BRITISH OPPOSE AMERICAN MILITARY TACTICS

The US and Britain are close allies but that has not stopped British generals and politicians from expressing serious concern about US military tactics, especially in Afghanistan where the US-NATO coalition is under fire this year for killing more civilians than the Taliban with an overuse of airpower.
Relations between the two allies were strained recently when a top British commander ordered US Special forces out of part of the Helmand Province of Afghanistan where the British believe they are getting the upper hand in a tough counter insurgency war against a resurgent Taliban. The British commander blamed US Special Forces teams for calling in heavy airpower that was causing untold civilian casualties, thereby providing propaganda for the Taliban. The deaths were alienating the local population from the British and undermining their reconstruction efforts. The British, with a long history of fighting low intensity conflicts from Kenya to Aden and N. Ireland, have warned for some time that heavy handed tactics by the US military were proving counterproductive.
There has been a growing concern within NATO that in Helmand, where as many as 300 civilians have died this year alone, there has been a tendency for US Special Forces to call in “shock and awe” bombing runs when they are outgunned or outmanned. The result has often been civilian casualties either because the bomb coordinates were wrong or the bombs fell close to villages. In the past year, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai has been openly critical of US air power, pointing out that a high civilian death toll has been turning the population against his government and its coalition sponsors.
News reports of the actions of the British commander in Helmand were down played by Britain and the US. The Pentagon even denied there was any disagreement and insisted US Special Forces would remain in Helmand for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, civilians are being killed by US bombing and that was evident on May 8 when villagers at Sarwan Qala carried 21 bodies to a NATO compound. On May 11, the British confirmed that an adjoining village was hit by American bombs and 18 civilians were wounded.
All of this has greater echoes in Iraq where the civilian death toll from bombing has been exceptionally high. There, the British have continually expressed serious disquiet about the excessive use of US firepower. In 2004, a leaked British government memo, published in the Sunday Times of London, referred to “heavy handed tactics” and warned that their use in Fallujah and Najaf had helped “fuel” Sunni and Shiite opposition to the coalition and “lost us much public support outside Iraq.” In Fallujah, cluster munitions and phosphorous bombs were deployed yet there were no US military figures for the numbers of civilian and insurgent casualties. The leaked memo also stressed the need for a more “sensitive and sensible” approach to the use of military force and pointed to serious diplomatic damage accruing from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
The British contend that their counter insurgency experience proves you cannot win a low intensity war unless you have the trust of the civilian population because the enemy hides within that population. The moment you alienate civilians is the moment you hand the initiate to the insurgents. A case in point occurred in July 1970 in N. Ireland in an episode called “The Lower Falls Curfew.” In what British Generals later admitted was a crude strategy, a massive military force was used to seal off and squeeze a Catholic enclave in Belfast. The result was that Catholics turned against the British army and young, Catholic men joined the ranks of the emerging Provisional IRA. The British army never quite recovered from that episode. It was a classic example of how the use of excessive power against civilians ultimately benefits insurgents. With events like that in its background the British in Iraq and Afghanistan have been wary about doing anything that would turn locals against their troops and provide succor and propaganda for the enemy.
Another worry voiced by the British has been about the use of “contractors” – mercenaries. In Iraq, they number well over 100,000 with approximately 45,000 originating with US companies. The fact that there is no exact number is testimony to the unregulated character of this private army. For example, US and British soldiers have been charged with killing civilians but “contractors” have not because they are not governed by the same rules. One of the most controversial aspects of their operational roles in Iraq is that they are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Secondly, they cannot be tried by Iraqis for killing civilians because of an unusual agreement put in place by the Coalition Provisional Authority – that ineffective body run by Paul L. Bremer that governed Iraq for 14 months after the 2003 invasion. That agreement, which ensured US soldiers and mercenaries could not be tried in the Iraqi courts, remains in place, insulating “contractors” from being held legally accountable for their actions. In a business that is said to generate anywhere from $5 billion to $10 billion a year “contractors” have become a second military in Iraq thereby raising the number of coalition forces from 160,000 to as many as 260,000 with some estimates putting the total coalition military force at 300,000.
In the main, “contractors” are exceptionally well armed, sometimes better than regular US and British combat troops, and are paid high wages. They provide security for US supply convoys, visiting diplomats, congressional personnel and even US generals like David Petraeus. Construction projects are among many of their priorities yet the failure of reconstruction in Iraq suggests the money used to hire mercenaries has not been well spent.
Like the British, US troops on the ground have serious reservations about the unregulated behavior of the “contractor” force. A leaked video hit the Internet in 2005, showing “contractors” laughing and firing at civilians. No one was charged in that incident. The company involved, “Aegis” defended the shooting on the basis that it was allowed within the rules established by Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority. Ironically, the CPA set up the Reconstruction Operations Center to monitor and list the numbers of mercenaries and their activities but like most CPA initiatives it turned out to be a failure. One ROC rule required mercenaries to report the wounding or killing of civilians. Unfortunately, the rule was not legally binding and was ignored as was an ROC request for mercenaries to register with the ROC center in Baghdad. As a consequence, there is now a lack of information about this private army, its activities, the numbers of civilians it has killed, and its funding.
The British have not been alone in calling for a reining in of mercenary companies and their personnel. Top level US commanders have begun to voice concerns, pointing out that because mercenaries are not under their control they can put the lives of regular soldiers at risk by their wayward behaviour. They also have the potential to alienate the civilian population which General Petraeus is trying to win over as part of his “surge” strategy. The lack of a chain of command within the shadowy “contractor army” has been one of the most serious issues for US commanders. They have complained that when an incident occurs involving mercenaries there is no mechanism for raising the issue.
But, for all the experience the British acquired in their low intensity wars it has not been enough to avert a failed campaign in the south of Iraq, especially around Basra. Privately, the British complain that there were never enough troops on the ground in southern Iraq and that the overall Iraq battle plan devised by the US was seriously flawed from the outset. Some British military commentators have argued that the events at Abu Ghraib and the use of excessive force made winning over the Iraq population impossible. That may in part be true but is it too convenient an argument and ignores the reality that the bitter tribal history of Iraq once unleashed was always likely to lead to a civil war outsiders could never win.
The British more than the US should have understood that Iraq was a place with dangerous divisions because they witnessed and helped with the emergence of Iraq from disparate elements in the early 20th century. They also oversaw the partitioning of Pakistan and India and the creation of Kashmir. It was Prince Charles’ uncle, the late Lord Louis Mountbatten who created Kashmir from the partition of India and Pakistan. It seems the problem with military men and with politicians who have great designs but a meager knowledge of the past is they rarely understand intricate historical complexities. They tinker with them in ways that can later lead to the resurrection of deeply held historical aspirations and a bitterness that can generate untold misery for generations.