Troops unhappy with rules restricting engagment

C.J. Chivers, NY Times:

...

Before the rules were tightened, one Army major who had commanded an infantry company said, “firefights in Afghanistan had a half-life.” By this he meant that skirmishes often were brief, lasting roughly a half-hour. The Taliban would ambush patrols and typically break contact and slip away as patrol leaders organized and escalated Western firepower in response.

Now, with fire support often restricted, or even idled, Taliban fighters seem noticeably less worried about an American response, many soldiers and Marines say. Firefights often drag on, sometimes lasting hours, and costing lives. The United States’ material advantages are not robustly applied; troops are engaged in rifle-on-rifle fights on their enemy’s turf.

One Marine infantry lieutenant, during fighting in Marja this year, said he had all but stopped seeking air support while engaged in firefights. He spent too much time on the radio trying to justify its need, he said, and the aircraft never arrived or they arrived too late or the pilots were reluctant to drop their ordnance.

“I’m better off just trying to fight my fight, and maneuver the squads, and not waste the time or focus trying to get air,” he said.

Several infantrymen have also said that the rules are so restrictive that pilots are often not allowed to attack fixed targets — say, a building or tree line from which troops are taking fire — unless they can personally see the insurgents doing the firing.

This has lead to situations many soldiers describe as absurd, including decisions by patrol leaders to have fellow soldiers move briefly out into the open to draw fire once aircraft arrive, so the pilots might be cleared to participate in the fight.

Moments like those bring into sharp relief the grand puzzle faced by any outside general trying to wage war in Afghanistan. An American counterinsurgency campaign seek for support from at least two publics — the Afghan and the American. Efforts to satisfy one can undermine support in the other.

...

Here is the problem that has led to these restrictions. The US has done a poor job of information ops. The Taliban camouflage themselves as civilians, thereby, endangering all civilians. They also tend to use human shields. Both of these acts are war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, but when it happens that civilians are killed in the course of a fire fight with the enemy, we rarely if ever explain what caused the civilian casualties, but rather start apologizing as if we blundered into the killings instead of pointing out how the enemy caused their deaths.

Karzai has been one of the worst at understanding or explaining what the enemy is doing to cause the causalities. Perhaps that is why he gets along so well with McChrystal who has been pushing the restrictive ROIs.