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Cultural Insensitivities and Aggravating Factors in Iraq and Afghanistan 
 

Dylan Hyams 
 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
 
 
 

Abstract 
 

When examining terrorism, you can find many reasons as to why people may resort to such 
violence; whether they be for financial purposes, religious incentives, revenge, or for the thrill of 
violence. However, in Western literature one aspect infrequently written about is how cultural 
insensitivities and other aggravating factors, presented in this paper, contribute to grievances that 
help solve the collective action problem posed by many organizations. Throughout my paper I 
introduce flaws in the handling of cultural practices in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, how 
they have plausible correlation with increased recruitment by extremist organizations, and what 
the Department of Defense is doing to the promote the elimination of these factors. This paper 
explores instances of cultural mishandlings and abuse at the arms of United States service 
members; including Abu Ghraib, U.S. drone strikes, and ground force activities. Using empirical 
data on the amount of terrorist attacks occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan and the dates of 
significant military incidents, I try to narrow the gap between grievances and the use of political 
violence by terrorist organizations. Later, I introduce programs created by the Department of 
Defense to increase cultural awareness and boundaries of the regions that troops will be deployed 
to.  
  



	 	 IJOIS Spring 2020, Volume VI Program in 
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Throughout the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has been fighting 

asymmetric battles against the Taliban, Islamic State, and al-Qaeda. As of 2018, these conflicts 
have taken the lives of over 475,000 individuals and have turned parts of the Middle East and 
western Asia into war zones, displacing tens-of-thousands of people (Brown, 2018). Although 
these conflicts themselves are important, the United States has neglected to significantly train 
and equip its troops with the necessary cultural training in understanding the various sects and 
ethnicities within the Middle East, causing greater grievances among the local populations 
relating to an increase in violence and anti-American rhetoric. This situation allows for non-state 
actors to gain an upper hand and continue to wage their jihad against western influence in the 
region, giving them a greater ability to use the local populations to their benefit.  
 After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States began its invasion of 
Afghanistan, nicknamed Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), with the hopes of ousting the 
Taliban from power for harboring al-Qaeda terrorists, and to remove their influence from the 
country. In addition to the war in Afghanistan, the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, 
nicknamed Operation Iraqi Freedom, with over 100,000 troops, officially starting the Iraq War 
(“U.S.”, 2003). The goal of Operation Iraqi Freedom was to topple the Saddam regime and 
establish a new government. This goal, however, did not foresee the tribal struggle for power 
after the Saddam regime was toppled, and further drove the country into a cultural sandpit. In 
both wars, the United States has been reducing its troop presence as the conflicts have been 
ongoing for almost two decades with moderate success.   
 This paper will be greatly influenced by the grievance theory, which will help explain the 
rise of terrorist activity proceeding important events related to the United States and its coalition 
within Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the grievance theory of terrorism, actors turn to 
violence due to an event in their life that triggered an emotional response such as sadness, anger, 
or distress. In their paper, “The Rationality of Radical Islam,” Kaltenthaler and Wiktorowicz 
suggest that grievance theory helps rationalize the actions taken by individuals within a terrorist 
organization and is an offset of systematic inequality and alienation (2016, p. 297). In order to 
further support grievance theory explanation and its tie to this paper, different cases backed by 
statistical data will be presented and elaborated on in order to prove that cultural insensitivity has 
had a negative impact on local populations and shows correlation with an increase in terrorist 
activity.  
 When approaching the Middle Eastern cultures, you cannot use a westernized viewpoint; 
which characterized the United States’ actions early on in the two conflicts and is still going on 
in some instances today (Lazarus, 2018). The disparity between these two groups of peoples 
creates more animosity towards the Americans and an increasingly negative image of the 
military (Gharib, 2009, p. 16). Gharib further elaborates that American service members' lack of 
cultural preparedness prior to deployment to an Arab region caused “severe mishandling of 
various incidents” and further demonstrates the crucial need for a stronger sense of cross-cultural 
[training] for all levels of the military” (2009, p. 16). The cultural insensitivity contributed by the 
West is not the only act that has caused grievances among the Arab population. Throughout the 
conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, American service members have been involved in incidents, 
controversies, and human rights violations which have greatly contributed to the increase of 
violence from terrorist organizations. 
 Within the cultural framework of the Arab community and their interactions with the 
United States military, there have been many instances in which its forces have unintentionally 
insulted and humiliated the citizens by disrespecting their cultural norms. When American forces 



	 	 IJOIS Spring 2020, Volume VI Program in 
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first entered Iraq, they did so with Kuwaiti translators. This was viewed by many Iraqi’s as 
insulting due to the country’s history with Kuwait in the 1990s (“CAAT”, 2004). Additionally, 
US hired translators were often plagued by cultural biases that ran in the opposite direction of 
military objectives and critically harmed the relationship between the local tribes and US forces. 
Through this early display of insensitivity by American forces and lack of adequate translators, 
Iraqi tribal leaders had a negative view of the Western forces occupying their country.  
 As outlined is the United States Army’s Chapter on Civil Military Operations and 
Cultural Issues in Iraq, they list a few scenarios that have contributed to the increase of anger and 
distrust with US forces. The first is the detainment of family members of anti-coalition members. 
The United States response to this was that they hoped the individual whose family was being 
detained would turn themselves in, however what actually happened was greater distrust among 
the Iraqi population. In addition to the detainment of family members, American forces would 
also detain the “women and children [of the family] without due process [which] contribute[d] to 
a lasting negative image” (“CAAT”, 2004). In the Arab household, women and children are seen 
as a symbol of the man’s honor, and taking their family away is seen as dishonoring the man.  
 In another instance where the family was targeted, Mohamed Ghani gives a personal 
narrative “of a man he knew whose wife had been searched by American soldiers” (Gharib, 
2009, p. 23). Gharib adds that the act shamed the woman’s husband and destroyed his honor 
(2009, p. 23). The issue portrayed in this scenario was that male soldiers would often search the 
females, as female soldiers were often not in the field. In the Arab culture, touching another 
man’s wife is a sign of disrespect and is highly looked down upon, and in some instances sparks 
long lasting feuds between families. Some can argue the Americans were doing their job and 
ensuring their safety, however their insensitivity to the Arab culture cost more than it benefited 
them by contributing to the local population’s rage.  
 In addition to the above scenarios which question cultural fluidity between the Arab 
people and the West, mosques were often used as staging areas for militant operations and 
frequently raided by American soldiers on patrol (“CAAT”, 2004). In the Islamic religion, 
individuals must take their shoes off prior to entering the mosque and leave any weapons outside, 
as not doing so is considered disrespectful and insulting. This was not followed by the US Army 
who would enter with their boots on and weapons up (“CAAT”, 2004). This sign of cultural 
ignorance created greater anger among the Arab population due the disrespect and dishonor the 
American soldiers had brought upon the Muslim peoples.  
 Further contributing to the rise of grievances among the populations of Iraq and 
Afghanistan during the wars are additional aggravating factors that created a breeding ground for 
ideas and helped spread the jihadist ideology to a greater populous. Included in these factors are 
certain acts perpetrated by the US military or a member within its ranks, and consist of unlawful 
engagements against civilians, prisoner abuse and torture, and collateral damage as a result of 
targeted strikes on suspected terrorist forces. There is also a positive correlation between an 
increase of terror attacks and the acts mentioned above, however, no causation could be 
appropriately concluded from the data. 
 Coming into the public eye in 2004 were the atrocities that took place among American 
service members towards prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Within the compound, Arab 
prisoners were stripped of their clothes, hooded and “piled on top of each other in a pyramid 
shape” (Nasr, 2009). The males were additionally forced to touch their genitals on camera, 
beaten, and dragged around on leashes by female soldiers (Nasr, 2009). In addition to the events 
at Abu Ghraib, Human Rights Watch reports similar treatment of prisoners have reportedly taken 



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place in detention centers in Afghanistan at Bagram air field, Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Asadabad 
(Sifton, 2004). This event significantly harmed relations and public support for the United States 
in the middle east, and further attributed to the anger of the local populations.  
 In the Islamic culture, Nasr writes, “the human body is a taboo, a sacred temple that 
should be covered and respected… exposing the naked body is a sin” (2009). At Abu Ghraib, the 
soldiers lack of cultural conscientiousness and religious tolerance gave terrorist organizations 
like al-Qaeda and the Taliban greater leverage over the United States with respect to its 
recruitment campaign. The public outrage at these crimes was significant and spread across the 
Arab world like a wildfire. When the first images of the abuses leaked out of the prison in 2004, 
data gathered in Iraq on terrorist attacks significantly increased during the period of 2003 
through 2004, from 102 to 323 (Ritchie et al., 2013). Additionally, when the second set of 
images emerged in 2006, attacks rose from 617 to 838 in Iraq alone (Ritchie et al., 2013). 
Although correlation does not necessarily mean causation in this case, there was a dramatic jump 
in the numbers compared to other years observed.  
 Furthermore, in 2008, a United States airstrike targeted a wedding procession in Haska 
Meyna, Iraq. After three bombs were dropped, 47 individuals were killed, including 39 women 
and children (Shah, 2008). According to the deputy chairman of the Senate in Iraq, Burhanullah 
Shinwari, “[t]hey were all civilians, with no links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban” (Shah, 2008). The 
indiscriminate targeting of US strikes on the local Iraqi people has caused additional grievances 
among the population and is also seen as correlation with an increase in violence among terror 
groups. Following the trend in data, there is a small increase in terror attacks in Iraq from the 
years 2007 to 2008, with a continued increase through 2009; from 1,047 to 1,106 to 1,137 
(Ritchie et al., 2013). The increase shown in those two data points shows a unique correlation 
between the incident and the increase, however causation cannot be appropriately inferred due to 
lack of evidence   
 Much like the earlier scenario of American soldiers entering a mosque with boots and 
weapons, the defamation of a religious event in the Islamic culture is also a sign of cultural 
insensitivity within the Iraq war. Throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, religion has played an 
important role in creating distrust between the Americans and local populations. For example, in 
Rwaida Gharib’s thesis, he describes an unnecessary violence that often took place, writing, “a 
white flag, which in Western definitions is a means of surrender, led many Marines to assume a 
black flag was the opposite of surrender. As a result, many Shiites, who traditionally fly black 
flags at home as a religious symbol” were often labelled as an enemy and shot at (Gharib, 2009, 
p. 22). This use of unnecessary force gave greater leverage to terrorist organizations in their 
recruitment by characterizing the American’s as enemies who came to occupy their land and 
tame their people.  
 The United States coalition has been working on ways of addressing the difference of 
culture issue presented in the cases earlier in this paper and has implemented new ways to train 
and equip allied forces to limit the number of incidents. Beginning in early 2005, the Department 
of Defense initiated a new language training program giving more individuals within the armed 
forces the skills necessary to “comprehend, read and converse in more world languages” in the 
hope that the cultural aptitude of the troops would grow (Gharib, 2009, p. 31-32). In 2005, the 
Marine Corps adopted and has grown a new cultural training plan for the middle east, focusing 
on “Islam, History, the Arab culture, Cross Cultural Communication and Tactical Application” 
(Gharib, 2009, p. 31-37). Additionally, prior to deployments, ground forces are able to receive 
hands-on training in a ‘Arab culture simulator’ taking place in a mock-up village with actors 



	 	 IJOIS Spring 2020, Volume VI Program in 
Arms Control & Domestic and International Security  	

   
pretending to be civilians (Gharib, 2009, p. 37-38). This allows pre-deployment forces to 
practice different situations they may come across in the field and be evaluated by instructors on 
their performance and effectiveness in decision making along cultural lines.  
 Following the start and implementation of the new language and culture program in the 
Department of Defense (DoD), the United States has yet to witness another incident as damaging 
as Abu Ghraib, though over the course of the past 15 years, smaller incidents have occurred 
between American coalition troops and the Iraqi and Afghan populations. However, one can 
argue that with the rise of the Taliban after 2005 and its reemergence during negotiations in 
2019, growth of al-Qaeda, and the emergence of the Islamic State in 2014, it appears the cultural 
programs initiated by the DoD have not been successful in their mission to eliminate cultural 
grievances, as there has been a surge of individuals joining these terrorist organizations in an 
effort to drive out western influence within the region. These programs have provided greater 
situational awareness among coalition troops and have implanted individuals with added 
knowledge of culture and language into frontline units, in an attempt to decrease the likelihood 
of cultural incidents to take place in the future.  
 Throughout this paper, the impact of cultural differences and insensitivities was discussed 
and was supplemented by data showing a plausible correlation, but not causation. Cultural 
differences and insensitivities discussed include lack of knowledge with Islamic practices, 
cultural taboos associated with the Arab culture, negligent use of translators, and abuses by 
American soldiers on Iraqi and Afghani prisoners. These differences and insensitivities caused 
grievances to build and “exacerbate[d] tensions and ha[d] negative consequences” with the local 
populations (Greene et al., 2011, p. 959). The cases listed in this paper are catalysts for the 
grievance theory of terrorism, and when looking at yearly statistics of terrorist attacks, there is a 
significant increase in terrorist attacks around the timeframe of those cases. When looking at the 
larger picture, these cases could have directly contributed to the failure of the US 
counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan through increased 
resistance to Allied forces in the region. As a result, the implementation of a cultural program by 
the DoD is expected to help reduce incidents revolving around culture and language by providing 
training to individuals and units who are forward deployed in areas where large amounts of 
interaction are expected.  
 This expectation, however, has not been successful on the large scale. According to 
Gharib, “[t]he evidence in the current training demonstrates that not only are the present systems 
of training inadequate, but also that the post-op briefing for cultural and language use simply 
does not exist” (2009, p. 44). Studies suggest that in Iraq, peace-keeping missions have led to an 
increase in conflict due to coalition forces not being taught “the intricacies of the various cultures 
and behaviors of” the local population (Gharib, 2009, p. 69). In response, the United States and 
its coalition partners must revisit their cultural training programs and target specific communities 
that military units will be deployed to, instead of giving broad-scale training.  

 

 

 

 



	 	 IJOIS Spring 2020, Volume VI Program in 
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Arms Control & Domestic and International Security  	

   
Shah, A. (2008, July 11). 47 Afghan civilians killed by U.S. bombs, group says . Retrieved from

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