How (Not) to Signal “Stop”

army.mil-2007-04-11-095526

The following is the caption for this photo as it appears on the Defend America military blog:

A soldier from 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) teaches tactical hand signals to Nigerian soldiers from the 322nd Parachute Regiment during exercise Flintlock 2007 in Maradi, Niger, April 4, 2007. The closed-fist signal means “stop.” U.S. Army photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Larson.

Although I had not previously seen a picture of this gesture, I had come across it in my previous investigations into issues of cultural miscommunication and translation in the war in Iraq. It is an example which was often used in news stories about the confusion that could occur at checkpoints, since the Iraqi gesture for stop is with the had open, as in the U.S. Here is a blog post, from a soldier recounting a joke told during a briefing session:

The training opportunities thus far have been sparse, but comical. An Irish sergeant from the Brit Army briefed our unit on IEDs–still the number one killer of coalition troops in theater–as well as various checkpoint protocols:

“The insurgents, they’re sayin’ they blow themselves up fer seventy virgins, aye? Well we in the British Army have a policy to deal with this problem: We send them straight to Allah and keep the virgins for ourselves!”

“The British use this hand signal [closed fist] ‘Stop!’ to control traffic at checkpoints. The Iraqis, they use a similar one, [open hand] ‘Oogaf!’ And then there’s you Americans: [points weapon] ‘Freeze motherfucker!’”

But this is no joking manner. Although I believe the number of Iraqis killed at checkpoints has declined, especially (I suspect) as the US forces turn over such operations to Iraqi forces, many, many Iraqis have been killed at checkpoints over the course of the occupation. According to McClatchy from 2006 to 2007 there was an average of one incident (resulting in injury or death) per day. The headline reads: “US troops shot 429 Iraqi civilians at checkpoints.”

Here is what that article says about hand signals:

U.S. soldiers traditionally have used hand signals or signs to tell civilians to stop. If that doesn’t work, they fire warning shots. If the vehicles still are moving too close, they’re authorized to kill.

It doesn’t however, discuss the exact nature of the hand signals used.

If all this seems like an argument for the importance of employing anthropologists in the military – it isn’t. In fact, I was inspired to write this post by my friend Scott Sommers who recently spent some time reading up on McFate and found an article (PDF) she had written in Joint Forces Quarterly. What’s particularly interesting about this article (as pointed out by Scott) is that she seemingly gets the hand gesture story wrong. Here is what she says:

One Marine explained the American gesture for stop (arm straight, palm out) meant welcome in Iraq, while the American gesture for go actually meant stop to Iraqis (arm straight, palm down). As can be easily imagined, this misunderstanding resulted in deadly consequences at roadblocks.

As Scott found, this version of the story was repeated in an article about human terrain teams from the Boston Globe, complete with this picture (from a US Marine publication):

hand signals

The US forces’ superficial understanding of local tribal customs and ancient ethnic and sectarian rivalries has hampered their efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. An outstretched arm, palm facing forward, for example, means “stop” in most Western cultures, but in Iraq it’s considered a sign of welcome. Confusion over the signal has had deadly consequences, leading US troops to open fire at Iraqi civilians who didn’t stop at checkpoints.

As far as I can tell the Boston Globe has this wrong, as does McFate. There is confusion over hand signals, to be sure, but it isn’t because the military are using an outstretched arm with the palm facing forward, but are using a unique military gesture which even most Americans would not understand.

In my post on “the myth of cultural miscommunication” I argued that many of these problems were “common sense” and didn’t require the intervention of cultural experts to intervene. In a comment on that post Carl Dyke wrote:

I’m inclined to agree with you, Kerim, but when you talk about common sense in an anthropological setting I get confused. Common to whom, under what circumstances, according to which rituals, restrictions and agendas?

I teach soldiers who have been or soon will be deployed. Like all of my students some of them tumble quickly to the value of taking the perspective of the other, while some are more rule or authority oriented. They seem to have different ‘common senses’ depending on how and where they were raised, where they are in their emotional-cognitive development, their sense of identity and purpose, their levels of stress, and so on.

Conflictual situations are notoriously poor ones for optimizing reciprocity of communication, as the post on the myth of Mars and Venus also shows. Short of a desirable but currently unlikely elimination of all conflict, what sorts of practical steps would in your view improve understanding under these difficult circumstances? Is there a specific way of understanding ‘common sense’ that gets us further there?

At the time I replied that I was “not talking about the common sense of individual soldiers, but of the military as an institution.” Since then I felt that Carl’s question deserved a better answer, and I’ve written this post partially as an effort to do just that.

If we take the McFate account at its word, then we really do have a cultural confusion which could be avoided with the help of cultural experts like McFate. But it doesn’t seem that this is the case. Scott also found this letter written to the Sandbox military blog in which a Company Commander finds that a new soldier does not understand the standard gesture for “stop”:

Now seeing this vehicle drive down the street I wanted to confirm that it was ready for combat. I held up my fist to communicate I wanted him to immediately stop. The Soldier however, interpreted my clenched fist more along the lines of the Mod Squad’s “solid” than as a command. The Soldier returned my “salute” with a wide smile on his face.

As you can see from this example, the strange and exotic culture that needs explanation is not that of the Iraqis, but the US military who have dealt with the problem of cultural miscommunication by creating a universal hand gesture which nobody understands.

In my previous post I used the term “common sense” but I think that oversimplified the matter. Deborah Cameron’s point is that men use miscommunication as a tactic to avoid doing what they want to do. The “Mars and Venus” books are aimed at helping women adjust to this fact by teaching women to better communicate their needs to men. Instead, Cameron argues, men shouldn’t be left off the hook so easily. The problem isn’t that miscommunication is a common-sensical problem – it isn’t. In fact there is a large body of linguistic anthropology literature on the subject, starting with John Gumperz’s excellent work on “crosstalk.” The problem is that this literature all too often overlooks the issue of power as it applies to such misunderstandings.

Similarly, we have a situation here where the US military uses an incomprehensible hand gesture and Iraqis are shot for failing to comprehend. The solution, we are told, is to teach our soldiers to better understand Iraqi culture, when it seems it might be our own military culture which needs to be able to adjust in order to adapt to local conditions.

But it is a “common sense” example in other ways, in that it seems the problem of hand gestures is well known – its just the details which are not. If McFate and company are wrong on the details, then they aren’t doing much good. The soldiers writing letters and blogs seem to understand the problem just fine (without expert advice) and the military needs to figure out how to listen to them. Or even better yet, leave it to the Iraqis to sort out for themselves.

On the other hand, I fully approve of using video games to teach the military about Iraqi hand gestures.

14 thoughts on “How (Not) to Signal “Stop”

  1. Absolutely brilliant post. It is a shame for human beings to lose their lives due to accidental interpretations. Sure, without any sort of communication we are in a worse position – but the improper execution of any method of communication can be just ad deadly.

  2. —Deborah Cameron’s point is that men use miscommunication as a tactic to avoid doing what they want to do. The “Mars and Venus” books are aimed at helping women adjust to this fact by teaching women to better communicate their needs to men. Instead, Cameron argues, men shouldn’t be left off the hook so easily. The problem isn’t that miscommunication is a common-sensical problem – it isn’t. In fact there is a large body of linguistic anthropology literature on the subject, starting with John Gumperz’s excellent work on “crosstalk.” The problem is that this literature all too often overlooks the issue of power as it applies to such misunderstandings.—

    I find it a bit problematic that Cameron seems to put all the agency in the hands of the more powerful party. That is, women’s indirect speech is no less transparent than women’s direct speech. In fact, what differentiates indirect from direct speech is how men act upon it.

    If we are to take pragmatics seriously don’t we have to acknowledge that particular individuals and particular events are distinct? The hypothesis that many men adopt a strategy of feigning misunderstanding of speech that can be construed as indirect strikes me as realistic. But is the alternative hypothesis that many men lack a sufficient control of speech resources to, in rapid real time succession a) consciously differentiate direct & indirect speech b) decode the propositional content c) decide whether they want to comply with the request and d) perform a reply that realistically dissimulates their true understanding of the proposition any less realistic?

    I guess what I really have a problem with is not the study of speech pragmatics but rather the way the analysis of fundamentally individual-level interactions gets tied to issues at the social and cultural levels.

  3. Kerim, great post. We have talked before about issues related to common sense and cultural communication, but this is a topic that needs much more development. Perhaps I’ll try and tackle it later. Your point that US military culture, and military culture in general, is “strange and exotic” is very important. I’m not so sure that the military is incapable of any type of reform, but rather that it is capable of only certain types. It is unfortunate that some of the vast sums financing social scientists for HTS can’t go into researching some deeper understanding of this problem.

  4. @MTBradley – Cameron’s argument is much stronger than what I present here. She shows that in actual studies of indirect speech and gender, men are just as likely (if not more) to use such speech styles as are women.

  5. Thanks for this, I can’t add anything on a professional level, but I think that’s one of the most tragic things I’ve ever read on the internet, given the scale of the casualties.

    It’s striking how much it suggests the complete separation of the occupying forces from any local influence (like they didn’t have traffic police before the invasion?) – and as you say, the wasted understanding of the soldiers on the ground.

  6. Thanks, Kerim. I think you’re right on with all of this. Adding the dimension of power takes this to another level.

    Along those lines: common sense is tricky, as we’ve agreed, but here’s my version of it: If, in a war zone, I am driving toward a heavily-armed soldier of an occupying power from an alien culture, and he makes an imperative hand gesture of any kind, I stop. I wait for at least two imperative invitations to proceed. I do so very slowly. The lizard brain ‘understands’ the difference between slow and fast.

    Nuances: I suspect the gesture for welcome is the open hand raised high, not the open hand thrust straight forward. And everyone knows that the high closed fist means “Black Power.” Any ambiguity in the presence of deadly fire would suggest caution, again. Good luck.

    So yeah, I’m agreeing that letting the soldiers and the Iraqis work it out is probably the best we can do, and that it won’t be good enough to avoid the occasional deadly misunderstanding.

    MTB, that’s a great analysis and thanks Kerim for adding Cameron’s acknowledgement that in many interactions, men assess their power negatively and communicate from the ‘one-down’.

  7. I’m a bit confused. The raised-fist gesture is taught as a hand sign for silent tactical communication – from one soldier to another, i.e., entirely within the military ground forces community (folks like aircraft ground crew have their own gestures). Hence it is entirely reasonable to expect (as the Sandbox captain did) that any soldier trained by and operating with Western forces would understand it.

    I may have missed this (if so I apologize), but is there any systematic evidence that Western soldiers are using the raised-fist gesture with civilians? I only see the one n-th hand anecdote from the British soldier.

    Not having deployed, I have no idea. Judging from anecdotal sources like the documentary “Off to War” (filmed in 2004), both “open hand” and “raised rifle” seem commonly used. (And equally problematic, but for the obvious reasons, not the more subtle “military culture” reason posited here.)

  8. @Paul – Although I could not find it for this post, I can recall seeing at least one other newspaper account of the use of this gesture at checkpoints in Iraq. (I saw it several years ago – its sad how long this war has gone on.) However, I do not know of any more widespread study of the problem and I would love to hear from deployed soldiers who can shed light on the practice.

  9. Causally checkpoint deaths are likely to be much more of a systemic, complex issue than misunderstood hand gestures. Especially since hand gestures are a small element of the whole checkpoint setup. I suspect McFate’s use of the example is pure nonsense – a nice publicity soundbite rather than something useful.

    I remember a lot of coverage on the issue after an Italian intelligence agent was shot in 2005, and the Human Rights Watch put out a series of recommendations in a letter to Rumsfeld. I doubt many of these were taken up. There are lots of different types of checkpoint – permanent and temporary (so-called Mobile Checkpoints) and it is evidently the latter that are most dangerous. There are also daytime and night-time differences – in the latter spotlights are used. Typically Arabic and English warning signs are set out saying “Stop or you will be shot” – an issue with these is their visibility on crowded, messy Iraqi streets and the distance they are placed ahead of the checkpoint. There then may be a staggered checkpoint of Iraqi police followed by US troops. There is an article by Annia Ciezadlo in the Christian Science Monitor called “What Iraq’s checkpoints are like” which is revealing here. The Iraqi police often casually wave you through, so you speed up and suddenly see US troops pointing their guns. Drivers may assume that they are exempt from this second checkpoint because they were waved through the first level, others may panic and speed up. Ciezadlo argues that Iraqi drivers have a fear of ‘idling’ or driving slowly near government buildings and officials, which was engrained during Saddam’s reign. Warning shots may be fired, but these are often inaudible from inside a car (you can’t hear a bullet passing over head)… Not to mention the mindset of the soldiers, who may have been on patrol a day earlier, shooting at Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes – making the switch to assessing whether Iraqis wearing civilian clothes driving cars are ‘friendlies’ or not must be problematic.

    If you do a Youtube search for “Iraq Checkpoint” you can see lots of evidence of variability in practice and the context in which checkpoints exist. Gestures are not really a feature – although there are a few ‘amusing’ examples to be seen. Anyway what is really needed is not Anthropologists happily applying their knowledge of cultural norms to volatile situations of individual variance, but something like workable Architectures of Control that shape behaviour in a careful way.

  10. Paul, thank you for your comment. I am the original source of Kerim’s information on the use of the raised fist in Iraq. I have been an infantryman in the Canadian military, which is why I am familiar with this usage and heard about this problem some time ago. Your point is interesting and as I have not seen Off to War, one that should be addressed. Kerim does not provide the links, but my post offers links to a number of examples.

    From an interview with Iraq veteran Jimmy Massey that speaks directly to this point
    http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/vet-n11.shtml
    “When you put your hand up in the air with a closed fist, in the Marines it means you want them to stop,” he said. “But, as we later learned, it’s actually the international sign of solidarity. It has a totally different meaning for the Iraqis—to them it was a sign like hello. And that was just one example of how we were not trained properly to understand the cultural differences between us and them.”

    From a post on the official US military blog The Sandbox entitled Hand and Arm signals describing the use of the closed fist to stop traffic
    http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/2007/07/hand-and-arm-si.html
    “A Soldier learns early in his or her career about hand and arm signals…One basic hand and arm signal is the clenched fist, held straight up…Now seeing this vehicle drive down the street I wanted to confirm that it was ready for combat. I held up my fist to communicate I wanted him to immediately stop….”

    From the LA Times, Shots to the Heart of Iraq
    http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/25/world/fg-civilians25
    “The military expects all vehicles to stay at least 100 yards from a convoy. When cars come too close, troops signal them to move back, sometimes by waving a little stop sign and sometimes by holding up a clenched fist.”

    You might also want to check accounts of the murder of the Italian envoy by American soldiers. While the details have alluded me, there are reports that the shooting confusion over hand signals.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/05/international/middleeast/05italy.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

    Here are some more relevant links
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/badvoodoo/etc/milblogs.ht
    http://iraqthepurgatorium.blogspot.com/2008/03/escalation-of-force.html

    The number of examples like this I can produce is endless. In fact, I found these quotes by typing Iraq + roadblock + “closed fist” into Google. A similar search with the term “open hand” produced nothing.

    While I am not sure if US military personnel use an open hand to signal stop, I am quite certain there is continued use of the closed fist. If you find any evidence to contrary, please let me know.

  11. I appreciate the input of everyone who has helped point out the complexity of the situation in Iraq. McFate’s description of the ‘cultural miscommunication’ with regard to hand signals at roadblocks is simplified to the point of uselessness. It is NOT merely a matter of getting an Anthropologist to straighten out all those quaint local customs and practices. Her depictions of conflict between US military practices and local customs seem either grossly distorted or to be a lie.

  12. I appreciate the input of everyone in pointing out the complexity of the situation in Iraq. McFate’s description of the ‘cultural miscommunication’ with regard to hand signals at roadblocks is simplified to the point of uselessness. It is NOT merely a matter of getting an Anthropologist to straighten out all those quaint local customs and practices. Her depictions of conflict between US military practices and local customs seem either grossly distorted or to be a lie.

  13. This post and thread seem awfully valuable to me. Thanks all.

    On the subject of power and common sense I don’t think I got my point said as well as the discussion deserves. As feminists keep telling us, people with power don’t bother to master subtleties of interaction because they have the leverage of command and final retaliation. Historically, conquering powers and military hegemons don’t typically waste more than a little effort on local relations. When push comes to shove it’s our way or the highway, the Romans, Mongols, Zulus and Nicaraguan death squads say. Mess with us beyond minor inconvenience and we raze your cities, or at least your Temple, kill your men and round up your women for domestic slavery. Get it?

    The context in which the discussion in this thread makes sense is a very different one, and that’s already real interesting. The molecular construction of new common senses and consent regimes (e.g. checkpoint etiquettes) is a very different way to do power than naked force. There’s room in that process for quite a lot of effective feedback, although the tolerances are by no means infinite.

    This is a historically amazing situation. What are the ways we can maneuver this toward better rather than worse interactions and outcomes? Expressions of outrage may be tactically useful from time to time, but since they depend on their targets basically agreeing on the moral framework of the situation (as Gandhi and King understood) a more pragmatic second phase is required. What would that look like?

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