Fighting Islamists: The Challenges Facing Israel And The West,Colonel Richard Kemp

Soldiers from all Western armies, including Israel's and Britain's, are educated in the laws of war. Commanders are educated to a higher level so that they can enforce the laws among their men, and take them into account during their planning.

Because the battlefield is a place of confusion and chaos, the complexities of the laws of war as they apply to kinetic military operations are distilled down into rules of engagement.

In the most basic form these rules tell you when you can and when you cannot open fire.

In conventional military operations between states the combat is normally simpler and doesn't require complex and restrictive rules of engagement. Your side wears one type of uniform, the enemy wears another; when you see the enemy's uniform you open fire. Of course there are complexities. The fog of war - sometimes literally fog but always fog in the sense of chaos and confusion - means that mistakes are made.

The tragedies that have ensued from such chaos and misunderstanding are legion throughout the history of war. We call it blue on blue, friendly fire or fratricide. And there are other complexities in conventional combat that make apparent simplicity less than simple. Civilians, perhaps taking shelter or attempting to flee the battlefield, can be mistaken for combatants and have sometimes been shot or blown up. Enemy forces sometimes adopt the other side's uniforms as a deception or ruse.

But in the type of conflict that the Israel Defense Forces recently fought in Gaza and in Lebanon, and that Britain and America are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, these age-old confusions and complexities are made one hundred times worse by the fighting policies and techniques of the enemy.

Hizbullah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Jaish al Mahdi and a range of other groups are trained and equipped for warfare fought from within the civilian population.

Do these Islamist fighting groups ignore the international laws of armed conflict? They do not. It would be a grave mistake to conclude that they do. Instead, they study it carefully and they understand it well.

They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the (correct) assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules.

It is not simply that these insurgents do not adhere to the laws of war; it is that they employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. Their entire operational doctrine is founded on this basis.

On the tactical level, protected buildings, mosques, schools and hospitals are used as strongholds allowing the enemy the protection not only of stone walls but also of international law.

On the strategic level, any mistake, or in some cases legal and proportional response, by a Western army will be deliberately exploited and manipulated in order to produce international outcry and condemnation.

And in sophisticated groupings such as Hamas and Hizbullah, the media will be exploited also as a critical implement of their military strategy.

In Gaza, according to residents there, Hamas fighters who previously wore black or khaki uniforms discarded them when Operation Cast Lead began, in order to blend in with the crowds and use them as human shields.

Like Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban in southern Afghanistan are masters at shielding themselves behind the civilian population and then melting in among them for protection.

Hamas of course deployed suicide attackers in Gaza, including women and children.

Women and children are trained and equipped to fight, collect intelligence and ferry arms and ammunition between battles. I have seen it firsthand in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Female suicide bombers are almost commonplace. Schools and houses are routinely booby-trapped. Snipers shelter in houses deliberately filled with women and children.

Especially in close infantry combat, the concept of the precise, surgical strike is more often pipe dream than practical reality. Then there is perceptual distortion, common in combat situations, which can lead a commander or soldier to comprehend events in a way that is different from reality.

The stresses and fears of battle fatigue and the body's natural chemical reactions can lead to excluding or intensifying sounds, tunnel vision, temporary paralysis, events appearing to move faster or more slowly than they actually are, loss, reduction or distortion of memory and distracting thoughts. These affect different people in different ways and can add to the confusion and chaos of battle.

Amid the disorientation, the smoke, the fire, the explosions, the ear-piercing rattle of bullets, the screams of the wounded, the incomplete intelligence picture and the failure of technology commanders and soldiers must strive to achieve their mission, no matter how hard it gets.

* * *

These realities apply to any combat situation and the challenges they add are self-evident. But they become that much harder when fighting a tough, skillful enemy one minute shooting at you or setting a landmine to blow up your vehicle and the next minute leaning on the threshold of his compound, smiling at you, dressed indistinguishably from the population.

I have personally witnessed the efforts American forces have been making for years in Iraq and Afghanistan to minimize civilian deaths. These have been impressive but of course have not always worked.

What of the Israel Defense Forces? Not only was Hamas's military capability deliberately positioned behind the human shield of the civilian population and not only did Hamas employ the range of insurgent tactics mentioned earlier; they also ordered - forced, when necessary - men, women and children from their own population to stay put in places they knew were about to be attacked by the IDF.

So what did the IDF do in Gaza to meet its obligation to operate within the laws of war?

When possible the IDF gave at least four hours' notice to civilians to leave areas targeted for attack. Attack helicopter pilots, tasked with destroying Hamas mobile weapons platforms, had total discretion to abort a strike if there was too great a risk of civilian casualties in the area. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas's military capability were cancelled because of this.

During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. This sort of task is regarded by military tacticians as risky and dangerous at the best of times. To mount such operations, to deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands, is to the military tactician normally quite unthinkable.

But the IDF took on those risks.

In the latter stages of Cast Lead, the IDF unilaterally announced a daily three-hour cease-fire. The IDF dropped over 900,000 leaflets warning the population of impending attacks to allow them to leave designated areas. A complete air squadron was dedicated to this task alone.

Leaflets also urged civilians to phone in information to pinpoint Hamas fighters - vital intelligence that could save innocent lives.

The IDF phoned thousands of Palestinian households in Gaza, urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed weapons or be preparing to fight. Similar messages were passed in Arabic on Israeli radio broadcasts warning the civilian population of forthcoming operations.

Despite Israel's extraordinary measures, innocent civilians were, of course, killed and wounded. That was due to the frictions of war and even more as an inevitable consequence of Hamas's way of fighting.

But by taking these actions and many other significant measures during Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Yet the IDF still did not win the war of opinion, especially in Europe.

* * *

The lessons from that campaign apply to the British and American armies and to other Western forces as well as to the IDF. We are in the era of information warfare. The kind of tactics used by Hamas and Hizbullah and by the Taliban and Jaish al Mahdi work well for them. As they see it, they have no other choice. And they will continue to use it.

How do we counter it? We must not adopt the approach that because they flout the laws of war, we will do so too. Quite the reverse. We must be and remain whiter than white.

Within the absolute requirements of operational security - and sometimes we may need to really push the boundaries of this out as far as we can - we must be as open and transparent as we can possibly be.

There are three lines of attack.

First, we must allow, encourage and facilitate the media to have every opportunity to report fairly and positively on us and on our activities. This requires positive and proactive, not defensive and reactive, engagement with the media.

The benefits are great. The insurgents - Hamas in particular - put a human face on war with spectacular success. We must do the same. We must let the field soldiers speak with sand on their boots and with a sweat- and dirt-covered human face.

Second, we must show the media in a way they cannot misunderstand the abuses perpetrated by the enemy. Our own units must identify such enemy abuses, and make statements about them, backed up by the hardest available evidence.

Every front line unit must be trained and equipped to collect this information in the same way as they are trained and equipped to collect intelligence on enemy operations.

Third, we must be proactive in preventing adverse media stories about our own units. I am not talking here about distorting the facts. We must look ahead and identify potential problem areas, preferably before they arise. Be absolutely sure of the facts, and ensure they are pushed rapidly to the media.

Where real problems do occur, where our troops are in the wrong, we should if possible say so as quickly as we can, driving the agenda, preempting the shrieks of the enemy or of the UN.

Where there is genuine concern over our own troops' conduct or action, we must not hesitate to conduct enquiries and investigations and if necessary bring people to justice. As far as possible, these processes should also be open and transparent.

But this involves of course yet another major complication, because we must not confuse mistakes made as a genuine consequence of the chaos and fog of war with deliberate defiance of rules of engagement and the laws of war.

Mistakes are not war crimes. We must also know how to explain this.

Most armies do some of these things already. But what we really need is a radical reevaluation of the effort required to achieve the impact we need. This requires a mindset that is hard to find in most armies. It requires extra resources and a shift in priorities. And it significantly complicates already highly complex military operations.

These steps are in essential to countering the strategies and tactics of the insurgents we are faced with today in Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

They are also essential in defending our military policies and objectives - and in defending our brave servicemen and women who are prepared to put their lives on the line to defend their countries.

Colonel Richard Kemp, CBE, served in the British Army from 1977-2006. He was commander of British forces in Afghanistan and completed 14 operational tours of duty around the globe. He now runs a private security company in London and advises on defense and security issues. This article was adapted from his address last month to the JerusalemCenter for Public Affairs' Joint International Conference.

Read Comments (1)

Fighting Islamists: The Challenges Facing Israel And The West , Colonel Richard Kemp

Good Advice
Date 03:07, 07-17, 09

This is an excellent talk by a military man who knows his subject thoroughly.