   These Bonyad foundations are intimately associated with; often familial connected with; and/or even part of, the Majles Legislature, the religious assembly of experts (or the religious parties they are drawn from), the president’s cabinet, and the IRGC.   These parastates appear to be familial in ownership and closely tied into government members and the political parties and interest groups that they are part of. The organizations are both commercial ventures and powerful charitable foundations that seem to control the bulk of the available capital flows and surviving industry in economically sanctioned Iran. The visible Iranian beneficiaries of these economic parastates have become something of a nemesis-fascination for the target audiences in my research as they illustrate the outlines of a modern kleptocracy. The respondents I interviewed, watched the elites’ purchases of wristwatches, choice of cars, clothes, vacation destinations, and even the fresh fruit available to them that is otherwise unavailable to the public. Implicit in the government and Bonyad messaging is that equal socioeconomic opportunity does in fact exist but that failure to achieve is based on good or poor bloodlines (remember, these foundations are mostly family entanglements which help the regime maintain discipline over them. For the rest of the Iranian population, the resulting psychological dynamic of alienated frustration was/is expressed in both the conscious and subconscious and is the result of the mind’s inability to attain a goal or objective that the individual has or is putting significant effort into accomplishing. The more that the subconscious and conscious mind is presented with the implied and expressed messaging from both government and elites of the possibility or likelihood that the failure to achieve their goals is the fault of its own inadequacy (as demonstrated by the public behaviour of the elite segment of peers who are blessed with   “good genes” ), the greater the feelings of alienation, shame, and left unintegrated, rage. Victim fantasies of aggression are a useful defence mechanism at first, because they allow the subconscious mind to repair its ego-self-esteem and continue to function, albeit more aggressively focused than before. Fantasies of aggression release creative energy to construct and then play out scenarios of passive revenge against the objects of their alienation: the “aghazadeh” (noble born) ‘elite’ who have succeeded where the ‘ordinary’ have failed, justified by the spectre of enhanced DNA. The Political Means of Population Control The physical means of the regime’s control of the population is most directly asserted by Ettala’at, IRGC, Basij, Faraja, & Morality Police through the intrusion into every aspect of human life in Iran – physical and psychological. The Ettala’at is the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence & Security (MOIS) and its minister reports directly to the Supreme Leader. The regime goes to great lengths to insert the power of the Ettala’at into all parts of social, political, economic, religious, and social life of the family and of the individual. Their goal is to create a mental object of terror at the thought of coming to their attention. The authority of the Ettala’at is absolute and only the Ayatollah Khamenei can overrule the MOIS, Esmail Khatib. Minister Khatib’s Ettala’at employs terror, torture, & extra-judicial killings to enforce the regime’s social order in Iran. The UK Home Office’s Independent Advisory Group on Country-of-Origin Information (IAGCI), under the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration at Globe House in London, publishes relevant and timely information on many of the countries where serious threats to the health and survival of vulnerable minorities. The most recent published report was version 4, released in May of 2022. This IAGCI report describes an ongoing pattern of extra-judicial killings, torture, executions, and generalized terrorizing of Iranian families that is far outside of acceptable United Nations treatments of any citizens. This UK IAGCI report is laden with number and statistics regarding the brutality that Iranians face daily, however there is little about the plight of women. Even amongst families who are unconnected in any way to anti regime activities, there is anxiety and dread. In part, this is because Iranian societies (Kurdish, Persian, Azeri, Balochi, and Arab) are tightly knit with family and clan/tribal relationships remaining close through multiple generations removed; nearly everyone in these population segments has a sibling, cousin, uncle, or aunt, however distantly removed, that they know are in one of the many resistance movements. Regime security forces hold families of socio-political and militant activists’ hostage, threatening them with arrest and imprisonment or forcing them to trick their family members into returning to arrest and execute them. “Close family members, such as spouses, children, parents, or siblings are more likely to be subject to arrest. In some cases, the authorities have arrested extended family members, because they were in touch with the politically active individual outside of the country.” “The Iranian government relies on extracting information from family members, in order for the family members to put pressure on the political party member or supporter. One source stated that if the authorities are aware that a person is a family member to a political party member, s/he is at risk of being subjected to torture.” Even the types of charges that activists and their families are charged with appear designed to incite terrorizing dread. The charge of Efsad-e fel-arz involves the nebulous allegation of ‘spreading corruption on Earth.’ The charge of Baghy, or rebellion against the State, can be anything that the regime says it is. IranWire reports that there is an increase of pressure tactics on the families of civil and human rights activists in the Iranian border provinces of Kurdistan. In recent weeks, the parents of Iranians whose children are living in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan have been summoned by the regime’s security agencies and told to contact their children and convince or trick them to return home to Iran, where they are arrested. A New Generation of Basiji. Iran has stepped up its operations to recruit young people to protect the Islamic Republic, many of them children, using some of the country's most powerful resources, including sophisticated propaganda campaigns. Significant work to bring in young fighters is done by the Students’ Basij Force, and Iran's leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has praised young students willing to put themselves on the frontline, and the teachers who have encouraged them. He and other senior officials have publicly said that students should be regarded as a vital part of Iran’s able fighting force. But statistics reveal that more than half of the student population are of elementary-school-age and are less than 12 years old.   Physical Control of the Population & Resources. The Ayatollah’s need to for ideological control over the population requires financial and resource control as described above and the organisational means to physically control unwilling members and segments of the population. The Ayatollah and his organisations employ Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) to maintain control over both populations and resources in an ever-increasing hold. The IRGC uses several organisations that it controls to affect its control over the population, such as the notorious Basij (people’s militia), the Faraja (260,000 strong Disciplinary Police Force), and the equally notorious Guidance (morality) Patrols. The Ministry of Intelligence and Security ( Vezarat-e Ettela'at Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran)  complements the IRGC’s efforts and also reports directly to the Ayatollah to maintain control of the population. What is mostly left unrealised by observers both inside and outside of Iran is that the efforts at controlling the population are principally a result of the Ayatollah and IRGCs need for absolute control of the national economy and national resources to fund their ongoing war efforts as illustrated in   figure s 3, 4, & 5.  Organised protests such as the one depicted in   figure   10, threaten the regime’s hold over resources that are daily drained into the Ayatollah and IRGC coffers by the myriad of Bonyads that are deeply embedded within the social and economic fabric of Iran. For these Bonyads to function as effectively as they have, the elite segment of the Iranian population had to be coopted, or the regime would simply not have the expertise, manpower, and knowhow to drain a national economy. These economic parastates called Bonyads can be vast and complex, requiring economic, trade, banking, across multiple states. Ideologically, the regime and the elites refer to these parastates as a ‘resistance economy’ that implies victimisation and authorises the necessary actions to survive, even at the expense of the general population. The poverty and deprivation of the population segments in Iran is not a byproduct of its diversion of resources to regional conflict. It is an intentional product used to physically control an otherwise unwilling public. At the centre of the regime’s resistance economy is the transformation of suffering into sacrifice and the transformation of sacrifice into sacredness of purpose and personal/familial memorialisation. The expression of this intentional pathology is the central ingredient used to recruit and employ the notorious Basiji organisations. These part-time volunteer organisations offer members outlets for psychological alienation and emotional shame in the form of mostly unrestrained power over others in a society where few have power. Officially, the Islamic constitution calls for the Basiji forces to number as high as 20,000,000 volunteers, calling them a ‘people’s militia’ charged with defending the Theocracy. The IRGC, which controls the Basiji and Morality Police, only accepts recruitment applicants from the ranks of the Basiji and morality police, which offer the IRGC recruiters a ‘past performance’ prior to accepting them. The Basiji routinely attack and brutalize fellow Iranian citizens, purportedly to ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic. At times, because of how their psychosocial pathology manifests in different individuals, Basiji members have been filmed committing extreme violence outside of orders, which generally try to prevent extra-judicial wet work from being filmed. The inner trusted organisations of Basij under the IRGC and offices of the clerical regime are led by talented diehard members of the established order and are usually closely connected to neighbourhood clerical leaders appointed by the Ayatollah’s councils. Much of what we know about the Basiji as people is derived from extensive interviews with Iranians who have had contact with the Basiji.  “I saw everything you can imagine, from the beating of an old man who could barely walk to the beating of a small child who couldn’t reach for his mother’s hand. It made no difference…even a child who couldn’t reach his mother’s hand. If there was an issue with killing, it was explained that the killing was for a cause and was a good deed.”  From a rational-agency perspective of governance, the Basiji organisation and its mission makes little sense outside of the clerics’ assertion that the Iranian government and its security agencies work to carry out the principalist ideology described above. This assertion, however, fails in that the regime opens and closes the Basiji authority to attack its citizens based not on theology, but rational self-interest of maintaining control. After the 2022 uprisings peaked, President Raisi reined in the Basiji, only to release them months later. An alternative explanation is that the violent enforcement of the universally despised morality laws on the main segments of society (pink collar, blue collar, bazaris, and university students) serves a rational useful purpose for the regime. The graphic in   figure   11 helps to methodologically visualise the make-up of the Basij. While the membership of the Basij is drawn from all segments, we have learned from field research that Basij members in positions in government, university, small business, and pink-collar workers, join for the benefits and access while declining to participate in suppression of dissent or public enforcement of morality laws. Those Basiji that we interviewed who admitted to participating in the violent attacks and public intercession against morality law violations, were usually drawn from psychosocially vulnerable segments of society whose life and family circumstances oriented them for profound indoctrination. Some of the comments from the Basiji members we interviewed were as follows: "From three or four months before the election we had attended classes on ideological and political thought and crowd control.”    “I’m in complete turmoil all the time. I spent more than twenty years raised like this, and before me a household of martyrs. I keep thinking, which is right? What I’ve chosen now, or the path they’ve taken." “We are a prominent religious family – always there on the frontline, always with memories of war, frontline and revolution. Since these events I keep thinking, who is right?” “We had received orders a matter of months before that there is Velayat Faqih, that there is the jurisprudence of the Imam Zaman, (the 12th Imam, who is expected to return like a Messiah) whose incarnation is Ayatollah Khamenei, and that he had announced that for the advancement and development of Islam and the development of the revolution…[various actions had been ordered in relation to the population].” The willingness and capacity to act on their orders to employ violence to suppress dissent and enforce the morality laws corresponds to members’ weakness in their grasp of individual agency and their participation in sociocentric behaviour outside of the nuclear family. Families that perceive themselves to be oppressed transmit that reality to children in a generational transmission of trauma. Where the child-adult’s psychological (damaged) reality is that they are oppressed, organisations for the mobilisation of the oppressed speak to their ongoing need for individual agency and corresponding rise in self-worth. Other members’ motivation involved adult expressions to childhood traumas such as those listed under the alienation menu in the graphic in   figure   1. Psychological and emotional pain of such childhood traumas are defended against by the child-adult through fantasies of power that deny or recreate the haunting events that have become memorialised in family discourse. The regime itself both causes/inflicts these alienation events in   figure   1 -   on their own population   and then capitalises on the resulting psychosocial damage to turn one population segment against another. These are some of the underlying dynamics and mechanisms behind authoritarian control of large populations and are the core concepts behind psychological warfare.   The Guidance Patrol or morality police is an Islamic religious police force and vice squad in the Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Guidance Patrol enforce Sharia–Islamic law—per laws in Iran; this is most often the enforcement of Islamic dress code, such as wear of the Hijab, and a myriad of other requirements. Such psychological manipulation is only possible to accomplish with population segments that can be physically damaged via the use of violence, arrest, abduction, starvation, eviction, or other psychological acts that cannot be used on the elites without them refusing to cooperate with the regime in controlling and extracting the majority of the wealth to support internal control and external hegemony. There are specialised segments of the volunteer Basiji that are alleged to be highly trained and paid fulltime members of the organisation, used for most of the wet work (shedding of blood) against protestors and non-compliant citizens. Although relatively small compared to the overall Basiji organisation, the group has the complete trust of the state. The Psychological Means of Population Control – Torture & Trauma. Roya Heshmati was a 34-year-old social activist against the regime’s Shi’a social control. She was arrested and received 74 lashes with multi-tailed leather whip. Her epidermis and underlying dermis separated at each strike of the multiple leather tails, opening the underlying flesh. Not every strike broke through into capillaries, but sufficient numbers did so, leaving her back and buttocks a bloody caked black mass. Days after recovering, Roya was back on the street protesting. The regime’s physical means of controlling her behaviour did not work. Purely physical coercion does not work when the goal of the authorities is the surrender of the psychological agency of the targeted individual. Regimes such as Iran’s employ a combination of physical and psychological assault that we refer to as torture. The use of torture is an attempt by one human being to break or disable the individual agency and ability to resist of another human being who is under the physical, psychological, or social control of the person inflicting the damage. Torture is not a means of physical control. It is a means of psychological deformation through the infliction of overwhelming psychosocial-physical pain. The employment of torture tells us more about the torturer than about the tortured. Professor Peter Elsass is a Danish clinical psychologist specialising in the sequalae of torture, who writes that: “Torture is among the most gruesome of human manifestations, particularly because it does not have its origin in animals, primitive man, or pre-culture. On the contrary, it is planned, and it stems from social order. It is a display of force, the aim of which is to break an individual’s judgement.” Torture is an intentional infliction, rather than an accidental infliction. This distinction is what makes the practice so gruesome. It is the controlled intentionality of the inflicted pain and fear that helps to create the conditions of hopelessness, helplessness and overwhelmed psyche that makes it so devastating. The regime’s intentional violence, trauma, and social malformation work to weaponize Iranian society and keep it vulnerable to continued manipulation and control.  As the graphic in   figure   14 illustrates, the violence, arrest, torture, incarceration, and in a sufficient number of cases (between 250 to 350 per year), execution, need not be large numbers outside of suppression of protests. Rather, these actions need to be ruthless, but without undo malice that localises the monster into the inanimate government. Instead, the violence and torture are applied with calm deliberation, in the manner that a parent might administer corporal punishment. The regime interrogator/torturer’s goal in   figure  14 with Taraneh Mousavi, was to break her family’s reality, not reinforce it by giving meaning. What breaks the human mind is not suffering, but suffering without purpose, without meaning This means that pain and torture become love and nurture.  The utility of this creates a type of twisted interpersonal relationship between abuser and abused, captive and captor. The surviving victims of deliberate employment of violent coercion, eventually, suffer the effects of malformed personalities as their conceptualization of self and communal ‘other’ begins to deform and disintegrate.   The victims' psyches struggle to create meaning of the lingering pain, the cutting, the electricity, the near-drowning, or the deformation of their hands, feet, and face. The regime’s perpetrators, on the other hand, devolve into self-hatred and corresponding hatred of others as their ego-progresses into enraged self-defence against annihilating guilt, and their self-regresses into shamed hidden silence. Most community members are affected by the ‘open secret’ that all refrain from talking about in open conversation, even as they tour the torture museums of the former Pahlavi regimes terrifying wax recreations of past torture, terror and death that is still whispered about in hushed voices. Together, the actual, the wax recreations in museums, and the dark imaginings in whispered conversations about the current regimes torture practices, creates an altered reality for the residents caught in the gritty urban interiors. This part real part imagined alternate reality underlays   (and possibly competes with)   their daily lives of keeping their jobs, navigating the crumbling infrastructure, and wondering when they will be the next subject of a corrupt Basiji or Ettala’at summons. These returnees face ‘difficulty’ because they are seen to be betrayers of the faith and must be punished as part of cleansing, prior to being returned into society. The lines of interrogation that arrested returnees were subjected to illustrate the types of rational/irrational concerns of the regime:   Intimate violence against the mind. The regime’s interrogators are intimately interested in what the returnees think about the regime, said about the regime, and why they would want to leave the regime. This sort of questioning is driven by ideations of abandonment and betrayal, which suggest the existence of a relationship that is one sided in the minds of the captors, but not in the minds of the captives. The Danish Immigration Service has researched series of cases where Iranian citizens who had applied for asylum in European countries were arrested upon return to Iran. Some returnees were reportedly interrogated and tortured while in the custody of the authorities, including one person who was killed under torture. The perpetrators of rape and other forms of sexual violence included agents from the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij force, and the Ministry of Intelligence, as well as different branches of the police force including the Public Security Police (police amniat-e omoumi), the Investigation Unit of Iran’s police (Agahi), and the Special Forces of the police (yegan-e vijeh).   State agents raped women and girls vaginally, anally and orally, while men and boys were raped anally. Survivors were raped with wooden and metal batons, glass bottles, hosepipes, and/or agents’ sexual organs and fingers. Rape took place in detention facilities and police vans, as well as schools or residential buildings unlawfully repurposed as detention places. Survivors detailed other forms of sexual violence such as state agents grabbing, groping, beating, punching, and kicking survivors’ breasts, genitals and buttocks; enforcing nudity, sometimes in front of video cameras; administrating electric shocks, inserting needles or applying ice to men’s testicles; forcibly cutting women’s hair and/or dragging them violently by their hair; and threats to rape survivors and/or their relatives. Rape and other sexual violence are frequently accompanied by other forms of torture and ill-treatment, including beatings, floggings, electric shocks, administration of unidentified pills or injections, denial of food and water, and cruel and inhuman detention conditions. Security forces also routinely denied survivors medical care, including for rape-related injuries. Unsurprisingly, there has been no domestic path to justice for any of the victims, males or females. The overwhelming majority of survivors do not file complaints after release, fearing further harm and believing the judiciary to be a tool of repression rather than redress. In all of these types of torture episodes, the end purpose is not about the mere infliction of pain, but the breakage of the person’s psychological reality to create a condition called violent trauma. First, break the mind, then insert the message. All of the sequalae of psychosocial trauma as individual and collective expressions are present every day in nearly every one of Iran’s cities and towns. My daily research and reporting show high levels of violence without motives, extreme overkill by both state and non-state actors, casual violence, promiscuity to include extensive sexual violence, anesthetization through drugs and alcohol, hyper-vigilance, suspicion, betrayal, and more. The levels of social, political, and military violence in Iran over the past four decades has left both victims and perpetrators changed through the malformation of the ego-self identities that underlay their personalities. The perpetrators and victims of deliberately inflicted violent suffering (subconsciously) become malformed in their interior perceptions of themselves and the larger society that produces them. Eventually, perpetrators and victims alike begin reenacting scenes of violence within the public sphere, exposing that which should not be exposed.    “…they keep finding bodies here and there…these bodies are somebody’s siblings or children.” “There is also a lot of murder, like the severed heads they found in Sheykh Bahai Street…” The underlying science behind how the Iranian regime operates to break, traumatise, and weaponize its population was discovered and organised by psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists to help build and repair societies, not to damage them for political and financial profit. Unfortunately, malign states and non-states have been employing this science in some version for the past half century as a low cost, deniable methodology of controlling populations and resources. This is why, with some trepidation, we must pull tools out of our treatment and therapy library to help explain what is happening and why.   The graphic in   figure   15 was created by the   American State of Maryland’s Coalition Against Sexual Assault   and was adapted from the Power and Control Wheel created by Domestic Abuse Intervention Project at   theduluthmodel.org .  If you compare the major categories of the wheel to the routine abuses reported by those Iranian population segments in Iran and in exile, you can easily see the correlation. While we think in western psychology of individual offenders and individual victims, the type of psychological and sociological structure created by the regime’s founders and leaders ( Figure   4) would naturally reflect their own inner malformed ideas of society, power, and control. Its authoritarian nature and the specific pathology of its stated national goals and objectives ( Figure   4) prevent it from ever evolving through learning and experience in a regional collective of communities. The wheel in   figure   15 can be applied to the model in   figure   1 that illustrates the mechanics and dynamics of intentionally created psychosocial trauma.   The intent of the violence, torture, executions, is to create intended psychological and emotional effects that can be manipulated within and between the population segments that have already been set against each other. Trauma & Weaponisation of the Iranian Population. As depicted in   figure   17, the intent is to place two population segments into opposition without the regime (Mullahs & IRGC) being demonised. The first population segment are the   ‘victim-mentality’   social enforcers (Basij & Moral Police) who merely work to protect the people from their own sinful tendencies against God. The second population segment are the   ‘victim-mentality’   populace who are trying to survive the ‘resistance-economy’, the complex laws of moral behaviour and speech imposed by the regime, and the intrusion of modernity brought in by the elites. Neither group can ever win against the other because the regime ensure that this steady state of aggressive tension continues to focus attention on this malformed intersocial relationship created by the regime. The girl in the graphic in   figure   17 is Sonia Sharifi, a 16-year-old student protestor who was abducted beaten, and, after the second arrest, sentenced to death for crimes against God and Islam. As the graphic depicts, the father is placed in a lose-lose situation where his female family members risk arrest, torture, rape, and execution to escape the regime’s intentional social malformation. Ultimately, Sonia’s sentence threatened to become even larger than another murdered schoolgirl, Mahsa Amini, tortured and killed by the Morality Police and Basij. Her execution was stayed but the girl remained in captivity for weeks, receiving various sorts of physical punishment that her family is not willing to talk about. It is important to note the intuitive flexibility that the regime uses to ramp up the psychosocial pressure and ease it to deepen their control over the physical, psychological, sociological, and emotional lives of Iranians and their resources. Our research into the Iranian government’s theocratic governance structure and its IRGC internal protective force and external (Quds Force) projection force, strongly suggests that both the former and the latter harbour a pathological identity structure known as ‘victimhood complex’ that was introduced earlier. We find that generationally transmitted damaged realities cause some people, and some collectives of people evolve into an identity structure that is rooted in perpetual victimhood, often (but not always) from acute or chronic psychosocial trauma. Dr. Rahav Gabay and her colleagues define this tendency for interpersonal victimhood as   “an ongoing feeling that the  [subconscious ego]   self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships. As a result, victimization becomes a central part of the individual’s [and communities] identity.”   Those who have a perpetual victimhood mindset tend to have an “external locus of control,” otherwise known as sociocentric psychological organization or tribal hereditary social construction. They believe that one’s life is entirely under the control of forces outside oneself, such as fate, luck or the mercy of other people.   Based on clinical observations and research, the researchers found that the tendency for interpersonal victimhood consists of four main dimensions: (a) constantly seeking recognition for one’s victimhood, (b) moral elitism, (c) lack of empathy for the pain and suffering of others, and (d) frequently ruminating about past victimization. One need not look too hard to see the depth of the Iranian regime’s victimhood identity construction. The takeaway of this realization is the dangerousness and ruthlessness of a collective of people who identify as victimized saviours who are beset by fantasy creations of evil; there is little moral restraint of actions against pure evil for the Iranian regime.   The IRGC and Ettala’at have been accused of stealing the bodies of victims to keep the body count low. 16-year-old protestor Nika Shakarami was abducted by the IRGC and Ettala’at, tortured and murdered. Her body was buried 40 kilometres away and her family was extorted by the regime to recover her remains. While no one is really sure just how many women, girls, and males have been killed and incarcerated, the graphic in   figure   18 offers some insight from just one organisation attempting to track the violence against girls in Iran. These mechanisms and dynamics at play are case study examples of psychological warfare, a growing form of violent control that breaks down a community making it easier to control and, in turn, weaponize for both internal and external employment.  Iranian citizens in opposition to the regime, are understood by the regime as betrayers of the spiritual and metaphysical goals of the regime. The purpose behind the torture, imprisonment, and executions is not merely to punish, but to punish as a way of saving those who fail to understand their place in a physical and metaphysical society of would-be believers. This again illustrates the principalist ideology that human beings are inherently sinful and must be carefully guarded and controlled by Islamic jurisprudence. Iranian Islamic jurisprudence, however, deviates significantly from traditional western norms in a manner that creates significant confusion. The age of consent in Iran for boys and girls is a good example to illustrate how extreme these deviations can be Under Velayat Faqih, or Islamic Jurisprudence in Iran, girls mature emotionally and mentally faster than boys. A girl can be held criminally liable for her actions once she turns 9 years of age, while a boy must be 13 years of age to be held liable. This jurisprudence guidance explains how a 9-year-old girl can be executed for   Moharebeh , the crime of "waging war against God" or   Mofsede-fel-arz , the crime of ‘spreading corruption on earth’. Of course, if a 9-year-old girl can be executed for a crime, then she can also give consent to sexual relations at the same age.   The full peer reviewed report on Iran and others can be accessed at   SW Asia (Iran Afghan Paki | Valka-Mir Foundation www.valka-mir.com

by Dr. Aleks Nesic & Arnel P. David This article was initially published in Small Wars Journal and was taken from research completed for the 2019 Special Operations Research Association (SORA) Symposium in Monterey, California. The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. -- Alvin Toffler Woven through contemporary debate are threads of different schools of thought that cross but lack a central thread which closes the seam. One school of thought sees a return of great power competition and argues for an emphasis on lethality and warfighting competency. Another sees a change in the character of conflict and competition where adversaries pursue their ends in the space between peace and war. Above all, and critical to stitching multiple paradigms together, is the one which is eternal in all war and immutable—the human domain. War is always a political act done by humans. Regardless of which school of thought gains the most currency in national security debates, Special Operations Forces (SOF) must continue to build capability and capacity to scientifically understand, accurately interpret and effectively influence human behavior. It is the SOF operator who will be on the ground early, working with an indigenous populace, learning to understand a given situation in order to provide critical context to both civilian and military leadership. SOF must be able to navigate complex social systems and operate at a speed that creates critical decision space while ensuring their actions don’t make matters worse. Recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan have illuminated critical gaps in this capability. In his book No Good Men Among the Living, Anand Gopal points out special forces’ activity early on in the war that not only helped the wrong people, but rather, perpetuated a deep sense of injustice that fueled an insurgency and undermined the mission.[1] With a poor understanding of the local dynamics between families and tribes, SOF were manipulated in targeting different warlord competitors and not real threats to the state. The mere mention of Al Qaeda and a target packet was built to action the next period of darkness. In The Thistle and the Drone, Dr. Akbar Ahmed, concluded that many times these targeted groups or actors may have been mislabeled as terrorists when in reality they were actually championing peace and fighting repression.[2] Ahmed attributes the failure of the United States and Pakistan to deal with transnational terrorists to their ignorance of tribal lifestyles, patterns of behavior, and customs.[3] SOF performance improved over the years but shortfalls in training and education remain. The current level of understanding in the complexity of the human domain lacks true scientific depth and application. Education in the emerging multidisciplinary science of the human domain will enhance SOF’s ability to gain indigenous knowledge and enable improved performance in the conduct of warfare in the 21st century across all domains and throughout the spectrum of conflict. This article highlights the essential components of the science of the human domain currently in development and lays out an analytical framework that SOF can use to develop these new skills. It begins with (1) methods to analyze the operational environment by leveraging both big and thick data to map human geography then (2) reviews ways to navigate a kaleidoscope of complex psycho-social and cultural landscapes, and (3) concludes that these new skills from conflict science to assess complex social dynamics among people cannot be sacrificed for the pursuit of the changes only in the physical domains. While many in the defense department continue to chase technological panaceas, scientists and scholars have declared that the social sciences are the science of the twenty-first century.[4] One general warns that we are entering an epochal shift where the controlling amplification of competition and conflict will be human and biological rather than organizational or technological.[5] The essence of complex modern warfare continues to occur among the people and will continue to be driven by the people. As such, SOF will always need the scientific ability to understand, work with, and influence, people. Big Data or Thick Data? Information is exploding. The amount of information available exceeds human capacity. Enter big data. The in-vogue concept of big data appears to be the solution to many problems facing business, industry, and the military. Big data may be useful but alone is insufficient to address the complexities of the human domain. Scholars and development practitioners find an “eclectic combination” of diverse theoretical perspectives and research methods improve the chances of revealing hidden connections and dynamic patterns not visible with a single theoretical lens.[6] Improved explanatory power is the result of using both big data and thick data. The world is entering an age of data driven decision-making. An increasing surplus of digital breadcrumbs are becoming more available for analytical consumption.[7] These large data sets of patterns, preferences, and other variables enable an examination of society in more fine-grained detail.[8] Moreover, the combination of data and machine learning is drastically improving predictive analytics. The choices of groups and decision mechanisms of masses help explain human behavior and at times, forecast emergent trends. Pentland claims this collective intelligence is behind dynamic social effects that influence our individual decisions and drive economic bubbles, political revolutions, and the internet economy.”[9] In the Merriam-Webster dictionary big data is defined as an accumulation of data that is too large and complex for processing by traditional management tools. From predicting teenage pregnancies to stopping the spread of diseases, big data is rapidly changing the world in a significant way.[10] The effects of these changes are yet to be fully recognized. In 2012, the World Bank declared the “pace at which mobile phones spread globally is unmatched in the history of technology.”[11] In studying areas of limited statehood, scholars found that the information communications technology (ICT) is filling voids in governance.[12] The use of ICT and the spread of information prevented governments from controlling the narrative. For example, Moscow was unable to cover up the crisis of the 2010 wildfires given the publics’ awareness of mortality rates and the ubiquitous communication mediums to share this information widely. ICT enabled a non-state collective response and undermined the state’s attempt to present a rosy account of the situation.[13] In addition to mobile phone and ICT, the proliferation of other sensors, provides a torrent of data and enable collective action. Web connected cameras, bio-sensing devices, and the confluence of other technologies aid in the collection of critical data which have aided in the accountability of government to reduce corruption, limit abuses of power, conduct crisis-mapping, strengthen civil society, and improved responses to humanitarian crises.[14] Big data is a powerful tool to understand what has been happening through quantitative explanation but thick data is a complimentary method to explaining the why. Thick data is qualitative information that provides insights into the everyday emotional lives of people. It goes beyond big data to explain why people have certain preferences, the reasons they behave the way they do, why certain trends stick and so on.[15] Thick data is derived from experts adept at observing humans’ behavior and underlying motivations. They span the fields of anthropology, ethnography, and must grow to include SOF. Analyzing thick data illumines emergent human dynamics not immediately visible with big data alone.[16] Military forces can be more effective by understanding the emotional and visceral context in which indigenous populations interpret their activities if they are educated and trained to operationalize the conflict science which will enable them to properly collect and analyze this enormously complex context of human dynamics. Just like in business, organizations want to build stronger ties with stakeholders and they need stories to connect. Stories contain emotions and narrative.[17] No large quantitative data set can deliver this context. It takes specialized and patient applied researchers to provide this critical insight which allows units and organizations to adapt as circumstances change. SOF need this capability. The outsourcing or ceding of complex problems to machines renders an incomplete sight picture. Multi-method approaches using thick data and big data empower successful strategies. The table below shows the characteristics of both kinds of data approaches. Leveraging thick and big data unlocks explanatory power leading to detailed causality and a richer quantitative and qualitative understanding of the human narrative. Christakis and Fowler assert the linking of the study of individuals to the study of groups help explain the human experience.[18] Their research reveals how social networks drive and influence virtually every aspect of our lives, many times in a subconscious way. Understanding the implications of these connections and networks are becoming more important for both civilian and military organizations. Most importantly, it is becoming abundantly clearer that successful use of these data approaches will require increased cooperation and engagement across the enterprise and with unusual partners. In her book, Peers Inc., Robin Chase emphasizes the value of cooperation and engagement amongst non-traditional partnerships forming a new collaborative economy.[19] She explains how the best of corporate power (industrial capacity and resources to scale) combines with people power (localization, specialization, and customization) to harness resources in new ways and creates new rules for value creation. Chase’s company Zipcar and Uber are examples of these types of businesses. Cooperation is key. The talent and skills to effectively harvest the vast oceans of data is not immediately available or evenly distributed across defense. Hence, engagement and cooperation with external elements is crucial for future interventions and requires mutually beneficial relationships. There must be incentives for outside agencies to partner with DoD and this leads to a key recommendation. SOF must leverage every opportunity to connect and collaborate in open source mediums with civilian and military organizations to gather the data needed to foster a deeper understanding. It is this level understanding that will enable one to navigate the kaleidoscope of complex psycho-social and cultural landscapes. The Interdisciplinary Science of the Human Domain As emphasized earlier in this article, one common element across all warfighting domains is the people. Behind every element and at every level of the warfighting enterprise is a complex domain of human beings and their multifaceted psychological, emotional, social and cultural identities. This human complexity requires accurate understanding and analysis. The only way for such understanding to be developed and effectively employed in the battlefield, is to utilize an interdisciplinary applied social scientific approach. Interdisciplinary—because not one single discipline is capable of providing comprehensive understanding of human behavior, and applied—because data collection and analysis of individuals and groups in conflict should be applicable within the reality of the conflict context, rather than theoretically orientated toward how things ought to be. This complex reality of the conflict context was recently illustrated via term “durable disorder” in Sean McFate newest book The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder. McFate argues that “Durable disorder is what’s left behind after the Westphalian system of nation-states retreats. It’s not anarchy, but a global system that contains rather than solves problems. It is the new environment for war, and we are unprepared for it. Old strategies fail, and armed conflicts smolder in perpetuity. Warfare is changing but we refuse to recognize this new reality—or adapt to it. We buy, train, deploy and fight according to rules that don't apply anymore, and then are frustrated by the outcome.” [20] Arguably, the Westphalian system of nation-states has already retreated in many places around the world, and in many places, it has never been effectively implemented. Decades of conquest and colonization of tribal areas within the Global South has been nothing short of multiple unsuccessful experiments of socially, culturally and politically engineering nation-states from within the tribal and indigenous systems of governance. These traditional i.e. indigenous systems were deemed illegitimate, namely because they did not resemble the West, and therefore needed transformation. But this transformation came at a costly expense and unsustainable future as many of them resisted, continue to resist, and are still not ready for such rapid and massive transformations. The grand failure in our approach to rapidly transform and centralize these political and economic systems continues to be driven by the classical realist and liberal political science theories that dominate the strategic direction and the rules of engagement. This creates strategic and operational failures in predicting and preventing the ongoing outbursts of violent interplays between state and non-state actors, violent extremist ideologies that continue to spread through fractured and vulnerable societies—the same vulnerabilities that our state adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran continue to cleverly exploit. One of the main reasons for our lack of understanding the complex system of the human domain is our overreliance on the classical realist and rational actor frameworks, the trademark theories of Western political science. By relying mainly on the rational actor theory, political scientists have failed to help those intervening in violence (government and military) to understand the seemingly irrational motivations and behaviors of different actors in conflict and their delicate interplay. We have failed to understand the nature of the human element outside the comforts of the rational-actor framework because no political science theory has ever been able to accurately explain variables most prevalent in unconventional warfare--fear, hope, trauma, dreams, and myths i.e. the covert drivers of conflict that power up, drive and sustain violence. What McFate alludes to as “old strategies” is actually an ontological and epistemological mistake in its original design, that is, we started with a wrong theoretical premise and formed a hypothesis based on a misunderstanding of what we were experimenting with—the human condition. The importance for SOF to understand the human condition in warfare, i.e. the human domain, is to expand its current education and training and to include psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology as the foundational disciplines that can explain the variables of irregular, unconventional and/or asymmetric warfare. Political science and rational actor theories are futile in the face of the human domain in current and future warfare. In 2017, the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) published a remarkable report titled The State and the Future of GEOINT in which it featured a commentary by Patrick Biltgen et al. that describes how to utilize Activity-Based Intelligence (ABI) in developing an understanding of “Patterns-of-Life”. They argued that standard statistical methods, regression techniques, and models are almost always based on the assumption that the variables are independent, but people are not. “People are not lifeless particles governed by Brownian motion or Kepler’s laws; we are complex entities whose activities are constrained and influenced by geography and other societal, relational, biographic, historic, and preferential constraints as outlined in the three axioms. For these reasons, human activities are not entirely random processes. Seemingly unrelated activities and behaviors cast as a spatiotemporal narrative expose the previously undiscoverable threads of motivation, purpose, and implication. Integrating and studying historical data that describes the activities of an entity across time and space improves an analyst’s understanding of that individual’s pattern-of-life. Adding the set of constraints and likely outcomes produces a model of what the analyst thinks will happen and a series of hypotheses that can be tested with real-world observations.” [21] This delicate interplay of individual and groups’ pattern-of-life can only be accurately assessed if psychology and sociology, curated by cultural anthropology, are employed and taken seriously if we are to succeed in the great power game. The ultimate aim of developing this understanding and knowledge is to instill a capacity within deployed SOF teams to achieve a capability to effectively act, react, and intervene within the conflict communities’ psychosocial, emotional, cultural and physical spaces.[22] This necessitates understanding complex internal, indigenous or traditional cycles of decision-making processes and psychosocial mechanisms of the target audience for non-lethal targeting and engagement, and ultimately create tactical effects within the population that will increase strategic effects on the battle space. How much do we know about traditional societies? How much do we know about indigenous governance systems? How do we build resilience and social movements? How do we prevent counter-governance? How do we instill courage and self-sacrifice in the partner forces’ soldiers? Who, what and how is influencing the partner nation soldiers and their families? Can we predict the effects of trauma on the partner nation forces soldiers and their families? What does heroism look like in the partner nation force? Do we understand the psychodynamics of psychological message construction? Can we locate and include cultural object symbology into messages in order to produce visceral emotional response? Can we accurately and effectively describe the psychological, sociological, and emotional processes that violent extremist and criminal organizations use to weaponize civil society? Can we accurately describe the psychosocial-emotional process used by VEO/Criminal organizations to create suicide weapons? Do we know how violent extremists and criminal organizations access and use indigenous knowledge and communication to support insurgent and terrorist networks? To find the answers to these critically important questions for SOF operators, three primary disciplines that SOF must utilize simultaneously are psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology, as their nexus allow us to understand and deconstruct the individual and his/hers psychological organization, i.e. how identity is constructed, how the mind and memory works, how an individual is contextualized and how it functions within a complex socio-cultural system, how such systems organize and sustain individuals and groups within them. The social science map of cultural conflict below depicts the intersection of these fields of science as they apply to the SOF operating environment. [23] Culture vs Human Domain? SOF must move beyond the simplistic understanding of “culture”, and build the capacity and capability where “culture” is understood as a set of complex psycho-social and emotional realities and dynamics of the host nation target audience. This level of analysis will enable SOF to become more effective in conducting pre-mission analysis and research, and develop an understanding of how to successfully message, navigate and engage the factors and conditions in the human domain that directly influence operations within each combatant command area of operation (COCOM AOR). The Framework for Mapping and Analyzing Overt and Covert Conflict Drivers in the Human Domain developed by Dr. Christian and Dr. Nesic (2016) for the US JKF Special Warfare Center and School could enhance and deepen other SOF tools, such as PMSII-PT, ASCOPE, and target audience analysis.[24] This tool enables SOF operators to produce thick data during pre-mission analysis and employ such knowledge in the field in order to not miss the underlying (covert) conditions that fuel violence and conflicts. There are slight variations in tailoring the education and training in the human domain for Special Forces, Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations. To support the requirements of Special Forces for host nation and militia forces training, tribal engagement, village stability operations, and operational preparation of the battlefield (environment), the knowledge must target ongoing SF challenges with insider threats, ability of host nation/militia forces to grasp basic military training, and their subsequent willingness to fight against non-state actor forces in the field. This knowledge will help build culturally relevant combat capacity within host nation combat forces as the content focuses on the nexus between the host nation partner force train, advise, assist, and accompany missions and the civilian community that the host nation partner force soldiers are a part of. The aim of this knowledge and capacity development is to address the central question that the SOF have always struggled with and continue to do so: how to build conditions of courage, heroism, and willingness to self-sacrifice within volunteer or conscripted soldiers of host nation security forces so that they are willing to fight as tenaciously as their adversaries? This training ensures that the host nation partner forces build acceptable levels of fighting capability that increases their willingness to engage VEO combat power without resorting to abandonment of the SF team advising, assisting, and accompanying them. Deeper psychosocial-emotional variables of FID and UW mission tasks focus on civil society’s role in population intelligence and material support as well as VEO enablement and concealment within the population.[25] For every example of an SF ODA figuring this out intuitively, there are hundreds of examples where we did not figure it out, at least not fully. Most importantly, SF ODA/ODB teams who did intuitively figure this out, cannot transfer that success to other teams in a predictable scientific manner that can actually be replicated on demand. Major Jim Gant’s book One Tribe at a Time is deemed a success in the type of engagement needed, yet his success was based on personal experiences and intuition, not scientific accuracy in targeting and engaging the Pashto tribes in Afghanistan. Simply put, it is not enough to know what worked, we must know why it worked, and how to recreate tactical success in all human domain environments at the family, village, tribe or clan level by NCOs and junior officers who man the frontline teams. We must enable their operational success by giving them the tools to know what they would say and what they would do to produce predictable results. To support the requirements of Civil Affairs missions to building resiliency in cultural conflict communities to resist violent extremist and criminal organizations’ ideological messaging, recruitment, and subsequent organizational spread through the population (target audience), the knowledge must be based on effectively and accurately diagnosing and repairing the damaged cultural-social systems of failing local governance structures that gives rise to violent extremist organizations (VEO) and/or criminal counter-governance. The Civil Affairs capability must include the science of how indigenous/traditional societies operate, how to socially engineer and re-engineer them and how to engage by, with and through the traditional governance structures.[26] This knowledge must focus on teaching the Civil Affairs teams to locate and understand the psychological organization, sociological structure, and emotional conjugation of indigenous, traditional societies or communities residing outside the capital cities where the structure of social authority and the integration of leadership, social purpose, survival, and health – both mental and physical combined—are the critical human domain areas for the Civil Affairs teams to understand and engage with. This application of interdisciplinary social sciences can help Civil Affairs develop the knowledge of the deepest underlying psychosocial-emotional needs of the conflict communities and teach how those needs are met outside of violent conflict; as a precursor to understanding how conflict societies attempt to meet their needs within violent conflict. Civil Affairs should be able to understand in detail how exactly societies are broken and weaponized by extended violence, loss of membership, intentional VEO and criminal weaponization, as well as the epidemiological spread of violent extremist ideology and trauma conditions. This learning could be accomplished through the use of specific field approaches to targeting (data collection and analysis) and engagement that rely on scientific assessments and analytical tools, such as the Assessments of Indigenous Social Systems and Traditional Governance Health and Resiliency developed by Dr. Christian and Dr. Nesic.[27] To support the requirements of Psychological Operations (PO) missions that are tasked with communicating psychological messages that use object symbology in message construction that achieves emotional elicitation to desired actions, the science must be used in a way that it teaches Psychological Operators how the ego-self (identity) is constructed, how it operates, how it creates thought, meaning, and emotion, as well as, how to access meaning and emotion in message construction. In addition, Psychological Operators must understand how the subconscious ego-self becomes destabilized from personality malformation, trauma, abuse, identity disintegration, and even how terror works in messaging, as well as how to identify symbolic objects within each culture; how to assess the emotional power of each symbolic object; and how to incorporate and build their psychological message around key or central cultural symbolic objects.[28] Knowledge of the psychological, sociological, and emotional variables of target audience analysis and message construction are currently missing in many PO lines of effort, hence the lack of understanding the ‘how’—how memory is created and used by the subconscious mind, and how memory becomes collectivized, destabilized and weaponized by VEO and political leaders. In order to design effective messages and/or counter-narratives, we must be able to first understand and illustrate how the ego-self engages in storying and narration as a basic structure of thought and how individuals and groups of human beings become psychologically extremized as a precursor to becoming behaviorally radicalized and subsequently recruited into violent extremist organizations as fighters and suicide weapons.[29] There is a clear scientific method to this process and SOF needs access to this capability. Concluding Thoughts and Way Forward Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) work in diverse and complex operational environments where psycho-social, emotional and cultural variables within the human domain present ongoing threats to regional stability and USG interests. A population-centric approach is key to ARSOF operations due to the fact that the majority of negative actors (state and non-state) use the human domain to: conduct influence operations to recruit and control populations; enhance freedom to maneuver and control key areas; derive manpower and logistical support, and ultimately achieve military and political goals. At this time, ARSOF is inexperienced in understanding and utilizing a population-centric approach and thick-data, and have little knowledge of the complex socio-cultural factors and variables associated with the geographically aligned lines of effort. Without developing a proper understanding of the operating environment and the means by which the enemy conducts operations, ARSOF will be unable to achieve long term mission success. Employing interdisciplinary social science of the human domain will enable ARSOF to 1) Develop a better understanding of the psychosocial, emotional and cultural variables of various regions of the 5 COCOM AOR to strengthen analysis, mission planning, and operational execution; 2) Achieve comprehensive knowledge of how state and non-state negative actors utilize the human domain and create and exploit vulnerabilities to achieve military and political objectives, 3) Establish initial guidance to update or improve LOE campaign plans to better address the importance of the human domain and psychosocial & cultural factors; 4) Develop concepts that utilize human domain practices necessary for population compliance; 5) Improve cross-cultural understanding and intercultural skills and techniques to enhance communication within 5 COCOM AOR and 6) Enhance ability to achieve long-term mission success. The opinions, conclusions and recommendations expressed or implied above are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of any organization or any entity of the U.S. or U.K. governments. About Authors Dr. Aleksandra Nesic is Visiting Faculty for the Countering Violent Extremism and Countering Terrorism Fellowship Program, Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), USSOCOM. As well as Visiting Faculty, US Army JFK Special Warfare Center and School and Senior Researcher, Complex Communal Conflicts, Valka-Mir Human Security, LLC. Lieutenant Colonel Arnel P. David is an Army Strategist and Civil Affairs Officer serving in the British Army as the U.S. Special Assistant to the Chief of General Staff. He is a coauthor of the book Military Strategy in the 21st Century: People, Connectivity, and Competition. End Notes [0] Table 1 derived from Tricia Wang’s website: https://medium.com/ethnography-matters/why-big-data-needs-thick-data-b4b3e75e3d7 [1] Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes (NY: Metropolitan Books, 2014). [2] Akbar Ahmed, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam, (Washington DC: Brookings, 2013) 1-42 [3] Ibid [4] https://www.nature.com/articles/445489a [5] http://armedforcesjournal.com/clausewitz-and-world-war-iv/ [6] Rudra Sil and Peter J. Katzenstein. 2010. “Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions.” Perspectives on Politics 8 (2). Cambridge University Press: 411–31. [7] Charles Duhigg, The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business, (New York : Random House, 2012). [8] David Lazer, Alex Pentland, Lada Adamic, Sinan Aral, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Devon Brewer, Nicholas Christakis, Noshir Contractor, James Fowler, Myron Gutmann, Tony Jebara, Gary King, Michael Macy, Deb Roy, and Marshall Van Alstyne, “Life in the Network: The Coming Age of Computational Social Science,” Science 323, no. 5915 (February 6, 2009): 721-723. [9] Alex Pentland, Social Physics: How Social Networks Can Make Us Smarter, Reissue ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 184. [10] Charles Duhigg, The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business, (New York : Random House, 2012). [11] The World Bank, “World Development Indicators 2012,” Washington D.C.: The World Bank. [12] Steven Livingston and Gregor Walter-Drop, Ed., Bits and Atoms: Information and Communication Technology in Areas of Limited Statehood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). [13] Gregory Asmolov, “Natural Disasters and Alternative Modes of Governance: The Role of Social Networks and Crowdsourcing Platforms in Russia,” in Bits and Atoms: Information and Communication Technology in Areas of Limited Statehood, ed. Steven Livingston and Gregor Walter-Drop, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). [14] Steven Livingston and Gregor Walter-Drop, Ed., Bits and Atoms: Information and Communication Technology in Areas of Limited Statehood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). [15] Jess Cook, “The Power of Thick Data,” BIGFish Communications, http://bigfishpr.com/the-power-of-thick-data/ [16] Tricia Wang, “Big Data Needs Thick Data,” Ethnography Matters, http://ethnographymatters.net/blog/2013/05/13/big-data-needs-thick-data/ [17] Mikkel B. Rasmussen and Andreas W. Hansen, “Big Data Is Only Half the Data Marketers Need,” Harvard Business Review, 2015. [18] Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, Connected: How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do, (NY: Back Bay Books, 2009). [19] Robin Chase, Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism (NY: Public Affairs, 2015). [20] McFate, S. “The West is Losing Today’s Infowars and it Must Hit Back Hard”. The Economist, https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/02/05/the-west-is-losing-todays-infowars-and-must-hit-back-hard [21] Biltgen P. (2017) Activity-Based Intelligence: Understanding Patterns-of-Life. In The State and Future of GEOINT. USGIF. https://usgif.org/system/uploads/4897/original/2017_SoG.pdf [22] Christian P.J., Nesic, A. (2017), Foundations of the Human Domain in Unconventional and Irregular Warfare, Valka-Mir Conflict Science Series: US Army SOF Textbook: USAJFKSWC&S, Fort Bragg, NC [23] Ibid [24] Ibid [25] Ibid [26] Christian, P.J., Nesic, A. (2017) Indigenous Social Re-Engineering & Traditional Governance Engagement: Preventing the Rise of VEO Counter-Governance in Conflict Zones, Valka-Mir Conflict Science Series: US Army SOF Textbook Civil Affairs Edition, Fort Bragg, NC [27] Ibid [28] Christian, P.J., Nesic, A. (2018) Psychosocial-Emotional Variables of Target Audience Analysis: Achieving Emotional Elicitation in PSYOP Messaging through Cultural Object Symbology, Valka-Mir Conflict Science Series: US Army SOF Textbook, Fort Bragg, NC. [29] Christian, P.J., Nesic, A., Sniffen D., et al. (2018) The Origins and Epidemiology of Violent Extremism & Radicalism, in Countering Transregional Terrorism, Edited by Dr. Peter McCabe, and Forward by LTG Michael K. Nagata, National Counterterrorism Center, Joint Special Operations University, United States Special Operations Command, Tampa, FL

Woven through contemporary debate are threads of different schools of thought that cross but lack a central thread which closes the seam. One school of thought sees a return of great power competition and argues for an emphasis on lethality and warfighting competency. Another sees a change in the character of conflict and competition where adversaries pursue their ends in the space between peace and war. Above all, and critical to stitching multiple paradigms together, is the one which is eternal in all war and immutable—the human domain. War is always a political act done by humans. Regardless of which school of thought gains the most currency in national security debates, Special Operations Forces (SOF) must continue to build capability and capacity to scientifically understand, accurately interpret and effectively influence human behavior. in this paper and upcoming presentation, Dr. Aleks Nesic and Lt Col Arnel David argue that the current level of understanding in the complexity of the human domain lacks true scientific depth and application, and propose SOF pursue training and education in the emerging multidisciplinary science of the human domain that will enhance its ability to gain indigenous knowledge and enable improved performance in the conduct of warfare in the 21st century across all domains. The authors demonstrate the essential components of the science of the human domain currently in development, and highlight analytical frameworks that SOF can use to develop these new skills. The knowledge, skills and abilities to analyze the operational environment by leveraging both big and thick data to map human geography, navigate a kaleidoscope of complex psycho-social and cultural landscapes, and use new skills from conflict science to assess these complex social dynamics among people cannot be sacrificed for the pursuit of the changes only in the physical domains. The essence of complex modern warfare continues to occur among the people and will continue to be driven by the people. As such, SOF will always need the scientific ability to understand, work with, and influence, people. This research will be presented at this year's Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) and Special Operations Research Association (SORA) Symposium titled "The Role of SOF in an Era of Great Power Competition." You can download the program for the symposium here or visit the SORA website for more information. #HumanDomain #MilitaryStrategy

Extremist ideologies; their organizing theories and propagation against individual/group predisposition to violent extremism by Patrick James Christian, PhD If we use human violent traumatic medical conditions as an allegory to violent traumatic social conditions, I propose that we can illustrate the relationship of extremist ideologies and violent extremism by examining the relationship between the human body’s immune system and viral/bacteriological disease. FIRST EXAMPLE: Two humans are exposed to the flu and only one human contracts the virus. If we do a post exposure pathology, we will likely find a sharp difference in the quality or quantity of their immune system at the moment of and immediately after exposure. Similarly, two refugees in Mollenbeek neighborhood of Brussels are exposed to an ideologue (See the enclosed slide); but only one of the two accepts the meaning-intentionality offered by the ideologue. The other refugee rejects, dismisses, or in some way negates the power of the offered meaning-intentionality through acceptance of differing meaning-intentionalities from other thought leaders. For the first refugee, the ideologue’s meaning-intentionality focuses his/her pain into a totalizing ideation of cause and effect that later, with the help of a recruiter, can be crystalized into a set of actions that helps to restore a rational reality to both subconscious (the ego/id/super-ego) and conscious mind, albeit one that is based on violent extremist ideology. Where the comparisons between human physical and psychological pathology diverge however is in the nature of the pathogen itself. Plague, Ebola, AIDS, Influenza, and others are viral or bacteriological organisms that have a verifiable existence outside of the human body. Extremist violent ideologies and subsequent radicalization do not exist outside the human psyche and would be better compared with say, Fibromyalgia, a disorder syndrome whose existence also does not exist outside of the human body and can only be diagnosed by process of elimination compared to presented symptoms. Fibromyalgia has no underlying viral or bacteriological particle (that we know of) that can be isolated and tested for within otherwise healthy patients. As the enclosed diagram shows, the predisposition to violent extremism does not exist outside of the human psyche. We note that most all humans can be motivated to extreme thought and subsequent extreme action under very specific conditions, however all extreme action is first proceeded by extreme thought and all extreme thought is laden and made powerful by extreme emotion that is conjugated from the underlying psychological crisis. If you accept this basic psychological logic, you might accept that humans do not preplan their own extremism; and thus they do not preplan their own radicalization (which is a sequelae of extremism). From this logic flows the conclusion that we cannot predict from tests whether a human is predisposed to conducting extremist, radicalized violent actions at the encouragement of the ideologue-recruiter-operative/leader terrorist triad. The basic behavioral traits that we can test for are common across the entire spectrum of human activity without regard to whether it is in service to existing civil society/government or in service to extremist-revolutionary ideologies pursuing religious political goals through violent action. SECOND EXAMPLE: The Orlando Florida shooter was an armed security guard in the service of his surrounding community, with unrestricted eligible to purchase handguns and protect fellow community members. Due to undiagnosed and untreated psychosocial-emotional issues (such as possible gender or sexual orientation that was inconsistent with his Afghan/Muslim/Patriarchal existing large group identity that possibly created sharp manifestations of cognitive dissonance) that likely presented from early teen to early adulthood, we catch glimpses of a devolution into extremism. This devolution likely progressed as in the diagram, from a basic psychological-emotional crisis, through totalizing meaning-intentionalities learned from ideologues to radicalized trait dissociation (transference of unwanted feelings or ideations onto ‘enemy others’), and finally, without intervention, to psychological devolution resulting in violent resolution where both the self’s inner-bad and ‘enemy others’ were together destroyed under a redeeming banner of ideological higher cause. Using this explanation of the relationship between ideology and recruit, you can see that the ideology’s organization and propagation (propaganda) has little need for factual accuracy, and in fact benefits from liberal application of exaggerated myth and symbolism. This explains political and religious sciences’ failure at combatting extremist ideologies that are not grounded in reality, but in the psychology of mythical archaic types and exaggerated emotions of belonging, heroism, savior, love, and evolution from man-to-God. Political science and religion can neither explain nor deny something that does not actually exist. Clinical, therapeutic engagement of the families and communities of the European refugees can however, restore the connection between the traumatized people and reality before their members are infected by virulent ideologies and become radicalized. Such engagement works to assess, diagnose, and treat the relative ‘psychosocial-emotional’ health of a community that is closely bound by physical and constructed markers of large group identity. This is a tricky sentence because ethnicity, race, gender, blood-relations, etc are physical markers of group identity, while religion, geography, language, historical narrative, etc are constructed markers of large group identity. (Culture is an expression of individual and group identity; it is the physical/auditory/visual/tactile/olfactory emanation of identity as humans transfer their subconscious feelings of communal belonging + distinction/affirmation from thought to expressed reality). As the diagram shows; clinical engagement within a community traumatized by violence, dislocation, and trauma can interfere with the false meaning-intentionalities offered by the ideologues. Clinical, therapeutic engagement of the family and community cannot take away their pain and suffering. Instead, clinical therapeutic engagement helps the community reestablish (non-extremist/non radicalized) meaning-intentionality to their suffering that is grounded in their new physical reality. Pain and suffering are powerful engines of either destruction (as you know) or of construction. The history of the many cycles of forced-migratory/refugees from Europe to the North American continent document the existence of powerful constructive energy that accompanies human suffering when connected to meaning-intentionality. The meaning-intentionality necessary for releasing constructive energy lies in the refugee communities’ ability to shore up and adapt their boundaries of belonging; reinterpret cause and effect relationships between their current circumstances and their existential historical narrative; and reimagine present and future constructions of group/individual identity archaic types meaning and saliency (eg; what does masculinity, femininity, heroism, sacrifice, creativity, fidelity, love, nurturance, beauty, mean/look-like, feel-like, and sound-like, to the Afghan boy or girl who metaphorically wakes up in the 21st century in Europe or America). The theory and practice of how we clinically assess and engage damaged, traumatized refugee populations is well beyond this short description. We can say with certainty however, that the psychosocial-emotional processes of extremism, radicalization and the devolution into suicidal terror can be assessed, diagnosed, and clinically engaged sufficient to withdraw them from participation in violent extremism and lethal radicalization. Clinical engagement will, in the long run, save tremendous costs in monetary resources and human lives. The only effective long term solution to terrorism is to begin directly and clinically engaging the underlying extremism, radicalization, and disaffected members’ psychological devolution into what is often suicidal terror attacks against innocent civilians.

by Patrick James Christian, PhD Applied warfare, like all other forms of human social endeavor, was once the preserve of governments and kings who monopolized domestic violence through demonstrated capacity to achieve genocidal response to armed minority protest. For significant and very complex reasons, the capacity or even the threat of genocide is no longer an available method for controlling populations that are unwilling to voluntarily submit. Even as global integrations of dense networks of technology and economics precludes most totalized state-on-state warfare, those same restraints have created new access to applied warfare by disaffected population groups. In the past quarter century, the senior beneficiaries of our global system of trade, finance, and technology have found themselves far more engaged by wars among communities than they have by wars among nations. Unfortunately, our international structures of diplomatic missions, our armed forces, and our respective military industrial bases have not changed to reflect this new reality. Once again, we are fighting today and tomorrows battles with yesterday's weapons. Wars among nations. For the better part of the past quarter century, the type of war that has drawn the developed nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the America’s into deploying their armed forces has been characterized as Intra-State conflicts. Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most of the wars fought by these developed nations involved Inter-State war. According to 18th Century Prussian General Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, interstate war involves two or more sovereign states continuing a political dialogue through ‘the addition of other means’; namely the application of physical force that we call war. Interstate war usually has a beginning and an end; winners and losers who are able to calculate their ability to take losses against expected gains. We can think of interstate war as ‘negotiation’ between two sides, involving dialogue and violence that creates suffering as sacrifice for national objectives of the governing majority or elite. Interstate warfare armies practice negotiation on battlefields punctuated by armor, artillery, and close air support from fighter jets and attack helicopter gunships. Physical terrain and the forced surrender by military and political leadership is the only objective. Civilian casualties are called collateral damage and are given tertiary consideration during the formation of battle plans. Each side’s military force is in effect, negotiating with the other side using applications of calculated violence on each other’s territory and defensive structures. Capitulation or negotiated truces occur when political calculations correlate with demonstrated, proven military capabilities. What is central to this introductory paragraph is that interstate war is organized violence by interested parties in dispute that is intentionally conducted for real or perceived objectives thought to be important enough for the accompanying suffering as sacrifice. Wars among communities.   Where interstate war is conducted to achieve the objectives of an organized state based on rational self-interest, intra-state war is not so simple especially for the unprepared national interventionist. When interstate armies fight intra-state conflicts, bad things happen. Think of the USSR intervention in Afghanistan; Egypt’s intervention in Yemen; France’s intervention in West Africa; the United States’ intervention in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; and now  Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen. These few examples are replete with failure and massive losses of national blood and treasure; all without materially resolving the underlying conflict. From the perspective of developed nations who are used to dealing with interstate conflict,  intra-state conflict requires an intervention into the affairs of others whose inability to resolve their violence threatens regional or even global stability. Stability is threatened by the vast displacement of non-combatant civilians onto the territorial shores of uninvolved nations; through the ideological radicalization of population segments of uninvolved nations; through the proliferation of weapons and violence into and out from the intra-state conflict zone and into the hands and minds of uninvolved neighboring populations. Several important differences characterize intra-state violence from interstate war, most notably underlying drivers of the conflict and inhibitors of resolution. While the political state in which the conflict is occurring may or may not be party to the conflict, the state is unable to resolve the conflict and halt the violence at the expense of its deteriorating legitimacy. This is why states with seemingly intractable conflicts are described as failed or failing states.Whereas interstate conflicts are usually fought over terrain or access to shared common pool resources, in intra-state conflicts, the underlying causes often do not involve recognizable utilitarian objectives.Intra-state conflicts often have inhibitors to resolution that would-be interventionists are unable to easily perceive such as social traumatizing conditions, disintegrating social structures, and devolving psychological organization of large group identity. From negotiated warfare to mediated intervention: the changing face of intra-state conflict resolution. The focus of nation state war has always been about national self-preservation from immediate threat of physical attack against its national boundaries. Violent conflicts in distant lands have only in the past half century or so, become strategically important issues for developed and developing nation states. Some of the reasons for this include: The growth of ethnic minorities living in diaspora and the rise of multi-ethnic societies whose psychological identities extended back to homeland countries. The growth of audio and visual communication capacity to the lowest levels of social organization (everyone has a video cellphone to capture the atrocities of their ethnic or cultural kin). The growth of trade, travel, and transportation systems that span continents and the oceans in between. National economies have become dependent on these new systems for continued growth and prosperity. Intra-state conflicts interfere with the emerging international market states, raising the relative importance of distant conflicts to the level of national strategic importance. As we have seen from the civil conflicts in Syria, Mali, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq, intrastate conflict creates massive movements of human populations that threaten massive social, ethnic, cultural identity changes to existing populations. Combining these reasons above together, intra-state conflicts, even in distant lands, can threaten agreements to govern between the many identity groups contained within the modern state. Faced with disintegration of their own national identity due to these global changes, nation states have begun intervening in other state’s domestic internal conflicts simply to protect themselves from the economic, environmental, and psychosocial fall out that registers on the shared physical and human terrain. This essay asserts that the types of interventionist deployments that will challenge the armed forces and diplomatic missions of most developed countries throughout the coming decades will continue to be intra-state conflicts rather than interstate warfare. The shift in violent conflict resolution: from negotiated warfare to mediated intervention. The battlefields of intra-state conflicts are quite different from those of interstate warfare of generations past. In the latter, the focus was always on the armed battle formations of the enemy other. Damaged, violated civilian populations existed, but the need for participating armed forces to survive the terror of high intensity warfare tends to marginalize their ability and or willingness to internalize the plight of unarmed civilians, especially those populations of the enemy other. Civilian casualties do often occur in interstate warfare as collateral damage, but what is different in intra-state conflict is the ‘intentionality’ of the casualties and in some cases, the care to which one side or the other took to ensure that maximum suffering occurred amongst their enemy other. The battles of interstate wars are fought over strategic passages through mountains and across rivers or over control of port and airhead facilities. Wide open spaces become vast avenues of approach for massed force that threatens loss of territorial control to defenders while rocky impassable lands become natural defensive lines. In intra-state conflict, the contested terrain consists of the human populations, together with their sustaining sources of food, water, and shelter. In the Darfur conflict, for instance, intra-state conflict focused on the human terrain taking the form of children chained to a wooden stump, their clothes doused with benzene and set afire, leaving only skeletal remains still bound by dull steel handcuffs. In the Rwanda conflict, piles of carefully gathered skulls mark sites of killing frenzies; in the Balkans, disemboweled pregnancies and mutilated children evidenced massive intentional civilian casualties that provided interventionists with little clue to the underlying structures of logic and emotion that drove the obscene violence. Where the interstate war battlefield smells of cordite, gunpowder, gasoline, diesel, and cement dust, the intra-state conflict zones smells of decayed flesh and the broken remains of village, town, and family home. The intensity of the violence against human terrain in intra-state conflict is driven by forces far more complex than negotiable percentages of common pool resources or adjustments to national borders or strategic passes. Often, these forces involve the perceived need for the extinction of the enemy other; a belief that one side’s existential identity must die so that the other may live. We see such totalizing visualizations of the conflict in ethnic cleansing and cultural wars of annihilation. In such conflicts, what is being protected is not merely life itself; but the survival of the psychosocial self-love across boundaries of death and metaphysical salvation. This is why armed forces practice of interstate warfare fails to resolve intra-state conflict; the participants to ethnic and cultural conflict often cannot negotiate that which they are not able to surrender; identification of self as it is known through historical narrative and existential memorialization to future generations. The intra-state conflict participants fight each other as politicized proxies against the physical fear of psychic annihilation. In this case, psychic annihilation is a condition where an entire group identity and the historical narrative that describes it, extolls it, nurtures it, remembers it, and transmits it across time and space becomes unstable and collapses into broad social trauma. Such conflicts can never be negotiated because one cannot negotiate away identity and memory. But there are knowledge and capacity tools that military, diplomats and defense industrial bases can build and field that will lessen the costs in blood and treasure to resolve violent intra-state conflicts.