The negotiations were going smoothly, but the deadline was approaching too quickly.
After briefly consulting with his superior, the Governors Representative gave an order. In four minutes, all three squadrons of military police would be dead, along with three civilian policemen, two gang members in their fortified compound and this journalist.
While most Tufts students were enjoying the warm weather on the first weekend back from break, 65 others trekked up to a paintball field in Weare, N.H. to participate in the annual Field Exercise in Peace and Stability Operations (FieldEx). Run by the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) and the Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES), FieldEx brings together students from all class years to participate in a 24-hour conflict simulation.
This year, the organizers planned a simulation of a conflict that may actually occur over the next few years as Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games: the demolition of the slums and the forcible relocation of their inhabitants. Students were assigned to one of a number of different roles: politicians, armed military police, civilian police, armed and unarmed gang members, journalists and residents of barracos a Portuguese word for shanties in the simulation.
The 65 participants met up on the afternoon of March 29 to board a pair of buses up to New Hampshire, bringing with them just $15 and a waiver releasing Tufts University of all liability. Overall, the daylong trip cost $5,000 in total, funded by the attendees fees, budget allocations from the TCU Senate and a $2,000 grant from the United States Institute of Peace. According to sophomore Joe Sax, one of the FieldEx directors, most participants majored in the social sciences, but a significant portion of the attendees were STEM or humanities majors, which enabled interaction between various groups of students on campus that are often segregated from one another.
In addition to Tufts students, cadets and midshipmen from West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy have attended FieldEx since its inception in 2009. This year, however, the delegations from each were unable to attend due to communication mishaps, bureaucratic delays caused by sequestration and scheduling conflicts, respectively, according to sophomore Revecca Dewey, Logistics and Financial Director of FieldEx, and junior Maria Oparil, ALLIES media director. The military component was not entirely lost, however, as several attendees from Tufts were also in the Army or Navys Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). In addition, a number of students from other universities, including Boston Universitys ALLIES chapter and Wellesley College, participated in FieldEx.
After arriving at a campsite 15 minutes from AG Paintball in Weare, everyone received an introduction to their assigned roles from their advisors, who were recent Tufts graduates or Fletcher students. The advisor for the armed units used his military background to teach basic tactics, while the journalism advisor, Amit Paz (A11), advised on tactics and how to best achieve in-scenario objectives without jeopardizing access to all parties. Before bedtime, groups began to strategize, and as would be revealed later, several students began plotting to manipulate the following days events in their favor.
Despite camping outside in below-freezing temperatures in three inches of snow, there was a general feeling of excitement. Students had a variety of motivations for being there. Sophomore Stacey Bevan said that she planned to work with global infectious diseases in the future and thought that it was possible that she might find herself in a conflict situation one day. Bevan remarked on the benefits of experiencing FieldEx.
[The simulation is] so hands on, and ... there is a sense of purpose that comes actually dealing with people, she said.
FieldEx provides complementary education in strategy and operations to often too-theoretical and detached material learned in college, Graham Starr, a sophomore who was participating in FieldEx for his second year, added.
As the first of three successive 90-minute scenarios began, politicians schemed about how to evict the barracos residents without having the military police shoot them all, and gang members struggled to obtain contraband in an attempt to obtain in-game money for sorely needed weapons. Simultaneously, unarmed civilian police attempted to conduct a census, the three journalists struggled to obtain truthful information to release selectively and spin for their own purposes and unarmed civilians struggled to band together in an effort to be taken seriously.
Participants were not simply defined by their occupation: the residents of the barracos also had to be loyal to members of their families, regardless of whether or not they were in the gangs. Dewey observed that, both in FieldEx and in real conflicts, the role of the civilian is one of the hardest. In the simulation, civilians without weapons or competent and non-corrupt leadership still had to find a way to make their voices heard.
Without any shots fired during the first scenario, the morning passed by slowly. Eventually, a series of peaceful demonstrations outside the civilians compound escalated, with the military police roughly detaining a civilian and firing shots into the air. The gangs, eager to push back against the military police, took this opportunity to strike back from inside the compound while blending into the civilian population. When the military police were given the order to raid the compound, armed gang members shot at them while unarmed gang members threw snowballs.
Military police, not wanting to inflict unnecessary civilian casualties, focused their fire only on those shooting at them, as they were unable to distinguish between civilians and gang members. According to sophomore Will Beckham, the inability to differentiate between civilian and insurgent is one of the major complications of urban warfare.
Dewey, Sax and senior Steve Yu directed this years FieldEx, with the assistance of six other FieldEx members. Despite large amounts of logistical planning, none of them foresaw how the final scenario would unfold. The coordinators had occasionally been intervening in minor ways throughout the day, whether by providing private information to journalists or by introducing additional ways for barracos residents to accomplish their end goals.
Their interventions in the third scenario involved attempting to divide the barracos by recruiting some civilians into a militia loyal only to the politicians, and by introducing a new character a member of the Games Committee who wished to tour the barracos. They had attempted to predict a number of scenarios, but none of them involved a Committeewoman being held hostage, which is what eventually occurred.
Events organically unfolded from that point until the simulations end. The compound was not taken and the hostage was not released, and ultimately, many participants did not accomplish their goals. The barracos residents, with the exception of those who managed to acquire resettlement packages furtively or deviously, still lacked either government services or legitimate control over their land. The government did not acquire space to build the new stadiums for the Games, and the gangs solidified control over the area.
FieldEx is more than a one-day paintball trip for international relations and political science nerds. The simulation demonstrates the complexity of real conflicts, and debunks the idea of resolutions as mere amalgams of considered actions and careful planning.
As in real-life situations, FieldEx leaders must make decisions based on incomplete and inaccurate information, and just have to hope that things turn out for the best, Dewey said.
