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Thread: Specially Protected Persons in Combat Situations (new title)

  1. #101
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tukhachevskii View Post
    ...(and always thought it was Al-Jazeera and Al-Mattar that were the bad guys!)...
    Don't know about Al-Mattar but I watch a bit of Al Jazeera-English via satellite every day. As I do CNN, BBC and SKY TV (which has a late night our time slot where they broadcast Katie Couric from CBS) and RT (Russia Today) and the new for us NDTV (from India). Then there is CNBC-Africa and Bloomberg (got to get my daily Charlie Rose fix) and the Chinese CCTV. Finally there is EuroN which is too bland to contemplate.

    If you don't get Al Jazeera via satellite then find it on the net.

    Interesting to watch how the different broadcasters handle breaking news.

    You would probably find the four part (online) video Afghanistan: How the East was lost interesting.

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    Quote Originally Posted by M-A Lagrange View Post
    How does a war without rules looks like? Well, it looks like what is described into the UN report on the 1993-2003 conflicts in DRC.

    This is relevant to another threat also and has a lot of political implication but it is important for all to actually know how the dirtiest war since WW2 looks like.
    http://www.genocidewatch.org/drofcongo.html
    A direct link to the report:
    http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Count...T_FINAL_FR.pdf
    Not sure about that. I suggest that there have been plenty of really dirty wars since 1945. As far as targeting civilians is concerned Korea must surely be right up there?

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    The napalm in that photo was dropped by the South Vietnamese Air Force.

  4. #104
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    Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
    The first modern, comprehensive code re: land warfare was the Lieber Code of 1863 ("Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field") ...
    Francis Lieber was at the battle of Waterloo when he was about 18 years old. Later he got himself in hot water in the German state where he lived because of his campaigning for government reform so he eventually emmigrated to the U.S. In around 1860 he had to give up his teaching job in Charleston, South Carolina and move North because of his anti-slavery views.

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    Default napalm sticks to kids

    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    Can the effect of this photo on the Vietnam war effort (and beyond) ever be truly assessed?

    Some links on Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the girl in the photo:

    Phan Thi Kim Phuc - Wikipedia

    Short Nick Ut Interview - BBC

    1st Cav Medic perspective

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    Default OK, JMA, please specify

    each instance where civilians were targeted:

    from JMA
    As far as targeting civilians is concerned Korea must surely be right up there?
    as opposed to strategic sites being targeted with civilians being killed or wounded because of their proximity.

    You could argue that WWII and Korea War targeting were determined using different constructs of military necessity and proportionality - as well as the factor of weapon systems inaccuracy (1940 ca. 20% within 5 miles of target; 1943 ca. 60% within 3 miles of target).

    However, if there were instances of explicit civilian targeting, I'd like to see them because they would make good case studies for this thread.

    Regards

    Mike

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
    The napalm in that photo was dropped by the South Vietnamese Air Force.
    Yes, I know. I was was trying to put forward what the visual effect of this photo had on the (world's) attitude towards the US in Vietnam and the use of napalm.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
    each instance where civilians were targeted:



    as opposed to strategic sites being targeted with civilians being killed or wounded because of their proximity.

    You could argue that WWII and Korea War targeting were determined using different constructs of military necessity and proportionality - as well as the factor of weapon systems inaccuracy (1940 ca. 20% within 5 miles of target; 1943 ca. 60% within 3 miles of target).

    However, if there were instances of explicit civilian targeting, I'd like to see them because they would make good case studies for this thread.

    Regards

    Mike
    Mike, I thought this was common knowledge?

    Korean War Panel Finds U.S. Attacks on Civilians

    then the air force

    U.S. Bombers Hit Civilians In Korea War, Reports Say

    A photo of the Rogers memo:

    and

    No Gun Ri Massacre

    Mike, not trying to open old wounds here just thought everyone knew and had moved on...

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    Default First off, I give not a dam (the little Indian coin) ...

    if wounds are reopened or scabs are ripped off. I'm good at doing both.

    Secondly, my point, apparently lost in the shuffle, was the difference between (1) targeting civilians with no strategic (military) target involved; and (2) targeting strategic (military) targets where civilians are proximate and are hit (killed or wounded) by the strike. A legal distinction clearly exists between the two situations even though the same number of civilians are casualties.

    The multiple Korean incidents you link did involve a real military problem: that of combatants mixed in or controlling civilians for purposes of infiltration - or, in the case of an attack, using them as classic "human shields. How big a problem you perceive that to be, and what measures you take, will depend on your resources available and your views on military necessity and proportionality.

    Along the same lines, you have situations like blowing bridges where combatants are mixed with refugees. Or a village where combatants are spread throughout. All of these are variations on the basic theme of combatants and civilians mixed together.

    COL Rogers of the memo was a bit confused as to terminology - "large groups of civilians, either composed of or controlled by North Korean soldiers, are infiltrating U.S. positions." If the infiltrators were North Korean soldiers or controlled by North Korean soldiers, they were not "civilians", but combatants or persons acting in aid of combatants (perhaps involuntarily).

    A worthwhile topic for discussion because the problem has not gone away since Korea.

    Regards

    Mike

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    Default Finding the "Truth" and Lessons Learned

    The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Korea) has concluded its work, as reported in the NYT article (linked by JMA), Korean War Panel Finds U.S. Attacks on Civilians:

    By CHOE SANG-HUN
    Published: July 9, 2010

    SEOUL, South Korea — A commission charged with investigating wartime atrocities has found that American troops killed groups of South Korean civilians on 138 separate occasions during the Korean War.

    But in a flurry of rulings made in the past few days, the commission decided not to seek compensation or criminal charges in about 130 of the cases either for lack of evidence or because it found that the killings were militarily justified.
    ....
    The commission will recommend that South Korea start negotiations with Washington to seek compensation for the victims in the remaining eight cases, the president of the commission said Friday.

    In the other 130 cases, the commission could not find evidence of illegality by the American military or it determined that the deaths resulted from “military necessity,” said Lee Young-jo, president of the government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

    “They were more like cases of negligence than of liability or war crimes,” said Mr. Lee, whose commission wrapped up its four-year-old investigation on June 30. “For such a low level of unlawfulness, I don’t think any government negotiations with the United States for compensation are necessary.”
    See also, AP story on Commission - AP journalists wrote a book on No Gun Ri.

    See Responding to the Bridge at No Gun Ri (By GI Korea on July 26th, 2007) for a different view of AP's journalism:

    Some civilians were gunned down at No Gun Ri, which is proven by witness testimony from people who were there that saw a handful of dead people in the tunnel after soldiers fired in response to rifle fire from the refugee column. Korean forensics investigators later found Russian shell casings and bandoliers in exactly the same spot GI witness said they took rifle fire.[xli]

    The initial warning shots the US soldiers fired over the heads of the refugees is what probably caused the gun men within the refugee column to open fire and the US soldiers then directed their fire into the refugees before being stopped by their officers. A tragic story no doubt, but this is not a scenario that supports the current body count mythology. A storyline of strafings, bombings, and four days of rifle fire despite all the evidence saying otherwise, has to be promoted to support the body count mythology.

    [xli] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Appendix B Analysis of Forensic Evidence, page B-8
    .....
    This is just some of the pertinent information about No Gun Ri that I have presented and in fact there is a lot more information I could put into this posting especially in regards to Korean and American witness testimony, forensics, aerial imagery analysis, and historical documents that further sheds doubt on the AP’s version of events. I could literally write a book about this topic if I presented the nitty gritty details instead of trying to provide a broad overview of what happened.

    I have also written this posting in an academic format by having pertinent information supported by footnotes that can be traced back to the source material. I did this because in the AP book they offered no footnotes to support their version of events and often make totally unsubstantiated claims. I am making claims in my above response to the original AP article that is supported with footnotes that can be traced to verifiable sources.
    The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the incidents (e.g., esp. No Gun Ri) have generated a huge amount of spin by journalists and lawyers - pride and $$ at stake, or am I too cynical ?

    If we want to salvage anything of value from those 138 investigated incidents, we should look to all three classes of incidents:

    1. Cases with no evidence of illegality by the American military (possibly some degree of negligence).

    2. Cases where the deaths resulted from “military necessity".

    3. Cases where the deaths resulted from illegality by the American military.

    The goal would be to determine how to handle the problem of migratory refugees in general; and how to handle the problem of enemy combatants using refugees for their ends, in particular.

    The Korean War in July 1950 was an example of a fluid situation (US & ROK forces could not establish a continuous line), NK forces found it easy to infiltrate via unguarded flanks (US units were 2/3 strength; so, 2 up, 0 reserve), CAS often had to be used in lieu of arty (the 1st Cav Div, its 7th Cav Regt was involved at No Gun Ri, had 2 batteries when it first deployed), and no troops were available to handle refugees.

    By 3 Aug 1950, 1st Cav had withdrawn from Taejon (No Gun Ri is roughly between Taejon and Taegu) across the Naktong River to near Taegu, except for its rear-guard Bn from the 8th Cav Regt. That unit was followed by a crowd of refugees. The NK advance units were near but had not yet closed. The rear guard Bn attempted to clear the bridge of refugees four times.

    When the NK units reached the refugee coilumn and continued their advance, Hobart Gay (1st Cav Div CO) ordered the bridge blown with consequent deaths of hundreds. Reported in T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, (Dulles, Virgina, Brassey’s, 1963) Chapter 2 Battle: Retreating; and in Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, (Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), Chapter 15 Establishing the Pusan Perimeter.

    Arguing about one incident is of little value to those who will see refugee problems in the future. As stated above, we should be looking at the hundred plus incidents investigated across the full spectrum of legality to illegality.

    Regards

    Mike
    Last edited by jmm99; 10-06-2010 at 03:49 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
    if wounds are reopened or scabs are ripped off. I'm good at doing both.

    Secondly, my point, apparently lost in the shuffle, was the difference between (1) targeting civilians with no strategic (military) target involved; and (2) targeting strategic (military) targets where civilians are proximate and are hit (killed or wounded) by the strike. A legal distinction clearly exists between the two situations even though the same number of civilians are casualties.

    The multiple Korean incidents you link did involve a real military problem: that of combatants mixed in or controlling civilians for purposes of infiltration - or, in the case of an attack, using them as classic "human shields. How big a problem you perceive that to be, and what measures you take, will depend on your resources available and your views on military necessity and proportionality.

    Along the same lines, you have situations like blowing bridges where combatants are mixed with refugees. Or a village where combatants are spread throughout. All of these are variations on the basic theme of combatants and civilians mixed together.

    COL Rogers of the memo was a bit confused as to terminology - "large groups of civilians, either composed of or controlled by North Korean soldiers, are infiltrating U.S. positions." If the infiltrators were North Korean soldiers or controlled by North Korean soldiers, they were not "civilians", but combatants or persons acting in aid of combatants (perhaps involuntarily).

    A worthwhile topic for discussion because the problem has not gone away since Korea.

    Regards

    Mike
    I suggest that we just accept that over the years since 1945 much has changed is what is perceived to be acceptable and what not when it comes to fighting a war any war... unless you are an insurgent that is (they can do anything).

    This thread has traced the legal minefield that soldiers face when they enter the battlefield, in most cases from those supposedly on their own side.

    Could we have prepared our soldiers better in this regard?

    Did we deal with any and/or all reports/evidence of possible breaches?

    What did we learn from these experiences that we carried forward to the next battle or the next war?

    How do we train/select soldiers in the 18-19 year old bracket and beyond to prevent a spark which may lead to shooting frenzy which may lead to a bloodbath involving non-combatants?

    My level was and my concern remains at the infantry combat interface. I am sad to say that the aerial bombing since 1911 to date continues to result in large numbers of civilian casualties.

    Individual or small groups of soldiers are being prosecuted for the deaths of small numbers of civilians in what we used to call "caught in the crossfire" but how many planners of pilots have been so charged?

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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    Could we have prepared our soldiers better in this regard?

    Did we deal with any and/or all reports/evidence of possible breaches?

    What did we learn from these experiences that we carried forward to the next battle or the next war?

    How do we train/select soldiers in the 18-19 year old bracket and beyond to prevent a spark which may lead to shooting frenzy which may lead to a bloodbath involving non-combatants?
    Maybe there isn't too much wrong with how we train our soldiers in this regard? It is how we train and develop our (military) lawyers and PIOs that is the greater issue...?
    Last edited by SJPONeill; 10-06-2010 at 10:25 PM. Reason: fix quote marks

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    Quote Originally Posted by SJPONeill View Post
    Maybe there isn't too much wrong with how we train our soldiers in this regard? It is how we train and develop our (military) lawyers and PIOs that is the greater issue...?
    Never can be enough in my opinion. With most modern armies with all the time on their hands I assume this aspect is much better covered than it was in my day but then again I was in a pre-ROE era as opposed to today as with the case of the Aussie soldiers.

    I suggest the test is the balance between the need and hopefully the burning desire to close with and kill the enemy and to comply with latest rules of war.

    Those particular Aussie soldiers seemed to still have the necessary aggression. Not sure where it all went wrong, if indeed it did.

    The more and better you train your basic infantry soldiers in this regard the less you need these lawyer types IMHO.

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    Incidentally Mike/jmm99, several memoirs of Union officers who fought against John S. Mosby's command during the Civil War state that in their opinion Mosby's men were not legitimate soldiers according to General Orders 100, the Lieber Code. I'm working off of memory here, from books I read about 15 years ago. If I recall correctly it had to do with the "farmers by day and insurgents at night" distinction made in General Orders 100. The implication was that Mosby's men were the Civil War equivalent of "unlawful combatants," and therefore summary execution of them would have been justifiable.

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    Default Hi Pete,

    A good, short (19 pages) article is Jeffery Bateman, Bushwackers and Terrorists - Combatant Status Policy in the Civil War and Global War on Terror (2006) (abstract and link) (pdf direct).

    A snip re: Mosby (footnotes omitted):

    General Order 100 seems to have been largely ignored by Union commanders in the field. In fact, senior civilian and military leadership issued individual instructions to subordinates directly contradictory to the Lieber Code’s distinction between partisan rangers and other irregular combatants. Ironically, this disregard for national policy was most evident in the Eastern Theater in the pursuit of Mosby’s Rangers in the Shenandoah Valley.

    John Singleton Mosby led a guerilla group that conformed more closely than any other to the partisan ranger units described by the Lieber code. Mosby’s men wore uniforms, they were led by commissioned officers, and they operated under Confederate orders. By 1864, Mosby’s unit was the only such unit that had not been officially absorbed by the Confederate Army.[23] Its unique status reflected its conduct (the poor conduct of many other Confederate guerillas had become a major embarrassment to Confederate leadership), as well as Mosby’s effectiveness frustrating Union Army commanders.

    Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s actions in 1864 reflected the frustration he and Major General William Tecumseh Sherman were encountering trying to destroy Mosby. Grant authorized Sherman to deny combatant rights and encouraged summary execution without trial of any of Mosby’s men Sherman caught, as well as suggesting that the families of Mosby’s men could be held prisoner.[24] Secretary of War Edwin Stanton issued similar instructions to the Union commander at Martinsburg, Brigadier General William H. Seward, authorizing him to employ “any means that may within your power to accomplish” in order to defeat guerilla units.[25]

    Union Cavalry officer Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer executed Mosby’s men on several occasions. He hanged five of them in 1864, while wearing Confederate uniforms, and executed six more later that same year, believing Grant’s and Sheridan’s directives authorized his actions.[26] Custer could certainly have argued , had his actions ever been challenged, that he was operating with confusing and contradictory guidance, as was every other field commander in the Civil War.
    Phil Sheridan had his own anti-Mosby unit ("scouts" attached to his headquarters), who played something of the role of "pseudo-guerrillas". That from Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox (Army of the Potomac, Vol. 3).

    Regards

    Mike
    Last edited by jmm99; 10-07-2010 at 03:21 AM.

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    Bateman's article conflates and confuses William T. Sherman with Phil Sheridan, who were two different guys. Sherman was at First Manassas but after that he was in Kentucky, and later in Georgia, South and North Carolina on the "March to the Sea." Sheridan commanded the Union Valley Campaign in 1864, Sherman was hundreds of miles away.

    I live in the area where Sheridan fought against Jubal Early in 1864, and where Mosby's command raided Sheridan's supply convoys on the Valley Pike, now U.S. Route 11. My bank has an office on the road, where formations under Jackson, Lee, Early, and Sheridan had marched. A guy with my mother's maiden name joined Mosby's command in 1865 right before the war ended.
    Last edited by Pete; 10-07-2010 at 04:00 AM. Reason: More info on Sherman's CW career.

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    Default Good point re: Sherman

    Figured that theatre of operations might be near your backyard.

    Sheridan's scouts have a large online bibliography - over 185K hits by Googling: sheridan scouts mosby.

    Example article (7 pages), America's Civil War: Union General Phil Sheridan's Scouts.

    Snip:

    They were loosely called 'Sheridan's Scouts,' a collection of more than 120 brave, versatile and intelligent Union soldiers who operated from August 1864 through war's end. Those risktakers helped their commander, Major General Philip H. Sheridan, lead his Army of the Shenandoah to victory in 1864 in the Shenandoah Valley and then in both the James River expedition and the Appomattox campaign in 1865. Many of the scouts wore Confederate uniforms and used forged passes and furloughs. Others passed back and forth in all manner of civilian attire.

    Their activities included buying information, establishing networks of Union sympathizers, intercepting enemy dispatches, conveying friendly dispatches, hunting down notorious guerrillas and engaging in desperate combat. At least 20 of the volunteer scouts became casualties, and seven earned the Medal of Honor. The youngest was 18, the oldest 40. ...
    These guys were less regular than Mosby's troopers (who if detained under modern rules would be EPW).

    Regards

    Mike

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    Mosby's command wiped out one of the pseudo units wearing Confederate uniforms in 1864 or 1865. If I recall correctly they were called Blazer's Scouts and they were armed with Spencer rifles or carbines, the first magazine-fed repeaters in the history of the U.S. Army. When Mosby had a grudge his pay-back was the proverbial you-know-what. Years ago I read that Mosby is the only pre-World War II guy in the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame.

    It's ironic in a way because Mosby was a skinny short guy, he probably couldn't have passed a modern Army PT test. His own sense of personal vulnerability led him to use his brain rather than his brawn when he planned combat operations. He was the scout whose reconnaissance made J.E.B. Stuart's ride around McClellan's Army of the Potomac possible in 1862. Stuart's confidence in him is what enabled Mosby to have a command and start his unconventional operations outside of Washington in 1863.

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    Default Crimes of war: the book

    For those who seek for details and definition of what may or may not be a war crime, here is the link with the crimes of war book web site.
    You will find a dictionary of what is considered as a war crime and what are the conventions, treaties and other dispositions for protected persons.
    http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/book.html

    As example of articles you can find, I have attach the one on human shield. I personally think that this book is quite balanced and is also giving examples of what is considered as a crime of war despite being not an obvious situation.

    Shields
    By Robert Block

    The world saw human shields on television when in the events preceding the Gulf War, the Iraqi government seized foreign nationals in both Iraq and Kuwait and held them at strategic and military installations. This is a most obvious case of using civilians as hostages or human shields to attempt to prevent an attack.

    International humanitarian law (IHL) prohibits parties to conflict from using civilians to shield military objectives or military operations from attack. But armies and irregular forces use innocent civilians as human shields in conflicts all over the world. Often, they do it in a manner that, unlike Iraq’s blatant example, is not instantly recognizable.

    Two such cases occurred in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in mid-1994, when more than 1 million people fled to Zaire and lived in the squalor of refugee camps. Some did not go back because of their role in the slaughter by an extreme nationalist Hutu regime of as many as 1 million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Others feared that Rwanda’s new pro-Tutsi rulers would be unable to distinguish the guilty from the innocent who fled Rwanda in the final days of that country’s civil war. But many others wanted to take a chance and go home where they had families and fertile land. They were not allowed to. Although considered refugees by the international community, they saw themselves as prisoners of those who ran the camps.

    Marie Akizanye was forty-three years old in 1996 at the time she fled the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire but looked twice her age. Her face was like dried-out leather. What little remained of the hair beneath her scarf was almost white, while her eyes were yellowed and glassy.

    “We wanted to come back to Rwanda, but in the camp there were people who stopped us. They had guns and machetes and they threatened us with death if tried to come back,” she said. “They told us that one day we would all go back together by force and they set up military bases among us to attack the enemy.”

    Indeed, between August 1994 and November 1997, the remnants of the armed forces of Rwanda and the dreaded Interahamwe militias still loyal to the defeated extremist regime of President Juvenal Habyarimana used the refugee camps in Zaire as a staging ground and launchpad for attacks into Rwanda. The extremists would stage raids into Rwanda from the camps and then seek refuge back there, using the refugees as shields from counterattacks. When the camps were broken up by a combined force of Rwanda’s new Tutsi-dominated army and Zairean rebels, proof emerged of plans for a massive military invasion of Rwanda from the refugee camps.

    Under international law, parties to a conflict must keep military assets as far as possible from concentrations of civilians. It is also a crime of war to use any civilians as a human shield. According to Article 51 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions: "The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objects from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations."

    The second example occurred in 1997. Zairean rebels fighting to overthrow the government of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko often complained that when they approached groups of Rwandan refugees who were then fleeing Zaire’s civil war, they were often fired upon by armed elements hiding among the civilians. This fact was in turn used as an excuse by the rebels to indiscriminately attack refugee areas, often massacring hundreds of women, children, and elderly—clearly illegal under IHL.

    Some cases are not so cut-and-dried.

    One such incident took place in El Salvador in March 1984. Under attack for its appalling human rights record, and unable to convince the world that it was waging a righteous struggle against Communist insurgents, El Salvador's military was searching for an incident to bolster its case before upcoming elections.

    The army's prayers appeared to have been answered one Monday evening outside the small town of San Antonio Grande when rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) attacked a train traveling from the town of San Vicente in the west of the country to the capital, San Salvador.

    The railway line cut though the heart of guerrilla territory. Trains plying this route were regularly fired upon or blown up. But these were always cargo trains, usually carrying supplies for the military or the businesses of the army's wealthy patrons—clear military objectives. This time, however, the train was full of civilian passengers.

    Eight people, including women and children, were killed and dozens wounded. Here at last was the "proof" of what the Salvadoran Army had contended all along: that its enemies were war criminals with no regard for human life. An attack that does not distinguish between military objectives and civilians is a war crime.

    The foreign press was summoned to the site the next morning by the Salvadoran military. Inside the train, the bodies of two men, four women, and a child were lying in a pool of congealed blood underneath wooden seats on the floor of a railway carriage. They had been left where they fell, untouched for fifteen hours so reporters could broadcast the guerrillas’ deed to more dramatic effect.

    Outside, a young woman was on her knees, rooted to a spot where she had collapsed. She was bent over the body of a small boy, resting her head on the back of one hand, while the other clutched at her breast as if trying to tear her own heart out. She wailed, pleading to God for her little son's life while damning the guerrillas. Her cries went out over the airwaves as well.

    This, an army spokesman announced with enthusiasm, was proof of the barbarity of the guerrillas. But upon talking to survivors another picture, different from what the Salvadoran Army wanted us to believe, began to emerge.

    According to the engineer, the rebels had brought the train to a halt after two mines went off on the track. The rebels had then demanded the surrender of a detachment of soldiers and five thousand rounds of ammunition that were in the last car. The soldiers had refused and a firefight ensued. Surviving passengers said that when the FMLN attack intensified the soldiers had taken refuge in their carriage, shooting at the attackers while hiding behind the civilian passengers for protection. It was then that people were killed.

    Not wanting the bodies of its troops to be seen lying alongside those of civilians in a passenger carriage, the army removed the soldiers' corpses long before journalists arrived.

    Despite the survivors’ story it is unclear whether the soldiers had rushed to the passenger area to use civilians as shields—clearly a war crime—or fled that particular car because they thought it was the best place to take cover, thereby committing no violation of law.

    Whatever the truth, in the television propaganda war for the hearts and minds of the world, it was the guerrillas of FMLN and not the Salvadoran Army who lost sympathy points that day.

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    Default A Point of View

    has the Crimes of War web site - home page

    I've found its Regions & Themes and Special Features sections to be quite useful, especially as to leads to original sources. Keep in mind that most of the direct crimes of war pieces are opinion pieces.

    For example, its articles on detention of AQ-Taliban from the gitgo to the present present opinions that simply have not been accepted as law by the US courts that have been deciding those cases. The cases won by detainees have been won on the facts - not on the view of detainment law held by the crimes of war authors.

    Of course, anyone may write anything they want about international law; but if you are a practictioner with a court case, what you write has to stay within the confines of the reservation boundaries - if you want to win, as opposed to blowing smoke.

    As to the El Sal sitution, at least the soldiers were in uniform. The run of the mill irregulars that some in the world seem to glamorize are not in uniform and regularly mix with the civilian population - and, if we follow some ICRC ideas about "direct participation in hostilities", irregulars are allowed to hide as civilians among civilians so long as they are not engaged in active hostilities.

    Regards

    Mike

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