Fragmentary Orders: What military responses to civilian casualties in Afghanistan tell us about the value of human life

The Granai Airstrike: On May 4^th 2009, a small village in Farah Province in the west of Afghanistan was rocked by a seven-hour long conflict between ISAF and ANSF troops and suspected Taliban militants. The struggle culminated in an airstrike campaign involving at least four strikes by aerial bombers, the last of which are believed to have killed up to 140 Afghani civilians (figures are disputed). 

The bombers were responding to calls for help from some 200 Afghan soldiers, police officers and American advisers who had apparently been fired upon by Taliban fighters around building compounds in the small village of Granai. 

A Pentagon report following an investigation and military inquiry into the incident claims that F-18 fighters carried out the first strike that only killed insurgents, and not civilians; however, it was the subsequent attacks by an Air Force B-1 bomber, which dropped five 500 pound bombs and two 2,000 pound bombs onto the compound, which are believed to have caused the civilian fatalities. According to the report, the military personnel behind the strikes failed to discern whether Afghan civilians were in the compound before carrying out the attack after tracking suspected Taliban fighters into the building, in a manner that deviated from the established rules that were designed to prevent these incidents. The investigation points most clearly to one of the raids carried out by the B-1 Bomber, which, after being cleared to attack Taliban fighters, had had to circle back to its position but failed to reconfirm a positive identification of the target after this delay. Afghani civilian witnesses make a claim echoed in the inquiry that it is possible that the militants identified as being at the site of the attack had left, or civilians had entered during the time that the strike was delayed.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press

”American success in Afghanistan should be measured by the number of Afghans shielded from violence, not the number of enemy fighters killed.” LieutenantGeneral Stanley McChrystal testified before a Senate Armed Services Committee, saying that high numbers of casualties that fostered civilian resentment amongst Afghani citizens would be detrimental to American credibility in the region. Full hearing at http://www.c-span.org/video/?286758-1/military-nominations-hearing




General McChrystal’s tactical directives: in response to the Granai airstrike, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal issued a list of new “tactical directives” as a means of discouraging ground troops from calling in air support when under fire from militants in heavily populated areas. These directives are just one in a line of similarly issued directives issued following similar attacks in Azizabad, and preceding the one in Kuzud just five months later. The directives issued by McChrystal was for US forces to ‘disengage’ and leave populated areas where they have come under fire from militants operating from civilian occupied buildings. Exceptions are available for US, NATO and Afghan forces in imminent danger, in which cases air power is reserved to provide cover, facilitate their escape, or to remove wounded troops from the area. McChrystal’s exception clause to the prohibition of air crew use in populated areas is a means of addressing the difficulties of US soldiers who must restrict the force used in civilian areas whilst trying to protect their own troops under fire from insurgents in these areas.

According to the Pentagon’s report, the strikes likely to have caused the casualties would have been prohibited by the new directives issued by McChrystal as the aim of the strikes was to target militants in the area rather than to allow for the safe evacuation of military forces.

“Popular support is the deciding factor in this fight”

The declassified sections of McChrystal’s tactical directives constantly reiterates the importance of winning the popular support of the local population as the key aspect of winning counterinsurgency campaigns. The basis of Neta Crawford’s moral argument on the discourse used to conceptualise civilian deaths as collateral damage in military objectives is that military leadership continues to consider the protection of local non-combatants as “another tool employed in the service of winning a war”, and by framing the aim in this way, contradicts the purpose of civilian protection, making it inherently unstable. There are remarkable similarities between the directives McChrystal issued after Granai (fig. 1-3) and those issued by previous US and NATO commander General David McKiernan (fig. 4-5):

Fig 1 (McChrystal, 2009, on the importance of local support)

Fig 2 (McChrystal, on proportional violence instrumentalising civilian support)

Fig 3 (McChrystal, on restricted use of violence in residential areas)

Fig 4 (McKiernan, 2008, on the importance of local support)

Fig 5 (McKiernan, on restricting violence in civilian areas)

General McChrystal emphasises the need to make the principle of civilian protection central to the military’s objectives, in a bid to reduce civilian casualties. Both McChrystal and McKiernan constantly reiterate the need to protect civilians in Afghanistan as a necessary aspect of winning the war through local support. How effective can their directives be, considering the strike in Kunduz barely five months later? The Kunduz strike resulted in further directives issued to control the use of force in civilian areas, making it obvious that perceiving civilian lives as instrumental to the wider war effort, rather than inherently valuable, has prevented effective limits to the use of force in civilian populated areas. The instrumental calculative framing of civilian deaths as collateral damage is the most obvious indicator of this, and the idea of military necessity is still clearly pervasive in on the ground judgements of uses of force.

What this shows is, as Crawford puts it, the inevitability or normalised view of civilian deaths in counterinsurgency operations. Responsibility for civilian deaths is delineated to an individualised level (which she states is shaped by the institutions of war-making), shown not only through the Pentagon’s report pointing only to the actions of the B-1 bomber rather than the erroneous misuse of airstrikes as a whole, but with an erasure of organisational responsibility at the higher levels of military planning for the deaths that occur because of the way in which civilian deaths are made a systemic, normalised part of counterinsurgency operations. When this normalisation occurs at organisational levels, inherent in the action of war planning is the fact that collateral damage is foreseeable and adjustable. The “rules of engagement” that troops are expected to abide by are not contravened when civilian deaths occur; rather, they are a consequence of these rules. The contraventions are said to occur where there are higher numbers of casualties, but no deaths are not expected.

The attacks and subsequent military responses show two things: civilian deaths are still perceived as an inevitable part of COIN campaigns; and despite efforts to reduce casualty rates this conceptualisation means there is lesser value placed on the lives of civilians, and the fragmentary orders (FRAGOs) the military produces reflect the fragmented, instrumental perception of civilian life in Afghanistan. 

By Aneesha Parmar

‘Shock and Awe' to ‘Hearts and Minds': Civilians in Counterinsurgency

Cultural Warfare's Re-birth:

In 2006, five years into the War on Terror, the U.S Army updated its Counterinsurgency Field Manual for the first time in 20 years. Counterinsurgency (or COIN) is a military strategy concentrated on draining an insurgency of its civilian support. It is grounded in the idea that civilians who are agreeable to Coalition forces (and the host nation government they support) are less likely to directly or indirectly assist insurgent groups. This is often referred to as “winning hearts and minds” in comparison to the use of violence in kinetic operations. Winning hearts and minds, however, isn't easy for foreign militaries who lack substantive understanding of local populations: their histories, politics, religions, modes of communication, grievances, etc. Counterinsurgency strategy therefore stresses the importance of acquiring cultural knowledge.

To understand the significance of cultural warfare’s re-birth, it’s important to briefly consider the United States' approach in the early “War on Terror” years. Initially, the U.S government and its military didn’t seem to either possess, or value, cultural knowledge. To the contrary, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Collin Powell devised a “Shock and Awe” campaign of mass aerial bombardments in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. 

Aerial bombing of Baghdad, 2003.

This involved using five hundred pound bombs to target critical infrastructure – often shared between insurgents and civilians – in an attempt to destroy the insurgency’s resources and paralyse its morale. As Jonathan Gilmore argues, Shock and Awe ‘embodies a distinctive dimension of U.S military culture preoccupied with the importance of projecting images of power and invulnerability’. In the 6 week Shock and Awe phase, Iraq Body Count recorded 7400 civilian casualties: an average of 317 per day. Furthermore, key cultural sites were left unprotected during the invasion, including the Iraq National Museum and National Library and Archive. These sites were looted and burned: destroying ‘7000 years of Iraqi civilisation’ and history in a matter of days. Iraqi lives and historical infrastructure were shown complete disregard by the U.S, to the extent that some have questioned whether this was a deliberate attempt to cripple Iraq's cultural longevity. 

Realising their “iron fist” approach was counterproductive to preventing insurgency, the U.S military released its new Counterinsurgency Field Manual to be implemented immediately. One might expect this shift from Shock and Awe to Hearts and Minds to correspond with a significant change in how civilians’ lives and livelihoods are valued. As Judith Butler argues, the lives of people in the Global South are not recognised by "us" as fully human: "we" do not bother to learn their ‘names and faces, personal histories, family, favourite hobbies [and] slogans by which they live’. They lack access to the public obituary; their lives do ‘not qualify as grievable’. Surely, then, acquiring cultural knowledge involves learning about civilians – thereby humanising them in the process?

Civilians in Counterinsurgency Discourse:

A civilised "population-centric" approach to war – based upon cultural knowledge rather than destruction – is certainly the image the U.S military tried to project with the change in strategy. However, does the material circulated internally corroborate with their public rhetoric? In other words, if you picked up a counterinsurgency manual to read, would you find evidence of humanisation?          

Having spent my summer reading 18 of such manuals, I can attest that humanising language is either non-existent, minimal, or massively contradicted by other passages, in COIN material. Most of the language objectifies civilians; they are seen primarily as sources of human intelligence, not as humans whose lives are intrinsically valuable. Civilian deaths are framed either in terms of cost-benefit analysis [see figure 1] or as strategic setbacks that could undermine U.S' efforts to curb insurgency [see figure 2]. As part of this strategic discourse, mathematical language – or “insurgent math” – is often used [see figure 3]. This language posits civilians as an unfixed or volatile quantity in the equation of Coalition success. In this mathematical framework, the military’s goal is not to genuinely understand civilians or provide them opportunities to enact their political agency. Instead, it is to decrease the volatility that they represent as direct or indirect supporters of insurgents. This is at once a de-humanising a de-politicising move as it forecloses the possibility for local political solutions and implements the United States' vision of security and control. As Jonathan Gilmore argues, ‘crucially the legitimacy of this vision is not open for debate’ by Iraqi and Afghan civilians.

Figure 1: Cost benefit analysis in Civilian Casualty Mitigation 2012

Figure 2: Civilian deaths as strategic setbacks in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual 2006

Figure 3: "Insurgent math" - mathematical language used in Joint Civilian Casualty Study 2010

Omissions and Contradictions: 

1.     Mistaking human intelligence for cultural knowledge:

Protests against Qu'ran burning in Laghman Province, Afghanistan.

De-humanisation and de-politicisation is further evidenced by the information that’s missing. What do civilians do? Who are they? What are their backgrounds, beliefs, cultures, grievances? What kind of society would they like to build for their children? In other words, where is the cultural knowledge that’s supposed to form the basis of counterinsurgency efforts? Human Terrain Teams were allegedly designed to obtain this kind of cultural information. However, HTT members are instructed to collect only ‘operationally relevant’ data and they’re given just ‘thirty minutes to a couple of days’ to do so. This stands in contrast to counterinsurgency's image as a form of "slow" warfare based upon rigorous research. Tellingly, it is left to the military to judge what counts as "relevant" and to establish the pace with which such information is gathered.

The result is not an enlightened armed forces but a failed attempt to acquire cultural knowledge. With the focus on the bureaucratic goal of "collecting human intelligence" (or "HUMINT" for short), it is unsurprising that cultural insensitivity continues in the U.S military. Civilians in counterinsurgency discourse are an easily-objectified, de-personalised category –  their value is instrumental. 

2.      Continued kinetic operations:  

Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan.

Another red flag is that counterinsurgency's purported goals are contradicted by the equal weight given to kinetic operations. As the 2006 Counterinsurgency Field Manual elegantly puts it: “Kindness and compassion can often be as important as killing and capturing insurgents”. The goals of these two strategies are antithetical, however, so this relationship is one of conflict not harmony. For example, how does the U.S reconcile its (antagonistic and destructive) large-scale drone programme with its (supposedly rehabilitative and constructive) Provincial Reconstruction Teams? Contradictions like these support Catherine Lutz’s argument that counterinsurgency is used as a cover to ‘replace the broken bodies at war’s centre’ with a sanitising and legitimising discourse.

Damage after a U.S drone strike in Afghanistan.

Conclusion

What does the omission of cultural knowledge, and the contradiction of continued kinetic operations, tell us about counterinsurgency's re-birth? For one it acts as an important reminder that this is still a U.S' war fought to secure U.S' interests. It's a cautionary tale against believing the military's public rhetoric. For what's externally justified as humanitarian missions to instil democracy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been neither humanising nor democratic. Iraqi and Afghan civilians aren't provided with opportunities to enact their political agency; instead, they ‘are objects of the violence of war, but never subjects’. Opportunities for local political solutions are thus foreclosed and replaced with a political vision ‘conducive to U.S security interests’. Civilians in counterinsurgency discourse matter to the U.S military for their instrumental value. Not fully human, civilian deaths are not grieved but merely regretted as strategic setbacks. 

By Alex Edney-Browne

Counterinsurgency: a mere means

By Lars Moen

The United States still fights a 'war on terror', and constructing stable and peaceful societies, the goal of counterinsurgency (COIN), is no more than a mere means to defeating terrorists. It is not an end in itself. The 2010 US Department of Defense’s National Security Strategy and Quadrennial Defense Review Report stated that the main focus remains to 'disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its allies'. This is not a problem as long as the US and the local population share the same interests. However, this is not always the case. The US reveals its 'Janus face', in Jonathan Gilmore’s words, when the 'war on terror' framework takes precedence over the COIN programme, and the local population is left disempowered.[1]

The perhaps clearest example of this is that the US and the host nation have a monopoly on assigning the 'insurgent label'.[2]  In Afghanistan, the United States and the Afghan government decide who is a legitimate target and who is not.[3] They do not take into account that the local population may voluntarily support an insurgency in opposition to an unpopular government.[4] US and NATO troops were deployed to support Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration, which was 'tainted with corruption and election rigging'. The legitimacy of this government was highly questionable, and its opposition was widespread. It nevertheless cooperated with the US military in identifying Afghan insurgents.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

In May 2009, US planes dropped five 500-pound and two 2,000-pound bombs on Garani village in the Afghan province of Farah. The result was tragic. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Afghan Independence Human Rights Commission counted over 80 civilian deaths. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) admitted that only 26 civilians were killed, 78 were insurgents.[5] The large proportion of ‘legitimate killings’ may have justified the air strike, but the question is: Was the insurgent label rightfully placed on the 78? Through their ‘labelling monopoly’, the US military and Afghan government appear to have claimed the right to identify individuals as it suits them. This is a right to decide who is a legitimate target and who is not. In other words, it is a right 'to take life or to let live', which implies sovereign power, according to Michel Foucault.[6] 

Gilmore suggests that the reason for US alliance with the Afghan government is about more than just ensuring a peaceful and stable environment for the Afghan people. In a 2006 report, the US Department of the Army emphasised its focus on helping Afghanistan develop a liberal democracy and a free market economy, and not necessarily the political and economic system the Afghan people would prefer.[7] Although the US Army emphasised the importance of cultural sensitivity in the 2012 report mentioned above, the report also contained traces of the opposite. One example is the 'Soldiers’ CIVCAS Smart Card' which encourages soldiers to '[t]reat civilians as you would want you and your family to be treated if the roles were reversed'. Soldiers should, in other words, see themselves in the civilians; they should understand the civilians to hold the same values as themselves. Critics may therefore be right to question whether COIN in reality is about promoting US interests and values rather than actually helping the local population.[8]

So-called ‘foreseeable accidental’ taking of civilian lives also suggest that the interests of the local population are secondary to the 'war on terror'. Neta Crawford questions how an accident can be foreseeable.[9] She emphasises the importance of distinguishing ‘genuine accidents’ from ‘systemic collateral damage incidents’.[10] The Garani case, mentioned above, was an example of the latter, according to Crawford.[11] A GPS guided 2,000-pound bomb is accurate to an average of 30 feet (9 meters) but its lethal radius is more than 41,400 square feet (or about 3,800 square metres).[12] According to a US Admiral, the safety distance is at least 4,000 feet (1.2 kilometres).[13] The use of such weapons, likely to cause more harm than destroying its target, certainly questions US intentions in Afghanistan.

US Air Force demonstrating the accuracy of a 2,000-pound bomb.

What is viewed as 'necessary' should be reconsidered, Crawford argues.[14] Labelling foreseeable killings of civilians as accidents may justify their consequences and thus undermine the COIN programme. And when the US and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) made such reconsiderations, the number of civilian deaths declined, as we see in the table below.[15] 

Unfortunately, the 'war on terror' norms of ‘uncompromising destruction of the enemy’s forces’ are hard to overcome.[16] This is the problem of norms that Foucault identified, and Judith Butler later adopted. Labelling civilian casualties as ‘necessary’ helps normalise these tragedies. They are described as necessities and exceptions but, according to Foucault and Butler, today’s exceptions are tomorrow’s norms.[17] There is, indeed, reason to believe that civilian casualties have been normalised already. And killing the very people one is meant to protect may obviously jeopardise the whole COIN programme.[18]

Within the US military it seems like John McCain’s words from 2001 may still be influential.
The US Senator said that '[i]ssues such as Ramadan or civilian casualties … have to be secondary to the primary goal of eliminating the enemy'.[19] The values the US Army promotes in 'The Soldier’s Creed' (video below) certainly seem more consistent with McCain’s aggressive rhetoric than the people-centred COIN programme.[20] And there is no consensus between senior US military officers on the role of high-impact war-fighting. This opens for an inconsistent interpretation of the COIN policy.[21] Commitment to 'kinetic' operations, involving the use of lethal force, is still prominent within the institutional culture of the US military, according to Gilmore.[22] Increased care for civilians often means that US soldiers must take greater risks.[23] It is therefore not unreasonable to expect commanders to value the safety of their soldiers higher than the objectives of development and society building.[24]  As Gilmore argues, '[a]t worst counterinsurgency’s human security discourse may simply represent the 'velvet glove' surrounding the 'iron fist' of traditional war-fighting'.[25] 

Based on my own conversations with former ISAF soldiers, I can with no doubt conclude that they lacked both respect for the Afghan people they were meant to help, and belief in their COIN mission. They explained that the cultural barriers simply seemed too high. When seeing a local man unable to figure out how to use a flush toilet, one of the soldiers concluded that 'these people cannot be helped'. This questions the pre-deployment training and cultural preparation ISAF soldiers received. And in her book The Tender Soldier, journalist Vanessa M. Gezari reveals that many of the social scientists involved in the COIN programme had never been to or even studied Afghanistan.

To sum up, the problem with the COIN programme is that it appears to be a mere means to winning the 'war on terror' and to promote US and Western interests. It is also questionable whether soldiers and commanders are properly trained for and truly believe in the COIN programme.

---

[1]  Jonathan Gilmore, “A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism: Counterinsurgency, Human Security and the War on Terror”, Security Dialogue 42, no.1 (2011): 33-34.
[2] Ibid., 22.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 27.
[5] Astri Suhrke, “From Principle to Practice: US Military Strategy and Protection of Civilians in Afghanistan,” International Peacekeeping 22, no. 1 (2015): 110.
[6] Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976 (New York: Picador, 2003), 240-241.
[7] Gilmore, "A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism," 32-33.
[8] Ibid., 32.
[9] Neta C. Crawford, Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post-9/11 Wars. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 8.
[10] Ibid., 11.
[11] Ibid., 20.
[12] Ibid., 15.
[13] Ibid., 16-17.
[14] Ibid., 24.
[15] Suhrke, “From Principle to Practice," 115.
[16] Gilmore, "A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism," 23.
[17] Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), 67; Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”, 38-39, 58-59.
[18] Crawford, Accountability for Killing, 30.
[19] Ibid., 11.
[20] Gilmore, "A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism," 27.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 28.
[23] Crawford, Accountability for Killing, 32.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Gilmore, "A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism," 28.

Counterinsurgency: a new type of war

Counterinsurgency: A new type of war 

As we move into an era where conventional warfare becomes the exception rather than the rule and where enemies are no longer so easily distinguishable from their civilian population comes the challenge of how to tackle these new insurgents that are rocking the peace and stability of a nation. 

Counterinsurgency has been coined as the new type of war, a war that despite retaining its military leadership and characteristics is, on paper at least, being used to fight the insurgents through the local population. Its people-centric approach has moved away from war's focus on destruction of the enemy, to winning over the locals and enabling them to reduce support for the insurgents effectively forcing them out. 

Traditional war tends to avoided in favour of this population-centric approach, however there remain challenges to this new type of war. 

To understand how this new type of war, counterinsurgency, differs from traditional warfare, its benefits and its challenges its useful to pit the two types of war side by side as has been done below. 

Counterinsurgency: Comprehensive civilian and military effort taken to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes.

“Every military leader, traditionally a professional specialising in the management of violence, must be prepared to become a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a boy scout… but only for as long as he cannot be replaced, for it is better to entrust civilian tasks to civilians.” - French counterinsurgency expert David Galula

Conventional warfare can be defined as armed conflicts that are openly waged by one state against another by means of their regular armies. But today this seems to have largely become an exception rather than the rule. 

Comparison 

The goal behind counterinsurgency is to defeat an insurgency and resolve the insurgency’s underlying causes. In order to do this the counterinsurgents will look to create and maintain long-lasting stability through effective governance, economic development and social reform, using a mix of defensive, offensive and stabilising 

techniques. 

Stability and reform 

vs

Destruction 

Conventional warfare has a greater focus on combat and military might to destroy an enemy with a priority on engaging with the opposing armed forces and demonstrating the capacity to fight, kill and win. 

Counterinsurgency has become less about combat and more about the powers of persuasion to build relationships, reduce the insurgent influence and train indigenous security forces.

Diplomacy 

vs 

Military  Might 

Conventional warfare is form of hard power with its big demonstration of military might through the sheer numbers of trained soldiers and military equipment such as tanks, mechanised infantry, combat engineering capability, artillery, attack aviation, air and naval support.

Counterinsurgency prioritises the safety, security and popular support of the civilian population. Counterinsurgency essentially has a population-centric approach that’s aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the people and persuading them to reject the insurgency.

People centric 

vs 

People come second 

Conventional warfare has a greater focus on combat and military might to destroy an enemy with a priority on engage with the opposing armed forces and demonstrating the capacity to fight, kill and win. Victory is emphasised through firepower and manoeuvres.

Counterinsurgency also tends to take a very long time as this graph shows…the longer counterinsurgent forces were in place the more likely of lasting success. Even in the short term, after the establishment of good coin practices the average insurgency still lasts roughly six more years.

Lengthy and costly investment 

vs 

Quicker and cheaper 

It can be a quicker rapid way of defeating the enemy as forces act first and finish decisively with their exertion of military might. This rapid and decisive outcome through the use of overwhelming force minimises the likelihood of long-term deployments and becoming bogged down in a foreign intervention and is evidently cheaper.   

Counterinsurgent forces may go into a territory to try to put an end to insurgency earlier than it may have otherwise, in the hopes of averting war

Early intervention 

vs 

Last resort 

Conventional warfare is typically a last resort used to defeat the enemy in a worst-case scenario where nothing else has worked 

Asymmetric warfare without a clear battlefield and and end goal of stability and social reform that is not so easily defined. 

Asymmetric 

vs 

Symmetric 

Symmetric warfare on a usually defined battlefield that has a rapid and decisive outcome achieved through the use of overwhelming force 

Afghanistan: a case-study 

The US public perspective on COIN in Afghanistan