Sanctuary or Ungoverned Spaces:identification, symptoms and responses

[Cole]

Carl,

With all due respect, you are smoking some hardcore crack here.

Not likely since I don't even drink. I'm perfectly capable of being irrational while sober.

Conventional ground forces had CIVCAS incidents almost daily while I was in Afghanistan. Typically some lower enlisted guy pulling security on a convoy or at some outpost faced with an urgent decision about what to do when a guy on a motorcycle races toward his position without responding to hand signals or flashing lights; or what to do when similarly a vehicle closed too close to the convoy.

And I watched a TV special where a SF guy claiming he was parking cars in Memphis a year prior shot an approaching truck in Afghanistan and hit a 13 year old in the truck bed in the chest. When taken as a percentage of total troops on hand, SF/SOF CIVCAS are higher at least in the headlines for major incidents. Why else would Karzai be decrying the night raids?

Default answer was to use their assigned weapon and stop the person.

Warning shots? Escalation of force. Isn't self-protection legal? Don't they have signs on vehicles saying to stay back? They tried to field sonic weapons and folks cried foul.

Next on the list was attack helicopters, who typically were held blameless for their actions. The conventional forces compressed their battle space to the ring road, the hwy to Quetta, and a few relative small bulges around major population centers. The remainder (and vast majority) of RC South was abandoned to a a handful of SF and SEAL and Coalition SOF outposts as permanent presence, and sporadic raiding by other SOF.

Sir, in a later post you mention how helpless you guys are out there and that you need the air support. Would respectfully submit you are trying to have it both ways. The Biden plan submits we can get by with outnumbered SOF/SF who can take care of themselves and hold just as much terrain as general purpose forces, influence as many in the population, train/mentor just as many ANA, and do so without calling in AC-130 (Marine incident south of Herat) or attack helicopters, or other aircraft engaging tankers in Kunduz (OK a German incident).

SOF events were and are rare, but they are sometimes dramatic when they do occur.

MARSOC rings a bell in two incidents (one showing off for Ollie North), night raids that killed a police chiefs sons, other night raids that killed a bunch of teens in the northeast?

All too often, pilots with eyes on the target would call the nearest ground commander (some SOF commander in a post isolated from any external support deep in Indian country) and describe a major threat and ask for permission to engage. When later it turned out that the target was a group of kids or women the lion's share of the blame would fall upon that SOF commander.

Sometimes there is some collateral damage but legitimate targets are also struck. Guntape and UAS footage should support one way or the other as they did here:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat...es_reports.php

And UAS footage confirmed that mortarmen were involved in the pre-Wanat incident of July 4, 2008. In the incident you mentioned, the tape turned out missing. Kind of hints at a situation where the cover up was worse than the crime.

Yes, after the fact, in the incident you describe it was determined that the vehicles contained a Hazara group traveling south from Dai Kundai down to Kandahar. To a ground commander listening to Taliban forces coordinating an attack on his small team in an isolated village far from his own base or any conventional support they were described to him as three vehicles full of armed men, accompanied by a large number of dismounts. He obviously could not see the target, he could only incorporate what he was being told into the totality of his circumstances there on the ground. The two pilots who came on station had no such concerns or hindrances. They knew that they faced little threat of effective air defense fire (unless coming within PKM and RPG range); and had eyes on with high tech optics and flew around the target vehicles several times before receiving the ground force commander's authorization to engage. They never told the ground the commander that this was not a Taliban force, they never closed to confirm their doubts, they just lit it up and flew back to base. Like I said, it was a tragedy, and those who dished out punishments or wrote condemning articles did so with full access to dozens of written statements, video and audios available for their review. The commander had none of that.

I hear you. Hindsight is easy, but the Predator guys followed the vehicles for hours...not the minutes that the OH-58Ds were on station.

Regardless, your stated assumption that the Dutch (who largely stayed in the narrow confines of their base and equally narrow surrounding battle space) conventional forces or the Marines (didn't realize Marines had been sent up to Uruzgan, so I question that) somehow have better situational awayness over this region than the US and coalition SOF (USSF, Aussie and Dutch SOF) who have been out and among the people (friendly and unfriendly) out in the rural areas since 2001 is just flat wrong.

My bad. I knew Sangin's location and mistakenly thought it was in Uruzgan and as you know it is close but in northeast Helmand.

But key to remember is that they are all civilians. Be one a hardcore Taliban fighter or a small girl. The whole term "CIVCAS" is a bit ridiculous as it drives decisions based on ones age or gender rather than upon their action or associations. If those vehicles had contained 15 fighters and 12 women and children would that be "CIVCAS"? Under our current rules, yes. Yet are all are equally liable either directly or as accomplices. Our operational laws we employ are broken in my opinion; as are our procedures for clearing fires and assessing blame. But that does not make a good story, SOF guys killing civilians does, so that is what makes the news.

Are you saying there are confirmed cases of women and young children pulling triggers? I've heard about kids throwing grenades over walls.

Just my opinion, and deepest respect for all warfighters in the air and on the ground. Just don't believe that single pilot fast movers at altitude even with Sniper XR, DCGS and RPA operators stateside who do great work but provide no habitual support and can't have the same tactical information, or SOF/SF on shorter tours and in fewer numbers can cover all the terrain and key populations or have the same intell as many more guys on the ground for a year.

[Entropy]

Cole,

The mistakes that led to that tragedy happened before the helicopters came on station. The critical error was not with SOF or the Army or the helicopters, but with the predator crew which failed to inform the SOF folks that women and children were in the vehicles. This was information they should have passed since it was the imagery analysts at the DGS that made the identification and the call that women and children were present. The helicopters were not brought in to ID a potentially hostile target - they were brought in to attack a target that was already determined to be a threat.