A social scientist in the Army's controversial Human Terrain program was en route to Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas after being set on fire in and apparent Taliban attack in Afghanistan. It's the third time in five months that a Human Terrain Team member has been killed or seriously wounded.

Paula Lloyd was interviewing locals in the southern village of Maywand on Tuesday as part of her duties in a Human Terrain Team, which embeds civilian cultural experts into U.S. combat units. She approached a man carrying a fuel jug and they began talking about the price of gas. Suddenly, the man doused Lloyd in a flammable liquid and set her on fire. She suffered second- and third-degree burns over 60 percent of her body, a Human Terrain source told Danger Room.

The injuries could have been worse. Lloyd's teammate immediately threw her into a nearby water source to douse the flames, then Lloyd was sped to a nearby medical facility. Fortunately, the first doctor to treat her was a U.S. Army burn specialist. After being stabilized, Lloyd was evacuated to the military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and is now en route to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Lloyd is in "stable, but guarded condition," the source said.

The Taliban took credit for the attack on their website. The Taliban has a long history of setting women on fire as a way of punishing them for perceived immodesty.

This is the latest in a series of attacks on Human Terrain personnel. In May, Michael Bhatia, an Oxford-trained political scientist working in eastern Afghanistan, was killed, along with two soldiers, by a roadside explosive. Less than two months later, a bomb detonated inside the Sadr

City District Council building in Iraq. Social scientist Nicole Suveges was inside.

She and 11 others died instantly.

Each incident has been scarring for the few hundred people in the tightly knit program. But the casualties are almost certain to continue.

"I mean, it's a war. That's what we're involved in," a Human Terrain source says.

The Human Terrain program has come under criticism from within the military for its sloppy hiring practices and uneven battlefield training. Academic social scientists, meanwhile, have accused the program on being unethical, for blurring the line between civilian researcher and armed combatant. Over the last year-and-a-half in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of the program's social scientists have dressed in uniforms that make them virtually indistinguishable from ordinary soldiers; others have not. Some have carried weapons; others move around unarmed.

Lloyd knew Afghanistan well, having worked there previously for the

State Department. She visited Maywand several times and was "very popular there. She was accepted very positively throughout the village," one program official says. The man who attacked her was "from all appearances a non-belligerent." Until he struck.

The attacker was shot dead, and the Army is investigating the incident, according to John Stanton, an independent journalist.

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