(via ‘Ilm al-insaan) An anthropologist embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan to help soldiers understand local customs has died more than two months after she was doused with fuel and set on fire, according to ap.
Anthropologist Paula Loyd, 36, had been chatting with an Afghan man about fuel prices when he suddenly attacked her. She worked for contractor BAE Systems in a Human Terrain Team, in which social scientists and anthropologists are embedded with combat brigades, according to court records.
She earned a cultural anthropology degree from Wellesley College and spent much of her career abroad.
According to BAE Systems Loyd served in Bosnia as a U.S. Army reservist, working on civil military affairs projects. She had spent significant time in Afghanistan, working as a civilian military officer for a United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, and also as a field program officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development in one of Afghanistan’s poorest provinces.
>> read the whole ap-story (link updated)
Oh I see there is also a story about her death in Wire Third ‘Human Terrain’ Researcher Dead and on Open Anthropology The Unreported Death of Staff Sgt. Paula Loyd of the Human Terrain System: Third Researcher to Die with lots of additonal resources (Open Anthropology seems to be the first to have reported on her death)
SEE ALSO:
More and more anthropologists are recruited to service military operations
“Anthropology = Smarter Counterinsurgency”
Cooperation between the Pentagon and anthropologists a fiasco?
The dangerous militarisation of anthropology
This entry was posted by admin and filed under Asia, Northern America, anthropology (general), ethics. 
Thanks Lorenz, and it seems that for the second time in a month I have served as a “breaking news” site.
I was writing also about a clash piece titled “Gassing Puppies, Burning Women, and Playing Tennis,” since a discussion/debate that came up between a friend and I seems to have finally helped both of us work our way towards some sort of anthropological conclusion on these Loyd posts.
For anyone interested, the post with the commentary beneath it is at:
http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/gassing-puppies-burning-women-and-playing-tennis/
It’s in moments like these that some people, with the reality or excuse of anger, give play to all sorts of racist expressions. That’s one place we need to step in as anthropologists. This Salam-Loyd encounter reads like dozens of tales scripted in the early colonial Caribbean, Africa, Pacific, or early colonial North America. It has a tremendous ring of familiarity.