Second, the front-line troops got zero coaching in cultural literacy. The Marines I labored with had been shocked, for instance, to listen to me exchanging favourite Koran verses with my fellow Afghans, mistaking this for extremism fairly than shared piety. When speaking to Afghan villagers, the Marines wouldn’t take away their sun shades — a transparent indication of untrustworthiness in a rustic that values eye contact. In some circumstances, they’d strategy and straight handle village girls, violating one in all rural Afghanistan’s strictest cultural norms.
