The Problem with Extra-Judicial Killing

Vincent J. Curtis



26 June 2007.

 

News Item: “NATO’s Civilian Death Toll Growing.  A day after President Hamid Karzai harshly criticized military operations in his country, the NATO-led force yesterday confirmed more civilians had been killed, this time in Pakistan.”  National Post 25 June 2007

News Item: “Brave Taliban Jihadis Use 6-Year Old Boy As Suicide Bomber.”  LGF 25 June 2007.

Politically, President Karzai positions himself on the right side of the issue, so far as he goes.  For forces of the state to kill civilians extra-judicially is potentially an extreme act of injustice, and extra-judicial killing creates tremendous resentment of the regime within the community.  Think Ruby Ridge.  Think Dudley George and Ipperwash.

But the discrepancy between these two news items goes a long way to explain why Western forces in Afghanistan face an uphill battle for hearts and minds.  The condemnation by the President of Afghanistan of the killing by Western forces of innocent civilians is reported in the major newspapers all over the world.  But the despicable things the Taliban do are found in paragraph 12, or on internet blogs; and for those reasons reports of atrocities are not taken as seriously and go unrecognized in the public conscience.  The ISAF powers need to address this problem.

It is a tactic of the Taliban and of other extremist movements to use innocents as human shields, and as targets.  Protecting rocket batteries with human shields was a tactic used by Hezbollah in its assault on Israel last summer.  Attacks on innocent civilians is the central tactic in the method of so-called “Fourth Generation Warfare.”  That is how terrorists fight.

Adding to the soldier’s difficulty on the ground is the problem of the definition of “innocent civilian.”  Not being members of the armed forces of a nation-state, the Taliban are themselves civilian.  So the statement often seen in press reports that so-many civilians were killed by Western forces is, at bottom, uninformative.  A dead Taliban is a dead civilian.  This fact doesn’t fit the neat categories and simple story lines the media have established for reporting wars of this kind.

The problem of classification is not unusual.  When would a Canadian reservist on Class ‘A’ service be considered a combatant, and when a civilian?  Hint: there is a legal and a practical answer.  Indigenous guerrilla forces act in a similar way to Class ‘A’ reservists.   Given that many Afghan men carry a weapon for protection, is the identifying mark of an innocent civilian the direction his weapon was pointed at the time he was killed in the firefight?  Our soldiers have to deal with the practical, and those away from the battlefield prefer to ask about the legal.

A scenario sometimes faced by soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan is that the head Taliban in the village, protected by bodyguards, is the only guy who goes around unarmed, and he lives with his wife and child.  If his bodyguards get into a shootout with Western forces, and he and his family are killed, are he and his family counted as “civilians killed?”  There is a practical answer and a legal answer.  Another problem: Are those who willingly shield combatants themselves combatants?

These unpleasant problems of categorization need to be addressed in a serious and thoughtful way by the politicians, senior commanders, and Public Affairs of ISAF if we are going to win hearts and minds.  It is not Canada’s policy and is contrary to our war aim to wantonly kill innocent civilians.  The blame for deaths of innocent civilians has to be shifted to the Taliban, for it is because the Taliban fight that there is this war.  Shifting the blame onto the shoulders truly responsible can only be done through a major program of public education.

Canada’s policy is to strictly follow the Geneva Convention.  The Geneva Convention states quite plainly that: “The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.” [Part IV: Civilian Population, Protocol 1, 1977.]

The Geneva Convention places the guilt upon the Taliban for the deaths of innocent civilians when they hide among them.  The rules of war say that.  It is for that reason not contrary to law for our soldiers to kill innocents by accident in the course of attacking Taliban.  And it is contrary to law for Taliban to use civilians to hide behind.  Culpability in the public mind belongs on the Taliban. 

People in Afghanistan have to be advised of the law of armed conflict that we follow, and be told to stay away from the Taliban when Canadian troops are around and high noon is nigh.  The sooner people become aware of the law and of the guilt of the Taliban, the sooner human shielding will lose it’s effectiveness as a tactic against us.  Harsh as the law may be, following the law is not wrong.  And we shouldn’t act as if it were.  Karzai should have also damned the Taliban for cowardice, and we should not accept his criticism of us.

Civilians who are inclined to play the role of human shield, guerrillas without arms, have to believe that their death will avail their cause no advantage.  And the fish are gradually separated from the sea.

Wars are best won quickly.  The sooner we win, the sooner we can dissociate ourselves from the appalling practices of the Middle East.

-          XXX –