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Michael Bhatia

MEMORIAL

Profile of a Fallen Contractor

By all accounts, Michael Bhatia was a brilliant young social scientist with a promising academic career. Unlike most of his colleagues, the 31-year-old Massachusetts man wasn’t content to bury himself in books and pontificate in classrooms. He did what mattered in his craft: He applied his studies to make the world a better place.

Last September, he signed on with BAE Systems on contract with the U.S. Army’s promising new Human Terrain System (HTS) program. HTS is designed to provide sociological support to the military so that our combatants can more sensibly navigate the “human terrain” of the country and work with the population to help fight the enemy. In November he went to Khost, Afghanistan, embedded with the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division. The unit is based at Camp Salerno, a forward operating base (FOB) near the heart of Taliban and al Qaeda territory, just south of Osama bin Laden’s old mountain hideout at Tora Bora.

On May 7, along with two soldiers from the 101st, Michael became the latest private contractor to give his life for the United States. The three died when a roadside bomb struck their Humvee. Two other soldiers were seriously wounded.

Michael devoted himself to a lifetime of service. He grew up in Medway, Mass., where he became an Eagle Scout. As an undergraduate and later as a graduate student, he worked in conflict zones around the world: western Algeria, East Timor, Kosovo and Afghanistan. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1999, received a Scoville Peace Fellowship in 2000 to support his work at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, D.C., and earned a prestigious George C. Marshall Scholarship in 2001. He received a master’s degree in international relations from Oxford University and was working on his Ph.D. at the time of his death.

He authored War and Intervention: Issues for Contemporary Peace Operations (Kumarian Press, 2003); co-authored Afghanistan, Arms and Conflict (Routledge, 2008); and wrote articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Global Governance, Review of African Political Economy, The International Journal of Refugee Law, International Peacekeeping, and Middle East Policy.

The young scholar bucked the academic critics of the Human Terrain System program. He was an enthusiastic supporter of HTS, arguing that the program would save both American and Afghan lives. In November 2007, he stood up for HTS in a statement posted at Brown University: “The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the U.S./NATO/ISAF strategy becomes better attuned to the population’s concerns, views, criticisms, and interests and better supports the Government of Afghanistan.”

Prior to signing on as a contractor for HTS, which is under the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), Michael interviewed 345 Afghan combatants who fought the Soviets and others for his dissertation, “The Mujahideen: A Study of Combatant Motives in Afghanistan, 1978–2005.” The project gave him valuable insight into Afghan combatant psychology for his subsequent work for the Army.

He also did research for the Organization for Security and Cooperation, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, the Overseas Development Institute, and the U.K. Department for International Development through King’s College in London.

Said HTS project manager Mike Fondacaro, “He is a hero in every sense of the word.

“I can’t think of a better example of what being an American is all about,” Fondacaro continued. “Here was a civilian, a civilian scholar who was very comfortable in his personal situation—he gave up all of that to volunteer his services to be a participant in what we were involved in, and assumed all the risks every one of those soldiers assumed. He gave his life for exactly what he believed in.”

“Michael is a hero,” added Gen. William S. Wallace, commanding general of TRADOC. “The Army didn’t go looking for him to ask him for his service—he came looking for us because he was committed to make things better. Our nation is better, as are the people of Afghanistan, because of his devotion and brilliance. He will not be forgotten.”

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From the May/June 2008 issue of Serviam.