ShareThisSAN FRANCISCO - In 2005, two years into the Iraq war, American soldiers began vaccinating cows across that nation not only to improve their health but also to garner goodwill among Iraqi farmers.
But instead of appreciating the help, the farmers stepped up support for the insurgents and even joined the violence.
Why? Because of a single, well-placed rumor that the Americans were actually poisoning livestock to starve the Iraqis.
A rumor, it turns out, can be as deadly as an IED, the improvised explosive devices favored by insurgents.
That's why the U.S. Navy is paying $1.6 million to San Francisco State University Professor Daniel Bernardi and three Arizona researchers to track, collect and find ways to defuse stories used as weapons.
Those who doubt the lethal power of "narrative IEDs," as Bernardi calls them, might recall the impact of another falsehood initially spread by now-deceased Iraqi President Saddam Hussein: that his country had weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration used that rumor to justify invading Iraq and for a war that continues today.
"Like their explosive cousins, rumors can be created and planted by nearly anybody, require limited resources to utilize, can be deadly for those in its direct path, and can instill fear," said Bernardi, a Naval Reserve officer who served 10 months in Iraq and six months in the Pacific.
He calls them a "low-cost, low-tech weapon."
To find out which rumors are genuine threats, the Navy will pay $400,000 a year for four years to Bernardi and his team of computing and communications experts. They plan to start the project the way many start these days: with an app -- a rumor app for smart phones.
"By uploading rumors as they are encountered on the battlefield, operational and strategic commanders will be able to track their spread," the professor told the Navy in his grant application.
Into a new database of pernicious fictions they'll go, as Bernardi's team tries to learn which ones pose a threat anywhere in the world. Figuring that out requires knowledge of the communities where the rumors germinate and thrive.
And that gets to Bernardi's specialty: cultural and media studies.
He is the new chairman of the cinema department at San Francisco State, where he teaches an online course called Signs of Aliens about cultural diversity as seen through aliens in pop culture. His book on "Star Trek" is required reading.
Think about it: Every time the Romulans outmaneuvered the Starship Enterprise, it was because of something Capt. Kirk didn't get about their alien culture. But once he figured it out, the Romulans were toast.
Bernardi wants to give the U.S. military that kind of an edge.
Back to the cattle poisoning rumor. It helps to understand that the West has a history of attempting dominion over Muslims, notably the Crusades, almost 1,000 years ago, Bernardi argues. While that may seem old enough to forget, it's also old enough for cultural myths and archetypes to take hold.
So Iraqi culture -- in which the West has long played the role of oppressor of Muslims -- is fertile ground for rumors about evil Americans, from phony inoculations to drought-causing weapons.
"We, not the insurgents, become the enemy the people must defeat," Bernardi said.
The project at San Francisco State is a wise use of military dollars, said Peter Vietti, spokesman for the Office of Naval Research.
"Rumors are a common method used by adversaries for discrediting U.S. efforts and as an instrument of persuasion and misinformation," he said. "Therefore, countering them effectively is important."
Bernardi will use an ethnographic team -- people who study cultures -- to evaluate the threat of individual rumors, an engineering team to build the rumor database, and analysts to do what analysts do. Finally, a "countermeasures team" will "develop targeted counter-narratives that speak directly to the cultural and religious traditions of relevant populations," Bernardi said.
He'll use Afghanistan as the testing ground -- though no travel is required, he assured the Navy.
Ultimately, he envisions a website for anyone, anywhere, to check in on threatening rumors as they check on threatening weather.
"We don't know that it's going to help," Bernardi said. "But we hope so."
E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov(at)sfchronicle.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
Must credit the San Francisco Chronicle
